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Witness History

A Chorus Line

Witness History

BBC

History, Personal Journals, Society & Culture

4.41.6K Ratings

🗓️ 25 July 2025

⏱️ 10 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

It's 50 years since theatre history was made - the premiere of A Chorus Line. It was seen as a seminal moment, turning the spotlight on the people who make the show for the first time.

Baayork Lee tells Josephine McDermott how she played Connie Wong in the original production. Like many of the first cast, her true life experiences made it into the show which was developed in workshops by director and choreographer Michael Bennett.

Baayork Lee describes “the buzz” the musical generated soon after opening in a small venue off Broadway on 21 May, 1975, with everyone from singer Diana Ross and former first lady Jackie Kennedy Onassis to comedian Groucho Marx vying for seats. Two months later on 27 July the show transferred to Broadway. It won nine Tony Awards and became one of the longest-running shows on Broadway.

Eye-witness accounts brought to life by archive. Witness History is for those fascinated by the past. We take you to the events that have shaped our world through the eyes of the people who were there. For nine minutes every day, we take you back in time and all over the world, to examine wars, coups, scientific discoveries, cultural moments and much more. Recent episodes explore everything from the death of Adolf Hitler, the first spacewalk and the making of the movie Jaws, to celebrity tortoise Lonesome George, the Kobe earthquake and the invention of superglue. We look at the lives of some of the most famous leaders, artists, scientists and personalities in history, including: Eva Peron – Argentina’s Evita; President Ronald Reagan and his famous ‘tear down this wall’ speech; Thomas Keneally on why he wrote Schindler’s List; and Jacques Derrida, France’s ‘rock star’ philosopher. You can learn all about fascinating and surprising stories, such as the civil rights swimming protest; the disastrous D-Day rehearsal; and the death of one of the world’s oldest languages.

(Photo: A Chorus Line at the Shubert Theatre. Credit: Richard Corkery/NY Daily News Archive via Getty Images)

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

I'm Mariana Spring, the BBC's social media investigations correspondent.

0:06.3

In my podcast, I've been investigating what happened to the daughter of a conspiracy theorist

0:10.9

who died having rejected chemotherapy.

0:13.5

It would mean the world to me if I could make it that she wasn't just another in the long line of people that die in this way.

0:18.9

How does this reflect the rise of health conspiracy theories on social media and beyond?

0:24.8

The new series of Mariana in Conspiracy Land.

0:27.8

Listen on BBC Sounds.

0:33.9

Hello, this is the Witness History podcast from the BBC World Service. I'm Josephine McDermott, one of the witness history presenters.

0:42.4

We're the podcast that takes you back to a key moment in history and we bring it all to life through incredible archive and the amazing memories of key witnesses.

0:52.4

Episodes are just nine minutes long and come out every weekday.

0:56.6

If that sounds like your kind of thing, make sure you subscribe wherever you get your BBC podcasts

1:01.5

and turn your push notifications on so you never miss a show. It's 50 years since theatre history

1:09.2

was made, the premiere of a chorus line,

1:12.6

a seminal moment turning the spotlight on the people who make the show for the first time.

1:18.6

Our witness is Bayork Lee, who is in the original cast.

1:22.9

So shall we start? Yeah.

1:24.4

Okay, I'm Bayork Lee. I'm from Chinatown, New York, and I'm having an interview

1:31.1

with Josephine. A chorus line is the story of a group of professional dancers hustling from

1:38.8

show to show, eking out a living in the super competitive, unforgiving world of New York City Theatre Entertainment.

1:47.2

It's January 1974, and Bioc Lee has appeared in a number of productions directed by Michael Bennett,

1:54.7

including most recently, Seesaw, about an affair between a lawyer and a dancer.

1:59.6

It hasn't run for long, and the mood for shows

...

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