Watch Broadway Barks then and now

Cole Escola, Orville Peck, Kecia Lewis, Jak Malone and Sadie Sink were among the performers pushing their puppies at the 27th annual Broadway Barks, the odd and adorable animal adoption event that I first recorded on video when Angela Lansbury stood on the makeshift stage of Shubert Alley with cohosts Mary Tyler Moore and Bernadette Peters, who won a special Tony Award for Broadway Barks that year. The year was 2012, the 14th annual Broadway Barks.

Below are some of the old videos, along with some new ones: Peters and new co-host Beth Leavel singing Old Friends with the cast of “Old Friends,” each holding a pooch; Orville Peck laughing while a Great Dane puppy bit at Cabaret co-star Steven Skybell who was calling the dog friendly; Kecia Lewis admiring Duke for being a cuddler (“We love a cuddle — especially when we’re single”) and Cole Escola suggesting that Chelsea the four-year-old female boxer would be best adopted into a household that already has a male dog “to help build her confidence. Who doesn’t need a male around to help build your confidence; we all need one, right?”

My favorite old video is from 2017, which got the least number of views — reason enough to repost them, some of which now serve as exercises in nostalgia.

2012:

The hosts were co-founders Bernadette Peters and Mary Tyler Moore, and after Angela Lansbury’s introduction, the luminaries holding and promoting would-be adoptees included Norm Lewis and Audra McDonald, Celia Keenan-Bolger and Adam Chanler-Berat, Ben Vereen, Rita Moreno, Carol Kane, Jeremy Jordan

2013: At the 15th annual Broadway Barks, the hosts were Bernadette Peters and Harvey Fierstein. Among those who spoke out for adoption, and who appear in the video: Billy Porter (whose commanding voice silences a barking dog), and other cast members from “Kinky Boots,” Bebe Neuwirth, the sole performer who paired with a cat, Michael Urie, who was solo performer in “Buyer and Cellar,” Valisia LeKae and other cast members of “Motown”
Andrew Rannells, best known then for “The Book of Mormon,” Michael Mulheren, and other cast members of “Spider-man: Turn Off The Dark,’ Corey Cott, and other cast members of “Newsies”

2015: Peters and Andrew Rannells were co-hosts. Highlights include the cast of Fun Home singing Happy Birthday to Sydney Lucas, who was turning 12, and then watching while two of the dogs rumbled. But the biggest treat occurs at the end of the video below, when Peter sings directly to a pooch a song from Dames at Sea, the musical in which she appeared in 1966.

2016: The two co-hosts that year, Peters and Gloria Estefan, talk about their first pets, why no one should buy from a pet store, and how their pets have inspired them in their life and their work.

2017: Interviews with Malcolm McDowell, Bernadette Peters, Janeane Garofalo, Jenn Colella, Mimi Lieber, Katrina Lenk, Celia Weston, and animal trainer William Berloni, who tell tales of acting with animals. Malcolm McDowell’s introduction to working with animals was holding a chimpanzee “who pinched me, then punched me” in a production of Treasure island