By Andrew Gans
15 Jun 2007

Judith Blazer (top) and (l.-r.) Rachel Ulanet, David Pittu, Ann Morrison and Blazer in LoveMusik.
photo by Carol Rosegg

News, views and reviews about the multi-talented women of the musical theatre and the concert/cabaret stage.

JUDITH BLAZER
Ever since Judith Blazer made her Broadway debut in Me and My Girl — succeeding Ellen Foley in the lead role of Sally Smith, the part created by Tony winner Maryann Plunkett — the singing actress has been a prominent presence on the Great White Way. Some roles have been larger than others, but one can't but help take note of the gifted performer, who always brings a fierce dedication to her work. Take her current job: Her characters in LoveMusik are simply titled "Woman on Stairs" and "Brecht's Woman," yet Blazer — with her period look (and beautiful voice) — lends an authenticity to the musical that explores the stormy relationship between Kurt Weill (Michael Cerveris) and his muse Lotte Lenya (Donna Murphy). "When Hal calls, you come. It's that simple," Blazer recently explained about her decision to be part of the LoveMusik company. "He said, 'I'm gonna do something special for you one day,' and I said, 'Hal, don't worry. You don't have to make me any promises. I'm just happy to be in the room with you.'"

It's an especially busy time for the actress, who is also the artistic director of Artist's Crossing, a theatre company and school that offers a variety of classes, workshops and readings each year. Blazer, whose Main Stem credits also include A Change in the Heir, Titanic and 45 Seconds From Broadway, will be part of The New York City Gay Men's Chorus' June 18 concert, The the A Train: NYCGMC Sings Billy Strayhorn. Written and directed by Joanna Gleason, the concert will be presented at the Nokia Theatre beginning at 8 PM and will boast Blazer and Darius de Haas as special guests.

I recently had the pleasure of chatting with the intelligent and refreshingly candid Blazer about her many roles; that interview follows.

Question: How did you originally get involved in LoveMusik?
Blazer: I was called in to do a workshop.

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Question: Were you playing the same part at that time?
Blazer: Yes, and I'm sort of mystified, because I thought, "Gosh, this isn't a part." I've always played a part . . . but I'll tell you, it's been an interesting learning experience. I've never been in any kind of ensemble before. It's challenging.

Question: Had you worked with Hal Prince before?
Blazer: Never.

Question: What has that experience been like? He's so revered.
Blazer: Yes, he is, [although] we spent very little time with Hal because our stuff was all with [choreographer] Pat [Birch]. Hal worked primarily in the mornings with Donna [Murphy] and Michael [Cerveris], and we really were dancing in the other room.

Question: Had you been a fan of Kurt Weill's music?
Blazer: Yes. I did Street Scene when I was in college. I played Rose, the ingιnue, and Lotte Lenya came. In fact, I have a picture of all of us with her. I didn't realize the extent of who she was at that time, but got to know it through the years. To me, I really don't know why we don't have a revival of Street Scene. That is a mystery to me. Of all the pieces, that one is so New York. It takes place in a brownstone — it's one set. I just really wish they'd bring that back. It's got some real bluesy, jazzy music in it . . . . Opera companies tend to bring it back. But nowadays with Piazza and stuff like that going on, you think, "Well, they can [pull it off.]" The other [Weill] I did was at Sundance — I did Happy End, and that was working much more with the Weill and Brecht estates in an attempt to maybe bring it back. It never happened, but I found that piece to be fascinating, too. I did the ingιnue in that, Lillie, and then I've sung different pieces of his. I'm definitely of that ilk — I'm more of a Kurt Weill type than I am classic American standards.

Question: Do you find Weill a challenge to sing?
Blazer: It's comfortable for me. It fits me, you know? How can I put it? It's like the difference between the way I look in Boho clothes versus a nice Ann Taylor suit. I look better in Boho. [Laughs.] So it fits me like that — vocally as well. It's good — I use all my chops in the show. I sing very low, and then I sing — not extremely high, but I'm definitely using my higher soprano, and that's a good thing — when you're doing eight a week and you're using your whole instrument.

Question: Do you think it doesn't tire your voice as much if you're using all different parts?
Blazer: I think it keeps your whole voice active. I teach as well, and have a company and a school. I work a lot vocally with young women, and the demands of today's Broadway is that you sing everything. When they come to me and they say, "Well, I'm a belter," or "I'm a soprano," I say, "No, you're a singer." A dancer doesn't warm up part of his body. I say, "Girls, pull up your bootstraps because we're going to use your whole instrument everyday." That way the whole instrument is there. If you increase your range, then where you do live is healthier.

Question: Where do you teach?
Blazer: I have a company called The Artist's Crossing, and we have a website. It's www.artistscrossing.com, and we have...links and pictures of our events and some of the stars that have come and worked with us and [the] students. . . . . In a way, I like to keep it Ma & Pa Kettle because it's inspired by the house I grew up in, which was European and Jewish. My mother and father met during the war. My father's a first generation Polish-Jewish American, a Brooklyn kid who went to Juilliard and then went to war. My mother was a rather renowned singer in Italy in the classical field, mostly recital work: art songs, oratorio — and the same with my dad. Anyway, they met during the war, and they began performing together and eventually they married and came here. The house that I grew up in was a mesh of every imaginable kind of artist coming over and interacting and rehearsing. It was delightful.

I realized my parents were my teachers. They were my mentors, they were my friends, they were everything. And so I thought, "I want to re-create this kind of home with my friends." I grew up in an old Victorian in Montclair [NJ]. It was big and full of people always — always music 24 hours a day, and I thought, "That's the way I'd like to go out." Like a good Hebrew, I worked backwards. I thought, "Where do I want to die? How do I want to die? And let me start building that now." [Laughs.] And so it was partly selfish, but I also thought, "There are so many young artists right now in Manhattan [who are] talented. And there are kids in different parts of this country that are going to come here, that are going to become tomorrow's big, great artists." And when they come, they're young, they're confused, they're lost, they're scared. . . . I've been here all my life, but when you come from Wyoming, it's overwhelming. So, I wanted to build a home for them, but also for all my colleagues, my generation of Broadway people, and all the composers that I work with: the Michael John [LaChiusas] and the Adam Guettels and the Ricky [Ian] Gordons, and that sort of group of crossover composers. I thought, "We need to give something to them; we need to feel useful." Actors in my generation want to feel renewed on occasion, and the best way to renew anybody is to give something you know, to pass something on. Otherwise we can feel a little bit undervalued — just not appreciated the way we would like to be. We don't have the opportunity to always use our chops the way we like.

Question: Do you enjoy teaching? Has it been fulfilling the way you had hoped?
Blazer: Crazy about it! Tell you the truth, my parents were teachers, [and] I swore I would never do it. I was a violinist growing up. I said, "I will never be a singer." And they were singers, so, "I'm never going to be a singer." Then I said, "I'm never going to be a teacher." Now I say, "I'm never going to be old," and they got old. [Laughs.] So I guess I am completely following in their footsteps. But also, I wanted to create a company where all of these artists could come and say, "I need to do a reading of this or I have a play that I want [to do]." I'm directing a lot now — I'm producing some readings of things and trying to get them out there, and I want people to have a fertile pad to come and do their work, besides just teaching and studying.

Question: Your parents' story sounds interesting. Have you ever thought of putting together some sort of cabaret act or show tracing their relationships through the music they performed?
Blazer: I really should. If I could find ten minutes to myself, I really would like to do that. I would love to have a collaborator that would help me do that. My dad passed two years ago, and my mom is 90 and lives by herself in Tennessee, and she is coming up to be with me for about three weeks, which is just a thrill. She lives in Tennessee because that's where my brother lives. When my parents got really elderly, they had to leave the house in Montclair, and they decided to go live near my brother because my dad had a heart condition and my brother is a cardiologist. . . . Anyway, I taped their story one day. . . . It was my birthday, and I said, "Okay, it's my birthday. I want to hear the whole story of how I got here." And I recorded it all. I had heard the story many times and, in fact, I was just with Rebecca Schull, the actress. I did 45 Seconds From Broadway with her, and she's a magnificent actress — mostly film and television — beautiful woman, and she came to see the show the other night. We went out afterwards — her husband Gene was there — and she said, "Tell Gene the story of your parents," and I did. Everybody says the same thing when they hear the story because it's got a lot of twists and turns in it, and has a very serendipitous surprise ending. Everybody says, "This is a film. You've gotta write this story." So if you know any great writers that want to help me, I'm there!

Question: You're looking for someone to collaborate with?
Blazer: Yeah, let's put it out there. I'd ask Richard Greenberg, but he's too darn busy. He actually wrote a part for me in one of his plays that was based on my mother. Isn't that funny? The character didn't speak any English. My mother speaks English but didn't when she came to America, so he kind of took that and ran with it.

Question: When did you decide to pursue singing/acting? You mentioned that you were originally a violinist.
Blazer: I was terrible at school, really bad. I couldn't focus. Now I guess they have all kinds of names for that — back then they called it "a bad kid." [Laughs.] . . . I wasn't doing well in high school, but I knew what I wanted to do. I was 16, and I just wasn't coping well in high school. I had been doing a lot of theatre, and I loved it. I wanted to be onstage. In terms of going to a college for acting, I had spoken to Olympia Dukakis and Lou Zorich, who were good friends. I babysat their kids — their daughter studied with my parents, we were friends. So I consulted with them, and they told me what the requirements are of an acting student, particularly a ton of reading, which I'm not great at. So I thought, "What am I gonna do?" I just wanted to get out of high school. The entrance exam for a violinist at Manhattan School of Music was "scales, major, minor, diminished, Bach, unaccompanied sonatas, concerti. . . ." The requirements for a singer at Manhattan School of Music were an aria and an art song, which I learned in a day. I went in there and had this absurd response — all the teachers standing up on their feet and yelling, "Brava!" [Laughs.] This little 16-year-old singing… It was funny, but I had been exposed to [classical music] all my life, so I had a certain maturity that your average 16-year-old kid doesn't have. I sang like an adult. That began my four years at Manhattan School of Music, where I studied with my dad. He was my teacher. Then I went to Italy for awhile and sang a lot there because my parents' colleagues are all there [and] my family on my mother's side is all there. Because she was so respected and my parents were respected, I had a whole chain of tours and appearances in major cities in Italy. It was great! My brother was living there for eight years in med school, so he and I lived together in Florence. Then I came back to New York, and I didn't know what to do. I was too young for opera. A friend of mine was getting Backstage. He said, "It's great. You pick up this paper, and it tells you what to do and the range of the character, and the description of the character, and you go in and all you have to do is 16 bars." So I started auditioning for musicals. I really wanted to act, that was my dream anyway. . . .

The movie "Cinema Paradiso" is a wonderful film. I think it came out about 15-20 years ago. It's [about] a little boy in Sicily who helps work for this guy [who own] a little private movie house, and they show movies in the piazza. Italians lived for American movies — they lived through American film, and that was my mom. So her dream of America was all through these films that were always 10 years behind. They were getting movies that we had seen 20 years ago. But when I was growing up, my mom knew the name of every single American actor in every single old movie that you could possibly [name], so I became obsessed with old movies. And I would have dreamed to be an actress, but I never would have dared because that wasn't the family trade. So, with this musical theatre thing, I got to get closer to acting — what my instinct was heading toward.

Anyway, I auditioned [and] I got The Fantasticks. I got my Equity card, you know, Sullivan Street, the whole bit. Then I got sucked up — purely by accident — into daytime television on a principal contract. A casting person saw me at Goodspeed or something like that [and] thought I'd be right for daytime. I don't know how he made that [decision], but I became a daytime diva for three years and was married to Larry Bryggman, only one of the greatest actors we have. I didn't know who Larry Bryggman was. I was playing his wife, but I learned more from Larry Bryggman in three years than I would have in any acting school. Oh, he's a genius! And the way he works. Daytime is very hard work, and it's very fast work, and it's good training. So I did that for maybe two-and-a-half years, and then I started getting back into theatre, which is what I really wanted to do. And finally, several years later, I got Me and My Girl on Broadway. I replaced Ellen Foley, who had replaced Maryann Plunkett, and I played opposite Jimmy Brennan, who is the loveliest man on earth, and thus began the Broadway thing.  Continued...

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