The current crop of Broadway actors, creators, producers and thought leaders congregated at Variety’s annual Business of Broadway Breakfast , presented by City National Bank . Amidst the conversations with “Sunset Boulevard” star Nicole Scherzinger and panels hosted by the cast and creator of the new Broadway addition “Yellow Face,” Variety paused to quiz the theater kids on their most memorable Broadway Firsts.
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“The first Broadway show that I ever saw was ‘Kiss Me, Kate.’ I was in New York, on a school trip,” said “Oh Mary!” creator and star Cole Escora, who was around 13 then. “I was so pissed. I didn’t want to be there. I had no idea what it was. And then, Marin Mazzie makes her entrance in this big hat. And she turns around in sunglasses. I was sold. It was heaven. I was in love.”
Jim Parsons recalled how his first Broadway performance ended with the waterworks. “I remember we had had a very short rehearsal process, and so I was very nervous,” the “Our Town” actor said. “I remember going on stage for the first scene of the first preview; I finished the scene, and I walked off-stage, and I guess all the tension released. I burst into tears as soon as I got off-stage. So, that was my first scene on Broadway, ended in tears.”
Nerves are not out of the ordinary when one debuts on the New York City stage. “Yellow Face” actor Daniel Dae Kim added, “The first time I ever set foot on a Broadway stage, I was doing ‘The King and I’ at Lincoln Center. I was replacing somebody…. I was the new kid on the block. And so, I had a whirlwind three-week rehearsal period and the night that I had to go up, I just felt my heart beating out of my chest.”
Other freshman members like Zoey Deutch, who is making her Broadway debut in “Our Town,” came out with new vocab words. “Last weekend was when I discovered what SNOB meant, Saturday Night On Broadway, which is very exciting,” Deutch revealed. “It’s when everyone gets together and drinks on Saturday and on Broadway after the second show. I am being guided by the veterans of the theater community, whispering, ‘This means this, this means that, that means that.’”
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Deutch wasn’t the only one with this experience. “Our Town” co-star Ephraim Sykes explains a similar occurrence during his first rehearsal on “The Little Mermaid.” “I was very new to Broadway,” he said. “Didn’t know anything about musical theater like that. We finished learning the first number, and they said, ‘Take it to the button.’ I was like, ‘What is that?’ So, the choreographer laughed and then told me that the button is the end of the number.”
Sammy Lopez, producer of the new play “Job,” recounts feeling inspired by “In the Heights” and its diversity. “When I saw that grate of Abuela Claudia come down,” Lopez said. “I immediately thought of my own family. It was the first time I saw brown people on stage, and it just reinforced that I could belong here.”
Hunter Arnold, producer of “Maybe Happy Ending,” recalled an awkward run-in with a theater icon when they were just five years old. “[I] went to go see ‘Peter Pan’ and wanted to wait backstage to meet Sandy Duncan. My father had been peppering me with trivia, trying to keep me engaged in the process. She finally came from backstage, and she went to sign my playbill, and I said, ‘Is it true you have a glass eye?’ So, yeah, that was the first show I ever saw.”
Watch the full conversation above.
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