{"id":2450001,"date":"2026-06-08T15:11:36","date_gmt":"2026-06-08T15:11:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/?p=2450001"},"modified":"2026-06-08T15:11:36","modified_gmt":"2026-06-08T15:11:36","slug":"shreveport-native-zhailon-levingston-wins-tony-award-for-direction-entertainment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/shreveport-native-zhailon-levingston-wins-tony-award-for-direction-entertainment\/","title":{"rendered":"Shreveport native Zhailon Levingston wins Tony Award for direction | Entertainment"},"content":{"rendered":"

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NEW YORK CITY – Shreveport native Zhailon Levingston won his first Tony Award Sunday night for his work on the Broadway stage.<\/p>\n

Levingston, alongside co-director Bill Rauch, took home the award for Best Direction of a Musical at the 79th Annual Tony Awards at Radio City Music Hall in New York.<\/span> The duo was honored for their work on Cats: The Jellicle Ball, an immersive, Ballroom-inspired reimagining of the classic Andrew Lloyd Webber musical.<\/span><\/p>\n

The production trades the original show’s traditional ballet choreography for the language of ballroom culture, vogueing, and runway categories.<\/span> The musical won three Tony Awards overall, including Best Choreography and Best Costume Design of a Musical.<\/span><\/p>\n

Levingston grew up in Shreveport and returns annually to direct theater in his hometown.<\/span> At 27 years old, he previously made history as the youngest Black director in Broadway history when he directed Chicken & Biscuits in 2021.<\/span><\/p>\n

During his acceptance speech, Levingston celebrated the legacy of the underground subculture that inspired the show, honoring the Black and brown trans women and gay men who pioneered ballroom culture.<\/span><\/p>\n

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\u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n

\u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.ktbs.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

NEW YORK CITY – Shreveport native Zhailon Levingston won his first Tony Award Sunday night for his work on the Broadway stage. Levingston, alongside co-director Bill Rauch, took home the award for Best Direction of a Musical at the 79th Annual Tony Awards at Radio City Music Hall in New York. The duo was honored […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2434518,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25172],"tags":[324114,363794,390708,481172,469707,311140,481171,481173,481168,481170,23089,25614,392277,312633,347120,481169,413757,481166,481167,390704],"class_list":["post-2450001","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-entertainment","tag-andrew-lloyd-webber","tag-ballroom","tag-bill-rauch","tag-black-director","tag-broadway-musicals","tag-cats","tag-co-director","tag-director-in-broadway-history","tag-dorian-awards","tag-first-tony-award","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-radio-city","tag-radio-city-music-hall","tag-shreveport","tag-the-79th-annual-tony-awards","tag-tony-award","tag-tony-award-for-best-musical","tag-xenofiction","tag-zhailon-levingston"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/Mount-Pleasant-PRCA-Rodeo-returns-with-family-fun-and-high-flying.png","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2450001","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2450001"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2450001\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2450002,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2450001\/revisions\/2450002"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2434518"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2450001"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2450001"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2450001"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}