New York ? Starting with this year’s ceremony, awards in all three categories will be given for plays and for musicals. In the past, they competed against each other. It’s an idea long overdue, say those in the theater community, particularly the designers themselves, who tend to be a pre-taped blur on the nationally televised show each June, and whose Tony triumphs are quickly announced between major awards and musical numbers.

“It seemed an opportunity to ensure that designers would be recognized for work which calls for different scale and different opportunities, as warranted by the material,” says Howard Sherman, executive director of the American Theatre Wing, co-presenter of the Tonys.

That means big musicals won’t necessarily dominate on Tony night, which is Sunday, as they have in the past.

Take the scenic design prize. During the last 20 years, designers of sets for plays have taken the Tony only four times, most recently in 2002 when Tim Hatley won for his lavish art nouveau designs for a revival of Noel Coward’s “Private Lives.”

“Plays tend to get lost in the spectacle of the Broadway musical,” says nominated lighting designer Donald Holder, pitted against himself this year for his work on two plays, August Wilson’s “Gem of Ocean” and a revival of Tennessee Williams’ “A Streetcar Named Desire.”

Holder should know. He won the Tony Award for lighting in 1998 for Disney’s elaborate stage version of “The Lion King.”

Monty Python's Spamalot grabbed 14 Tony Award nominations, including nods in all three design categories for a musical. Starting with this year's ceremony, awards for all three design categories - sets, costumes and lighting - will be given for plays and for musicals.

And then there’s the fabled Tony quest by veteran costume designer Jane Greenwood, who mostly has done costume designs for plays. Her nomination this year for the Kathleen Turner-Bill Irwin revival of “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” is her 15th over four decades, starting in 1965. Yet Greenwood has never won, even when she was nominated for musicals.

“There was one year (1994) when I was nominated for both ‘Passion’ and ‘She Loves Me’ – and the dancing tea cups won,” she says with a laugh, referring to the crockery and cutlery costumes designed by Ann Hould-Ward for Disney’s “Beauty and the Beast.”

“Talking from the point of view of costume design, the difference between a musical and a play can be quite significant,” Greenwood said. “Sometimes it is as difficult to design four costumes – clothes people are going to look at all evening – as it is to design 40 or 400. When you only have four characters on stage (as in ‘Virginia Woolf’), people even look at their shoelaces. They have time to contemplate it all.”

On the other end of the Tony costume-design spectrum is William Ivey Long, a four-time winner for such big musicals as “Nine,” “Crazy for You,” “The Producers” and “Hairspray.” This year Long is nominated in both the play and musical costume categories – for the Roundabout Theatre Company revival of Tennessee Williams’ “A Streetcar Named Desire” and the revival of the Jerry Herman musical “La Cage aux Folles.”

Sets. Costumes. Lighting. They provide some of the most potent memories of Broadway shows. And now the Tony Awards are doubling their recognition.