NEW YORK — On September 24, performer Maya Bowles headed to the theater for a day of work that she would never forget.

"Today I'll be making my Broadway debut at the Al Hirschfeld Theatre with 'Moulin Rouge,'" said the performer. "I'm so excited. I'm nervous, but I'm so pumped to be able to like make art again in front of a live audience. They'll definitely be tears. I think I will just be thinking about how my mom and my grandma are in the audience and they wanted this moment just as much as I have for so long. And like, it's just gonna be overwhelming, I know it."

After beginning her hair and makeup process Maya went to the stage to get warmed up physically.

"We still have about an hour before the show, so just getting super warm and then I'll finish hair and makeup and get ready to go," she said.

As Maya was back in her dressing room getting into costume, the sold out crowd began pouring back into the theater. The electricity in the air was palpable as this historic reopening performance began.

Two and a half hours later the crowd was still going wild as Maya took her first Broadway bow. Few, if any, people there were more excited for the moment than Maya's mom and grandmother.

"This has been the most amazing, magical moment," said Maya's mother Maria Bowles. "I am so very proud of Maya, but this cast and the show was incredible. I'm speechless! I’m honestly speechless."

"And of course, as a grandmother this is something that I would not have imagined that I would have been able to see," added her grandmother Seretta Ford. "But I am so elated to have been able to live to see my granddaughter on a Broadway stage."

"I am incredibly overwhelmed and incredibly happy and just excited for this new journey that I'm about to embark upon," Maya said at the end of her first official night as a Broadway performer. "Just being a part of this amazing cast and getting to share the stage with so many people that I look up to - it's just insane."