BEST ORIGINAL SCORE:

David Byrne and Fatboy Slim

David Byrne and Fatboy Slim wrote a new Broadway score filled with “exhilarating songs” (USA Today) using disco to capture the story of First Lady of the Philippines, Imelda Marcos, and culminating with disruptive acoustic sounds giving voice to the People Power Revolution.

“A few times I would go to discos when there was a live act. DJs would say there's an arc to the evening. We take the audience on a journey [through] dancing. But what if the arc was a story? What if you could tell a story using [the] songs they're singing? And when I read Imelda Marcos, former First Lady of the Philippines, loved going to discos, who had a mirror ball installed in her New York townhouse and turned the roof of her palace into a dance club, here's an eccentric, real-life person who has created and lives in that world. Maybe her story could be told that way.”

 “Since this story is set in a disco, I wanted the audience to be like I would be in a disco, with performers up on platforms, etc. So we have to have that kind of energy a lot of the time telling the story. So I went to Fatboy Slim. We wanted it to really sound like dance music. And it worked. To me it felt like the buoyant energy you get from dance music. That must be what it feels like to be a powerful person like this, to be the president's wife, and you kinda do whatever you want.”

— David Byrne