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ONSTAGE & BACKSTAGE: Make-a-Wish Music
By Seth Rudetsky
02 Nov 2009
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Andréa Burns
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A week in the life of actor, musician, music director and talk-show host Seth Rudetsky.
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I usually end the column with upcoming events, but in honor of daylight savings time, let me begin with it. Next Monday, Nov. 9, I'm heading up to Ithaca to do a fundraiser for The Hangar Theater, for which my friend Peter Flynn is the artistic director. It'll be me, his wife Andréa Burns, the hi-larious Ann Harada, the beautiful voiced Lewis Cleale and my good friend, Paul Castree. The fun part is the show, the devastating part is the hours-long van ride upstate. I feel like I'll be back in my days on the European tour of A Chorus Line where we'd have long bus rides to "interesting" cities like Bonn, Germany. The key to getting your own seat was to feign you were sleeping when the annoying wife of the bassoon player came down the aisle looking for a seat. I still don't understand why she didn't sit next to her husband. PS, that was the tour where we were told we were going to London's West End! It was in 1991. Still waiting to get exact details…
[AUDIO-LEFT]
Last weekend I got S-I-C-K right after I wrote my column. I had to co-host (with Paul Canaan whom I did the Legally Blonde reality series with) and perform in the Make-a-Wish benefit and every time I swallowed it felt like I had a giant ball of sandpaper in my trachea. Nonetheless, the show went great. Laura Bell Bundy did a sassy song from her new CD that's about to "drop" (that's record company lingo), Laura Osnes sang a song from Frank Wildhorn's Bonnie and Clyde which she's currently starring in, Kate Shindle sang a belty version of "Gimme Gimme," James did his Rosie Cruise version of "Piece Of Sky" getting mid-song applause (!), Eden Espinosa did a whole amazing section from Wicked joined by her former fantastic Glinda, Megan Hilty, and Norm Lewis sang his signature "Before the Parade Passes By" with his delicious interpolate B flat. Click here for a deconstruction of that brilliance.
And I met Tim Howar for the first time. I knew he had done Rent on Broadway but, as we were talking, was saying words like "brilliant" and "bloody" as in "bloody hell." I finally asked what was up with the Brit-speak and, turns out, even though he's from here, he now lives in London…and talks like Madonna. Regardless, he has a great voice and sang Rod Stewart's "Maggie May" because he starred on the West End in Tonight's The Night. The big hit of the whole night, however, was Taylor Carol, a teenager who got his make-a-wish to perform in the benefit and make his own CD. He brought down the house with his version of "This Is The Moment." Here's a little compilation of the whole evening: sethrudetsky.com.
My good friend Jack Plotnick came to the show and was going to get a hotel room and stay overnight till I mentioned that our hotel room had a couch he could use. I'm not saying he's cheap, but by the time I finished that sentence, he had the sofabed pulled out and was in his pajamas. The next day I woke up feeling even sicker and luckily was able to sleep all day. And by "sleep" I mean "teach a four-hour master class." OY! Thankfully, I had a great group and Jack was there as well giving his amazing acting advice. He does this great exercise with people who put on fake "performance" personalities. He'll chat with them and ask them something like what their favorite subject was in high school and why they liked it, and who their friends were back then, etc., and suddenly he'll ask them to launch into their song. It's a great way to remind people of how they really communicate so they can apply that to their song. Go to his website for his whole technique: JackPlotnick.com.
One of the guys in the class asked me what I thought about people singing songs from the opposite gender. I said that I recommend it definitely for women because it's a chance to do a classic song and not have the stress of being compared to the original singer because you're a different sex. My friend Traci Lyn Thomas does a great "He Loves Me" and Kristine Zbornik from Catered Affair belts a powerful "His Face." I mentioned that it's harder for men because I've noticed that men have to prove they're masculine when they audition for musical theatre. If you want to sing a female song, pick one that's not about love because even if you change the "she" to a "he," if you're singing a Barbra song, casting people are going to imagine you in your bedroom, towel wrapped around your head, lip-synching into a hairbrush. I asked the guy what song he had in mind and he told me "Maybe This Time." I stared and moved on. Speaking of master classes, my next one is in New York on Nov. 15. Go to sethrudetsky.com to register. Continued...
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