Corbin Bleu on Honoring Black Broadway Legends with PBS Concert Special: 'It's a Community'

Corbin Bleu is joining forces with some Broadway powerhouses for a new PBS concert special.

Black Broadway: A Proud History, A Limitless Future, which was filmed at Howard University's Cramton Auditorium and premieres on Feb. 28, celebrates popular stage performances made famous by Black artists as they are performed by the current generation of Black Broadway stars.

Speaking with PEOPLE, Bleu details what it was like working on the project, which also includes performances by Nikki Renée Daniels, Tiffany Mann, Nova Payton, Stephanie Mills, Norm Lewis, John Manzari, Leah Flynn, Amber Iman, Sydney James Harcourt, Peppermint and Nova Payton.

"It was an easy 'yes,'" he said of joining the special. "What a wonderful opportunity to be able to stand on stage with all of these incredible Black performers, celebrating all of these iconic moments in the history of musical theater for Black culture. I'm proud of it. It was an amazing experience that I'll never forget."

"Just watching every single performance be hit out of the park. There wasn't a single weak link, there wasn't a single moment where you weren't completely captivated," he adds.

While Bleu is "honored" to help celebrate Black culture in theater with the new special, he admits that growing up, he didn't see much Black representation on stage.

"From a theater and stage perspective, going to see a Broadway show is not an easy ticket," he notes. "And the times where I did get to go see them, that wasn't always something that I saw someone up there on stage like myself. Same thing watching a lot of the old classic musical movies, especially a lot of the mainstream, it wasn't a whole lot."

Later on, he did discover Brian Stokes Mitchell, who he has the privilege of celebrating during the PBS special with a performance of "Make Them Hear You" from Ragtime.

"I never imagined that I would get to sing at this sort of a caliber," he says. "There are so many Brian Stokes Mitchell songs that resonate with me so much. It's always been something that when I do have the opportunity to sing those kinds of songs, it feels right and it feels like home. I'm grateful that I got the opportunity to do it."

As Broadway strives to be more inclusive, Bleu says that he applauds the industry's "turn towards color-blind casting" in recent years. "We do get the opportunity to actually see completely new renditions [of shows] and we get to see representation. Young performers can go and see these iconic roles played by someone that does look like themselves," he adds.

That being said, he would love to see more Black creators behind those Broadway shows. "A lot of times, they are making shows for artists of color, but the shows themselves are not by the artists of color," he explains. "That's really important for us to be able to actually hear the voice from the original source of what that show was intended to be."

While Bleu has taken on many different roles over the years — including Usnavi in In the Heights, Seaweed in Hairspray, Jesus in Godspell, and Bill Calhoun/Lucentio in Kiss Me, Kate — one that has had the biggest impact on him, of course, is Chad Danforth in the High School Musical franchise.

"I don't think that I fully understood its impact until later on in life," he says of the franchise. "A lot of us were in our teenage years, we were just having a great time. We worked hard, we were hungry. We were giving everything, all of our body to this project, which I do think is a major factor towards its success."

When it comes to the stage versus the screen, Bleu adds that nothing quite compares to theater. "It's a community," he says. "It's vulnerability. You are burying yourself with this group, this troupe, in front of this audience every single night and it forms a bond."

Even looking back on HSM, he admits that some of his favorite memories were performing live with his costars on tour. "It was when we did the concerts and toured all over the world and performed in front of hundreds of thousands of people," he says. "Those experiences really, really bonded us. And that's theater. That's the magic of theater right there."