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Laurence Olivier Award for Best Sound Design

Annual award for London's West End theatre

Manuscripts, fine bindings, an engraving plate and preserved performance ephemera
Arts and lettersInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionAug 8, 2026
Entity authorityQ6500808 ↗
Source-derived summary

The Laurence Olivier Award for Best Sound Design is an annual award presented by the Society of London Theatre in recognition of the "world-class status of London theatre." The awards were established as the Society of West End Theatre Awards in 1976, and renamed in 1984 in honour of English actor and director Laurence Olivier.

This award was introduced in 2004, 13 years after the 1991 introduction of individual awards for Best Set Design, Best Costume Design and Best Lighting Design.

Winners and nominees

2000s

2010s

2020s

See also

Tony Award for Best Sound Design

References

London Theatre Guide (2008). "The Laurence Olivier Awards: Full List of Winners, 1976-2008" (.PDF). 1976-2008. The Society of London Theatre. p. 20. Retrieved 2008-08-30.

Editorial summary

“Laurence Olivier Award for Best Sound Design” enters the record as annual award for London's West End theatre. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Laurence, Olivier and Award can confirm, complicate or overturn.

Editorial reviewBest approached as a cultural-object dossier: authorship and date matter, but circulation and reception often explain the wider significance. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1976, 1984, 2004, 1991—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 2004. Its strongest next move is a source search built around Laurence, Olivier and Award.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

“Laurence Olivier Award for Best Sound Design” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Laurence, Olivier and Award provides the most credible route into that argument.

Evidence profile

Object files, edition statements, performance records and contemporary criticism preserve different stages of the work’s history. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 8, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q6500808. None of the 2 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1976, 1984, 2004 and 1991.

Critical limits

Rights, attribution and provenance may remain disputed even when a general reference summary presents a stable account. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Separate the work, its editions or performances, and its later reception. Catalogue records, publication histories and object files often preserve different parts of that story.

Best used for
  • Identifying works and editions
  • Tracing reception history
  • Finding collection records
Verify next

The original object or edition, catalogue raisonné, performance record, rights file and holding institution.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Laurence Olivier Award for Best Sound Design”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Laurence Olivier Award for Best Sound Design primary sources, Laurence Olivier Award for Best Sound Design archive and Laurence research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Laurence Olivier Award for Best Sound Design”?
  2. How did later circulation or interpretation alter the work’s reception?
  3. Where is authorship, date or provenance documented?
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Laurence Olivier Award for Best Sound Design” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.