Master Class with Zoe Caldwell and Audra McDonald, in 1995

Brandon Victor Dixon and Audra McDonald in Shuffle Along, or The Making of the Musical Sensation of 1921 and All That Followed,

Audra McDonald accepts her sixth (record-breaking) Tony Award, in June

Audra McDonald re-creates the voice of Billie Holiday in Lady Day at Emerson Bar and Grill, and there is a sad, sad moment, after Billie has gone off-stage (clearly to shoot up), when she comes back, cheerful and wobbly.

Audra and Michael Shannon in Frankie and Johnny in the Claire de Lune

Audra McDonald and Will Swenson “We have shelter, we have each other, and that’s all we know,” she said and then sang “Smile” while he played guitar.

Audra McDonald has won six Tony Awards performing in a dozen plays and musicals on Broadway. Below are videos organized roughly in chronological order that — not always perfectly, but sometimes spectacularly — sample her eclectic and electric Broadway career.

Check out the rest of the Broadway Alphabet Series

Carousel Music by Richard Rodgers; Book and lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II. 1994 revival
Mr. Snow at 2:51

Her first Tony Award acceptance speech for Carousel

Master Class by Terrence McNally

Audra McDonald as student auditioning for Zoe Caldwell’s Maria Callas

Ragtime
Book by Terrence McNally; Music by Stephen Flaherty; Based on the novel by E.L. Doctorow; Lyrics by Lynn Ahrens

Wheels of a Dream, performed with Brian Stokes Mitchell (for Kennedy Center Honors)

Marie Christine by Michael John LaChiusa
Final performance. “Way Back to Paradise,” with Kimberly JaJuan, plus Audra’s curtain-call remarks

60 Minutes Profile 1999

A Raisin in the Sun by Lorraine Hansberry
scene from filmed version of 2008 Broadway revival

110 in the Shade
Book by N. Richard Nash; Music by Harvey Schmidt; Lyrics by Tom Jones. 2007 revival

She performs “Raunchy” with John Cullum at 2007 Tony Awards

Porgy and Bess
Music by George Gershwin; Lyrics by DuBose Heyward, Dorothy Heyward and Ira Gershwin; Adapted by Suzan-Lori Parks and Diedre Murray

Audra McDonald sings Summertime

Lady Day at Emerson’s Bar & Grill by Lanie Robertson; Music arranged by Tim Weil.

Her performance at the 2014 Tony Awards

Her sixth Tony Award acceptance speech, a record, for Lady Day

CBS Sunday Morning profile 2015

Shuffle Along,Or The Making of the Musical Sensation of 1921 and All That Followed. Book by George C. Wolfe; Music by Eubie Blake; Lyrics by Noble Sissle;
Tony Award performance

Frankie and Johnny in the Clare de Lune by Terrence McNally
trailer

At Stars in the House
with Seth Rudetsky and James Wesley

Smile with her husband Will Swenson in quarantine