Award-winning Broadway, film, and television songwriters Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman described themselves as “too rock and roll for theater, and too theater for rock and roll” around the time they gravitated to Club 57. From there, they staged their first beloved Downtown musicals at the basement club. This pair of rarely-seen performance videos documents early productions that ran weekly at Club 57 in 1981 and thrived from the venue’s scrappy spirit and lively audiences. Trojan Women is Euripides by way of Sin City, complete with Joan Rivers, Elvis, Cher, and a chorus of Downtown showgirls while the subsequent Livin’ Dolls, an original musical, is an accomplished homage to the beach party movies of the 1960s starring Barbie and Ken.