Small Acts, Big Impact: 2025 Special Tony Winner Celia Keenan-Bolger’s Legacy of Compassion

Celia Keenan-Bolger did not expect a Tony Award this season—at least not the kind that would come via a Zoom meeting. “I just was like, ‘What?’ and burst into tears,” she recalls, of learning the news. “It immediately felt much bigger than me.”

The acclaimed stage actor, who won her first Tony in 2019 for To Kill a Mockingbird and earned another nomination just last year for Mother Play, is this year’s recipient of the Isabelle Stevenson Award—an honor not for a performance, but for a lifetime of advocacy through the arts.

“I never imagined this,” she says with characteristic humility. “I wanted that Tony so badly for a performance. But this—this is a different kind of recognition. And honestly, I don’t think I ever thought there would be a Tony Award in my future for the work I’ve done off stage.”

Her service work has rarely made headlines, and defies easy categorization. “It’s kind of all over the place,” Keenan-Bolger admits with a laugh. Whether she’s raising funds for healthcare workers, organizing for local elections, fighting for LGBTQ+ rights, supporting fellow artists in need or training as an end-of-life doula, her throughline is clear. “What I’ve been doing is community care,” she says. “It’s small acts. But done over time, they really matter.”

Keenan-Bolger traces her values back to Detroit, where activism wasn’t extracurricular, but part of daily life. Her parents, Susan and Rory, were public servants who brought their children to protests and soup kitchens, modeling the idea that being a citizen means showing up. “It makes it so much easier when you’re introduced to it at a young age,” she says. “It just felt like another thing we always did.”

That early exposure made advocacy feel natural. As a student at the University of Michigan, she gravitated toward service projects instinctively. One spring break, instead of heading to the beach, she traveled to Texas to work with United Farm Workers. “Gavin was like, ‘Wait, what?’” she recalls, laughing. That Gavin, of course, was late Tony Award-winning star Gavin Creel—her classmate, future roommate and co-conspirator in advocacy.

Their bond, started in school and deepened in New York City, became one of the great partnerships of her life. “Gavin was always giving voice to the things he wanted to do in the world,” she says. “And that inspired me to do the same.” Together, they marched, fundraised, volunteered. “We were just trying to be with our people and do something useful,” she says. “And that made it easier and more joyful.”

That joy—of doing something useful, of working with friends, of building a life around care—is central to how Keenan-Bolger sees her place in the theater world. “I’m not someone who started an organization or raised millions,” she says. “But I’ve just kept showing up. I’ve tried to be a helper.”

Nothing crystallized the meaning of service—and its emotional weight—quite like Keenan-Bolger’s final act of care for Creel, who died of a rare form of cancer last September.

Two years before his diagnosis, she had completed training to become an end-of-life doula, inspired by learning of the work of doulas during the pandemic. “When you meditate on the fact that you’re going to die,” she says, “it helps you ask: Am I living the way I want to live, knowing that’s coming?” That training introduced her to the concept of R.U.G.s—regrets, unfinished business, guilt or shame—emotions that often surface near life’s end.

By the time Creel’s health declined, Keenan-Bolger navigated his final days as both his close friend and his doula. “I asked him what he felt most proud of,” she said in her moving eulogy at his public memorial. “He talked about his family, his friendships, how proud he was of [his 2023 musical] Walk On Through. He was brave, and also scared and tired.” Before she could even ask about regrets, he gently closed his eyes. “Ceels,” he told her, “I have no regrets. I did everything I wanted to do. It was a pretty amazing life. I just wish I had more time.”

That line serves as both a reflection and a motivator for Keenan-Bolger, who is being honored in the middle of her career—and her life. As she looks ahead, she’s clear on her priorities.

“For the next eight years, I just want to be the best mom I can be while my son is still living in our house.” She and her husband, actor John Ellison Conlee, have a ten-year-old son, William, and family life is firmly at the center of her world. “We’re a household full of feelings and ideas and big questions,” she says. “And I want to make sure I’m present for all of it.”

That grounding has helped her focus her advocacy. Instead of trying to do it all, she’s committed to two priorities this year: supporting diversity, equity and inclusion efforts at William’s school and getting involved in the upcoming New York City mayoral election. “It feels possible and small enough that I can actually affect a little bit of change,” she says.

She also draws inspiration from people who’ve balanced art, family and activism with grace—like her friend, and fellow performer and mother, Judy Kuhn. The two are part of a giving circle that raises money for progressive state legislatures, continuing Creel’s legacy of civic engagement. “Judy is such a hero to me,” Keenan-Bolger says. “Her life is so rich, and she’s still out there doing the work. That gives me a lot of hope for what’s ahead.”

She finds hope, too, in both elders and younger generations. “At a recent protest, I saw so many elders—people with walkers, in wheelchairs—marching 30 blocks,” she says. “They might not even be here to see what happens next, and still, they show up.” She’s equally inspired by youth-led activism: “I want to understand where they are, how they’re feeling. I want to help them, but also learn from them.”

For Keenan-Bolger, advocacy and artistry are intertwined. “A lot of why I feel like I matter in this community is because of this work,” she says. “If that’s any nudge for people who are looking for belonging, for connection, I really do believe that service is a direct path to that feeling. Even if it’s small. Especially if it’s small.”

Which is why, come Tony night, Keenan-Bolger is embracing the experience. “The greatest thing,” she says with a smile, “is getting to celebrate a year of theater I wasn’t even in—just be a fan, fangirling all night long.”

Still, there’s a deeper glow in her eyes when she talks about this moment. “I never imagined there’d be a Tony Award in my future for this,” she says again. “But I hope it lets people see that you don’t have to start big. You just have to start. Be someone who shows up.”