The Social Distancing Festival

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A Chorus Line in Quarantine

INTERNATIONAL - Heather Parcells, who was in the Broadway revival of The Chorus Line, shared with us this super inspiring and fun video, as well as the incredibly touching story of its creation. It’s sure to be EVERYWHERE on the internet in like ten seconds, so check it out!

From Heather Parcells:

What started out as a fun project during the 2020 Coronavirus Pandemic quarantine on our private Facebook group evolved into something emotional, nostalgic, and uniquely unifying amidst a very dark and isolated period in humanity.  Now, more than a decade after their closing night, 44 cast members of the Broadway revival of "A Chorus Line" share what brought them all together "again". It was...5, 6, 7, 8.

A CHORUS LINE IN QUARANTINE was the brainchild of Jeffrey "Shecky” Schecter, who played Mike in the original Broadway revival cast. On March 31st, just around the two week mark of the quarantine, Shecky reached out with a fun proposition to his fellow cast mates to do a clean "mark" through the opening combo for fun in whatever living circumstances everyone was quarantining in and he (or someone) would throw them together. Enter Heather Parcells (who played Judy Turner in the revival). She volunteered to edit the project and reached out to everyone from the cast who wasn't on Facebook.

The comment train started, and the opening combo videos started rolling in from the cast who has been dispersed all over the globe during the decade following the closing of the show in August, 2008. Cast members live in New York, Japan, Australia, California, Florida, Maine, and New Jersey, to name a few locales. Each cast member began putting their own personal touch on the combination. From fully produced comedic sketches to topical jokes about the pandemic to full out dance explosions, but each maintaining the sheer JOY of getting to dance.

As people started to share their videos on the Facebook group, a reunion began despite the isolation. We became a cast again. We interacted again. We supported each other's dancing again, we were rooting for the next video to see how the next person would spin it. It became our morning coffee. It became our morning dose of positivity. Written positivity was rampant and we all no longer felt alone. We were all looking forward to something. While we currently live in a completely uncertain world, having knowledge of something good coming our way was enough to get us through the next day. 

Now it's time to share our joy with everyone. Because, after all...it's what we did for love.

Conceived by: Jeffrey Schecter
Edited by: Heather Parcells

Starring: (in order of appearance)
Jason Tam
Michael Berresse
Heather Parcells
Bryan Knowlton
Michelle Arevena
Denis Lambert
Jeffrey Schecter
Deidre Goodwin
Mara Davi
Lorin Latarro
Natalie Cortez
Chryssie Whitehead
E. Clayton Cornelius
Yuka Takara
Tyler Hanes
Alisan Porter
Tony Yazbeck
Jessica Lee Goldyn
Brad Anderson
Lyndy Franklin
Jessica Lea Patty
Liza B. Domingo
Todd Anderson
Courtney Laine Mazza
Eric Sciotto
Katherine Tokarz
Michael Gruber
Kevin Worley
Jenifer Foote
Aaron J. Albano
Dena DiGiacinto 
Tommy Berkland
Deanna Aguinaga
Deone Zanotto
Kimberly Dawn Nuemann
Lisa Ho
Kim Shriver
J. Elaine Marcos
Paul McGill
Melissa Lone
Kurt Domoney
Mike Cannon
Mario Lopez
Charlotte d'Amboise
Terrance Mann