Interview: Con O'Shea Creal of SOMETHING ROTTEN! at Orpheum

SOMETHING ROTTEN! has to be the best musical to hit the stage of Omaha's Orpheum this year. It has all the elements of a great musical, which is ironically the thread running through the story. The Bottom brothers are figuring out how to write the world's first musical. And while you are enjoying every second of this knee slapping, toe tapping romp, you can also see for yourself the remarkable talent that comes from our own part of the country. Con O'Shea Creal, a Lincoln, Nebraska native and graduate of Pius X High School spoke with me last week about life on the road.

I'm really fascinated with your bio, because you are travelling with your wife and two small daughters:

Yeah. That's correct, yes. In fact, Willa? Willa, can you say hi really quick? All right, Willa just wants to say "hi" and then she'll be quiet. Say "hi" Willa. (Small voice: "hi!") That should placate her.

How old is Willa?

Willa is two and Gemma is about to turn one.

She's about to have a birthday on the road?

Yeah. Willa had hers in January. Everyone makes it fun. There's another actress on the road who has her son with her, and we just celebrated his birthday on Saturday. Everyone has a good time celebrating everyone's birthdays on the road. It's working out well. We're enjoying it.

So you are from Lincoln!

I am, yeah. Born and raised. I went to Pius X High School.

Did you do high school theater?

I did quite a few of the plays and musicals while at Pius. I also did track and field and cross country as well.

It's difficult to be active in both athletics and fine arts in school. How did you manage?

I think it was hard for some of my coaches, in the sense that I was figuring out what I wanted to do... you know, I grew up tap dancing and that was kind of speaking to me a bit stronger than some of these other activities I was doing. And then you have to start managing your time and deciding where you're going to apply yourself more so than other things. At times it might have been difficult for them to accept. I was never a varsity star athlete or anything of that sort. But I still enjoyed the team aspect of sports; that was fun for me, too. Performing definitely ended up taking hold permanently. By the time I was graduating, I had decided to attend the University of Oklahoma where I then received my degree in Musical Theater. That's what won out in the end.

I graduated in 2008. It's a great school. It's up to each person and what they're looking for and how they apply themselves. I tried to make the most of my time in Oklahoma, and they gave me great training.

Tell me a little bit about your tap dancing.

I never really did it competitively. I started when I was seven. There's a dance teacher in Lincoln named Stephanie Chase. She now runs a dance studio at the Madonna Rehabilitation Center ProActive Fitness location. She was a Rockette in NYC for a long time and had just come back to Lincoln and opened up her own studio - I think about a month before my mom walked through the door to sign up my sister for ballet class. There was a tap class that was going on. My mom had always enjoyed Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly flicks. She always had those playing on the TV while we were around the house. So I was very familiar with tap dancing, and she signed me up. I kept going and my sister ended up quitting a couple months later. Stephanie's studio wasn't so much competition based at that time. She does a little bit now. For me that was really good. She taught me the craft of tap dancing. She had studied with great, great tap dancers in New York City. Yeah, that really fueled that fire to keep pursuing it.

I'm sure that's a great skill to have when you are in the business that you are in.

It's a trick to have in the back pocket. I definitely had to start learning other styles of dance as I got older to really be competitive in booking actual professional work. College was almost putting tap dancing on the back burner. It really was, in order to learn other disciplines of dance and really improving my singing and acting as well. But it is a nice little trick in the back pocket. It does book me a lot of work, so that's nice!

I read on some advance public relations materials that you learned to make hand made shoes. What's that about?

Yeah, last year... I think it's kind of a shared thing among tap dancers that we all appreciate a good pair of shoes, whether they have taps on them or not. For the longest time, I was always kind of intrigued by shoes and how they were made. I think I always sensed when I was buying shoes that unless you're really buying a quality shoe, really finding out what makes a good shoe and what makes a cheap shoe, I kind of wanted to learn how to do it. New York City usually has anything you want to learn to do, you know, some way to offer you a class. I ended up finding a class at a JCC, there was a former Fashion Institute of Technology teacher there who taught this class. I just wanted something different while I was auditioning, to learn a different skill. I learned how to make shoes. There's still quite a bit of the skill set that I need to improve upon, but I've got a nice pair of wing tip boots that I can wear around that don't kill my feet by the end of the day. I suppose you could also say that it's like looking toward the future. I probably can't dance my entire life, so the more skills I can add to the arsenal the better!

We have an old-fashioned shoe shop downtown Papillion. I love the smell of the leather and the polish.

Yeah, it's so tactile. You don't get to experience stuff like that very often. I will definitely have to check that out while I am I Omaha.

What made you move to New York City?

I mean that's where everything happens. You can go to Chicago and to a couple other cities, but for the most part, it was always the dream to go to New York and do shows there. As I was finishing school, there was a little bit of that uncertainty that was starting to creep in, and you hear how expensive New York is, and all this stuff, you know. It is an expensive place, but you learn how to stretch a dollar pretty far when you're an actor. If you're going to choose acting as a career, you might as well throw yourself into one of the most difficult places to live to find out if that's what you really want. That was the dream and I went out there. After I graduated I worked a summer stock gig in Oklahoma City and saved that money, then went out to New York and couch crashed for about a month and a half. I auditioned as much as I could. I was really fortunate and booked a Broadway show. So then I was able to get my feet under me financially and move out to New York and get started.

That was just the beginning. That was just the first step towards learning how to audition. That's a whole different skill set from performing. New York is where most of the jobs...even those that go out of town...they all audition in New York. That's how I made that choice.

Did you learn your audition techniques in college or pick them up on your own?

We definitely learned audition technique in school, but one aspect of being in New York is that there are just so many more people and the turnover of people is so regular. At any given audition you're seeing new people. At school you're used to the same people and you get into a comfort zone. There's still the competition aspect, but you know, learning how to stay out of your own head is really more of a mental exercise. Singing is the easy part. Putting yourself in the real life situation of staying focused. You can talk about it and train for it, but doing it is more difficult to do.

You seem to be doing well travelling with your family.

That's definitely a testament to my wife. She grew up performing on the road as well. She was in a family band. The idea wasn't so foreign to her, but it's definitely a lot of work. It's not like it's really an economic decision. We can either save the money and maybe keep an apartment back on the East Coast and they could stay there, but that just wasn't really an option for us. We really wanted to be together. She's really supportive of what I'm doing. She didn't see any reason for me to close up shop and go pursue a different career path. She's a huge help to me in all of that and that's what is making this all work out.

I imagine you will have a lot of family and friends coming to see the show?

Yeah, Yeah! They're all getting their tickets. It's good to get the word about it, too. It's probably easier getting the word out this way rather than making phone calls to everyone I know. It's exciting. I've actually never played Nebraska before. I've played Kansas City and Chicago, but to actually play a theater in Nebraska is a first for me. So it's really fun for me to get to do this. I've seen shows at the Orpheum growing up. It's just so cool.

What would you say about SOMETHING ROTTEN to somebody who is asking you about the show. How would you describe it?

I would say it's such a good time for all. If you love musicals, there will be something for you there. If you grew up wondering why you were reading, "Romeo and Juliet" in high school and you just wanted to bang your head against the desk, this is going to give you some shared experience to release those feelings of frustration about Shakespeare. But, there are also some great themes like when your spouse helps you through difficult times and understanding. When you go through a crazy moment and you don't know what you're doing and you've kind of lost touch, she helps you and sees you through to the end. There are great themes like that. And at the end of the night, it's just a fun show! I not laughed so hard in the theater before when I went to see it. It's great. It's got tap dancing. It's a frivolous good time.

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