Tom Galantich and Jennifer Babiak in My Fair Lady.

 

My Fair Lady, based on George Bernard Shaw’s classic play Pygmalion, tells the familiar story of Eliza Doolittle, a Covent Garden flower peddler who agrees to take speech lessons from phonetician Henry Higgins in order to fulfill her dream of working in a flower shop. However, Eliza succeeds so well that she outgrows her lowly social status, and manages to become an indispensable part of Higgins’ life.  The original 1956 production of My Fair Lady with Rex Harrison and Julie Andrews enjoyed a seven year run on Broadway leading to the 1964 film which won several Oscars, including Best Picture.

The Altar Boyz rock the stage Thru 9/18 ! Do not miss them!

     I grew up in a very small town upstate called Claverack. It’s one of those towns where practically everyone is either a farmer or a cop. Even though I was not on a farm growing up, there was one directly behind my house, so feeding the cows that night’s vegetables that I didn’t care for was something that regularly occurred throughout my childhood! Growing up in such a small community can seem unbearable to most people, but I wouldn’t change it one bit! Because we were all so close, I was able to gain the support of my friends and most of my community.

When I was sixteen, I booked the lead in Disney’s High School Musical in Albany at a professional theatre. At that time, it was a huge deal since it was one of the first productions of the show in the nation and I was completely excited and overwhelmed. I’ll never forget, when I walked out of my dressing room and down to the lobby on opening night, I realized that almost half of the audience was from my school! It was just one of those moments where I knew I was blessed with such amazing friends!

My biggest support group, is my incredible family. They know very little about theatre, but they love every second of it! My parents were never stage parents, they always let me make my own choices and they backed me one-hundred percent! I remember in eighth grade, I found out that my math teacher was a tap instructor, so we arranged that every Tuesday, she would teach me tap for an hour after school in exchange for my help on any little project she needed done. The only problem was, I didn’t have tap shoes. My father (also my baseball coach) took me down to the garage and cut a sheet of metal to fit the bottom of my dress shoes. And after a full night of work and testing I had a perfect pair of tap shoes!  I’ve been blessed with an amazing family and a great group of friends throughout my life.

For as long as I can remember, I was always performing. If I wasn’t making a stage out of the couches in my living room, I was torturing my friends with rousing productions of some mindless concoction I called a play! My first real spark came when I was four years old. The local high school put on a production of Peter Pan and instantly I was bitten by the bug. Of course, at four, I thought that every show had flying in it. I would audition, rehearse and get to fly in every show I did! Well…. that didn’t happen, but along the way I realized that I truly loved being on stage. It’s strange, I’m more comfortable on stage in front of an audience then I am hanging out with a group of people.

As  for mentors… there are two people who, unknowingly, shaped my acting career. The first is Monica Wemitt. She has been everywhere and done practically everything (including being a part of the original cast of Hello Dolly with Carol Channing!). I first met Monica while working at the Mac-Haydn Theatre many years ago when I was ten. I had the opportunity not only to work onstage with her, but off as well. Just watching her work and seeing how she treated others was more of a lesson for me then any class could have taught in years. The other “mentor” is Rob Richardson, who coincidentally, just performed at WBT in Jekyll and Hyde! I worked with Rob on the same show when I was fifteen and he just had a way of commanding the stage. He was able to reach out to the audience night after night and hold on to their hearts until the final curtain fell. After that, he was always more than happy to meet the patrons who came to the performance that night after the show. The way he interacted with the audience is what a true performer aspires to do.

Dr. Seuss was a huge part of my childhood. I would always force my mother to read the same stories over and over again before I went to bed. For some reason… no matter how many times I heard the story, it was always so exciting and new!

Getting the opportunity to play the Cat in the Hat is absolutely amazing! Getting to see all of the characters that I grew up with come to life every night on stage is absolutely magical. I must admit, I was quite intimidated when I was first handed the role. Everyone seems to have a very clear idea of how the Cat should be played and what he really stands for. Living up to those expectations was a rather trying task. Once I had the chance to really sit down with the script, I realized that everyone imagines any character in a book differently from anyone else. That’s the magic of it all. So, I’m becoming the Cat in the Hat that I always envisioned every night as my mother read to me… with a little added punch just for fun! After all, he is the Cat!

Hands down, my three top shows are Ragtime, Titanic, and La Cage Aux Folles. Each manages to spark my imagination every time I see them performed. I do have three dream roles; Tony in West Side Story. It’s a bit cliché, but he’s such an iconic role and the songs he gets to sing… well… he’s great! The next is Dr. Jekyll in Jekyll and Hyde. I’m young for it now, but if I start preparing, perhaps, one day it could happen! My third, and ultimate, dream role is to be the first ever, male, Mamma Rose in Gypsy on Broadway. Outlandish? Perhaps.

First and foremost I’m a full-time student at Pace University. As you can imagine, it takes a good portion of my time! Other than that I am the director at the Yorktown Stage Camp! I love working with kids and getting to watch them grow as performers. Talk about the magic of theatre!

When I’m not on stage, I enjoy hanging out with my friends and traveling. Not necessarily to far off places, but just heading somewhere none of us has been. I also have a soft spot in my heart for those days of wearing my spongebob sweatpants and snuggie and watching classic Disney movies with a bread-bowl of soup from Panera and Root Beer. Weird combo… I know, but a marvelous day!

Good grief. My Ipod is truly the most random thing you could ever imagine. I always get nervous when people take it and plug it into a sound system at a party and set it on “shuffle.” It ranges from Broadway, to classical, to rap, to country, to techno, to my own music. I’m not too picky with my music. As long as the artist has a good message to deliver and the music has a driving melody, I’m all ears!