PLAYBILL.COM'S CUE & A: Stephen Spinella | Playbill

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News PLAYBILL.COM'S CUE & A: Stephen Spinella Stephen Spinella — star of the new Broadway musical Spring Awakening — fills out Playbill.com's questionnaire with random facts, backstage trivia and pop culture tidbits.
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Stephen Spinella Photo by Ben Strothmann

Full given name: Stephen Nicholas Spinella
Hometown: Grew up in Glendale, Arizona
Audition song: "Lonesome Polecat" - Seven Brides for Seven Brothers
Monologue you can recite from memory: "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" by TS Eliot or Shakespeare's sonnet 18. Working on Keats' "Ode to a Nightingale." Monologues from plays I can never remember.
First Broadway show ever saw: 42nd Street (in 1980)
If you could go back in time and catch any Broadway show, what would it be? Anything with Duse. Also the opening night of the original production of Long Day's Journey Into Night. Ron Leibman said he saw the original and at the end after Mary Tyrone said, " ... and was happy for a time," there was a long slow slow curtain after which the audience, devastated, destroyed, sat motionless. No applause. Nothing.
Current show you have been recommending to friends: I loved, loved, loved The Vertical Hour.
Favorite showtune: "Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered." Joe Mantello used it when he directed Love! Valour! Compassion! John Benjamin Hickey played my husband. Everytime I hear that song to this day I think of Hickey.
MAC or PC? PC, though I'm thinking of switching.
Most played song on your iPod: Two: Pavarotti "Nessun dorma" from Turandot (thrilling!). Scott Matthew "In the End" from the film "Shortbus" (haunting and heartbreaking).
One CD you couldn't live without: Joni Mitchell, "Court and Spark"
Last book you read: Joan Didion, "The Year of Magical Thinking"
Must-see TV show: "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart"
Performer you would drop everything to go see: Christopher Walken. Meryl Streep. Vanessa Redgrave. Linda Emond. John Slattery.
Pop culture guilty pleasure: The guiltiest. Donna Summer "MacArthur Park."
First stage kiss: Joe Mantello - Angels in America - Actually Joe and I first kissed 45 min. after meeting for the first time at a photo shoot for an article Vogue was doing on the play. We kissed continuously for about 10 minutes. We've been friends ever since.
Favorite post-show meal: Steak Frites. Cafe Une Deux Trois.
Pre-show rituals: It changes with the show. For Spring Awakening it's 100 push-ups. The most difficult thing I have to do every night is over before the audience is seated.
Worst flubbed line: Went up while singing solo downstage center in James Joyce's The Dead. I sang "ditchaa sitchaa datchaa dotchaa..." for 10 bars before I remembered the correct lyrics.
Who have you played on "Law & Order"? Which edition? Played a pornographer/murderer (so guilty!). Favorite line was to the female district attorney: "You can put that deal between your knees and SQUEEZE." The original edition.
Special skills: Used to juggle. I guess now... DIALECTS!
Who would play you in the movie? Daniel Day-Lewis. With a script by Dostoevsky directed by Federico Fellini.
Worst job you ever had: Fry cook at Bonanza Steak house in Glendale, Arizona.
 
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