EXCLUSIVE: Accepting the best musical Tony Award for The Book of Mormon in 2011, co-director and co-writer Trey Parker broke up the Beacon Theater audience by thanking “a co-writer who passed away” — Joseph Smith, founder of the Mormon religion. “You did it Joseph, you got the Tony!”
Smith, who presided over the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints until he died in 1844, apparently had company. After Avenue Q won three Tonys in 2004, its composers, Jeff Marx and Robert Lopez, disclosed that they were working with Parker and Matt Stone of Comedy Central’s South Park on a musical about a religion they wouldn’t identify. Marx told the Los Angeles Times in 2005 that he and Lopez had spotted Parker and Stone in the audience at Avenue Q, at the Golden Theatre, and went up to them at intermission. “They thought we were really weird, until we whipped out our Playbill and showed them our bios, where we list them as one of our inspirations.”
