BWW Interview - Debut of the Month - COME FROM AWAY's Geno Carr

Geno Carr makes his Broadway debut in Come From Away in the role of Oz Fudge and several other characters. The uplifting new musical that played record-breaking engagements in La Jolla, Seattle, Washington D.C., and Toronto, is written by Canadians Irene Sankoff and David Hein, and directed by Christopher Ashley (MEMPHIS).

COME FROM AWAY tells the remarkable story of 38 planes with 6,579 passengers who were stranded in a remote town in Newfoundland on September 11, 2001. In the days that followed, the locals opened their hearts and homes, hosting this international community of strangers and spurring unexpected camaraderie in extraordinary circumstances.

Today, BWW speaks with Geno Carr about making his Broadway debut in a musical which proves that even when tragedy strikes, the human spirit will always prevail.

[NOTE: BroadwayWorld's fabulous photographer Walter McBride captures images of the Broadway stars profiled in our monthly column in a special photo shoot. Check out the pics of Geno Carr throughout the feature!]

The message of this show is perhaps more relevant than ever with all that is going on in the world right now.

Yes, it's amazing timing in a lot of ways. We think of this story as timeless and as something that applies everywhere, but I think you're right, particularly right now, it's a story everyone needs to hear. The story is about the people of Gander and the surrounding communities and how good they were that day. But I think that's inside of all of us. It's just a matter of letting it out, taking care of each other, and it doesn't have to be huge, grand gestures like the people did that day or during those days, but the fact that that is within us everyday. And even when horrible things happen, good can come out of it as well. And I think that's a really important message.

One of the most powerful scenes for me was when the passengers from all different countries and religions and languages came together to pray. I literally said 'wow' out loud during that moment.

It is one of my absolute favorite scenes in the show, because it really isn't just about religion. I mean of course you have all these different faiths coming together, but it's more the fact that all these different people can come together, even in a sort of non-religious way, and they can co-exist and can get along. And they allow each other to speak in their own voice, and speak their own truth. And it really makes this beautiful tapestry of sound. It's one of my favorite arrangements in the show. The prayers are so beautiful in the way they all come together. And yes, it is a 'wow' moment for sure.

How did you first become involved with the show?

Well, the world premiere was at the La Jolla Playhouse, almost two years ago now. I had been living in San Diego almost a year at that point, my wife had dragged us out to Southern California to go to graduate school and we thought we would be there for about two years, but we ended up staying because we loved it so much and there's such a vibrant theater community there. So I got called into La Jolla Playhouse to audition for this show. I had been in several times before that for other shows and nothing had quite worked out. And then suddenly, I booked this show, not really knowing how amazing this journey was going to be. So I was very lucky. I was one of just a couple of local actors. They cast people from Canada, from New York, from all over, so I felt so lucky to be brought into the fold of this piece and it was such an amazing experience. And I got to continue on the journey and I cannot believe we're here on Broadway!

I would imagine that all of you being together from the beginning has helped to foster that sense of community that we see on stage.

It does. It is pretty rare in commercial theater like this, not to do some recasting when you go to Broadway. It's just sort of an inherent given with most shows that they'll replace some people, because they want bigger names, or they want something that's going to change the dynamic. And I think our producers and our creative team are amazing because they kept what was working and they kept, like you said, the community that we had built together. I mean we'd done this show a couple of hundred times now together, and there's nothing like a team that's been together for a long time. And although we keep making changes to the show, and that's part of the excitement of the process, we know this show inside and out. We really do feel like a pretty well-oiled machine at this point, and that translates into the performance.

When you first went into the audition, were you familiar with the story of the people of Gander?

I had never heard the story. And it's so funny because so many people hadn't heard it. Tom Brokaw had done a piece on it, a 40-minute special during the Winter Olympics, and some people had watched that and it gave the story some national exposure. A lot of Canadians, of course, knew about this story, but I don't think a lot of Americans did, and I was definitely one of them. So when I read the script, and read the background of the story I was just blown away by it. It's so amazing that it hadn't been more widely publicized or on the public consciousness. So I was enthralled by this amazing town and acts of generosity that they showed during those days.

You portray several characters in the show. Are they all based on real-life people?

Yes, every character you see in the show is either a real person or sort of a composite of multiple people. Of course you can't portray 16,000 of them in one hour and forty minutes, but certainly Oz Fudge, the constable from Gander who is the main character I play, is a real-life human being. I spent time with him in Gander when we were there for two concerts back in October, and it was amazing. The writers didn't make stuff up, this wasn't highly fictionalized, so much of the show is based on how these real people really are, and Oz is exactly that way. He was so welcoming and he was so funny and we got along so well and I became good friends with him and his son and his daughter. His daughter crocheted a hat for my 18-month-old son. She found out he likes Cookie Monster and she said, 'oh I'll make him a hat.' And by the next morning she brought it to me! She had crocheted it in a couple of hours. So the people are like that and it's amazing to play real people and not have to make them something that they're not. They really are this nice.

It must be extremely challenging to not only play so many different characters, but to have to go back and forth between them so rapidly.

Yeah, you know they always say practice makes perfect, and we've had a lot of time to practice. Certainly at first, it was extraordinarily challenging. And the way the script moves on the page, it's almost rapid fire sometimes. You know you turn around, put on a hat, and turn back around and you're a whole different person, with a whole different dialect. So as an actor, that's one of the most exciting challenges you can get. You're trying to create these characters as fully as possible, sometimes with one hat, sometimes with just one line of dialogue, and not make them cartoonish or general, broad stroke characters. So it is a huge challenge, but that's more than half the fun for us, getting to play all these characters and bringing that sort of inherent theatricality to the piece.

Have you ever gotten a little confused and said a line using the wrong accent?

[laughing] No, luckily I haven't and I'm not going to throw anyone else under the bus! We've certainly had some moments of close calls shall we say. But overall, we're really very consistent which is great.

The people of Newfoundland speak with a very unusual dialect. Was that difficult to pick up?

Well the Newfoundlander dialect is something that's definitely very unique. I think a lot of people think of the general Canadian accent, they think of the 'eh' and the other Canadianisms and that kind of sound. But Joel Goldes, who is our dialect coach, worked very hard to create sort of a standard Newfoundlander dialect for us. Of course with any dialect, there are variations. It's like saying an 'American dialect', where of course the southern dialect is very different than the northern. But it was something that was kind of difficult because it does have a bit of an Irish feel to it, so it was difficult for a lot of us not to go into Irish. So Joel and the rest of the creative team had to try to keep us within that Newfoundlander box. Because you don't want to be a cartoonish dialect, it has the potential to become that if you're not careful. So we worked really hard to keep that as truthful and as consistent as we could. But yeah, it's definitely a challenging one.

You could certainly hear that Irish influence in the dialect. I assume at one time many Irish people immigrated to that part of the world.

Yes, and that's something I learned as well as we were working on the show and the dramaturgy of it. And you hear it in the music too, the way that the music is orchestrated. The sound of Newfoundland music has the pipes and the fiddle and a lot of guitar. It makes up this folk rock, almost celtic sound. So yes, there is a lot of Irish influence in the people as well as the music of Newfoundland.

The audience really gets the chance to hear that music as they're exiting the theater and the band comes out on stage to play. Everyone just sort of stopped in their tracks and started clapping along - it was a wonderful moment.

Yes, it's almost like you are in an Irish pub. You get that boisterous, energetic feeling and it's just so much fun. And you know that playoff at the end of the show that you're talking about originally started as just the exit music. The band was just going to sit in their seats and play, and like with most shows, the audience would leave. But then when we first started doing it, the audiences in La Jolla didn't leave! They heard that music and were like, 'this is great, we're going to stay and clap." And so they ended up staging it and bringing the orchestra down and it was really this kind of happy accident. So it's a great way to leave the show. People leave on such a high note and that's very exciting.

Can you describe what it has been like to make your Broadway debut in Come From Away?

Oh, it's the most surreal thing I've ever experienced. It's something I've dreamed about all my life. And I would never say I gave up on the dream, but I used to live in New York, and my wife and I moved around, as I said, we were in San Diego for a long time, and perfectly happy. We had a house, we now have a baby and a dog, and then all of a sudden Broadway basically called, which doesn't usually happen. It's not usually, 'hey, Broadway on the phone!' So the fact that I get to go on this journey with the show and end up here is absolutely and literally a dream come true. It may sound like a cliche, but it really is. And it's so wonderful to be doing it with this show and these people, and as we talked about before, we have been working together for so long, it's this feeling of new and exciting, yet also very comfortable. And because of that, I think the anxiety that might be there otherwise isn't as present because we've done this, and we know this, and we trust this. So it's a kind of an interesting dichotomy of giddy excitement and comfortability - which is a really, really good thing for neurotic actors!

About Geno Carr: A BroadwayWorld and Craig Noel award nominee, Geno has appeared Off-Broadway, on national tours and regionally at La Jolla Playhouse, The Old Globe, Merry-Go-Round Playhouse, Cygnet Theatre, Heritage Theatre and many others. Favorite credits include: Allegiance, The Producers, The Foreigner, Next to Normal, The Full Monty, How the Grinch Stole Christmas!, Assassins, and Little Shop of Horrors.