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A Chorus Line

by Tom Kitt and Brian Yorkey

Listen to the Original Cast recording on YouTube 

ABOUT THE PLAY

A Chorus Line is a musical centered on seventeen Broadway dancers auditioning for spots on a chorus line, and is set on the bare stage of a Broadway theatre during an audition. The play provides a glimpse into the personalities of the performers and the choreographer as they describe the events that have shaped their lives and their decisions to become dancers.

Following several workshops and an Off-Broadway production, A Chorus Line opened at the Shubert Theatre on Broadway July 25, 1975, directed and choreographed by Michael Bennett. An unprecedented box office and critical hit, the musical received twelve Tony Award nominations and won nine, in addition to the 1976 Pulitzer Prize for Drama.

The original Broadway production ran for 6,137 performances, becoming the longest-running production in Broadway history until surpassed by Cats in 1997, and the longest-running Broadway musical originally produced in the US, until surpassed in 2011 by Chicago. It remains the sixth longest-running Broadway show ever. A Chorus Line’s success has spawned many successful productions worldwide. It began a lengthy run in the West End in 1976 and was revived on Broadway in 2006, and in the West End in 2013.

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Next to Normal

by Tom Kitt and Brian Yorkey

Listen to the Original Cast recording on YouTube

ABOUT THE PLAY

Next to Normal concerns a mother who struggles with worsening bipolar disorder and the effects that her illness and the attempts to alleviate it have on her family. The musical also addresses such issues as grieving a loss, suicide, drug abuse, ethics in modern psychiatry, and the underbelly of suburban life.

Next to Normal received several workshop performances before it debuted Off-Broadway in 2008, winning the Outer Critics’ Circle Award for Outstanding Score and receiving nominations for Drama Desk Awards for Outstanding Actress (Alice Ripley) and Outstanding Score. After an Off-Broadway run, the show then played at the Arena Stage in its temporary venue in Crystal City, VA (just outside Washington, DC) from November 2008 to January 2009.

The musical opened on Broadway in April 2009. It was nominated for eleven 2009 Tony Awards and won three, Best Original Score, Best Orchestration and Best Performance by a Leading Actress in a Musical for Alice Ripley. It also won the 2010 Pulitzer Prize for Drama, becoming just the eighth musical in history to receive the honor. The previous musical to win the Pulitzer was Rent, in 1996, which was also directed by Michael Greif. In awarding the prize to Kitt and Yorkey, the Pulitzer Board called the show “a powerful rock musical that grapples with mental illness in a suburban family and expands the scope of subject matter for musicals.”

The First US National Tour launched in November 2010, with Alice Ripley reprising her Broadway role; the tour concluded in July 2011. The Broadway production closed in January 2011 after over 700 performances. It has since spawned many international productions.