Tuesday, January 23, 2007; Posted: 07:01 AM – by Robert Diamond

Lately, it’s been Spring (Awakening) Fever on Broadway with fans, celebrities and more coming to see the new show – not to mention that it received the best reviews of the 2006/2007 theatre season. In this first of a three part series, we check in with the second of the show’s talented young stars – Lea Michele, who created the role of Wendla in Spring Awakening – 7 years ago!

Before we get into Spring Awakening, let’s rewind a bit – where were you born and raised?

I was born in the Bronx, and that’s still where most of my extended family lives right now. But … Read the rest

Glee star Lea Michele has claimed that her nude scene in Broadway musical, Spring Awakening was ‘tasteful.’

The actress, who stripped off to her smalls for a part in the musical alongside Glee co-star Jonathan Groff who plays Jesse, has admitted she still can’t believe she went topless in front of a live audience two years ago.

Michele told Now magazine: “I just think it was done so tastefully. It wasn’t until I came back to see the show [once I'd left] that I was like, ‘Oh my God, I did that every single night’.”

Groff added: “Any awkwardness went away in the first couple of times we did it.”

Lea, who plays Gleek Rachel Berry in the Fox … Read the rest

News, views and reviews about the multi-talented women of the musical theatre and the concert/cabaret stage.

LEA MICHELE
This season presented Lea Michele a problem that any actress would be happy to face: Should she star as Eponine in the Broadway revival of the epic musical Les Misérables or should she create the role of Wendla in the Broadway mounting of Spring Awakening? The young actress says that it was the hardest decision she has yet to make, but after spending six years working on Spring — including the production’s acclaimed, much-extended, Off-Broadway engagement at the Atlantic Theater Company — she would opt for the Steven Sater-Duncan Sheik musical that is based on Frank Wedekind’s 1891 expressionist play. Spring … Read the rest

For nearly two years, Lea Michele and Jonathan Groff shared a stage in the Off Broadway and Broadway productions of “Spring Awakening” as Wendla and Melchior, the German youths who share feelings, a beating and many more intimate acts during an ill-fated romance. After enduring that for eight shows a week, Ms. Michele and Mr. Groff did not get sick of each other, and instead forged a friendship that, as you’ll shortly see, is unusual, even for theater people.

It’s a friendship that has lasted as Mr. Groff has continued his career in theater (“Prayer for My Enemy,” “The Singing Forest”) and film (“Taking Woodstock”) and Ms. Michele has become a star of the Fox series “Glee” (which Alessandra Stanley… Read the rest