GYPSY OF THE MONTH: Gavin Lodge of 'Annie'

On stage and off, Gavin Lodge is a man of many vocations. In just one number in Annie, "N.Y.C.," he plays both a beggar and Santa Claus (a tap-dancing Santa at that). His other roles in the show include the dog catcher out to get Sandy, Judge Brandeis and FDR cabinet member Harold Ickes.

In real life, too, Lodge has pursued several different occupations. The would-be diplomat, who speaks French and Spanish, majored in international affairs and worked on political campaigns before ever performing professionally. He's also created an app and written two as-yet-unpublished books. And he's an inveterate adventurer and traveler, most recently taking his infant son to Italy.

"That's what I would do if I had no responsibilities and endless cash," Lodge says of traveling. He's been to eastern Africa, Peru's Machu Picchu and Iceland, among other destinations. The trip to Italy was his "Annie-moon," taken after he'd been cast but before rehearsals began (he's taken other vacations like that, when he's known he'd be starting a job). Lodge attributes his wanderlust to the road trips he and his mom made every summer when he was a child.

Born in Indianapolis, Lodge grew up in Lakewood, Colo. The Younger Generation Players, a Denver-area children's theater troupe, was his only performing experience other than school plays and choir before he settled in New York in 2001. For more than a year preceding his move to New York, he worked on Al Gore's presidential campaign and the initial U.S. Senate run of Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.). Now Lodge has four Broadway shows to his credit, including the entire 15-month run of Priscilla Queen of the Desert, where he understudied the lead role of Tick. He's played principal roles regionally as well, among them Harold Hill in The Music Man and Jerry in The Full Monty.

Yet while he was attending the University of Colorado in Boulder, Lodge was focused on a career in diplomatic service. "When I went into college, I knew that I wanted to be a diplomat, I wanted to work overseas--I was positive of it," he says. Nonetheless, he'd originally intended to double major in international affairs and theater. But the school's BFA program didn't really allow for much outside coursework, so he double majored in international affairs and philosophy and performed in some college productions. After graduating, he spent the fall of 1999 in Iowa as a get-out-the-vote organizer for the Gore campaign leading up to the Iowa caucuses; he would do similar work for the Missouri, Pennsylvania and Minnesota primaries in early 2000.

For most of that year, however, he assisted former broadcasting executive and congresswoman Maria Cantwell as she ran for U.S. Senate (she won and was reelected again this November). Serving as Cantwell's "guy Friday," Lodge helped write speeches and transport her to appearances and provided general support, assistance and a sounding board. Cantwell and Lodge spent a lot of time together and got to know each other well. And as valuable as he was to her, she could tell that just maybe there was another kind of work he'd rather be doing. After the election, Lodge recalls, "she said, 'You can come and work for me, but I don't think you want to do that. I think you want to go give New York a try.'" She was convinced particularly by an evening during the campaign when she and Lodge went to karaoke with some fund-raisers. "I ended up, shall we say, giving quite a performance," he says. "She said [remembering that], 'I knew that you didn't want to go to D.C. and be a bureaucrat.'"

So New York it was. "I arrived in the city completely wet behind the ears," says Lodge. "I threw myself into dance classes, because I figured that would probably be the skill I could [improve] to get into the chorus of a show." He came here full of optimism: His first audition was for a NETworks tour of--prophetically enough--Annie. "I thought, Man, I'm gonna book this in a heartbeat," he says, laughing at his naivete. He didn't get that job, and his first professional gig turned out to be a summer '01 production of Anything Goes on Hilton Head Island, S.C.

Lodge had been similarly confident when he auditioned for the Rent tour in Denver during his senior year of college and was invited to callbacks in L.A. "Suddenly I'd had illusions of thinking, 'Oh, I'm going to have to drop out of my senior year in college to go be on Broadway.' Needless to say, that didn't happen." His optimism didn't flag even after years in the business. He received his Equity card doing the national tour of 42nd Street in 2003, then got into the Broadway company for the last eight months of the revival's run in 2004. "After 42nd Street closed, I thought, Man, this is so fantastic, I'm never gonna leave Broadway," he says. Instead, it took him a couple of years to appear again on Broadway.

Adrienne Onofri, one of BroadwayWorld's original columnists, created and writes the Gypsy of the Month feature on the website. She also does interviews and event coverage for BroadwayWorld, and is a member of the Drama Desk. Adrienne is also a travel writer and the author of Walking Brooklyn: 30 Tours Exploring Historical Legacies, Neighborhood Culture, Side Streets, and Waterways, published by Wilderness Press.

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