GYPSY OF THE MONTH: Angela Pupello of 'The Drowsy Chaperone'

In The Drowsy Chaperone, Janet Van De Graaff reveals all kinds of talents, from spinning plates to sharpshooting, while facetiously claiming she doesn't want to "Show Off." Angela Pupello, who will be playing Janet later this month while Sutton Foster's on vacation, could show off with some hidden talents of her own. Like roller skating. Rocket science. And, oh, saving lives.

Pupello won't get to roller skate in Drowsy—that's left to Janet's blindfolded fiancé, Robert. But if needed, she could call on her childhood experience as a competitive roller skater. She won a lot of the competitions, and started taking dance lessons only to refine her skating routines. Pupello didn't even think about dance as a career until several years later. Through most of high school, she says, "I was obsessed with aerospace engineering. I thought I was going to be an astronaut." Though the stage ultimately trumped outer space, Pupello did not lose all interest in the sciences. Inspired by her doctor father, she has become a certified EMT.

She's also become a comedian, director, singer and nonmusical actress—and has made her living doing all of them. Bicoastally, no less. Drowsy is Pupello's first New York job since Bat Boy five years ago. She moved to L.A. after marrying Danny Cistone, also an actor/singer/dancer/comedian, in the fall of 2001. They had been trying to land in the same city since meeting on the Grease tour seven years earlier, but work kept separating them.

In L.A. she and Cistone wrote and performed for the sketch comedy group For the Kids and launched a theater company, the 68 Cent Crew. Both had ardent followings. For the Kids scored a development deal with the WB and performed two years in a row at the U.S. Comedy Arts Festival in Aspen, Colo. One of the 68 Cent Crew's biggest hits, a play called West of Brooklyn, has been filmed with Joe Mantegna in the cast, Cistone directing and Pupello recreating her stage role; it's currently in postproduction.

 
While out in California, Pupello got a call from old friend and former castmate Casey Nicholaw, who would be directing and choreographing a Toronto transplant called The Drowsy Chaperone for L.A.'s Ahmanson Theatre. He asked her to assist him at the auditions. She tried out for the role of bimboish showgirl Kitty but was cast in the ensemble and as understudy for Kitty (Jennifer Smith) and Janet. Nicholaw also made her dance captain.

 
"I have the most respect for dance captains now," Pupello says. "I never knew how much work it entails. I've been dancing every day in a studio with the vacation swings, training them, and I'm constantly trying to catch up with charts and notating what's going on. Most dance captains aren't in the show, they're swings, so they can watch every night. I can't ever see certain things."

That's because she's on stage playing a maid, a reporter and, in Janet's simian-induced nervous breakdown, "the mean monkey." She also finally gets to fly, as she had aspired to in high school—she's an aviator in the finale. When Pupello, who has a background in gymnastics, goes on as Janet the week of Sept. 18 (Sutton Foster is taking time off for her wedding to Spamalot's Christian Borle), she'll be doing not only one-handed cartwheels in the number "Show Off," as Foster does, but also front and back walkovers. "I threw in some extra tricks one day in rehearsal just to show Casey, and he was: 'Great! I love it!'" Pupello says. "But you don't want to go too crazy fancy, because it still needs to be true to the vaudeville, adorable, kitschy kind [of choreography].

"Casey is willing to shape it to whatever your strengths are," she says. "The beautiful thing about doing The Drowsy Chaperone is that Casey Nicholaw and the whole team completely celebrate everyone's individuality."

 
Those were hardly the circumstances under which Pupello first worked with Nicholaw, in the 1999 Broadway production of Saturday Night Fever. Nicholaw played the father, and Pupello was in the ensemble, understudied the two female leads and had the small part of nerdy Doreen, who fawns over Tony Manero in the disco. "There was just kind of a negative cloud over that whole thing," she says. "One of the ugliest things was that the women were pressured to be terribly underweight. 'You look like big sacks of blubber! You must be careful about what you eat because these poor boys are lifting you!' This was actually screamed at women who were already underweight, and it had seriously unhealthy results. Doreen was sort of a comic-relief, character type, so I was able to ignore that a little easier than some, but I know they didn't like putting me on for the lead character Stephanie because I was 'too voluptuous.'"

 
That wasn't the only undesirable working condition. The U.K. creative team who brought Fever over from London violated Equity rules (possibly because they differed from Britain's) regarding the audition process, work hours and musician requirements, Pupello says. Making matters worse, she went into Fever with an injury. "I was in a sling for, like, three months of rehearsal, and I was trying to heal. That was from tumbling in a production of Grease at Theatre Under the Stars in Houston; I hurt my wrist doing some back handsprings.

 
"It was not a great experience overall," Pupello says of the show, "but the saving grace was meeting someone like Casey Nicholaw." She left Saturday Night Fever after about six months to do the world premiere of the musical Urban Cowboy at Gloucester Stage in Massachusetts—three years before it made it (briefly) to Broadway. "It was totally different by the time it ended up here," says Pupello, who at Gloucester had the lead role of Sissy, played on Broadway by Jenn Colella.

 

She continued working in regional theater after that, performing in the musical Everything's Ducky—a riff on "The Ugly Duckling"—at both St. Louis Rep and Cincinnati Playhouse. Next came off-Broadway's Bat Boy, where Pupello was a swing and went on as both the mother and daughter numerous times. At one performance of Bat Boy, several male regulars were out and a cover was needed for the roles usually played by Doug Storm. The male swing didn't know the parts, so Pupello took them instead. "I ended up going on with absolutely zero rehearsal," she says. "And as the character of the stoner boyfriend, I had to make out with Kerry Butler on stage in front of 400 people!"

She then reunited with Ducky (and Dreamgirls) composer Henry Krieger for a workshop of his musical adaptation of Moonstruck. It was directed by John Patrick Shanley, who had written—and won an Oscar for—the screenplay of Moonstruck, and starred Idina Menzel in the Cher role. Pupello played Connie, the bakery worker in love with the Nicolas Cage character.

 
Between Moonstruck, Saturday Night Fever, West of Brooklyn and Avenue X (which she was in off-Broadway and in L.A.), Pupello has done well by Italian gals from Brooklyn. She's actually an Italian gal born in Northern California and raised in Tampa, Fla., the baby sister to two brothers. Though her family is, "like, the only Italians who aren't Catholic," she attended a Catholic school from junior high on because it provided better college prep than the local public schools. It didn't have any music or drama programs, but Pupello was more focused on other activities anyway. She was a sprinter and hurdler on the track team, captain of the cheerleaders, vice president of her class—and planning to pursue math or science in college. "It was kind of last-minute that I decided I wanted to try this performing arts thing," says Pupello, who just attended her 20-year high school reunion earlier this summer.

 
She was accepted at Stanford but passed it up to enroll in Florida State as a dance major. "It was a very strict dance department—classical ballet and Martha Graham modern, and that's it," she says. During her first semester, "I heard they needed dancers in the theater school for A Chorus Line, so I started doing plays, but that didn't sit well with dance department." One of her castmates in a 1987 production of Guys and Dolls at Florida State was a fellow student named Jay Douglas, who's now a swing in The Drowsy Chaperone.

 
After two years at Florida State, Pupello transferred to USC. Following her junior year, she was cast from an open call in the national tour of Starlight Express. She was on the tour for a year, then went back to USC to complete her degree and graduated summa cum laude. Pupello majored in drama at USC and later studied Meisner acting at New York's William Esper Studio. "I have no musical theater training specifically; all of my training has been classical and straight," she says. "So it's funny that I've made my living mostly in musical theater."

 
From July 1992 to December '93, Pupello played Eponine in the national tour of Les Misérables. For fun, she and the actresses who played Fantine, Cosette and Madame Thénardier called each other "Diva." The nickname has stuck for Pupello, who's "Diva" to her agent and almost everyone involved in The Drowsy Chaperone. She returned to the Les Miz tour in May 1994 so she could perform in her hometown of Tampa.

Then she played Rizzo in the national tour of Grease for a year. Her understudy: Sutton Foster. They later costarred in the Broadway production, Pupello as Rizzo, Foster as Sandy. Pupello closed out the revival's run on Broadway, following several thirtysomething Hollywood names (including Rosie O'Donnell, Linda Blair and Mackenzie Phillips) in the role of high schooler Rizzo.

She had initially auditioned for Cha-Cha because Rizzo was supposed to be played by a "star" on the tour, but the role opened up for her when producers decided to go with a male headliner. Consequently, Pupello played opposite such onetime TV/pop stars as Rex Smith, Adrian Zmed and Jon Secada as Danny Zuko (as well as Joe Piscopo and Donny "Ralph Malph" Most as Vince Fontaine). Before Brooke Shields made her Broadway debut as Rizzo, she was "tried out" on the road, giving Pupello a short break from the role. "She's a total sweetheart," Pupello says of Shields. "It was my birthday during that time, and she helped make Rice Krispies treats."

But her "favorite of all" the Hollywood folks she performed with in Grease was Sally Struthers, who portrayed principal Miss Lynch. "She's the most generous, loving woman," says Pupello, "like my second mother." Years later, Struthers took Pupello and her husband in when they first moved to L.A. and had nowhere to live.

 
While Drowsy Chaperone's transfer to Broadway last spring was good for Pupello professionally, it took her away from Cistone. She had been turning down New York jobs to stay in L.A. with him after they married. Together, they founded the 68 Cent Crew with Ronnie Marmo, who wrote West of Brooklyn (and had 68 cents in his checking account when he got his first film role in L.A.). Pupello has appeared in several original plays and directed the political satire A New War—written by her Everything's Ducky director, Gip Hoppe—for the company, which has its own 99-seat theater on Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood.

 
Cistone and Pupello also got involved with For the Kids, which performed regularly at L.A.'s Knitting Factory. The executive who signed them to a development deal at the WB recommended them for the Aspen comedy festival. To their surprise, they were assigned to a high-profile venue and time slots. Chris Rock and Conan O'Brien performed in the same theater as them one day, and on another they were scheduled between an AFI tribute to Diane Keaton and a Sex and the City panel with Sarah Jessica Parker. For the Kids was also invited to participate in a late-night variety show at the festival hosted by Drew Carey.

The troupe's WB deal expired without producing a series, but Pupello acknowledges, "It was never the right place for us anyway. Our group is very offensive and adult comedy. We're searching now for a cable home." Asked for an example of their blue humor, she reluctantly begins: "We have a—can we say this on BroadwayWorld?—fisting sketch, which I'm very prominent in." And what happens in it? "I'm fisting my husband [not played by her real husband]...and then we get interrupted by friends who come over and don't realize what we were in the middle of. And I get stuck, and they have to help us." She adds: "It needs to be seen. The ending is a surprise."

You can see Pupello and her comedy cohorts in the less sexual but still off-color sketch Lucky, which they filmed as a short that's viewable on the Web. It also has screened at Aspen as well as the HBO Comedy Fest in Las Vegas and film festivals in Los Angeles, Palm Springs, Denver and Chicago.

 
Pupello has appeared in such other film-festival entries as The Cross and the short The Kids' Table (for which she won an acting award at 2004 New York International Film & Video Festival). Wider releases on her résumé include Grind, starring Billy Crudup; Fish Without a Bicycle, directed by and starring Brian Austin Green of Beverly Hills, 90210 fame; and The Jerky Boys.

 
One of her favorite nonmusical roles was Joanne Galloway in the West Coast premiere of A Few Good Men at Burbank's Third Stage in 2003. "It was a very fulfilling experience," she says, and not just because her husband was also in the cast. "The production ran about six months in Los Angeles, which is pretty unheard-of. Aaron Sorkin's writing is such a pleasure to perform. And I love that the play shows the triumph of the underdog and that there are people who devote their lives to defending honor. My brother Brad is a Marine, so the play had special meaning to me."

When Pupello's family comes to New York to see her in the Drowsy lead, she's taking them to Spamalot. It's payback of sorts for helping her discover some early comedic inspiration. "I was always watching what my older brothers were watching, so tons of Mel Brooks, tons of Monty Python," she says. To this day she considers Madeline Kahn an idol. "She could do anything. She had an incredible voice that she could change in any way. Also, she's someone who is infinitely likable—you just can't help root for her." Pupello has another special family outing planned in the coming weeks as well. In October, she and Cistone will celebrate their fifth anniversary (which is on Sept. 30) by returning to Italy, their honeymoon destination. During the Sicily vacation, she will visit cousins she hasn't seen in almost 20 years.

 
Photos of Angela, from top: in her dressing room at the Marquis Theatre; with Sutton Foster (left) in Drowsy Chaperone; with hubby Danny Cistone; as Rizzo, with the boys in Grease; surrounded by her For the Kids comedy colleagues. [Drowsy Chaperone photo by Joan Marcus.]