The Antonyo Awards were created in 2020 by Drew Shade. Shade founded Broadway Black in 2012, an organization that supports Black theatre and which helped produce the awards ceremony. Dustin Ross, a close friend of Shade, named the ceremony the "Antonyo Awards" as a light-hearted joke in reference to The Tony Awards. An additional purpose of the awards is to shed light on systemic racism in the New York theatre, a mostly-white institution, in the light of the racial protests that rocked America after the deaths of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and others. No one was paid to participate in or run these awards.