Tony Award for Best Featured Actress in a Play

The Best Performance by a Featured Actress in a Play is an honor presented at the Tony Awards, a ceremony established in 1947 as the Antoinette Perry Awards for Excellence in Theatre, to actresses for quality supporting roles in a Broadway play. The awards are named after Antoinette Perry, an American actress who died in 1946. Honors in several categories are presented at the ceremony annually by the Tony Award Productions, a joint venture of The Broadway League and the American Theatre Wing, to "honor the best performances and stage productions of the previous year." Originally called the Tony Award for Actress, Supporting or Featured (Dramatic), it was later changed to its current title in 1976. Before 1956, nominees' names were not made public. The change was made by the awards committee to "have a greater impact on theatregoers".