Happy Birthday to Us! Broadway.com Turns Five

After months of countless late night work sessions for a small, dedicated editorial staff in a triangular Union Square office and a tech team based in Boca Raton, Florida, Broadway.com was born five years ago. The exact time of arrival is hard to pinpoint, but it happened sometime in the wee hours between April 30 and May 1, 2000, thanks to a series of computer servers housed in South Florida.

It's difficult to describe how much it and we have grown and changed in the years since then. We know we turned a lot of heads. Within our first few months of existence, The New York Times acknowledged our knack for breaking stories specifically, Ken Mandelbaum's revelation of Rob Marshall's Seussical show doctoring and The New York Post's Michael Riedel charmingly poked fun, describing us as "kids wielding handhelds" at Broadway openings.

Among the first headlines on our initial purple-and-gold homepage were announcements of the deaths of two Broadway institutions—legendary showman David Merrick and '90s mega-musical Miss Saigon. Our first photo ops, on the other hand, focused on the new—opening night images of Matthew Broderick and Parker Posey toasting the comedy Taller Than a Dwarf and Craig Bierko beaming at the ballroom of the Marriot Marquis, where well-wishers toasted his triumphant debut in The Music Man.

The first Broadway.com Q&A subject was George C. Wolfe, struggling to keep his stirring production of The Wild Party alive at the Virginia Theatre. Reacting to an observation that he puts a lot of himself in his projects, Wolfe responded: "Yeah, I do. Otherwise, why do it? It's my 'hit by a bus' theory. Which is, I'm in the middle of rehearsal, and I walk outside and I get hit by a bus. Am I gonna be pissed because I spent my last seconds working on something that didn't matter to me? Or am I gonna think, 'Well, I wish I could see it open, but at least I was in a room trying to find a truth, trying to find a passion, trying to connect to a reality that would have an impact on someone's life.' That's the most important thing to me."

Other features included our first Fresh Face, Jesus Christ Superstar's Maya Days, and an opportunity for fans to connect with Aida's Adam Pascal in our Ask a Star section. When answering the questions, Pascal counted among his dream roles Hedwig in Hedwig and the Angry Inch, Mark in Rent and Frank-N-Furter in The Rocky Horror Show which made a Broadway return a few months later sans Pascal. Among the other revelations elicited from our readers' probing questions were Pascal's kinship to superhero Aquaman, a love of Billy Joel and a desire to be film star Russell Crowe. On the video front, we launched with a rap lesson from the talented cast of off-Broadway's The Bomb-itty of Errors.

Dame Edna officially "launched" Broadway.com with an early morning visit with Bryant Gumbel on CBS' The Early Show. Speaking of broads, we're proud to share a place in history with Mae West, who returned to Broadway via Claudia Shear's witty, wonderful Dirty Blonde on the day of our launch.

Dirty Blonde wound up losing the Best Play race at the next month's Tony Awards to Michael Frayn's talky Copenhagen, but it still managed to run longer on good buzz. Speaking of last laughs, Contact may have grabbed a controversial Best Musical win that June, but it was Disney's Aida deemed unworthy of a Best Musical nod by nominators that struck a chord with audiences, running a total of 1,852 performances. In case you're wondering, just four shows that were running back in 2000 are still on the boards—Beauty and the Beast, Chicago, Rent and The Phantom of the Opera. Hollywood certainly took note of these long-runners in recent years-the latter three have all enjoyed once-stalled big-screen treatments.

Many of today's current Broadway stars weren't even blips on our radar—or anyone's but their parents'—when we opened our doors for business. Tony winner Sutton Foster, now an above-the-title headliner in Little Women, probably missed our site's launch—she was up in the woods of Connecticut playing a minor role in the musical Dorian at Goodspeed Musical's Norma Terris Theatre. Shoshana Bean of Wicked was right off the bus from Cincinnati, about to land a small off-Broadway revival of Godspell. Norbert Leo Butz, now a big-time attraction at Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, was pounding the pavement after finishing a national tour of Cabaret. And Brooklyn power-belter Eden Espinosa? Paying her dues at Disneyland, excelling at characters like Pocahontas and Snow White.

If I may, a special shout-out to the Broadway.com employees that I've been proud to work alongside on the day-to-day operations of the site for the entire five years: President Matt Kupchin, a pioneer of online Broadway ticketing, Creative Director Jeremy Yuricek, Director of Order Fulfillment Drew Kupchin and a 24/7 editorial team to die for: Managing Editor Beth Stevens, columnist Ken Mandelbaum, photographer Bruce Glikas and news hound Cara Joy David. And there are hundreds of others who deserve mention—those who have joined or left the always-growing team over the years. And, of course, a special thanks to Hollywood Media Corporation Chairman & CEO Mitchell Rubenstein and President Laurie S. Silvers for making it all happen in the first place.

There are countless others to thank for Broadway.com's five years on the theater scene and subsequent climb to the top of the Broadway Internet food chain, but we'd mostly like to thank you, our readers, for caring about Broadway and the stars and shows that make us shine. We love what we do and are thrilled to share it with you.

Paul Wontorek
Editor-in-Chief