 Perhaps the biggest winner of the 2010 Tony Awards was Fela!, the off-Broadway celebration of Fela Anikulapo Kuti that transferred to the main stage on Broadway and have the musical and the Fela tickets sales another breath of life. The show earned 11 Tony nominations and won three (Best Choreography, Best Costume Design of a Musical, and Best Sound Design of a Musical). Though the production only won three awards, it helped create enough buzz for the show to continue its successful run at the Eugene O’Neill Theatre. The show already had incredible reviews from the New York Times and a star-studded cast of producers (Jay-Z and Will and Jada Pinkett Smith). The nomination for Best Musical helped in particular, drawing what every Broadway musical needs, media attention. Fela! began off-Broadway at the 37 Arts Theatre B on September 4, 2008. The production only ran until the next month, closing October 5, 2008. The run attracted enough attention to find funding from powerful figures in music and film. With the funding the biographical jukebox musical conceived by Bill T. Jones and Jim Lewis would become a sensation in a year marked by plenty of healthy competition and a difficult economy.
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