Tiger of the Week: Roger Berlind '52

When The Book of Mormon won the Tony Award for Best Musical June 12, co-creator Trey Parker accepted on behalf his collaborators. “We did this because we all secretly wanted to have a big, happy Mormon family,” Parker said, “and now we do.”

 

Producer Roger Berlind ’52 was part of that happy family, congratulating his peers on a side stage that Parker jokingly called the “circle of doom.” The Book of Mormon headlined the night, winning Tonys in nine of the 14 categories in which it was nominated – great news for Berlind and for Jordan Roth ’97, president of Jujamcyn Theatres, which owns The Book of Mormon’s Broadway home. (One more Princeton connection: The theater is named for Eugene O’Neill, the Nobel Prize-winning playwright who briefly attended Old Nassau as a member of the Class of 1910.)

 

The Book of Mormon is the 15th Berlind production to win a Tony for best musical, best play, best revival of a musical, or best revival of a play. This May, Berlind received the 2011 Lifetime Achievement Award from the playwright-development workshop New Dramatists. In announcing the honor, New Dramatists artistic director Todd London said Berlind’s projects “exemplify taste, intelligence, and a love of theater.” The Tony voters seem to agree.