Vestavia Hills native creates online community to celebrate Broadway with stars, fans

About four years ago, AJ Hunsucker, a Vestavia Hills native now working as a dancer and actor in New York, began celebrating his theater community on Facebook.

“I was posting a bunch of rare videos and photos and getting a lot of attention with them,” he said. “I had people reach out to me and say, ‘I think you should create a group.’”

Hunsucker finally decided to do that, but he had to come up with a reason that his group was different from a myriad of other Broadway and theater groups out there.

“My idea was to have a group from the industry, including the fans, sharing and celebrating the industry, so that people that were there can tell the real story or tell what was going on or little facts that most people might not know,” he said.

The result was Broadway by Broadway, a Facebook group that launched in March 2019 and now boasts 11,000 members, including Broadway stars such as Betty Buckley, Lucie Arnaz, Anita Gillette, Melba Moore and many others.

On the page, Hunsucker posts archival photos and video that he finds on YouTube, in the New York Public Library and from other sources.

The history of Broadway is something that Hunsucker, who performed with Red Mountain Theatre Company and Summerfest before studying musical theater at Point Park College in Pittsburgh, has always been interested in –and his love for classic shows shines through in Broadway by Broadway.

“I noticed even before I moved to New York, Broadway started drifting in a totally different way than I necessarily like, so another thing in the back of my mind is to remind people what quality theater was,” he said. “A lot of these Broadway groups don’t talk about old shows at all. We do, and people are like, ‘Oh, yeah, I forgot how great that show was and how hard those people worked on them.’”

Broadway by Broadway has strict posting rules: Posts about theater history only; no promotions; respect everyone’s privacy; no politics; be kind and courteous.

It’s that last rule that recently had Broadway legend Buckley, who created the role of Grizabella in “Cats,” singing Hunsucker’s praises and calling for more kindness and less meanness in the world.

“What AJ Hunsucker has created here is a wonderful page meant to celebrate the great legacy of our wonderful Broadway,” Buckley wrote. “As AJ has, repeatedly, stated this page is not a place for any of us to share, unleash or state our supposed critiques of any performer or any play or show.”

Buckley’s comments, which went on to urge people to check their nastiness at the door when making comments, made their way to other Broadway publications and put the spotlight on Broadway by Broadway.

Hunsucker, for his part, tries his best to enforce the “no-negative” policy.

“I’m fine with critiques, but there’s a difference between critiques and nasty, negative comments,” he said. “There are 11,000 members, so it’s impossible to see what everyone is posting all the time, but I try to keep tabs on it.”

Broadway by Broadway has been particularly important during the pandemic, Hunsucker feels.

“Broadway is shut down, and a lot of people need theater,” he said. “They need to talk about it, and people kind of turned to my group as away to do that ... I kind of became the person feeding these people their entertainment because they weren’t able to go to Broadway.”

During the pandemic, Hunsucker has been posting several times a day, although that will probably slow down once New York gets back to normal and he’s back to work auditioning and performing in shows.

He doesn’t foresee stopping Broadway by Broadway or getting help running it anytime soon, though.

“I don’t really trust anyone else to uphold the standards that I like,” Hunsucker said. “Maybe someday, but right now, I’d rather be in total control because I know exactly what I want. And people seem to like what I’m doing.”