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She’s Photographed Broadway for Years. Now Broadway Is Honoring Her.
Sara Krulwich has been shooting plays and musicals for The New York Times since the 1990s. On June 4, her work is being recognized by the Tony Awards.
Sara Krulwich has been covering the Tony Awards for years. This year, she’s being honored by them.
She joined The New York Times in 1979 but did not always feel welcome. A photo technician once slapped her when she expressed concern about the quality of a print, she said, and when she first started, the New York Press Photographers Association declined to grant her admission.
She became a culture photographer in 1994 and gradually overcame obstacles in the theater world, too, where producers were accustomed to controlling visual images of their shows by granting access only to photographers they hired.
Over time, she turned theater photography into a beat at the Times, becoming a mainstay on the arts pages while documenting more than a hundred plays and musicals each year. And on June 4 — six days before the Tony Awards air on television — she will be the first journalist recognized with a Tony Honor for Excellence in the Theater.
Here, annotated with comments from Ms. Krulwich, are a few of the thousands of photos she has taken, chosen to illustrate the demands of her job and the changing technology she has used to do her work.
1987
Cabaret
“This is Joel Grey putting on makeup in his dressing room at the Imperial Theater. Everything was black-and-white then — we didn’t use color until the 1990s. It was also shot with film — our photos then were developed by lab technicians — so for a few hours you didn’t know whether you had a picture.”
1996
Rent
“On the day the Pulitzers were announced, ‘Rent’ was in rehearsals on Broadway, and we walked over to the Nederlander and told the cast that Jonathan Larson, who had died the night of the last dress rehearsal Off Broadway, had just won. Everybody cheered, and then started to cry, just weeping. It was a moment where everyone missed Jonathan so much, and I happened to catch Jesse L. Martin and Anthony Rapp.”
2002
Movin’ Out
“Until this time, I had been shooting film if I wanted to get action, because digital cameras had a shutter lag. But then I got a camera that was able to shoot many frames per second, and each of them was sharp. It was a game changer. I never used film again.”
2003
Chicago
“The musicians’ union had a four-day strike, and when they finally settled my job was to find a way to illustrate that they were back at work. I instantly thought of ‘Chicago,’ because that production has the orchestra on the stage. Other photographers had been asked to leave, but the stage manager let me stay, because we had worked together before. This picture ran above the fold on the front page.”
2009
Ruined
“‘Ruined’ was a very upsetting play about the Democratic Republic of Congo, where one of the weapons of war was violence against women, but the pictures the show released were of a couple dancing and a woman putting on lipstick. I think my role as a journalist is to show people what they’re going to see when they go into a theater, not to shelter them from a tough situation.”
2010
A Little Night Music
“I had shot Elaine Stritch many times — once I even went up to Canada to shoot her in ‘Show Boat’ — and she was a force of nature. This was one of the only times I remember her staying still. It’s a very long exposure, in pitch dark, and I loved how sharp she was in the midst of all the movement.”
2010
Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark
“It was really, really difficult to be allowed into ‘Spider-Man,’ because it was very controversial, and people were being hurt. But it was also absolutely spectacular for a photographer. It was challenging to figure out whether you should be under or over the flying, but I liked above better, because you could see into Spider-Man’s eyes.”
2015
Hamilton
“During the dress rehearsal, Lin-Manuel Miranda would go offstage when he wanted to see how the play looked, and would have his alternate play the role. There were no lights in the seating area — just the light thrown from the stage and the computers — but my camera sees more in the dark than I do. And I loved the image of him in the middle of this technological zoo, but wearing this 18th-century costume.”
Michael Paulson is the theater reporter. He previously covered religion, and was part of the Boston Globe team whose coverage of clergy sexual abuse in the Catholic Church won the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service. More about Michael Paulson
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