Raul Esparza On the ASTEP NYC CHRISTMAS Concert Tonight!

Tonight is the annual ASTEP benefit concert at 7 PM on at Joe‘s Pub, so be sure catch Raul Esparza as the host of NEW YORK CITY CHRISTMAS, directed by Lynne Shankel, to benefit Actors Striving To End Poverty. Information available here!

Also, be sure to pick up the must-own stocking stuffer and enchantingly unique holiday gift you are sure to find in the NEW YORK CITY CHRISTMAS album, featuring Esparza's breathtaking bilingual bossa nova take on "O Holy Night", on Sh-K-Boom Records. You can purchase the album on iTunes and find out more here.

Here are edited comments from the complete three-part InDepth InterView: Raul Esparza pertaining to ASTEP! Be sure to stay tuned to BroadwayWorld for Part 3 coming later this week!

PC: How do you fit in the time to host a benefit with all that you are up to? You are the biggest star on Broadway!

RE: Thank you. You are too kind.

PC: Are you going to sing "O Holy Night" again? I love your version of it on the album.

RE: No, I'm not. We're going to do a new song. I had a little bit of time to do this - I just got back from Los Angeles, just got back into the city - so I had a little bit of time free and I thought it would be nice to do it.

PC: You've done this benefit before, of course. What are you doing this year besides emceeing?

RE: We're going to do a different song this time. I'm doing "In The Bleak Midwinter". It's an English carol.

PC: A beautiful one.

RE: Yeah. It's really pretty.

PC: How did you discover it?

RE: I think I first heard it in this movie, IN THE BLEAK MIDWINTER, that Kenneth Branaugh did years and years ago. It was about an Acting Company putting on HAMLET in the middle of the winter and I heard this Christmas carol and I loved it. So, we're going to do a little arrangement of it.

PC: I loved the arrangements on the first album, especially your "O Holy Night".

RE: Oh, the first album? The recording we did?

PC: Yes, it's so wonderful.

RE: Oh, that's so nice of you. I'm glad we were able to do that.

PC: How did you become involved with ASTEP in the first place?

RE: Mary Mitchell Campbell founded it and she is one of my very best friends and she was my musical director for COMPANY and re-orchestrated it. I got involved with the organization because of her and what she believes in with helping the kids. She had a real massive experience that changed her life when she was in India, working with girls in orphanages in such incredible poverty. She felt it was really important to bring the arts to these kids and to teach them to use the arts to empower some sense of themselves outside of this poverty and pain and loss. The fact that we have these spaces in India and South Africa and in the Bronx, here in the US, is really incredible. Mary is a dear friend and she is going to be my musical director at my Songbook concert.

PC: And the NEW YORK CITY CHRISTMAS concert?

RE: Lynne [Shankel] had this idea to do a concert a few years ago, as a fundraiser for ASTEP and for the kids as a Christmas thing. Just for the fun of it, you know?

PC: For a good cause.

RE: Yeah. But, it turned out to be - I mean, I don't like doing benefits and, to be honest, I kinda hate it - but, this one turned out to be really fun. So, I've come back every year now because it's such a great cause and we are with friends and you sing Christmas music and it is such a warm and wonderful couple of hours in New York. And, you feel really lucky to live in this city and work with such cool people. I think to see these kids brighten up because they heard a Stephen Schwartz tune in India... (Laughs.)

PC: How moving that must be to see.

RE: They do these things with the arts and it just transforms them. I am really proud to be a part of it. And, it just keeps getting bigger and bigger and bigger every year - which I am glad of, because, you know, if we can help the organization in any way then that is really important.

PC: And anyone can buy the album and make a contribution!

RE: Yeah, it's a really good album. And it's gonna be a great night. If we can sell copies of the album, that's a great start. The arts is always the first thing to go, because it seems superfluous to people. But, if you don't teach the arts - even to those who don't have a real interest in pursuing that - you are missing out on one of the greatest ways the human mind works; the human soul works.

PC: Undoubtedly.

RE: You don't teach a child to play the piano or to paint or to be in a play because you are tying to create Picassos, or Beethovens or Mozarts or Chekhovs or great ballet dancers - what you are doing is you are teaching a child to think for themselves, creatively. To think outside the box; to make connections that are tangential instead of literal; to learn things not by rote, but invent them for themselves; and, to know that all things are interconnected - because that's the way the real world works. Everything is interconnected. And, if you only teach English and history and mathematics and science, and you don't supplement it by encouraging artistic expression, then you will never, ever allow a child to truly expand their minds and say the truly original things that may be able to think about English and art and math. Because, I tell you, a business man has to be just as creative as anyone making a painting!

PC: You got that right. It's all connected.

RE: For some reason, people think the arts aren't necessary - I think it's one of the most necessary things of all. I think they think we are trying to make every student an actor and that is not the case - but, the thing of it is, if you study acting you may end up being one of the greatest lawyers there ever was. It's totally applicable.

PC: All play into each other.

RE: The main thing is that we just need to learn to think for themselves.

PC: Do you think people try to be something else in an attempt to make life easier?

RE: Yes. Too often in this life, it is very easy - and, particularly in this country - for us to be told who we are and where we fit. Everybody wants stuff to be black and white.

PC: And it's all shades of gray.

RE: Everything is on party lines. People don't think for themselves - it's easier that way. We're overwhelmed; we're oversaturated. But, the arts offer you an opportunity to connect with the world beyond the very thing in front of you and teaches you to think in circles instead of lines.