|
 |
THE LEADING MEN: Wopat and Breaker
By Tom Nondorf
04 Jun 2008
Breaker Breaker
If you need a little good luck, root for Daniel Breaker to cross your path. The man is recently married, has a baby on the way, and is up for a Tony for his role in Passing Strange, the first professional musical he's ever done. "I am going to cure cancer in July, so as soon as that's done I think I'll just take a break," he jokes. The way things are going, don't doubt it.
Question: Congrats on the Tony nomination. What was your first reaction?
Daniel Breaker: Thank you. I didn't believe it. I did not believe it at all. The Tony website sort of popped up with the information before CBS did. I got the information like half an hour before TV, so I got with my wife, and we looked online, and I was like, "This isn't really happening." And then they announced it, and I thought, "This really isn't happening, and at like two o'clock that day, I took it in and realized life is going to change a bit.
Q: So you're not someone who is going to pretend you weren't really paying attention.
Breaker: Oh, of course, I was. There was all this talk about it. With my family alone, they would call me and ask me if I got nominated for a Tony yet. So, they sort of added the pressure. My mom and dad — we sent them out to Vegas for Mother's Day, and at 5:00–5:30 in the morning their time, they woke up to investigate to see if the news was out, so they were some of the first to call. I got lots of sleepy yet excited phone calls from my family. I also have a sister out in L.A. who called that early hour also.
Q: What was it like showing up at the theatre after finding out something like that?
Breaker: This play, this musical, this project is an ensemble. And I don't mean that in the B.S. sort of way, it really is. The only reason we are here is because of the band and the actors and the creative team, so it feels like we all got nominated for seven awards, and it does feel like a collective, so everybody was on Cloud Nine that day. As a result, the audience is a bit more supportive, a bit larger, so the show was actually somewhat easier to get through because we don't have to get the crowd to join us. It's not as difficult as it was before; as soon as they come in, they are having a great time.
Q: Would you have envisioned this success for yourself and the show a couple years ago?
Breaker: Yeah, this was never my plan. I never actually had dreams of being on Broadway. I definitely didn't have dreams of being in a musical. Also, when I joined the show at Sundance back in 2005, I could not even imagine that this show would have legs on Broadway. But a series of events have happened to help us get here, and also I think audiences are looking for something like this show. It was also sort of a good year in terms of the Broadway world — I feel like we have a balance of funky, new, downtown musicals that make it uptown and classics like Gypsy, like South Pacific, which I think is exactly what Broadway should be. It should be both of those things.
Q: What's the most fun that you have at any given performance of Passing Strange?
Breaker: I love it all. The show is always different. There's always new things that we discover in the show, and musically Stew tries new things, so that's always fun. The fact that it is live and that it's different each night really is enjoyable because you never get bored. He's doing this new part in the show during the song "Keys," where we sing "It's all right," where the music cuts out and it's just a little drumbeat, and everybody is singing, "It's all right" without any musical accompaniment, and that is a hell of a lot of fun, and the music crashes back in, and that elevates the show, and just takes it to a whole new level, and the audience comes along. And that's been a new, fun element, but really it's everything, from the top of the show to the curtain call. It's just damn fun. It's a great way to live.
Q: You lived in many different places growing up. Did the transient life inform your acting?
Breaker: I think a lot of army brats tend to be actors. When you travel around so much, you get to appreciate the kinds of masks that people sort of wear or the traditions that people have in their lives. I think I took in so much, so many different cultures, so many different backgrounds, both racially and economically, that I sort of brought all those things onto the stage. I think this play sort of epitomizes that idea because this kid wears different hats throughout the show. So it was very true-to-form.
Q: In your recent "Cue & A" interview for Playbill.com, you had several references to classical music. Did that come from your days at Juilliard?
Breaker: My two loves other than my family are cooking and classical music. One of the few constants when I traveled around was Mozart, so I attached to him, and when I got into college… You know, Juilliard is just real rife with geniuses, so it was a wonderful opportunity to kind of drink in all of the magnificent musicians, so I am like a little armchair conductor, I guess you could say. I love music — anything that is communicating an emotion or a thought through music is beautiful. And when it can elevate itself to trigger emotions in someone, it's awe-inspiring. So whenever that happens, it's great. I mean, for some it happens in Gypsy, and for others it happens in In the Heights, and for me it happens in a Bach fugue.
Q: Have you thought of how you are going to be on Tony night? Playing it cool?
Breaker: Honestly, the thing I'm really looking forward to is my beautiful pregnant wife next to me in her lovely gown, my mom, my dad, my brothers and sisters also there. The Breakers of Jacksonville are coming in!
[Passing Strange plays the Belasco Theatre, 111 West 44th Street in Manhattan. Tickets are available by calling (212) 239-6200 or by visiting www.telecharge.com.]
Hither and Yon
If you're up in the Catskills, say Phoenicia, doing some inner tubing, and you feel like you need a theatrical fix (hey, you never know!), check out Bye Bye Birdie, being done by the Shandaken Theatrical Society. I got a quick impromptu tour of this little upstate theatre during rehearsals. For reservations, call (845) 688-2279 or go to stsplayhouse.com. Final weekend of shows is June 6- 8… Jason St. Little, so canonized by this column by my accidental typing of a "t," has taken his sainthood in stride and will be performing two more of his one-of-a-kind shows as Tits Fisher on July 3 and 10 at the Zipper Factory. See zipperfactory.com for all the mad details… Variety calls him a "freak." He calls himself "America's Gaysian Sweetheart." Alec Mapa is bringing his one-man show to Joe's Pub, June 28 and 29. Go to www.joespub.com for more… Billy Stritch, so entertaining in tandem with Jim Caruso at Caruso's Cast Parties, will perform in concert with Klea Blackhurst, celebrating the release of Stritch and Blackhurst's Hoagie Carmichael Tribute CD, "Dreaming of Song." The concert is June 16 at Birdland, part of the treasured Broadway at Birdland series. Hit www.birdlandjazz.com or call (212) 581-3080 for ticket info… Tony Danza is at Feinstein's until June 14 in his show, "I Could Have Danced All Night." . . . Adam Pascal will close out June at Feinstein's with shows on the 29th and 30th. Visit feinsteinsatloewsregency.com for info on those events…Enjoy the Tonys, folks! May your favorite performers and shows take all the hardware.
Tom Nondorf can be reached at tnondorf@playbill.com.
 |
|
Chad Goodridge, Daniel Breaker, Colman Domingo, Stew and Rebecca Naomi Jones in Passing Strange.
|
| photo by Carol Rosegg |
Contact Us | Advertise | Privacy Policy
Send questions and comments to the Webmaster
Copyright © 2008 Playbill, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
|
|
|
|
|