Isn't Kathy Griffin special, too?

Leave it to Kathy Griffin to speak for the id that lurks behind the most high-minded escapades on Broadway.

When the comic actress with the unplugged psyche makes her Broadway debut March 11-19, her one-woman show will be titled, bless her, "Kathy Griffin Wants a Tony."

True, her stand-up act is only scheduled to run eight performances, not enough to qualify for Tony eligibility. But even if she met that requirement, the raw fact is that she still couldn't get what she wants.

There is no longer a Tony for special theatrical event, the category established in 2001 to catch all the nontraditional stuff that falls between the cracks of best play, best musical, best actor, etc.

The useful niche that kept Dame Edna from competing with either James Earl Jones or Cherry Jones in 2005, was dropped ("retired" in Tony speak) after the 2009 telecast.

This means that Pee-wee Herman is eligible to compete with Al Pacino for best actor. Hearing this, Griffin exults in the absurdity. "I want to be in the same category as Al Pacino and Pee-wee!," she wheedles over the line from Los Angeles. "Come on, Tony voters! Make it happen!"

I admit I hadn't noticed the disappearance of the special theatrical event award until Griffin's funny title began rankling her fans on the Web. But does it make sense to pit Colin Quinn's shrewd historical/political solo comedy, "Long Story Short," and John Leguizamo's new one-man memoir "Ghetto Klown" against, for example, such a celebrated, conventional play as the upcoming "Jerusalem"?

Certainly, it doesn't make sense to Eva Price, a presenter of Griffin's show and a producer (with Jerry Seinfeld) of "Long Story Short" and last season's painfully enjoyable Carrie Fisher's "Wishful Drinking."

"I'm really sad that the category went away," she said this week. "These artists who create unique and special Broadway fare have little to no chance of winning Broadway's most prestigious award. I wish I understood this and I think many of the stars I've worked with on Broadway would love to understand as well."

To understand, I turned to Ted Chapin, levelheaded and good-humored chairman of the American Theatre Wing, which runs the Tonys with the Broadway League. According to Chapin, the special theatrical event award grew out of uneasiness with "Contact," Susan Stroman's dazzling dance play that had no words and no live music but which won the Tony for best musical in 2000.

"A room full of honorable people said 'it's wonderful,' 'it's brilliant,' 'but is it really a musical?," he recalls from the creation.

But the first year of the prize went to "Blast," which Chapin accurately describes as a "third-rate halftime show" that happened to have been booked into a Broadway theater. "Then we had a few years when there were only one-woman shows." (In 2002, Elaine Stritch, Bea Arthur and Barbara Cook.) "So this became the one-woman show award."

There were no awards given in 2004 and 2008, and only one nominee ("Bridge & Tunnel") in 2006. "It got to the point that we felt things were being geared for the award," by which he means things that wouldn't ordinarily have even been on Broadway, such as "Suzanne Somers pushing a cart full of ThighMasters" in 2005.

"So we decided to be honorable," he says about retiring the category. Oddly, this decision happened in 2009 after Liza Minnelli's comeback spectacular beat Will Ferrell's satire about George W. Bush - each a worthy candidate in the category for things that don't fit anywhere else.

Chapin wants to make sure we know that individual special Tonys can still be given "to something that's really pretty special. That puts the burden on the administration to act properly, which occasionally it does, and, in its wisdom, grant a special Tony to something that is sensational."

This distinction seems reasonable, unless one considers all the artists and productions that have won Tonys without having to be so special. Would Billy Crystal's wonderful autobiographical solo have been recognized in 2005 if there hadn't been a category created expressly for this kind of odd fit? Would the exhilarating boundary-breaking "Def Poetry Jam" have had a Tony in 2003 if there hadn't already been a slot made for it?

Wouldn't it make more sense, and be more responsive to the changes around us, if the special theatrical event Tony were reinstated and, like all the other Tonys, only given when there were more than two nominees in the category?

This could not include Kathy Griffin, because she isn't going to be here long enough to invite all the Tony voters. But even she seems surprised - OK, amused - at being excluded. "I just assumed that I would get one based on my natural charm and because there will be so much cursing," she says, suggesting both a promise and a threat.

Asked if we might expect Spider-Man jokes, she confirms "Yes, I am going to be dipping into that web." As a specialist in the impolite observation, she appreciates that her gig - "just me and a microphone" - will be followed into the Belasco Theatre by a Neil LaBute play called "Fat Pig."

Most of all, she seems stunned that she can't get a Tony for best title on Broadway.

Who knows? Maybe her title will remind Broadway to make room again for special events at the theater party.