On July 27, a 50th anniversary concert of “A Chorus Line” will bow in a sold-out one-night event at Broadway’s Shubert Theatre, the venue where “A Chorus Line” debuted on the Main Stem and ran for 15 years. Original cast members Kelly Bishop (who played Sheila), Wayne Cilento (Mike), Baayork Lee (Connie), Priscilla Lopez (Diana) and Donna McKechnie (Cassie) will reunite to pay tribute to one of Broadway’s landmark productions. Lee will also direct the evening, having been the ambassador of “A Chorus Line” for five decades, mounting productions of the musical around the world.
Lee wants audiences to know that this concert “is not the show,” she told Broadway News. It’s a singular reunion event. The celebration will feature the quintet of cast members “talking about how it all started, the effect the show had on Broadway and Times Square and the first time they heard their numbers,” Lee said. “A little backstage information that I think the audience will like.”
Lee also teased appearances by celebrities, Broadway favorites (like Bebe Neuwirth and Jennifer Simard) and additional original company members in addition to unique stagings of numbers from the show. “I wanted to go back to 1983, when we surpassed ‘Grease’ as the longest-running musical,” Lee said. “Michael Bennett had at least 300 to 400 dancers from Australia, Mexico, Japan. They all participated. It was unbelievable.” The event will benefit dance programs of the Entertainment Community Fund, formerly the Actors Fund.
Here, Lee, Lopez and McKechnie reflect on their experience putting up the show 50 years ago, milestones from the past five decades and their hopes for the future of “A Chorus Line.”
The following is compiled from multiple conversations and has been edited for clarity.
What role, if any, has the Fund played in your life and career?
Baayork Lee: It really is important. Back in the ’80s, so many of our friends passed away. They were sick with AIDS or HIV. We didn’t know what it was. And the Actors Fund came to their aid and paid their rent, their medicine, any psychiatrist. The Fund was there for us. I’ve always remembered that. When we wrote our book “On the Line,” all of my royalties I gave to the Actors Fund. When Chris Ketner, our producer, came to me and he said, listen, it’d be great if we did this [50th reunion] for a charity, I said, the Actors Fund, which is now called the Entertainment Community Fund.
And there’s robust dancer-specific programming through the Dancers’ Resource.
Lee: We didn’t have all of that in 1983, but we have it now. And it’s because of them that dancers are taken care of.
McKechnie: I love the Fund. I knew people that worked there as social workers and aids and got us through some very difficult times. Everybody pitches in. It’s a community with a big heart, and I’ve always been proud to be a part of it in any way that I can. I know that the money that they raise really does good work.
Lopez: Being in as many shows as I’ve been in, I’ve done many Actors Fund [special performances]. And it was always wonderful because the people who would come to those performances wanted to be there. I am just happy because I know the work that the Fund does for so many people. Ronnie Dennis, who played Richie, he was diagnosed with AIDS ages ago. And he lived an incredibly long, beautiful life. And I can tell you it was the Fund who made a lot of things possible for him. There are probably hundreds of actors who really benefit from it — and not just actors.
I want to reminisce about “A Chorus Line” before the official celebration. Baayork, you and Michael Bennett actually met in his dance classes. You were in multiple shows of his before “A Chorus Line,” and then he asked you to be the one to carry the show’s legacy, which you’ve done so beautifully. What do you think it was that connected the two of you and made you such a match as a creative pairing?
Lee: Every single choreographer I had worked with hired me as a kid. I would go to these auditions [for kid parts] and then, when I got into the show, they realized I had ballet training from the School of American Ballet, and they started putting me in the numbers. But I had to get the audition as a kid. So when Michael Bennett said to me, “I want to choreograph, and you’re going to be one of my dancers,” I was going to dance like everybody else. He was so ahead of his time. He had Tommy Tune, who was six-foot-six, next to me. He had Latinos, Asians. He ran the gamut. Michael Bennett, he really changed the whole look of what a Broadway show should look like. [For “A Chorus Line”], I went in as [Michael’s] assistant. [Later] he said, “I want you on the line.”
Priscilla, your song “Nothing” as Diana Morales is about your real-life experience with an acting teacher in high school. Is it correct that, at one point, the song was going to be a different story?
