Gay&Night Maart 2016
Interview met Broadwayster Kyle Dean Massey, singer/songwriter Aafke Romeijn, alles over de Bear Pride en de Roze Filmdagen en meer!
Interview met Broadwayster Kyle Dean Massey, singer/songwriter Aafke Romeijn, alles over de Bear Pride en de Roze Filmdagen en meer!
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‘Pippin in<br />
Carré is going<br />
to be bigger<br />
and more<br />
spectacular’<br />
So now that it’s set in a circus, does that mean you’re<br />
doing acrobatics as well?<br />
‘Yep! I did a lot of training for that – I worked with a<br />
circus trainer. And still, before every performance<br />
there’s an hour of circus training. Before every single<br />
show, eight shows a week. Just to keep the skills up.<br />
What I do in the show is really difficult for me, but the<br />
actual acrobats in the show are really doing deathdefying<br />
acts. Things that have to be constantly trained<br />
and perfected, it’s not something you can just leave for<br />
a few days.’<br />
I’ve noticed that when big productions from abroad<br />
come to Amsterdam, often they’ve been scaled down<br />
signicantly. How has Pippin been trimmed?<br />
‘It hasn’t! If anything, it has been scaled up! I’ve done a<br />
couple of tours, even just national tours in the US, and<br />
they were very scaled down, just so they could move<br />
from city to city. Pippin is the only show I’ve been a<br />
part of that is exactly the same, physically, as it was on<br />
Broadway. The set is exactly the same size, it’s the exact<br />
same number of performers. If anything, the costumes<br />
are a little bit ashier and bigger, so the larger<br />
audiences can see them. On Broadway, our theater sat<br />
around 900 people – Carré seats more than twice as<br />
many. So if anything, I’d say things have gotten bigger<br />
and more spectacular. And that’s a very rare thing.’<br />
presence, we interact with them and things like that.<br />
So every once in a while we get to go out into the<br />
audience and interact with people, so that’s a little bit<br />
different. But you’re right about the technicality of a<br />
show like that. People underestimate the number of<br />
people it takes to put on a Broadway show. You may see<br />
25 people on stage, but there are 75 people backstage.<br />
Your choreography off stage is just as intense, if not<br />
more complicated, than it is on stage. Where you go, to<br />
change costumes, change your wig, change your mic<br />
pack, all those kinds of things. It’s very planned-out and<br />
precise. Backstage is a wild place, it’s always a moving,<br />
energetic place to be. And you appreciate the people<br />
who work behind the scenes. When I go off stage, and I<br />
have to stand there, my dresser changes all my clothes,<br />
someone touches up my make-up, someone xes my<br />
microphone, some else xes my hair. They’re so good<br />
at doing all of that stuff so fast, in all that chaos. They’re<br />
very skilled people. I get to work with great people.’<br />
You’ve been to Amsterdam before, and you’ve seen the<br />
Carré theater where you’ll be performing the show,<br />
right? How did you like Carré?<br />
‘Yeah, I was there in December and August. Carré is<br />
wonderful! I think Pippin is the perfect show for that<br />
space, with the rich circus tradition that they have<br />
there. It’s a gorgeous historic theater. Our cast is going<br />
to be thrilled to be in Amsterdam, playing there.’<br />
‘Your<br />
choreography<br />
off<br />
stage is just<br />
as intense as<br />
on stage’<br />
What is it like for you to go back to doing Pippin?<br />
‘We do these kinds of shows eight times a week,<br />
hundreds and hundreds of times. I’ve done 400 or<br />
500 performance of Pippin by now, I think I’ve done<br />
maybe 2,000 performances of Wicked. I think people<br />
underestimate the grind of it all. People always say “oh,<br />
it must be so much fun doing a show like that!” and I<br />
love it, but I’m not sure if fun is the right word for it. We<br />
do it over and over and over. That’s what’s so exciting<br />
about this touring production of Pippin; on Broadway<br />
you go to the same theater every day, you do the show<br />
for kind of the same mix of tourists. It’s going to be<br />
so exciting to be doing Pippin in The Netherlands, at<br />
Carré, because it’s going to be a completely new kind<br />
of audience. In a completely different setting. I think<br />
it’s going to inuence and change the show a lot, for<br />
the better. Fresher and more exciting. It’s the European<br />
premier of this version of Pippin. Sometimes people<br />
don’t realize how cool it is for us as actors to get to<br />
break up the monotony and get to do the show in a<br />
fresh space like that. It’s going to be a magical and<br />
amazing experience, and I’m so excited for it.’<br />
Broadway shows always seem incredibly technical. Is<br />
there any room in Pippin for spontaneity?<br />
‘There is a little bit in this show. In Pippin, unlike<br />
other shows, there’s no “fourth wall”. In normal shows<br />
you’re on stage, and you pretend the audience isn’t<br />
really there. In Pippin we acknowledge the audience’s<br />
Let’s talk about Nashville for a bit; you play Kevin, an<br />
openly gay songwriter who starts to work with Will,<br />
a closeted gay singer, and they develop some kind of<br />
relationship. Have you ever been in Kevin’s situation<br />
in real life, dating someone who wasn’t ready to be out<br />
yet?<br />
‘Yeah! Absolutely. I dated someone who wasn’t just<br />
closeted in his professional life, but in life – period. This<br />
was over ten years ago. It was completely frustrating. I<br />
recall saying to him: this isn’t going to work out, if every<br />
time someone knocks on your front door, I literally<br />
have to hide in a closet. It wasn’t good. And he actually<br />
did tell his family while we were dating. He had a long<br />
coming out phase, which was not nearly as painful as he<br />
thought it would be. I actually kind of forgot about that<br />
whole experience.’<br />
Have you ever experienced difficulty coming out or<br />
being out in the public eye, like the ‘Will’ character<br />
has?<br />
‘I think at a certain point in my life I did, when I was<br />
younger. Especially when I was living in Arkansas, I<br />
felt… Not ashamed, but I just didn’t want to open that<br />
can of worms. You don’t want to deal with people and<br />
their opinions all the time. You don’t always want to<br />
get into a political argument with some very religious<br />
person in Arkansas. I think I shied away from it then,<br />
but now I don’t care at all, and I will say whatever the<br />
hell I want to say, regarding whom I love.’<br />
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