GYPSY OF THE MONTH: Steve Konopelski of 'Gypsy'

Mama Rose herself would be impressed with all the places Steve Konopelski has played. From a rural town of 200 in western Saskatchewan, he's danced his way to, among other places, Prince Edward Island; Provo, Utah; the Caribbean; Myrtle Beach; northern California; Akron, Ohio; Las Vegas; and of course Broadway.

With his role as L.A. in Gypsy, Konopelski is part of a Broadway revival of an all-time great. His previous Broadway appearances were as a replacement in a long-running hit (Beauty and the Beast) and in the original cast of a flop (Hot Feet). Regionally, he's been in West Side Story twice, Cats, White Christmas and Guys and Dolls. He received the gypsy robe on Gypsy's opening night in March, as the ensemble member with the most Broadway credits.

Mama Rose might also be pleased to know that one of Dainty June's Farmboys is played by a real live farmboy. Konopelski grew up on a thousand-acre farm in Rabbit Lake, some 90 miles north of Saskatoon (if that helps), 200-plus miles from Regina (or that) and over 300 miles from the U.S. border. His elementary school class had six students; the whole school, 90.

When Konopelski was 8, he and his family went to see his babysitter perform in a recital at Annette's School of Dance in North Battleford, a larger town about 45 minutes from Rabbit Lake. "That was the first time I'd seen 'organized' dance, and it looked like a lot of fun," he recalls. "My dad used to play in a polka band when he was a young man, and my mother was a teenager in the '50s, so music was something we grew up with in the house. But when we actually saw something in performance, both my sister and I were like, 'We have to do this.'" They started taking classes at Annette Ellis' studio.

His sister gave up dancing after a few years and is now a schoolteacher in Utah with a two-week-old daughter, Allie Marie. Meanwhile, Konopelski is onstage every night with one of Broadway's most beloved divas, Patti LuPone, three-time Tony winner Boyd Gaines and young star Laura Benanti, all under the direction of musical theater legend Arthur Laurents. But he goes home every fall to conduct a weeklong workshop for current students of Annette's. He teaches them choreography from shows he's been in and combinations he learned at auditions. "It's my way of giving back to that community, and to my teacher," he says. "But my main goal in going back is to let them know that just because you come from a small town in the middle of nowhere doesn't mean you can't succeed in whatever your dream is. If they want to go on and become dancers, fantastic. But if they want to go on and become surgeons or veterinarians or scientists...just try and be the best in whatever you want to be. Sometimes there's a stigma that comes with small-town kids that they can't leave that small town and go on to something greater. I'm a little bit of an example of 'Yeah, you can.'"

His took his first step toward "something greater" when he was 16 and he attended the Royal Winnipeg Ballet's summer school. He was subsequently accepted into the company's full-year program, so he moved without his family 500 miles from home and finished high school in Winnipeg, attending academic classes at a public school in the afternoon and dance classes at the conservatory every morning and evening. He stayed in the ballet school for two years after graduating from high school, but was starting to realize that he may have more of a future in musical theater. "In the ballet world, being a shorter guy, I would never get to be a prince," says the 5'7" Konopelski. "I would always be doing character roles." As a ballet dancer, he had such parts as Fritz in The Nutcracker, the jester in Swan Lake and a bird in The Secret Garden (a ballet created by the company). When he did get to do a pas de deux, it was one from Don Giovanni that's more comical than romantic. "I felt kind of pigeonholed," he explains. "I was at a classical ballet school but not really getting to do the classical ballets."

He also missed dancing tap and jazz, which he had studied at Annette's school. So he flew to Vancouver to audition for the German company of Cats. He didn't get a part, but the experience convinced him "the musical theater world is really where I need to be," he says. "I was getting to perform in this whole character-driven way and to use all of my body, as opposed to just my body and not my voice. In Cats, there was some classical-type dancing, and then stuff that was more contemporary and jazz, and there's even a tap number as well. So I just went: Every show is going to require a different type of dancing, but I'll still get to use all of my technique. That made it for me."

He ultimately was cast in a show, the musical Anne of Green Gables that's performed on Canada's Prince Edward Island (where the story is set). He went back to ballet after that, enrolling in Brigham Young University on a ballet scholarship. A year later, he gave up dancing altogether to answer his mission call for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. He spent two years on the mission in Montreal, Quebec City and Ottawa, serving in a bilingual capacity (thanks to two months of intensive French lessons while training for the mission).

"It was a wonderful experience," Konopelski says, "to forget myself, to put that all aside and dedicate myself to one sole cause, of helping people and teaching them and helping them to find that maybe there's something greater than themselves, and how can that light, that energy, that being guide them and make their lives even better."

After the mission, "I felt a lot more grown up," he says. "I felt a lot more clarity as to what I wanted to do in my life. What I once would have called dreams now became goals. When I came home from my mission, that was solidified for me—I knew that I wanted to perform, that I wanted to be on Broadway, it wasn't just 'I'll just kind of perform and whatever.' There was a lot more focus." During his hiatus from dancing, however, he'd gained 35 pounds. He returned to the Winnipeg ballet school to get back in shape and then re-enrolled in BYU.

He was there for only a couple of weeks before he got a job performing on a Norwegian Cruise Line ship sailing in the Caribbean. That put an end to his college days, as—on the advice of fellow cruise performers—he moved to New York post-cruise, undeterred by the 9/11 attacks that occurred two weeks before he arrived in the city and by his having only one acquaintance here. He didn't stay for long, going out on tour with an Irish dance show called Spirit of the Dance (the first time he did that type of dancing), which included extended runs in Las Vegas and Myrtle Beach, S.C. He had another cruise gig after that, aboard a Princess ship in the Caribbean, and then performed in an Opryland revue in Myrtle Beach.

Thus, Konopelski considers 2004 the year he really settled in New York. Just as he'd taken to Winnipeg, the first city he lived in, he embraced his new home, no matter its vast difference from where he'd grown up. "I loved the city. I think it's something that's always been inside me: As much of a country boy as I am, I think I longed for something grander."

He received his Equity card in Paper Mill Playhouse's 2004 production of Guys and Dolls, starring Karen Ziemba and Robert Cuccioli. Then he finally got to do Cats—the show that motivated him to switch from ballet to theater—playing Pouncival at Philadelphia's Walnut Street Theatre. Two productions of West Side Story followed: at American Musical Theatre of San Jose, Calif., where he played Big Deal, and Baltimore's Lyric Opera House, where he was Baby John.

His Broadway debut took place in the spring of 2006, in the Earth, Wind & Fire jukebox musical Hot Feet. Hip-hop and krumping were new kinds of dancing for him, and the energetic Hot Feet ensemble earned critical praise for their demanding work. The rest of the show, however, was pretty much a disaster, garnering uniformly negative reviews and zero Tony nominations and closing in less than three months. Konopelski doesn't remember it that way, though.

"The second week into rehearsals, they took us to the theater," he says. "It was empty, they hadn't put the floor down, there was no set there, the crew hadn't come in. We just got to stand on the empty stage and look out into the audience. It was such an amazing experience, I called my parents right away. This was something I'd dreamed about for a really long time, and finally that dream was coming true. Being in a show that was not very popular and seemed to have some problems was a little bit difficult, but people really liked the dancers. That made it easy to go on. The choreography was challenging. I'm really glad that I got to do a show where I got to really dance and sort of earn my sweat."

Later that year Konopelski achieved another goal: getting cast in Radio City Music Hall's Christmas show. He'd auditioned for it for several years, always being offered a slot in one of the touring companies (which he turned down), but this time the offer was for the New York production. He was thrilled. Then, on the first day of dress rehearsals, he was called by the Broadway company of Beauty and the Beast to replace an ensemble member who'd torn his bicep. Beauty was another show for which he'd auditioned repeatedly—he'd been in it at the Lyric in Baltimore—and he couldn't turn down Broadway, so he dropped out of Radio City. From December 2006 to March 2007 (four months before it closed), Konopelski played a townsperson, a gargoyle, the cheese grater and a fork in Beauty and the Beast.

And then came Gypsy, the inaugural production in the City Center Encores! summer series. It ran for two weeks last July, but talk of a Broadway transfer began as soon as people got a look at Patti LuPone's Mama Rose. "We knew that something special was with this project," says Konopelski. "Patti had insisted that at the last performance at City Center, the curtain not come down. So somewhere in my mind: 'This means something...' I don't know when or where this is going to happen, but I think this means this is not the end of this production."

Nearly five months passed, with no plans for a Broadway or London run announced. In the meantime, Konopelski went to Akron to perform in White Christmas at Carousel Dinner Theatre. While he was there, he got word that Gypsy would indeed open on Broadway and he would have the same role. So much of the buzz around the production stems from LuPone's gangbusters performance, but Konopelski has no problem taking a backseat in a star vehicle.

"It's a good place to aim for," he says. "I watch Patti and Boyd and Laura and Alison Fraser—people that have had fantastic careers—and that's where I want to be. Having Patti here especially is just a great educational experience. It's like: You know what? You can be a star. It's possible. Somebody that people just love, and somebody that's so dedicated and really becomes the part. She leads by such a wonderful example. I try to just watch and learn as much as I can about driving a company and leading a company. I've learned the importance of taking the moment to sort of let the scene play itself out. You don't need to rush through your lines; really be the character instead of trying to pretend to be that character. "

He also has the honor of being directed by Arthur Laurents, who wrote the book of Gypsy. "He definitely is musical theater royalty," Konopelski says of the 90-year-old Laurents, "and he really loves every single person in the company. He genuinely cares about every character in the show. Everybody is integral in telling this story. He's given my character attention...L.A.'s a real person, he's not just code for 'Dancer Boy Number 3.'"

Konopelski describes the personality he and Laurents conceived for L.A.: "He's maybe not the brightest of the Farmboys, but he means well. He is kind of dumb. Arthur really helped bring that part of him to life." It shows up in L.A.'s "little tics" during the "Mr. Goldstone" number. "There's a moment where I cover my mouth, I scratch my head a lot, and I wipe my nose," Konopelski says. "When we do the Farmboy number, all L.A. does is smile. There's parts where the other boys are not smiling and he is still smiling because Mama Rose said to smile and that's what I'm supposed to do!"

He hopes he'll get to work with Laurents again, on another musical classic that Laurents helped create. "I secretly have my heart set on West Side Story that Arthur is directing," he says. The Broadway revival is planned for next year, and Konopelski just went to the first round of auditions.

When Konopelski was in West Side Story in San Jose, he dance-captained for choreographer Vince Pesce. He did the same when Pesce choreographed White Christmas for Carousel. Konopelski considers Pesce (the April 2006 gypsy of the month when he was in The Pajama Game) a mentor—and a role model for a possible transition to choreographer. That's a ways off, but Konopelski says, "I see myself eventually being on the creative end." Before then, he aspires to something virtually all gypsies do: "Being able to step out of the ensemble and into the principal world. I want to get to bow by myself."

Konopelski choreographed the Gypsy cast's skit in this year's Easter Bonnet Competition, presented earlier this week by Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS, and he's assisting director Denis Jones on Broadway Bares, BC/EFA's annual burlesque fund-raiser, to be held June 22. He's participated in Broadway Bares for several years as a performer, even raising additional money through its Strip-a-Thon pledge drive.

These activities may seem incompatible with Mormon dogma, but Konopelski—who went to church every week growing up but doesn't attend as often nowadays—states: "I don't have any conflicts with my work. This is what I do: I'm playing people, I'm telling stories, I'm becoming characters. That's not who I am in everyday life." Besides, he adds, "The Mormon people love performing. The Mormon Tabernacle Choir is world-renowned, and I think music is one of the highest, most beautiful things that we have on Earth."

Photos of Steve, from top: offstage last month; as Farmboy L.A. in Gypsy; when he really was a farmboy, as a child in Saskatchewan; in Cats at Walnut Street Theatre; backstage at Broadway's Beauty and the Beast; as the Jet second from the right in American Musical Theatre's West Side Story, with (from left) Peter Leskowicz, Michael MacLaren, Freddie Ramirez and Richard J. Hinds; preparing for his LDS mission, 1998.