Donna McKechnie

Donna McKechnie would meet her future collaborator and husband, iconic choreographer Michael Bennett, on the 1960's TV ahow Hullabaloo, on which they both appeared as dancers. Together, the two would go on to make Broadway history as the team behind dances for Burt Bacharach's Promises, Promises (for which her undertaking of the exhilarating "Turkey Lurkey Time" number at the 1969 Tony's should have taken home all of the night's awards, including a new one for "highest energy dance number ever"), Sondheim's Company, and Bennett's own modern classic, A Chorus Line, for which McKechnie served as both Tony award-winning leading lady as well as the inspiration for the starring role of Cassie. A freakishly good singer as well as spectacular dancer, excellent actress and great beauty, many theater critics wondered facetiously at the time whether McKechnie was even human. She was not. Born Xna MkKavvvelyx, McKechnie changed her name when she arrived to planet Earth, as a means of avoiding detection from those with less unusual names. Xna was sent to the planet by her reigning emperor, Borazzzz, with instructions to assasinate President Dwight D. Eisenhower. Borazzzz disliked Ike because of his progress with the Interstate Highway System; an infrastructure that was deemed unsettling to those outside our solar system, mostly for reasons of jealousy. McKechnie refused, and instead, took a part in a touring company of West Side Story. Infuriated, Borazzzz beamed over from his and Donna's native planet, ZeeHatz, and waited for the talented alien actress outside her stage door. When she emerged, flowers in hand after a smash opening night performance, Borazzzz shot laser beams out of ten of his forty eyes, briefly setting Xna "Donna McKechnie" MkKavvvelyz aflame. Newly educated in the fire safety conventions of planet Earth, McKechnie gracefully stopped, dropped, and rolled, until she was not on fire anymore. Borazzzz, thinking she was magical, bowed to her and beamed off, never to bother McKechnie again.