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Rising star Aaron Tveit, who burst onto the Broadway scene by creating the role of Gabe (singing "I'm Alive") in Broadway's Next to Normal, left the show in early 2010, but counts his Big Song from the Pulitzer Prize-winning score as one of the three show tunes that has most thrilled him in his young career. Another favorite is "One Song Glory," which he got to sing when he went on as Roger in the non-Equity tour of Rent (another Pulitzer winner). He left college to do the show and never looked back. Tveit (rhymes with "eight," he says) was a replacement actor in Broadway's Wicked and Hairspray, and has appeared in regional theatre productions. (And, yes, that was him singing a mashup of "I'm Alive" and "Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered" with Stockard Channing on the 2009 Tony Awards.) The Middletown, NY, native is poised for greater exposure in 2011, when he'll be above the title in the new Broadway musical Catch Me If You Can, inspired by the film of the same name. He played the show's lost-boy con-man Frank Abagnale, Jr. in the 2009 Seattle tryout of the show. He spoke in the weeks leading up to the Aug. 6-8 Hollywood Bowl concert production of Rent, to be directed by Neil Patrick Harris. (For information, visit HollywoodBowl.com.)

I'd love to see this Rent that you're doing — outdoors at the Hollywood Bowl.
Aaron Tveit: I'm really excited. I think it's gonna be pretty fantastic, you know. I mean, the show is just so great, always, but I'm so excited to hear the music in the Hollywood Bowl. It's one of these venues — Paul McCartney was just there! It's this place that all these amazing people play. I can't wait. This is also gonna be my first outside [amphitheatre] venture, playing like this. I've only seen pictures of the Hollywood Bowl, I've never been inside, so I'm sure walking onstage when we start rehearsing onstage is gonna be quite a trip.

I went on as Roger a bunch during that time, and I was 19, 20 years old — doing this part that I had just seen on Broadway a couple years before. It was such an amazing good time, and then to have the opportunity to go back and look at it as a different person and a different actor. It's just a thrill. It's kind of, really, full circle.

How did this gig come about? I wonder if Michael Greif — the original Rent director, as well as the director of Next to Normal — might have had something to do with it.
AT: You know, Michael didn't. He cast me in that Rent company years ago, but I became really good friends with Tim Weil, who's the music supervisor of Rent and he's actually music-directing this. And I met Neil Patrick Harris 'cause he hosted the Tony Awards last year, and he came and saw all the shows, and he was a big fan of Next to Normal. And at the Tonys, I had rehearsal and stuff and he was hosting, and then I think it just kinda came up. …I was just beyond thrilled that they were interested in me to do this. It was really thrilling.

You have a little bit of a clean-cut image. Is it fun getting a little edgy, a little downtown, or is there a part of Roger in you?
AT: You know, I think there is a part of Roger in me. I think that, sure, it's a little grittier than people have maybe seen me play, but I think that's the beauty of what we do. We get to transform ourselves and kind of shatter people's thinking of us. You have to kind of do that in every role anyway, but I think the guy is just a person struggling with regret, and I think all of us deal with that in some way in our lives. Maybe not to the extremes that he's having to deal with it, but I think if you can tap into that and connect to that in life, I think, for me, that may be the opening door to this character. So, yeah, I'm really excited to go a little darker and into these pits of despair than maybe people have seen before, so I think it'll be a really exciting challenge.

	Tveit with Jennifer Damiano in Next to Normal
	photo by Joan Marcus

It occurs to me that Rent and Next to Normal are kind of sister shows, in that they are rock shows and try to go deep — they do explore some darker sides of human experience. Did librettist-lyricist Brian Yorkey or Michael Greif, or even composer Tom Kitt, reference Rent when you explored Next to Normal?
AT: Really, it never came up in the process of finding out what Next to Normal was, or in describing the show. But I think a lot of connections have been made to [Rent] because it came at such a time where rock music really hadn't — I don't want to say "hadn't worked," but it changed the face of rock music on Broadway. And I think, naturally, because Next to Normal was such an amazing, raging rock show, that the connections were there. I think what you said about the deeper material and the human experience [is] really what [linked] the shows together. The thing that I find similar between two shows is the direct contact that both shows make with their audiences. We came across these kids that felt like they didn't have any avenue to express themselves in a way or to deal with, specifically, the material of Rent, in their own lives and in their hometowns, in smaller towns, and so they rallied around the show as kind of an outlet — to breathe a sigh of relief and say that it's O.K. to talk about this stuff, it's O.K. to experience this stuff. I didn't feel that again until I did Normal — then it became about mental illness, these people struggling with mental illness and how prevalent [it is] in our society and how people don't want to talk about it. They came to the show and they were able to say, "Yes. Thank you."

Do you have a favorite moment when you're playing Roger? Do you have a favorite aspect or song?
AT: I've always said this — there have been a couple of [memorable] moments in my young career. Singing "I'm Alive" on stage, on Broadway, that was one, in Next to Normal; singing "Goodbye" in Catch Me If You Can, that's coming up, that's another one; and singing "One Song Glory" on stage, as a young actor — hearing that music and singing this amazing song that has so much meaning to it. I remember, every time I got to do it, it was hard not to hear something in the back of my head saying, "You're singing this song right now with a full rock band." And I look forward to the moment of getting to do that for 18,000 people at the Hollywood Bowl.

Where'd you grow up?
AT: I grew up about 60 miles northwest of New York, in Middletown, NY. It's in Orange County.

Did you come into the city to see theatre as a kid? Did your folks take you to the theatre?
AT: I did. I came a few times with my parents, but actually, [I also came with] different school groups that I was involved in. So, with my high school chorus, we saw at least a show a year, and as I got older, my sophomore, junior, senior year of high school, I came in with a bunch of different groups. And we saw 10 to 15 different shows… It was really kind of amazing to be so exposed to this. You know, I have friends from all over the country who have to fly in once a year and it's a big thing, and I was really so lucky to be exposed to it. And not only Broadway shows — ballet and opera and a lot of different abstract things, too, all the museums. So I really benefited from living so close to New York City. I still do, and I still go home all the time and get out of here. I can just jump on the train and get home, so I'm very, very lucky.

Did you know when you were a kid that you wanted to be an actor?
AT: I was very unsure about what I wanted to do in high school. It kind of just got solidified when I went away to college and, really, when I started working. I just realized that this was the only thing I could see myself doing… I didn't grow up a theatre kid, going to theatre camps. I played sports, and that was my main direction. But luckily, I never had to choose between sports and theatre.

And you do it all. You want to do plays and musicals. You're not just a musical actor.
AT: Oh, no, absolutely not. I relish the opportunity to do a play, and I've been very lucky the last couple years being successful in three different mediums — stuff from Broadway and television and film work. I really want that to continue. I'm not a person who's trying to jump to television or jump to movies and get out of theatre. I really hope that this crossover that I've been able to do will continue for the rest of my career. I want to do stuff here in New York, do plays and do musicals and I also want to be able to work in film. I hope that I can just have no boundaries. Wherever great stuff is, that's where I want to be.