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ONSTAGE & BACKSTAGE: Broadway 101
By Seth Rudetsky
17 Apr 2007
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Andrea McArdle
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| photo by Aubrey Reuben | A week in the life of musician-actor-writer and Chatterbox host Seth Rudetsky.
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Hey, everyone! This week's column is a day later than usual because I wanted to wait until after I did my big benefit so I could talk about it. And by "talk," I mean write.
Last Monday was the first rehearsal for Seth's Broadway 101, which is a show I put together for The Actors' Fund of America. The show describes to the audience how Broadway works (what is a vocal arranger, orchestrator, swing, etc…) with live examples. At the first rehearsal Devanand Janki, the choreographer, staged the dance segments. The first thing he did was the swing section. If you don't know, swinging on Broadway is not the same thing as swinging in the movie "The Ice Storm." (Key party? Anybody?) It means to understudy the ensemble. Usually one man for all the guys in the chorus and one woman for all the ladies. I wanted to show the audience how the swing has to be ready to go on at a moments notice and how terrifying it is to go on for the first time. So in order to create theatre vérité, I made myself the swing. Have I ever swung before? No. Would they ever hire a swing whose leg extension is in the early double digits (39 degrees)? No. But I knew it would be exciting for the audience to see real fear and profuse sweating.
Anyhoo, Dev staged the number and apparently it's not good for your body to take dance class in college, take 20 years off and then dance again full out. Let's just say, after that rehearsal I was only able to swing the role of Madame Armfeldt.
The more dances I learned, the more I realized how hard it is to be a gypsy on Broadway. I'm used to music directing and yelling at the cast to cut off on beat three-and-a-half. I didn't realize that you have no time to think about cut offs when your lower body is doing one thing, your torso is doing another, your head is facing is one direction and you still have to think about minutiae like where your focus is (Dev was always yelling things like, "First look at the orchestra seats…then lift your eyes to the balcony."). There was no way I could sing and do all that, so after this week I must ask Ashlee Simpson to move over because I am now the king of lip-synching. If all the body mics cut out during the show except for mine, you'd have seen my mouth moving but heard only a stream of air coming out of my yap that was very similar to heavy breathing. How do people sing and dance at the same time? I couldn't even inflate my lungs. Hats off to gypsies everywhere!
Monday night I saw the brilliant Kristine Zbornik's show at the Metropolitan Room. She is so unbelievably funny, yet is also able to belt Es. She brought down the house by just saying simply, "Antonio Banderas' cologne is sold exclusively at Walgreens." I'm also obsessed with her version of "Some People": "There I was in Mr. Orpheum's orifice…and he was saying to me, 'ARGH!!!!'" (followed by uncomfortable grunts).
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Dustin Sullivan and Holly Butler
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| photo by Aubrey Reuben |
Tuesday was more rehearsal and the day I found out how much I owed for taxes. Most jobs I have don't take out money, so I owe it all at the end of the year. My reaction was the kind you'd have after spending a day seeing a matinee of Death of a Salesman, an eight o'clock performance of Marie Christine and a special midnight showing of 'night, Mother.
Wednesday, Raul Esparza came by to work on his song, "Morning Glow." He told me that he thought Sondheim would love this show and that he would email him. First of all, I'm dying to know what his email is: Goodthinggoing@aol.com? Bring-in-bounce@verizon.net? Also, who has ever said that in a sentence? "I think I'll email Sondheim." Okay, I think I'll email Mozart.
Also, the previous Sunday, Patrick Pacheco wrote an article about the "Grease" reality show that ran in the LA Times. My friend Paul Castree was quoted, and I bragged to him that I had three paragraphs to his measly one. On Wednesday they reprinted it in Newsday. Paul still had his delicious paragraph, but they cut mine down a little. And by "a little," I mean to zero. Nary a trace. I've heard of instant karma, but never four-day-later karma. It was like karma mailed third class.
Thursday I hosted the Chatterbox with Legally Blonde's Michael Rupert. The first thing he told me that I was obsessed with was that he did all these television shows when he was a kid — "My Three Sons" and "The Partridge Family." It's so much cooler to have grown up in that time period. People my age can only brag about doing guest spots on "Silver Spoons" and "Alf." He also said that when he auditioned to replace John Rubinstein in Pippin, Bob Fosse asked him to take off his shirt. Even though he claimed it was above board and solely because Pippin spends much of the show shirtless, to me it smacked of Coco in the movie, "Fame" ("Tres jolie, Coco." Anybody?).
We also talked about him playing Marvin in Falsettos, and he told us about the myriad of letters he got from kids who got the courage to come out because they saw the show. Or the glaring, uptight folk he'd see in the front row who'd be near tears by the end of the show. He also described how moved he was when he'd meet sickly looking men at the stage door who had flown to New York for an AIDS treatment. They'd always tell him how necessary it was for them to have seen the show. I've always loved that show so much. Bill Finn and James Lapine wrote such a real portrayal of gay people. So many times, gay characters in shows have one character trait: they are gay. Instead, everybody in Falsettos is a complex character. Marvin is so flawed at first but finally grows up by the end. It's always so embarrassing for me to be listening to "Unlikely Lovers" at the gym and be crying on the Stairmaster.
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Laura Benanti and Raúl Esparza
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| photo by Aubrey Reuben |
Continued...
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