Leah Michele, Jonathan Groff and the Spring Awakening team reunite with the Doctor after 15 years

Leah Michele says the idea is to combine the Broadway original spring awakening The actor came in a dream.

Talking about hollywood reporter For the new HBO documentary about the New York premiere Spring Awakens: Those You Know “That’s part of the play, part of the bonding special,” recalled the actor, who played lead character Wendy, when the band discussed this: “Maybe the tenth anniversary” of the show based on Duncan Sheik and Stephen Sutter. About Frank Wedekind’s 1891 teen drama.

But mostly, he said, the special event took place after actresses Laura Pritchard and Jonathan Groff spoke. “Laura’s dream was for us all to be together, as it was a real dream when she slept at night, and she called Jonathan and said, ‘We have to get back on stage together,’” Michele recalls.

This piece will be a boon to the show’s fund during a pandemic. Despite COVID protocols and the live audience, the team only had a few days to rehearse, says star Jonathan Groff, who played Mercury in the award-winning rock musical.

“I trained on the Broadway musical for two months and we got up spring awakening Come back, I don’t know, three days of rehearsal? Lily Cooper, who produced Martha, explained. “Memory [original Broadway director] Michael Meyer tells us, “Yes, you will have books, but don’t look at them.” And we used to say, “What do you mean? Do you expect us to know all this? Of course we went to rehearsal and it came out of us as it has always been with us for the last decade and a half. ”

Film Team and RadicalMedia – Global media and communication company behind musical films hamilton s comes from far – They also worked fast, under unusual circumstances of high pressure in the background.

“As it was just one night, it was a different challenge for us. We didn’t have the four or five days we normally would. We had a scene, just like them,” said Dave Sirulnik, PhD producer, who explained that the crew typically shoots many times with and without an audience and can take certain angles and close-ups during the process without interruption. Live the experience for theater lovers. “So I think everyone was very cooperative and really connected to what we were doing.”

While all cameras were on them, the Count and John Gallagher Jr. (who played Maurice) agreed that filming the play “wasn’t intrusive”. A bigger challenge, said Gallagher Jr., was the simple act of getting the team together. “After so many years, it’s hard for so many people to come to the same place. “Everyone is scattered and so they have their own life and vocation,” said the actor. THR. “So it would be enough to get back together for one night, but impressing his descendants as he is and sharing him on the global stage with the world is almost absolute.”

While the document describes the performance of the live benefits spring awakeningHe also goes behind the scenes and introduces new and familiar fans of the main company to the process of creating the Broadway show years ago.

“I think this is special because, as you can see, it’s not just a play, it’s the story of these people and what they came up with,” Sirulnik said. “story spring awakening “It’s a wonderful and inspiring story, so we’re thrilled to be able to tell that story and bring it to the center of performances.”

“Of course we love doing our show every night, but the real joy came backstage and in the time we spent together. “I’m very happy that we have the 2006 team on Jonathan’s family farm,” added Michele. “We didn’t show the behind-the-scenes tricks of the reunion, although I think we were together every night until five in the morning, but we’re a family on and off stage and I’m so grateful that this documentary shows it all.”

For Cooper, it sparked that vertigo and, at one point, insecurity, when he was young. “Anyway, it took me back to that vulnerable teenage world where I was like, ‘Oh, I hope everyone likes me.’ “I hope we can be friends again,” Cooper said with a smile. “Someone had a really good idea, I forgot who it was, but they said it like we were introducing ourselves. And when will you be able to do that?

There’s also a chance that the new generation will see this original actor in this story for the first time and his (sadly) lasting messages. “For me, what’s in the movie are stories so deep that I think a lot of people should understand. So my dream for this film is for it to travel far and wide,” said Dr. Michael John Warren, directed by Dr. “A lot of people are marginalized by the community or have something going on with them personally and I love the fact that we made this movie that can go anywhere so people who don’t understand the really important messages in it. The film suddenly hears them.”

However, the document itself was not just a timely return to discussions on sexuality, gender, religion, abortion and authority, among other topics. It wasn’t just a way to remember its actors or a means to reach a wider audience. By performing on social media, the experience allowed the actors to revisit the show with each other and with fans in a way they had never seen before.

“spring awakening It was happening before the social media wave, so not all the videos and performances that you have now existed,” Groff said. “For us to get together again and play songs and talk about the show and record it, it’s really important to us because we never got that video, not from the recording of the show or from the same recording that it was. We are already so used to social media. ”

Another new part of the experience was the roles of adult actors. “The biggest difference for me was that I was 16. I was a very different person in 2006. I’ve grown a lot in who I am. “I’m a mother now,” Cooper said. “I think the reunion show itself was so profound because we saw it from a different angle and it allowed us to tell the story in such a powerful way.

“I feel like an adult in this role, we had a lot more clarity on what we were really saying, what it meant,” Michele added. “The return of an adult, not just a better understanding of what we’re talking about, with life experience, he’s gotten a lot safer. It was so much fun hanging out with friends and telling a story. It wasn’t that much pressure to do a good deed every night. It really put us at ease and we showed a really sincere and down-to-earth performance. ”

Spring Awakens: Those You Know Premieres Tuesday at 9pm on ET HBO.