ABSTRACT

Tom Eyen was insistent from the beginning that the Dreams be cast with dark Black women, rather than their lighter skinned sisters who were supposedly more viable to White audiences. When Dreamgirls opened it was the biggest commercial hit to that time, next to The Wiz, featuring a primarily Black cast. Michael Bennet, who would eventually direct Dreamgirls, had established the workshop model with A Chorus Line, which premiered at the public theater. Instead of the then standard developmental step of doing a trial run of the musical out of town, which was growing prohibitively expensive, a workshop consists of several weeks of rehearsal. With enough progress having been made in the workshops, the producers decided to give Dreamgirls a Boston try-out. It opened in October 1981 at Boston’s Shubert theater and was an instant success.