Dreamgirls: History and Key Facts

Dreamgirls is a Broadway musical, with music by Henry Krieger and lyrics and book by Tom Eyen. It is based on the show business aspirations and successes of R&B acts such as The Shirelles, James Brown, Jackie Wilson, and others, and particularly The Supremes, as the musical follows the story of a young Black female singing trio from Chicago, Illinois called "The Dreams", who become music superstars.

Staged with a mostly African-American cast and originally starring Jennifer Holliday, Sheryl Lee Ralph, Loretta Devine, Ben Harney, Cleavant Derricks, Vondie Curtis-Hall, and Obba Babatundé, the musical opened on December 20, 1981, at the Imperial Theatre on Broadway. The musical was then nominated for 13 Tony Awards, including the Tony Award for Best Musical, and won six. It was later adapted into a motion picture from DreamWorks and Paramount Pictures in 2006, starring Jamie Foxx, Beyoncé, Eddie Murphy, Jennifer Hudson, Danny Glover, Anika Noni Rose, and Keith Robinson.

Source and attribution

Text excerpted from Dreamgirls by Wikipedia contributors, available under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0. The extract is abridged and formatting has been adjusted; the adapted text on this page is shared under the same licence. Revision history.