Minnesota playwright's Broadway musical up for 3 Tony Awards

MINNEAPOLIS (FOX 9) - For 14 years, Carson Kreitzer worked to bring her passion project to the stage. Now it is up for several of the highest honors a work of art can receive on the Great White Way.

"I think it's been the most thrilling work of my life," said Kreitzer. 

The musical "Lempicka" is about the life of art deco painter Tamara de Lempicka and the love triangle she was in with her husband and her female muse.

Leading ladies Edin Espinosa, who plays Lempicka, and Amber Iman, who plays one of her love interests, have been nominated for Tony Awards, along with the show's scenic designers Riccardo Hernandez and Peter Nigrini.

"This has been a really long process of building these roles with these women, and seeing them recognized in this way is just as thrilling," said Kreitzer.

Kreitzer, who co-wrote the play with composer Matt Gould, came up with the idea after moving from upstate New York to Minneapolis to work with The Playwright Center 20 years ago.

She says the iconoclastic artist challenged the expectations of what a woman could do and be between the First and Second World Wars and was ahead of her time.

"We always think of her in terms of Madonna and that she sort of was the Madonna of her time, curating her image very carefully and with a real canny sense of how to put herself forward into the market," said Kreitzer.

Kreitzer says "Lempicka" closed after a month-long run on Broadway at the Longacre Theater. But she'll be pulling for her stars to make a curtain call on an even larger stage when the Tony Awards air on Sunday.

"Yeah, I will be watching every moment and rooting for all of our incredible people," said Kreizter.

Kreitzer says she isn't sure what is next for her play, but the cast recording will be released next week.