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Baayork Lee, right, rehearses with Billy Harrigan Tighe (who portrays demanding director Zach) and Emma X. O’Loughlin (as Connie, the character based on Lee). (Photo by Mason Wood)

Actors get in “Line” at City Springs to hear stories, learn moves from Baayork Lee

Many of the questions remain the same but Baayork Lee’s answers are anything but generic.

As she has traveled around the world the last five decades as a director, choreographer and original cast member of A Chorus Line, Lee encounters lots of impressionable young faces, all looking to pick her brain, discover how she has mastered a long life in show business and, of course, learn all they can about Michael Bennett’s revered choreography. Ever the pro, she’s always eager to share her secrets.  

Lee, 75, created the role of Connie Wong in A Chorus Line and was involved with the landmark 1976 musical for three consecutive years — in its off-Broadway engagement, on Broadway and on the first national tour. She has remained busy in the industry since. 

This week, she returns to her roots directing and choreographing a version of A Chorus Line at City Springs Theatre Company that opens Friday for a run through March 27. The invite came at just the right time.

“I was not working for two years because of the pandemic; all the theaters in New York were shutting down and then I got a call from City Springs that they were doing it live,” Lee recalls. “I thought, ‘Just put on that mask and get on the plane. I am there. When they selected A Chorus Line . . . well, that’s my thing!

Baayork Lee: “When I come to City Spring and see those big eyes asking what was it like, I get goosebumps.” (Photo by Marc J. Franklin)

Having directed South Pacific as part of City Springs’ first season in 2019, Lee was taken with the staff and facilities, which she calls as impressive as anything  she had worked with in New York. 

Preparing for Covid-era safety protocols, though, was a new and evolving phenomenon — and a challenge unlike any she had faced before, says Lee one recent morning in a Zoom interview. After combing through self-taped auditions, she chose 80 performers, all hoping to be part of the ensemble, to bring to the Sandy Springs playhouse. Auditioners sang in front of plexiglass and danced in masks until the director whittled down to the final cast. It was a trying process, but Lee praises City Springs for being on top of safety measures.

“We are tested three times a week, get our temperature (taken) every time we walk through the door and have masks on all the time. Everyone has to be vaccinated before they sign a contract. We can’t be struck down the way (theaters) were in New York. We tell people not to think about partying and being in large groups and to be careful.”

A lifetime in the theater can be an overused expression but for Lee it’s accurate. At age 5, she was working with Yul Brynner in 1951’s Broadway version of The King and I. The casting agents were looking for children and found a lot of them to bring on stage. She was chosen. “I remember walking into the theater and seeing a chandelier and all those seats. I told my mother at 5, ‘This is it! This is what I want.’ I had blinders on.”  

A decade later, Lee became Bennett’s first friend in New York. The two met at Manhattan’s High School of Performing Arts and hit it off immediately. Ultimately they would go on to work on several shows together. After starting off as performer, Bennett eventually decided to focus on choreography and asked Lee to be part of his stable of dancers. 

As the two were in production of Seesaw on Broadway, they heard the buzz that New York theater was dying. Two dancers from the show who had moved to the area decided to get together with friends, all of whom still wanted to work. Bennett was invited to attend, and that gathering became known as the Tape Session, with everyone telling their story of why they came to the city. He recorded the event, and Lee estimates that at least 75 percent of the narrative from A Chorus Line came from that and a subsequent meeting. She was at the second gathering and related her own account — about being too short to be a ballerina and being fired at the age of 8 for outgrowing her The King and I costume.  

Eventually Bennett took those tapes to producer Joseph Papp, who didn’t know quite what the project would become. Yet he was hooked and asked Bennett to develop it. The first workshops followed, and Bennett wanted Lee, who was acting as his assistant, to be in the show as well.

“Everyone he chose had told their story,” Lee says. “There was no acting involved; none of us had taken any acting lessons. We were playing ourselves. We were the first reality television (show).” 

When the team hired Marvin Hamlisch to write the music, the performers had to audition to basically portray themselves. “I had to go in and as I was reading this piece of paper with all my own words on it, I said to myself, ‘If I don’t get this part, I am going to jump off the Washington Bridge!’”

Fortunately, she got the role of Connie, one of the musical’s 17 dancers auditioning for demanding director Zach to become part of an eight-person ensemble.  

A Chorus Line won nine Tony Awards, including Best Musical, and Bennett took home Best Director and Best Choreography honors. A commercial smash, the production was credited with saving Broadway.

The cast of City Springs Theatre Company’s production of “A Chorus Line”

“Broadway was dying and when we did A Chorus Line, we did not know what it was,” Lee says. “We were off-Broadway and we closed and went right to Broadway in time for the Tonys. When we started it, 42nd Street was a cesspool. You never went there. People were not going to see shows, and we helped the city grow and brought Broadway back.”

While she was performing in the musical, Bennett was also training her to direct and choreograph it. Lee soon got to a point where she realized she simply could not do both. “The machine was starting to move. I was in charge of all that, and I could not perform anymore.” 

From there, she went on to direct or choreograph more than 35 versions of A Chorus Line across the world, including the 2006 Broadway revival, as well as musicals such as The King and I, Porgy and Bess and Jesus Christ Superstar. (Fun fact: Lee also had a small role in the 1973 film version of Jesus Christ Superstar.

In 2017, Lee received her own Tony, the Isabelle Stevenson Award for her commitment to future generations of artists through work with her National Asian Artists Project and various theater education programs around the world. 

Besides Bennett, Lee has collaborated with the likes of Hal Prince and Mike Nichols and credits those mentors with shaping her aesthetic vision. She has worked hard to create her own voice but has kept a basic tenet in mind: “The book always comes first and then we layer it with the choreography. The choreography must have meaning. You are not just doing steps to music.”

At an age where she could easily rest on her legacy, she’s instead ambitious and energetic — and proud to serve as a mentor, as others did for her.

“I never get tired of it because there is new blood,” Lee says. “There are so many people who want to learn Michael Bennett’s choreography. It’s iconic. It’s an honor to bring it to another generation. When I come to City Spring and see those big eyes asking what was it like, I get goosebumps. I have so much to tell them. Even today, when I am rehearsing with the newbies and talking about it, there is such a joy.

“I still feel like that little girl in that theater saying, ‘This is what I want.’”

::

Jim Farmer covers theater and film for ArtsATL. A graduate of the University of Georgia, he has written about the arts for 30-plus years. Jim is the festival director of Out on Film, Atlanta’s LGBTQ film festival. He lives in Avondale Estates with his husband, Craig, and dog Douglas.

 

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