![]() Tony Award nominee Robin De Jesus ( In the Heights, La Cage aux Folles)Ĭaroline, or Change. Messinger, who regaled us with tales of Merman and Jerome Robbins and made us believe we just might be able to be up there on the stage. I saw one of the coolest guys in the school, Joe Lucaro, singing, "Brush Up Your Shakespeare" and wanted to be him. So, it all started as a way to see a girl and a way to get out of the house every night, but I was hooked quick. I tried out and was amazed to be cast in the ensemble. She was going to try out, and she said I should, too. ![]() I met a girl in one of my classes, and she told me about the school musical. I was a small kid, and it was hard for me to fit in initially. in Brooklyn to Malverne Long Island when I was beginning 10th grade in high school. So, the show Oklahoma! will always mean a lot to me and one of the main reasons I'm in musical theatre. I thought my life would be over because there was no way it would get better than that. Then, in fourth grade, I auditioned at my elementary school, and I got it. ![]() I knew that one day I would be playing that role. When Laurie and Curly finally get together, I cried every time. This was where our family was every July 24 for my birthday, much to my brother's chagrin. And out came the horse with Curly singing, "There's a bright golden haze on the meadow!" From that second, I was in. You'd get there early and eat and enjoy the hot 100 humid weather of Oklahoma and scratch the mosquito bites till they bled.īut the sun would go down. Kool-Aid may or may not have been included. I remember you could order a box dinner and choose between chicken and steak, a couple of sides and a desert. Every summer the did Oklahoma!, naturally. Growing up in Oklahoma, we had an outdoor theatre called Discoveryland. Tony Award winner Kristin Chenoweth ( You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown) It is the show that made me want to do this. It is not only the show that has changed my life. My understanding of how theatre can work and how music can work in a theatrical context was entirely built around West Side Story, so I can't think of how my life would have been down this path if it were not for that show. I heard West Side Story when I was a kid, and I used to put the needle on the LP - because I'm ancient - and then I would lift it up, and I would read the dialogue that was in the script that was published, and then I'd put the needle back down. The reason I thought musicals were a thing someone should write is because of West Side Story. Tony Award winner Jason Robert Brown ( Parade, The Bridges of Madison County) We are healing the world through our work! It just struck me so deeply to hear that and really understand how important this art form is. After the show, they did a talkback and Essie said she grieves differently at that moment every night. At the end of the play when Glenn was being taken away, Essie Davis (as Stella) was screaming and crying for her sister, and I remember being completely entranced by how real she was. I had a student ticket, so I was in the front row, and it was unforgettable. I saw it at the National Theatre, starring Glenn Close and Essie Davis. I saw A Streetcar Named Desire in London in 2002 when I was in college. Robert Pastorelli and Glenn Close in A Streetcar Named Desire Photo by Catherine Ashmore Then, I saw Crazy for You when I was 11 with my middle school class, and I was like, "That! I want to do that." I was probably like 8 or 9, and then I started singing along to it, and I was crying because I just thought it was so unbelievably beautiful. My mom is a voice teacher, and she had it on the piano, and I just started plunking it out. The song "I Remember Sky" was learning to play the piano. People sing their feelings? This is remarkable." So, that. That was the thing where I was like, "Oh my gosh, hold on. I've had so many different levels of life-changing, like when I heard Stephen Sondheim for the first time when I was five, that changed my life. When she described the exact same thing that happened at my performance I knew then and there that the theatre was a very unsafe place where anything could happen. Vereen had ruined the show the night I saw it! The next day at school, I asked Ellen Walters what happened at the end of Pippin the night she saw it. I was very young, and the whole ride back to Pennsylvania I couldn't believe Mr. He even invited audience members to come up and kill themselves. I knew the album by heart, but was absolutely shocked when, at the end, Ben Vereen stopped the show removed sets, tore off costumes and pointed out a mole on the leading lady. The first Broadway show I ever saw when I was a kid was Pippin. Tony Award nominee Douglas Carter Beane ( The Little Dog Laughed, Xanadu, Sister Act, Lysistrata Jones, Cinderella)
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