ONSTAGE & BACKSTAGE: Talking With Tyler Maynard and Sparring With Jack Cummings III

By Seth Rudetsky
23 Aug 2010

Marc Tumminelli
This week Juli did camp at "The Broadway Workshop." It was AMAZING. It's only five days, but during that time they get workshops from members of all different Broadway shows (Like Memphis and The Addams Family) who teach them the choreography to numbers from their shows. AND they had a stage combat class, AND a commercial workshop class where they were filmed reading scripts from actual commercials AND they saw Wicked AND did a talk-back with the cast. On the last day, they had a performance at New World Stages (!) where they sang and danced medleys from Broadway shows. All the kids had a solo and it was so exciting and extremely nervewracking to watch Juli do her solo from Snoopy!!! They also sang "One Short Day" from Wicked…with the two women who played the leads during the Wednesday matinee they just saw! It was my first chance to see Mandy Gonzales do a little Elphaba and she was a brava. The founder of the camp is my friend Marc Tumminelli who played my teenaged son when I did Torch Song Trilogy. We talked about how Juli looks like Daisy Eagan (who was 11 when she won the Tony Award for The Secret Garden) and Marc said that he was obsessed with Daisy when he was a kid. He remembers that he somehow got the number for backstage at The Secret Garden and used to call all the time, desperate to speak to her.

MARC: HI, is Daisy Eagan there?
THEATRE PERSON: Who is this?
MARC: (Pause.) A friend.

Of course, he never got through to her and now thinks that his "secret backstage number" was actually the number for the box office. Ouch.

OK! Tonight (Aug. 23) is my Seth's Big Fat Broadway Show at the Triad and my special guest is super-belter/riffer Orfeh! If you've never heard her incredible voice, watch this! You can tix at http://triadnyc.com/. Then Thursday I'm doing Deconstructing Broadway in Provincetown at the Crown and Anchor and Friday and Saturday, I'm doing Andrea Martin: Final Days! Everything Must Go! in Huntsville, Canada. And then They're Playing Our Song on Monday! Excited/terrified. Get more info at www.SethRudetsky.com and peace out!
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Seth Rudetsky has played piano in the pits of many Broadway shows including Ragtime, Grease and The Phantom of the Opera. He was the artistic producer/conductor for the first five Actors Fund concerts including Dreamgirls and Hair, which were both recorded. As a performer, he appeared on Broadway in The Ritz and on TV in "All My Children," "Law and Order C.I." and on MTV's "Made" and "Legally Blonde: The Search for the Next Elle Woods." He has written the books "The Q Guide to Broadway" and "Broadway Nights," which was recorded as an audio book on Audible.com. He is currently the afternoon Broadway host on Sirius/XM radio and tours the country doing his comedy show, "Deconstructing Broadway." He can be contacted at his website SethRudetsky.com, where he has posted many video deconstructions.