Before Drew Gasparini held his Masterclass session on Sun 16, Alex Rimell, Digital Media Officer at Norwich Theatre, sat down with Drew and chatted about his upcoming show at The Playhouse, his advice for anyone looking to get into musical theatre and how Norwich is the cutest place he may have ever seen!
Tell us a bit about your show coming up.
Yeah, sure, on Saturday I will be playing at the Norwich Theatre, and it will be a night of songs that I have written since I was 16 years old until now, so the last 20 years of my life.
I would love to showcase some stuff from The Karate Kid. I don’t know if I am allowed to yet. I will get in touch with my producers about that, but it will be cool to showcase some songs from my upcoming Broadway musical, The Karate Kid.
The show will also feature some of the stuff we will be workshopping here this week from my musical We Aren’t Kids Anymore. So, it will be some theatre stuff, some contemporary stuff, and some singer-songwriter standalone stuff.
Frankly, I put on a great show, I have been doing it in New York for several years, and we sell out all the time, and it just becomes such a party and a celebration of music and our individuality.
Is it just going to be you on stage, or is there a band?
Oh! It will just be me at the piano, and I like that because the space feels intimate here. Even though there are however many seats, there is such an intimate feel to the space.
Frankly, as much as I love having a band, I drive that piano like a truck! So let’s go, we will have a good time. We will have some guest singers from England, which is special to me.
Why did you choose to come to Norwich and collab with Norwich Theatre?
Chris Cuming, who does some work up here, has invited me to develop the show we have been talking about since the pandemic. So, it has been two years of Zoom conversations with him on where we can take the development on this piece we want to work on, and he said Norwich Theatre would love to house this.
So then I googled Norwich, and it was just the cutest little town I have ever seen in my life.
Did you know about Norwich before?
Honestly, I had never heard of it in my entire life, but there is a great arts culture out here, and I really appreciate that.
Also you get lost in the fold in London, and I like the idea of being one of the locals, which is exciting to do in a spot like this.
What are you expecting from this afternoon?
I am keeping my expectations very middle ground right now, which is a good place to start. We have a very wide age group which I think is interesting, and I want to tap into people’s uniqueness and individuality.
Often artists and actors want to fit some mould that they have been taught to fit, and the way we see theatre progressing is because it is the arts. It is an evolutionary art form, and it should keep expanding. So, I can’t wait to find out what is special about each person and say that! Keep doing that.
Is there something you always focus on first when doing masterclasses?
Yes, I call it the conversation. I look at it the minute you come into the room. The conversation begins. The first note you start singing is part of the conversation. I don’t want you to perform or be a character; I want you to show me who you are through your interpretation of this song. So that is what I am hoping to get.
What are you working on at the moment?
So right now, a handful of things. We just did our pre-Broadway out of town tryout with The Karate Kid, and we sold out and got great reviews, and it will be coming to Broadway in the next year or so. I am so excited about it, and I am so proud of it. I think whatever people expect a Karate Kid musical to be, this will defy every one of those expectations. We worked tirelessly on this throughout the pandemic and didn’t stop. So it became less of a wow, I am writing The Karate Kid to much more of a passion project for me. There is so much heart in that story, so I am really excited about it.
On top of that, Universal hired me years ago to adapt this novel called It’s Kind of a Funny story, and if you are reading this, get that book. It is the easiest read, and you feel like you have written the book. It is so personable. It is a comedy about depression and a really interesting lens through which to look at mental health. I have been writing that with Broadway star Alex Brightman who plays Beetlejuice on Broadway he was in School of Rock’s original cast, Tony-nominated actor. He and I are writing that together and have been writing it for almost ten years.
Also, I am writing an animated movie based on the children’s novel the whipping boy. That is another project I am working on right now, alongside many other things.
If you could have written any song, what would it have been?
I think every composer at this point wishes they could have written Hamilton. But, it is such a phenomenon and such a global phenomenon, and of course, that concept was well executed.
One theatre song that I think is pretty perfect that I wished I had written that is so hard is anything from Little Shop of Horrors. I am a big Alan Menken fan, and I love all those animated Disney movies, so any of those things that became the anthem of our childhood, like Part of Your World or A Whole New World or I Can Go the Distance, all those songs still speak to me and I kind of wish I had my thumbprint on those. Those hugely inspire me, and you can kind of hear them in my music already, so those are the songs I wish I had written.
Lastly, what advice would you give someone to get into musical theatre?
I think the advice I would give is coming from somewhat of an American standpoint because I understand that training and the musical theatre programs out here are very well respected. In America, we don’t care where you graduated from. It really depends on what you are bringing to the room right now. What is this audition? Let your talent speak, not where you graduated from.
So, the advice I will give might not stick to some people from the UK, but it would be to be you. It is so important to showcase your individuality. It is different when you think of the arts going from job to job to job, and if you are doing what you have been trained to do, you can be in the ensemble of every show. That is a fantastic way to make a living, but what do you want to be? It is what story hasn’t been written yet and what story you want to tell.
You are allowed to find those parts for yourself if you lead with your individuality, and then you will be the original something or the first to do whatever, and that is a harder hill to climb, but I think the reward is much higher as well.