Wayback Wednesday! Step Into a Time Warp with Spring Awakening, A Chorus Line & More Vintage Videos

For the last 14 years, Broadway.com has been on the scene for some of the most exciting events in theater history: We’ve seen Broadway hopefuls become legends, unknown musicals become Tony-winning smash hits and so much more. Every Wednesday in January, we’re opening the Broadway.com vaults to take a little trip down memory lane. This week, we’re dusting off vintage videos of A Chorus Line, Spring Awakening, Little Women, The Phantom of the Opera and Dirty Rotten Scoundrels. Stay tuned for more rare clips next Wayback Wednesday!


Spring Awakening CD Signing, 2007
Way before Lea Michele joined the Glee club, John Gallagher Jr. was a Newsroom employee and Jonathan Groff was Looking for love on HBO, Broadway.com captured this adorable footage of the giddy Spring Awakening stars at their first-ever CD signing at the Virgin Megastore (which has since turned into a Forever 21). “To see all these people here waiting for us, this is like a really big moment for me right now,” Michele gushed. Lea, the feeling is mutual!


A Chorus Line Cast Recording, 2006
What happens when you take the cast of A Chorus Line, blindfold them and put them on a bus to a ranch in the middle of nowhere? Find out in this Wayback video of the revival’s cast album recording session at George Lucas’ Skywalker Ranch in Nicasio, California. This blast-from-the-past video features interviews from Jeffrey Schecter, Charlotte d’Amboise and more.


Little Women Opening Night, 2005
Let’s hop in the time machine and set the dial back 10 years, when Sutton Foster had only one Tony Award on her shelf and we had no idea what a Bunhead was. Step inside Little Women’s starry opening night party at Tavern on the Green and see Foster “shine as brightly as the sun” alongside her co-stars Megan McGinnis, Jenny Powers and Amy McAlexander.


The Phantom of the Opera Movie Event, 2004
The Phaaaaantom of the Opera is here...inside the windows at Bloomingdale’s! Rewind back to 2004, when the movie adaptation of Phantom was just hitting the big screen, starring Gerard Butler, Emmy Rossum, Patrick Wilson and Minnie Driver. Broadway.com was on hand for the unveiling of the Phantom-themed Bloomie’s windows and to chat with the cast.


Dirty Rotten Scoundrels Rehearsal, 2005
Exactly one decade ago, John Lithgow and Norbert Leo Butz were swindling ladies out of their money in the “naughty and irreverent” but still extremely “classy” musical Dirty Rotten Scoundrels. Check out this early rehearsal footage of John Lithgow and Norbert Leo Butz performing “Great Big Stuff,” and see Butz reveal the secret “tender” love affair he’d been having with one of his co-stars.