By Tom Nondorf
04 Feb 2008
DORECK EXCELS
Chad Doreck is still in Altar Boyz. He wants everyone to know that because internet rumors had his contract not being renewed. Not true, he says emphatically. He is happily part of the show, and happily enjoying his post-"You're the One That I Want" life on the East Coast. One bit of West Coast life the Orange County native is bringing east is his love for funk music. He will be performing a solo show at The Cutting Room on Feb. 21 with a full complement of horns and "The Chadillacs." We talked with him about Boyz, funk music and some of the funky oddities on his résumé.
Question: So you are still doing Altar Boyz, correct?
Chad Doreck: Still doing Altar Boyz! I'm getting great joy out of it. I would love to stamp that [rumor] out because I am having a great time, and I'll be sticking around for at least a little while longer. It was reported that my contract didn't get renewed, but I don't have a contract to renew in the first place. I love going to work every night, I love working with the guys and sending out that positive message every night.
Q: We talked to your co-star Ryan Strand last month about how unique the comedy of Boyz is to play.
Doreck: It's a balancing act. As an actor, you are aware that some things are supposed to be funny, but sometimes the comedy is written into the dialogue, and sometimes it's up to the actor. You have to walk the fine line of knowing you have to make it happen, but not playing for that. It's really interesting. Rex Harrison played in My Fair Lady all over the world, and I read something about how he would just minutely change things every night until he knew the best way to get the joke [across]. I do that, too, because sometimes things are not as funny if I say them when I'm standing up as when I'm sitting down, and I have to learn what those are.
Q: Tell us about your funk show at the Cutting Room.
Doreck: I am really excited. It's my first time playing my music outside of L.A., and I've got some fantastic players, incredible backup singers and session players who are going to be hitting the stage with me; it's going to be a great time. Interestingly, there is a big funk scene in New York, coming out of Brooklyn and Staten Island, and I am really hoping to be considered part of their world when I start playing here. The backup girls are the Chadillacs, a nickname I came up for them one day during one of my shows. It just came out of my mouth! I wanted to put together a new set [of my own music] with some fun covers. We are turning the Busta Rhymes song, "Got Y'All in Check" from a rap into an R&B song. It's going to be fun.
Doreck: Well, at the time, and even now, it was probably the hardest thing I've ever done. Just the nerves of it and the amount of work they had us do and the pressure it put on my family — it was unreal — and at the same time, probably the biggest blessing I ever received. The people I met out of it have encouraged and inspired me, and I learned lessons in patience and forgiveness. I'm so happy I did it, and I know that some people have their qualms about a using a TV show to find a cast, but it's great for the actors, because a lot of us came off that show and right into jobs!
Q: With the talk of Legally Blonde using a similar casting method, what advice would you give girls auditioning?
Doreck: A mistake I made was that I was very concerned with how the editors and the producers and writers would portray me with the footage they shot. Naturally, I am outgoing and a leader, but I hid that to a certain extent, and I feel that had I gone into the situation with more abandon and just been myself, it would have been a more pleasurable experience.
Q: Let's talk about some of the wild credits you have. When you were working on the music video for "Weird Science," did you know Oingo Boingo's Danny Elfman would become the king of movie music?
Doreck: No, I think I was five or six [laughs]. I had a major crush on Kelly LeBrock though! I remember it very very vividly. [That job] actually inspired me to this day. My aunt was one of the pioneering music video people of the eighties, so she called me, and I fell in love with being on the set and begged my parents to let me go on auditions, and that's how I got started. Honestly, I still sort of feel a connection to Danny Elfman. I feel like he got me started. He doesn't know it, but he did.
Q: You had a run as the voice of Crackle from Rice Krispies fame? Any free cereal out of that?
Doreck: I was the voice for a while, through the early 2000s, but they have a propensity to recast those voices. Not a bite! Everyone assumes that it's a perk, but I've done somewhere in the ballpark of 200-300 commercials, and I've never gotten one free thing out of it ever. Once I was the spokesperson for a German chocolate company, and I got one single box of chocolates. This was on-camera work, too! Just one little box — it had five bars in it.
Q: How about your work in the musical classic "Jackass Number Two"?
Doreck: I know it sort of seems small, but being on the set of that was sort of fulfilling a lifelong dream. Though I love theatre, and I love the liveliness of it, I am a movie freak. I watch old movies all day and night, and all my favorite actors are old actors. During filming, we were on the biggest soundstage at Paramount, where so many of those old traditional musicals had been shot and filmed, and with the girls in the big costumes, it was like being on the set of a Busby Berkeley movie. One of the reasons I started acting in the first place was because of those movies, but no one is making that kind of stuff anymore.
Q:Lastly, "Texas Chainsaw Musical"?
Doreck: [Laughs.] Of all the things to pick off my résumé. You know, living in L.A., short films are part of your life, because if you're not doing one, then one of your friends is. I directed one called "Tupac is Dead," and that's on YouTube still getting a lot of hits. But anyway, a friend was doing "Chainsaw" to enter into an MTV contest, and he needed dancers and a choreographer, and I ended up being one of the finalists out of thousands. We were all dancing with our arms chopped off and with chainsaws and stuff. It was hilarious!
[Tickets for Altar Boyz, which plays New World Stages, are available at www.telecharge.com or at (212) 239-6200. For more information visit www.altarboyz.com or call (877) ABOYZ-411.]
HITHER AND YON
Congrats to recent Fantasticks and "Leading Men" alum, Doug Ullman Jr. for snagging the role of Hero in Forum at Florida Repertory Theatre. Stephen Mo Hanan will be Pseudolus . . . . Check out Beverly and Kirby Ward as part of the Broadway at Birdland series on March 3. Kirby was the original Bobby Child in the West End premiere of Crazy for You . . . . The Zipper Factory features Jason St. Little as Tits Fisher with "Kittens Kiss A Cabaret Voltaire," which promises to be utter insanity on Feb. 28 . . . . Thanks to Bill Keller and students in his journalism class at the University of Alabama who were kind enough to have me speak briefly about my work for Playbill.com. Appreciation for theatre knows no bounds!
Tom Nondorf can be reached at tnondorf@playbill.com.
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