John Fleck rose to a certain type of fame when he was labeled one of the NEA (National Endowment for the Arts) Four. Conservatives didn’t like the art he was creating and were up in arms about his receiving money from the NEA. That didn’t stop him and nothing has slowed him down since that controversy erupted in 1990. We spoke about his show It’s Alive, It’s Alive! and his career. He’s wildly entertaining.

Before Joshua Henry joined the Encores! production of Into the Woods, we spoke with him about his Broadway career which included In the Heights, The Scottsboro Boys and a revival of Carousel.

We first got to know Wayne Cilento as an original member of the Broadway cast of A Chorus Line. He’s the director behind the upcoming revival of Bob Fosse’s Dancin’ which will open on Broadway in 2023. This production began its life at The Old Globe in San Diego. So we talked all things Fosse (and perhaps a little A Chorus Line).

Adam Pascal is best-known for originated the role of Roger in Rent. This year he was on the road in the musical Pretty Woman. We talked about Rent, Pretty Woman and coming to grips with the ups and downs of fame.

Bobby Conte had just finished his run in Company on Broadway when we caught up with him before he was performing his show Along the Way. He talked about Sondheim, LuPone (Patti, of course) and his approach to music.

If anyone had a Cinderella story this year it was Broadway star Julie Benko. She was Beanie Feldstein’s understudy in Funny Girl before taking on the role full time until Lea Michelle joined the show. We spoke with her and husband Jason Yeager about their album Hand in Hand, but you don’t think we ignored Funny Girl do you?

Julie Halston is one-of-a-kind. She’s also a Broadway star, has a recurring role on And Just Like That, and a wonderful conversationalist. This might be our most purely enjoyable interview of the year.

John Rubinstein originated the role of Pippin in the Stephen Schwartz musical directed and choreographed by Bob Fosse. He’s currently on stage in his first one-man show as President Dwight D. Eisenhower in Los Angeles. We talked Ike, Fosse and politics!

Those are just some of our Stage Interview Highlights from 2022. Be sure to go to our YouTube channel to check out all of our interviews to date and to subscribe.

Tomorrow we conclude our interview highlights with some of our favorite interviews from the world of opera!

Photo: Jared Grimes and Julie Benko in Funny Girl (Courtesy Polk and Company)

The post Stage Interview Highlights 2022 appeared first on Cultural Attaché.

Just as theater has returned to performances, so has Fleck. His new show, it’s alive, It’s Alive just opened at the Odyssey Theatre in Los Angeles. It is arguably Fleck’s most topical show as it covers everything from the pandemic to cancel culture and everything in-between. Fleck plays multiple characters and sings a diverse selection of songs.

When we spoke last week via Zoom (you can see the full interview here on our YouTube channel) Fleck, who turned 70 last year, still has a lot on his mind. Surprisingly having faith in these troubled times is amongst the reasons Fleck has to believe.

“This was to celebrate the resiliency of a theater and our spirit,” he said of the show’s creation. “You know, it’s alive. It’s alive. Then it started to get deeper. It’s alive. It’s alive! There was a virus going around it and the politics, I mean it’s a monster. So I just channeled all of this stuff and out it popped.”

Fleck revealed his goal in creating the show, which had a workshop production at the Odyssey Theater last year.

“I’m channeling not just the world, like all the fear. I’m channeling extreme right wing fear and I’m channeling the left wing fear and I create these characters. I pretty much created like an opera of sorts where I created this mythological COVID germ that I play who’s just all about love. They’re not here to kill us. They’re here to actually save humankind. It’s all packaged in a lovely cabaret. Sometimes it makes an audience go, ‘you’re going too far,’ but that’s what I love to do.”

Reading the rehearsal script for it’s alive, It’s Alive! makes it clear this is a very timely show. Fleck is aware of its topicality and also of its shelf life.

“This is a show in the moment. I have no plans to do this show again. It’s just too contemporary. It’s a living organism and it has to be done now. That was always the nature of my work when I started doing performance pieces. You know, I studied with Rachel Rosenthal and those folks and I was really into these happenings like, you create a show, you do it and then you move on. So I create a new show every year. But then I started realizing that’s too much work. So I started running shows and they were generic enough in terms of times the specificity that I could do them a year later, two years later; like my last show, Blacktop Highway. I could still do that. But this show is definitely a living entity and has to be done now. Or it’s like cheese. We have to eat it now or it’s going to get moldy.”

When asked if his audience is mostly filled with like-minded people, Fleck makes it clear that he is equal opportunity with his commentary.

“I like to kind of like tear both sides apart a little bit so we can take a look inside what motivates both. I address the whole like cancel culture thing. My family in Cleveland loves to call us the cancel culture. But you know how loud the right wing cancel culture is? We both got to see how we’re both involved in this. It’s a dialog. It’s a conversation. They’re calling me cancel culture and us cancel culture. And yet they’re canceling abortion, right? They can say, like in Florida, don’t say ‘gay.’ I think we all need to just take a good look at ourselves. Some shits and giggles kind of helps diffuse the tension, if you ask me.”

While continuing to question what we’ve become as a society, Fleck offers a surprising perspective.

“Everything seems to be black and white. You’re either a liberal or conservative or none or you’re pro-life or pro-choice or, or pro-gay, anti-gay. I don’t know just what happened. I don’t know. It’s hard to have faith sometimes when when I see what’s going on. But hey, I’d rather choose to have faith that that we can somehow get through this right now.”

He then elaborates on his definition of faith.

“God has kept this world spinning for a long time. Faith, you know, I always think is being in a 12-step program. There’s a lot of fear. But I think for me and for people I’ve talked to in my orbit, there’s a lot of faith. I want to have faith that this democracy can survive. I want to have faith that that the polarization can stop that. There’s a way to communicate humanely with one another. You hear the sea level is going to rise by a foot in 50 years. I mean, God, how do you have faith that the world is going to survive? I don’t know what what keeps us going. Why don’t we get up in the morning? I have faith that the day is going to be good.”

I reminded him of a 1983 performance at the One Way Bar in Los Angeles where Fleck, donning a cardboard cake costume, dropped that costume and revealed himself to be naked. He then sang, “There’s no penis, like show penis, like no penis I know.” When he thought back to those days and looked at where he is today he was pleased with the decisions he’s made in his life.

“I never imagined doing bigger shows. At the time I was just hoping they wouldn’t throw beer bottles at me. They were punk rockers. developed some really good survival skills and I kept studying. I feel I had a choice. Shall I come to New York? I really should become a more serious performance artist. There’s always this thing between New York and L.A. That New York was more serious. Who cares about theater in L.A. But you know what? Being here in L.A. was the best choice for me because I got the best of both worlds. I got to be a performance artist and I got to work in TV and some great roles.

“I always feel I’m not a religious person, but I always feel like I had a guardian angel, a higher power, whatever you want to call it, looking over me. Thank God I was receptive enough to follow that path. I feel that creature who I was back then and in the 80s, getting on top of that bar, might have been mighty proud of what we became.”

it’s alive, It’s Alive! runs through March 20th. For tickets and more information, please go here.

Main Photo by Cooper Bates/Courtesy Odyssey Theatre Ensemble

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