Video of Me on Stage in 1994
My anxiety about starting school in about eight hours is keeping me up, so what else does a night owl do but Google himself? For the first time Ever, I Google Video searched myself, and oh my god, there’s a video of me as a ten-year-old in the Paper Mill Playhouse production of South Pacific.
When I was a kid, I did a lot of theatrical stuff—not just throwing tantrums at home, but literally dancing and singing on a stage. I think I had a better income as a kid than I do today. Paper Mill is the state theatre of New Jersey and during my childhood, it was practically my second home. I was there at least every Christmas season to dance in New Jersey Ballet’s The Nutcracker. As the myth goes, the casting director for Paper Mill saw me in The Nutcracker and phoned my people (my people being my parents) to see if I wanted to audition for South Pacific, and the rest is history.
This production was really special, and the first few minutes of the video will show it. Aside from starting with the Star Spangled Banner before the actual overture, the absolutely gorgeous set design is put on full display complete with an awesome rotating center island—so conceptual!
Check out the video below, at time stamp 3:36, and you’ll see my disgustingly skinny body and wobbly heavy head appear. My character and his sister are running around playing tag before busting out in song, which sadly is cut out of the video. I wore a loincloth and I was always embarrassed and shivering.
I thought I’d share the other video below, that YouTube user showho (Hey Mike!) posted, which is the Dame number. It’s a stretch, but if you feel like watching it AND you’re a pop culture junky, I think you’d be pleasantly tickled by some of my trivia. I’m a sucker for celebrity, so stick with me:
Bloody Mary (the black lady with the grass skirt): Tina Fabrique, sang the Reading Rainbow theme song.
Nellie (the main white chick in both clips): Marguerite MacIntyre, mom in Kyle XY.
Two of the dudes in the chorus are Mo Rocca (comedian and commentator on VH1, Wait Wait…Don’t Tell Me! and The Tonight Show) and Christopher Sieber (uber Broadway actor).
And because I found yet another clip of a show I did at Paper Mill, here’s the amazing Betty Buckley singing Rose’s Turn from Gypsy. In 1998, I was one of a few kids playing kid roles in this production with Deborah Gibson as Gypsy. I’m not in the clip, but this performance is just sweet!
And that is my super blast from the past blog post of 2009! Oh Internet: what will I find tomorrow.
