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The Tonys are to Broadway what the Super Bowl is to football. This year, Lycoming County had a friendly face right there in the heart of it.
Tess Marshall, originally of Loyalsock Township, started performing with the musical Titanique, a parody of the movie Titanic, where Celine Dion imagines herself as part of the movie, when it was still off-Broadway. This year, it opened on Broadway in time to be considered for the 2026 Tony Awards.
"When we knew we got the slot for spring, we knew we would be eligible for Best New Musical nomination and the musicals who are nominated for Best New Musical perform at the Tonys, so we knew from there was a good chance," Marshall said.
About a month before the award ceremony, the actors had a meeting with the producers and found out they would be performing.
"A lot of times, producers and shows do their best to allow people who are off-stage covers to perform on the Tonys, but it's not always possible," Marshall said. "I was really hoping and praying that I would get to be part of it and get to perform, but I wasn't holding my breath. When we had that meeting with our producers and we sat down, they let us know that everyone in the building was going to get to perform on the Tonys and I cried."
She called it a dream come true.
"You can work in this business a really, really long time and never have the perfect storm of an original Broadway cast, a show that was nominated for a Tony Award and actually getting the opportunity to perform on the Tonys," Marshall said. "It just has to be aligned in the stars for all of those things to happen at the same time. I feel so grateful because it really does just feel like a once in a lifetime thing. I sincerely hope it won't be. But if it is, I got to do it and it was so special, to say the very least."
It reminded her of watching the Tonys growing up.
"I will say I was performing on the Tonys and having a full out-of-body experience because I just remember watching the Tonys as a kid," Marshall said. "In high school, having parties, watching the Tonys and having friends over. In college, it was like the night of the year. 'Oh my gosh, who's going to win? What's everyone wearing? Who's going to perform?'"
This year, the answer was her.
"For my friends to be sitting around a TV, watching me performing on the Tonys, I can't explain it," Marshall said. "I just can't explain it. I don't know if I'll ever really have the words to explain how deep that hit me."
Watching the Tonys year after year certainly did not help her know what to expect when it would come time for her to be on stage. Her day began at 7:15 a.m. at the St. James Theatre, where Titanique performs.
"The way that this works typically is that anything that can happen at your theater happens at your theater because Radio City has been packed with 1,000 performers and there's no room for anything," Marshall said.
After fixing hair, makeup and microphones in half an hour, the cast got on a charter bus and drove less than a mile away to Radio City, where they waited their turn for dress rehearsal with the performer Pink, who hosted the Tony Awards.
"Which was so cool," Marshall said. "They run a really tight ship. They've got so many stage managers. It's down to the minute. Everything is perfectly rehearsed and choreographed. Considering that this happens all on the day of the Tonys, there's really only one shot to get it right."
After rehearsing their opening number with the performers, the cast sat in the audience and watched Pink run through the show until it was their turn to rehearse the "Best musical" performance.
"Once we were done with our best musical number, they said, 'Okay, get back on the bus, go back to your theater' because we had a matinee," Marshall said. "Oh my gosh, it was crazy."
They returned to St. James Theatre at 10:30 a.m., where they had free time for two hours until their show at 1 p.m.
"I made a wild decision that the dress that I was planning to wear for our after party just wasn't feeling right," Marshall said. "So I left the theater in my hair and makeup still and found a dress for the Tonys at a dress shop on 38th Street in 45 minutes and it was the best decision. I felt so beautiful in that dress."
After returning to the theatre and doing the matinee, the show came down and the cast ate dinner there so they could put their costumes and microphones back on and return to the bus to go back to Radio City.
"Here's the part that I didn't anticipate," Marshall said. "You spend more time on the bus than you do in Radio City. They bus us to the venue. We stayed on the bus for a while until it was our turn to come on for the opening number. I want to say we were only backstage for probably a total of 10 minutes. So we stayed on the bus that whole time."
When it was their turn, they performed the opening number, walked right off stage and went back onto the bus.
"We sat on the bus and watched the Tonys on someone's phone until it was our turn for best musical, then they marched us back off the bus, back into Radio City," Marshall said.
After they performed a second time, they went back onto the bus.
"I wasn't anticipating that so much of my glamorous Tonys night was going to be spent on a Greyhound, but it was," Marshall said. "We finished watching the Tonys at our theater on a screen in the basement while we got ready for our after party. Then we just partied the night away and it was so much fun, but most of the Tonys experience was actually experienced right outside the theater on a charter."
She did not know until it was happening that was how her night would go.
"We were like, 'Oh, okay, we're just really on this bus,'" she said. "It was so funny, but we were all in it together. We all experienced it together."