Brruuuuce! The Boss of Rock ‘n’ Roll and now Broadway, Bruce Springsteen, will receive a special Tony Award Sunday for his one-man show and — set your DVRs now — will perform at the 2018 Tonys ceremony. (For a complete list of 2018 Tony nominees, visit post-gazette.com/ae.)

Here are 10 things Pittsburgh theater fans will want to watch for when they tune in to the ceremony, which will be telecast live by CBS at 8 p.m. Sunday.

1. Tonys co-host Josh Groban spent a hot minute at Carnegie Mellon University before going on to a recording and concert career and, finally, to Broadway last year. The Tony nominee for “Natasha, Pierre and the Great Comet of 1812” is joined by singer-songwriter Sara Bareilles, a nominee for “Waitress” and this year’s SpongeBob SquarePants musical.
2. The Groban-Bareilles team appeared on “Late Night With Stephen Colbert” Tuesday night and announced the initiative #TonyDreaming: People who tweeted a photo of themselves in an early theater production — “the more embarrassing, the better” — with that hashtag might find themselves showcased during the Tonys ceremony at Radio City Music Hall.
3. Besides the “Springsteen on Broadway” performance by the Boss, the 72nd annual Tonys will feature numbers by the casts of “The Band’s Visit,” “Rodgers & Hammerstein's Carousel,” “Frozen,” “Mean Girls,” “My Fair Lady,” “Once on This Island,” “SpongeBob SquarePants: The Musical” and “Summer: The Donna Summer Musical.” The spotlight also will be given to 2017 best musical “Dear Evan Hansen.”
4. Carnegie Mellon had six alumni garner nominations, including producer Jamie deRoy (“Angels in America,” “Three Tall Women,” “Once on This Island,” “Latin History for Morons” and “The Band’s Visit”) and costume designer Ann Roth, at 86 a nine-time nominee (“Edward Albee’s Three Tall Women” and “Eugene O’Neill’s The Iceman Cometh” and “Carousel”). Grey Henson of “Mean Girls” is a nominee for featured actor in a musical in his first Broadway show, while sound designer Peter Hylenski (“Once on This Island”) has nomination No. 5. And lighting design partners Jules Fisher (a six-time Tony winner) and Peggy Eisenhauer (she's got three) collected two nods (“The Iceman Cometh” and “Once on This Island”).
5. Renee Fleming, the opera star out of Indiana, Pa., is a first-time nominee for “Carousel,” lending her voice to “You’ll Never Walk Alone.” She has one previous Broadway credit, in the short-lived “Living on Love” in 2015. The musical comedy co-starred Anna Chlumsky, Jerry O’Connell and Douglas Sills.
6. CMU grads Zachary Quinto of Green Tree, back on Broadway in “The Boys in the Band,” and Ming-Na Wen, who grew up in Mt. Lebanon and was the voice of Disney’s Mulan, are part of the the starry list of presenters. Others are CMU alums Leslie Odom Jr. and Mr. Quinto’s castmate, Matt Bomer.
7. Mr. Quinto and Mr. Bomer previously partnered to inaugurate the first Tony Award for Excellence in Education, a Tonys partnership with Carnegie Mellon. This year's winner is Melody Herzfeld, a drama teacher at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla.
8. More presenters at the 2018 Tonys: Christine Baranski, Mikhail Baryshnikov, Melissa Benoist, Erich Bergen, Rachel Bloom, Rachel Brosnahan, Tituss Burgess, Jeff Daniels, Robert De Niro, Brandon Victor Dixon, Tina Fey, Christopher Jackson, Billy Joel,John Leguizamo, Patti LuPone, Katharine McPhee, Matthew Morrison, Kelli O’Hara, Bernadette Peters, Amy Schumer and Kerry Washington.
9. Andrew Lloyd Webber and Chita Rivera will receive Lifetime Achievement awards at these Tonys. Some of you might recall Ms. Rivera as villainess Magdalena Monteverde in Pittsburgh CLO's world premiere of “Casper, the Musical,” which debuted in June 2001.
10. How soon will we see Bruce Springsteen in the Tony Awards telecast? It may be worth noting that when “American Idiot” was rocking Broadway in 2010, the curtain lifted to reveal Green Day to open the show.

Sharon Eberson: seberson@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1960. Twitter: @SEberson_pg.

Sharon Eberson

Pittsburgh on Broadway: 'The Band's Visit' victory is one of three for Jamie deRoy

First Published: June 7, 2018, 8:22 p.m.