216 WHAT ARE YOU WILLING TO GIVE UP TO BE EXTRAORDINARY? Kyle Dean Massey and Pippin come to Amsterdam Text: Martijn Tulp / Photography: Nathan Johnson for Broadway Style Guide (main), Joan Marcus (scene photos) 008
Interview / Kyle Dean Massey It’s not often that a full-sized Broadway show makes its way to Amsterdam without being scaled down. In fact, this might be one of the rst times: Pippin will be performed at Carré in March and April. We were fortunate enough to speak with hunky lead and multi-talented Kyle Dean Massey. So you grew up in Arkansas, right in the heart of the American Bible Belt. What was that like for you? ‘It was great while it was happening, I didn’t know any different. Going back there now, it’s very conservative, and a little backwards sometimes. You go down there and you see a lot of confederate ags, from the American civil war, which happened like 150 years ago. People still y the ag of the confederates. That’s kind of weird. It was a small community to grow up in. It was great; my friends and family were wonderful, but as far as being an actor, there were no resources for that in Arkansas. I didn’t come out until I went to college. It would probably have been a little bit more difficult to be ‘out’ if I had stayed in Arkansas, but it’s not as if I’m closeted when I go back there. I just don’t know that I would ever stay there. I’m not going to say it’s a hostile environment, but it’s not welcoming. There’s no reason for me to be there, other than my family.’ Did you always grow up loving Broadway shows? town, we didn’t have Broadway touring shows that came through, people from my community didn’t travel to New York to see Broadway shows frequently. So I didn’t really know what they were. But I loved music, and I loved the musicals that I saw as movies. I just didn’t realize that something like Broadway existed.’ Were you familiar with the original production of Pippin? ‘When I did my rst show in high school, I realized I loved musical theater and wanted to know more about it. So I went to the library and checked out cast recordings of musicals they had there. They had a cassette of Pippin, which I checked out when I was 16 or 17. So Pippin was certainly one of the rst Broadway shows I knew of, and learned the words to. Bob Fosse [legendary musical theater choreographer and director - ed.] was involved in the original production of Pippin, so it must have been pretty minimalist in terms of sets and costumes. But the version you’re performing in is quite the contrary, right? ‘It is! I mean, it’s spectacular. I think the costumes in our production are simple, but they’re amazing. They were designed by Dominique Lemieux, who designed the costumes for the Cirque du Soleil show O in Las Vegas. They’re very opulent, gorgeous, form-tting costumes. The show now takes place in a circus tent. I think the set is completely beautiful, the way they light it and create different spaces – I think it’s very imaginative. It’s not an over-the-top scenic spectacle. Compared to other Broadway shows I’ve done, it’s still very sparse. It focuses on the story. I think the heart of the original Bob Fosse show that was developed in the 70s is still there.’ ‘As soon as I discovered it, yeah, but I can’t say I really discovered it until I was a teenager. I lived in a small 216 009