Entertainment
One singular sensation –
Ian Liberto of ‘A Chorus Line’
Some things never go out of style, and the hit Broadway musical A Chorus Line is one of them. Ian Liberto wasn’t even born when this groundbreaking show first hit the stage in 1975, but the 25-year-old dancer and singer, who plays Bobby in the touring production, is thrilled to be a part of the show that “paved the way for gay characters in theatre.” Liberto and A Chorus Line come to the Buell Theatre from May 4-17, but you can meet the hunky performer in advance. I was able to catch up to him by phone during a break in his Manhattan-based rehearsals to talk to him about the show, his character and his career so far.
Matt Kailey: You’re in a theatre right now?
Ian Liberto: Right now, we are rehearsing at a rehearsal studio on 42nd Street – really enormous rooms, lots of mirrors, walls of windows overlooking 42nd Street. That’s where we are now.
MK: How did you first get into musical theatre?
IL: I have to say that, when I was in high school, I always dabbled in theatre, just because it was available to me in my school. But mostly, I was a swimmer and I played in the orchestra and I was very occupied with those things. And I remember being 16 years old, and the national touring company of Chicago came through Chicago, where I grew up, and I just thought it was so spectacular and I fell in love with the style of (choreographer) Bob Fosse and the musical itself, and it really sort of changed my mind about what I wanted to do with the rest of my life. And I decided that that specific show and that style of dancing was what I wanted to do. So that put me on the path and I started looking for colleges that had musical theatre programs and the rest is history.
MK: You went to Millikin?
IL: I went to Millikin University in Decatur, Illinois, which is where the girl, Sierra Boggess, who’s playing the Little Mermaid right now went. I went to school with her. I know she’s from Denver. And we were friends in college together.
MK: Were you out through high school?
IL: I came out in the beginning of my senior year in high school. And I want to say, I didn’t necessarily have a sort of grandiose coming-out process. I just finally decided to be true to myself, and if anybody was going to ask me, I was going to tell them the truth. And I decided to start speaking certain feelings that I had instead of keeping them inside. So it’s not like I made a decision to tell all my friends and tell my parents and stuff. I just started being myself and everything sort of followed in line after that.
MK: And you’re still very young, right?
IL: I’m 25. I’ve been out of college three years now. I spent the first year out of college touring with Thoroughly Modern Millie. And then I worked regionally for a year in Arizona and Chicago and New York, and now, here I am.
MK: I read that you had the part of the Emcee in Cabaret, which, to me, is just like the ultimate role.
IL: I know. It was an amazing opportunity. I also choreographed that production, and I got to recreate the choreography of the person that inspires me the most, Mr. Bob Fosse. And I love the style of that show. It’s very sexual without being vulgar, but it also has this amazing message about tolerance and diversity and it was a really, really amazing production. I’m so glad that I was part of it.
MK: So, with Chorus Line, you’ve got a group of people who are auditioning to basically a ‘faceless’ director –
IL: Yeah. Sort of the voice of God. He does appear. He is on stage with us at the beginning of the show and he comes onstage at various points during the show, but for the majority of the show, he sits in the back of the audience and we’re talking to him, so it’s a really great audience perspective, because everyone in the audience can imagine that everyone on stage is talking director to them. For those people who are familiar with the movie, the movie is quite a bit different than the stage production. They updated it a little bit to be a little bit more ’80s, because they felt that the stage version was a little ’70s – which it is, and at this point, it’s become sort of a period piece, very much like Sweet Charity is a very sort of period ’60s piece, I think that Chorus Line is a definitive ’70s musical.
MK: For the character in Chorus Line, it’s so emotional. They’re scared, a bunch of stuff comes out of them as they’re talking about themselves. How realistic is that for an audition?
IL: It is really emotional, because you have to stop and think to yourself, ‘These people that were in the original production were saying these lines onstage and they were things that they actually said once.’ Michael Bennett got a whole bunch of New York dancers together and told them to just tell about their lives, and he tape-recorded the whole thing. And all of the dialogue and the lines in the show are lifted from those tape sessions and rearranged to make an artistically stable show. And you have to think about, these people are pouring their hearts out, talking about how they’ve been hurt, how they felt like they had insufficient childhoods, and to think about the fact that, in the original production, the people onstage were actually talking about themselves. My character, Bobby, talks about how his father was an alcoholic. And you just have to say, ‘Can you imagine the day that his father actually came to the show and saw his son talking about him being an alcoholic on stage. And the character of Sheila, talking about her mother found another woman’s earring inside her car and having her parents come see the show. It’s just very emotional.
MK: When you go to audition, are there 50 million people there and you go through all these dance routines and people slowly get eliminated? Is that how it works?
IL: For the most part. Things are a little bit different today than they were in the world of the show that we’re presenting. In the world of A Chorus Line, it was very much a cattle call, everybody shows up, you’re just a number. Hundreds and hundreds of people showed up and they made cuts and they brought you back the next day and the next day. And as far as that aspect goes, it’s very much the same today. You’ll go to an open call, and it’s always worse for women. There could be 350 women there versus 150 men. And they bring you into the room in groups of 20. They are basically allotted about 30 minutes to teach you about a 45-second dance combination. They call out the pictures and resumes of the people they want to stay, either to dance another combination or to sing. Oftentimes, that will happen for three or four more days as callbacks go on, and it slowly gets whittled down to the people who are going to be chosen for the show. But today in New York, a lot of times, casting primarily happens out of agent submissions and invited calls versus in the ’70s, where you would go to an open call and you might have the Broadway show by the end of the day. There’s a little bit more structure to it now.
MK: What does it take for you to stay in dancer-ready shape?
IL: I have to say that I personally don’t think that I’m in the best shape of my life right now. But I’m slowly getting there because our choreographer, Baayork Lee, who originally played the role of Connie in the show on Broadway, has a very athletic, strenuous workout that we do every morning for an hour, from 10-11 – 300 sit-ups, 125 pushups, all sorts of Pilates things, leg exercises, all sorts of stretching, running around, just trying to build our stamina up for the show. And that’s really getting me in shape. And every night I say to myself that I’m going to go to the gym and work out some more after rehearsal and then I just go home and take a bath because I’m so tired. But the show itself very much prided itself on being very sexy when it opened on Broadway. They weren’t wearing costumes, technically, they were wearing dance clothes. And it was the first time that people went to go see a Broadway show and there were people showing skin and showing their bodies on stage. And it’s all about the dancer’s body being really fit and really in shape and the revealing clothes that you wear at auditions to get noticed and stuff like that, so it is really important that we have to stay in shape. Once we get on the road, we’ll have to find gyms in each city that we go to, to try and keep our stamina up.
MK: How does that work with your partner when you’re on the road for six months to a year?
IL: For us specifically, it is going to be par for the course. He’s a musical director. He has music directed for the past year and a half The Producers national tour, and for the two years before that, the Oklahoma! national tour. And we met about a year and a half ago. And so our life has very much been an on-the-road sort of life. But we see each other at least once a month. We make time on our days off to fly to whatever city the other one is in and if we happen to cross over in New York for any length of time, that’s fantastic. But it’s a life you have to get used to.
MK: You say that Bob Fosse is your idol. Is there someone that you would most like to work with at some point now?
IL: Rob Ashford, for sure. He choreographed Thoroughly Modern Millie and he choreographed The Wedding Singer and Curtains and the show that just recently opened of his, Cry-Baby, and he has two more coming out this year. He is, by far, the best choreographer on Broadway right now, in my opinion. And that’s from a dancer’s opinion.
MK: What role would you most like to play that you haven’t played?
IL: I have a lot of roles on my wish list that I won’t be able to play until I’m older. Sky Masterson in Guys and Dolls is one. Billy Flynn in Chicago is another one. I’m not going to be playing those roles for a while, but I like the debonair quality that those two characters have.
MK: What advice would you have for people who would love to be in your position?
IL: I would tell them that it’s never too late, but you only get out of it what you put in. So if you’re willing to go all the way, you can get somewhere. But it’s a very difficult life and a very difficult career and if you’re not willing to put in the effort to get somewhere, then it might not be worth it.
MK: What else do you want to tell us?
IL: I’d like to talk a little more about my character. I’m playing Bobby, who is not, in the context of the show, openly gay. My character Bobby wants to be a movie star. That’s his line that he keeps singing over and over again. And he sort of represents the Rock Hudsons and the Tab Hunters – a period in show business when, in order to acquire any degree of success as a movie star, you had to stay in the closet. And he’s up on stage with the characters of Greg and Paul, who come out and actually say that they’re homosexual, but he’s too scared to, because he doesn’t want his career to be affected by it. But the show itself was really groundbreaking for gay characters. It was the first time on Broadway that anybody said, ‘I’m a homosexual.’ You just did not do that. And it really sort of paved the way for gay characters in theatre, I think. … It was pushing the envelope in its time. Now, partly because it happened, it is not so much an issue, but back then, it really surprised a lot of people. You know, there’s a reason it won the Pulitzer Prize. It was really groundbreaking.
A Chorus Line will play at the Buell Theatre in Denver from May 4-17. For tickets or more information, go to www.denvercenter.org.
