An Interview with LILLIAS WHITE

Broadway actress and singer Lillias White is a voice to be reckoned with. Sometimes she eases into a song, slowly and subtly caressing the melody, swirling it around the room like the smoke of a fine cigar. Other times she jumps into the lyric with both feet, grabbing the song and flinging it boldly out to the crowd until you can feel it in the depths of your soul and you have no option but to stand up and cheer. Either way her voice, glides, shimmies and belts a song like nobody's business but her own.

This Saturday night the San Francisco Bay Area will have the chance to experience the soulful sounds of multiple award-winning, multi-talented phenomenon Lillias White as she pays tribute to her friend and legendary songwriter Cy Coleman. For one night only she will occupy the center stage of the Venetian Room of the famed Fairmont hotel in her first solo concert here in nearly ten years.

BroadwayWorld.com's Linda Hodges had the chance to interview the Broadway star about being back in the Bay Area, her love of Cy Coleman and why she comes back to live theater again and again. That interview follows.

BroadwayWorld (BWW): Lillias let me begin by congratulating you for your 2010 Tony Award nomination for your featured role in Fela! Your passion and how you embraced of the part of Fela's mother, Funmilayo Ransome-Kuti, was truly moving.

This is your first time back in the Bay Area in almost ten years. How are you finding the City?

Lillias White: It's gorgeous. Absolutely gorgeous! It's prettier than ever! I feel very blessed right now to be sitting here in California where it's green and lush and full of blue skies.

BWW: Your Bay Area fans are certainly happy to have you back. To have you here, singing Cy Coleman's songs - it's the perfect combination. What made you decide to do this tribute to him at this time?

Lillias White: I put the tribute together a few years ago, right after he passed away. I really believe that Cy Coleman was a composer like Hammerstein and Sondheim. He's up there with the greatest of the greats. That is my belief and that is my feeling. I want to make his name a permanent fixture in the American Songbook. And how we do it -- how we keep his music alive -- is by performing it. That's how it gets done. I'm singing the best music that has ever been written because it's been written by my friend, Cy Coleman.

BWW: What word would you use to describe what it's like to sing a Cy Coleman song?

Lillias White: Challenging! It's a great musical challenge! I love the way his melodies flow. I like the way he plays with lyrics - but Cy's music is not easy to sing. It's been a great challenge that has made me a better performer, a better actor, a better singer - better all around.

BWW: What is your favorite Cy Coleman song?

Lillias White: "The Best is Yet to Come." The first one I learned was "On the Other Side of the Track," but I really love, "The Best is Yet to Come." I like the message.

BWW: Yes, that song has a great message. He lived his life fully and was forward thinking. He once said "I feel as though I have a lot of colors in my palette and I want to use them." Do you feel like you're using all the colors in your palette?

Lillias White: Oh, honey, my life is so very colorful! Especially right now. I'm very fortunate to be working and to have worked all year and all over the world with really talented, gifted people. I want to be the best Lillias that I can be and I think that that's what Cy would want me to be doing right now. So that's what I'm striving to be every day and every year. To reach further inside so I can be further into you, my audience. When people come to me and tell me how I make them feel when I'm performing and they get a good feeling. That means a lot to me.

BWW: A live audience is really important to you. Although you've done film and television you keep coming back to live theater and cabaret. What about it entices you back?

Lillias White: I love performing for a live audience. I enjoy it in a big theatre or a small little jazz room. It's how I connect to the human race. And it makes me feel alive inside to figure out a character and make the most of her so that she's vibrant and real.

BWW: You did that for the part of Sonia in The Life and you got a Tony Award. And then for the character of Funmilayo in Fela!, for which you received a Tony Nomination.

Lillias White: Yes, to not be Lillias for a while, to be someone else -- and to be her fiercely -- that's what keeps me coming back. And then to get the response for that effort, people are crying or screaming or clapping their hands off. That's the juice, baby!

BWW: You have a milestone birthday coming up this July. [She'll be turning 60.] In addition to The Life and Fela!, you played the oldest woman alive in Barnum, singing the song, "Thank God I'm Old." Cy Coleman felt that he was, "...Lucky to be in a profession where you can keep getting better." Do you feel that way, too?

Lillias White: Absolutely. There's always a challenge for me to be better and to get clearer. To reach more people. But mostly to reach inside me and straighten that out. Because if an artist is clear on the inside, what comes out on the outside is better and is clear for the people receiving it.

BWW: What has getting older taught you?

Lillias White: It teaches me that life goes on, that no matter what happens life goes on and sometimes it hurts like hell to have someone who've you been on the journey with pass away. Suddenly inexplicably they're gone. I miss Cy Coleman right now. Right now. Right this second. But life goes on, no matter how it's hurting you. If you stay, you gotta go on. Life is like the show, it's gotta go on. And it's taught me to enjoy the moments that are beautiful and wonderful and colorful. It's also taught me to make more of those moments happen as often as you can.

BWW: If you could send an email or letter to Cy Coleman today, what would you say?

Lillias White: I would say, thank you. I love you. Thank you. I know that you're up there with the greatest of the greats who have passed on to the next realm. You've made that transition and I hope you're enjoying the music still. And my thanks that I've can keep becoming as good as I can be with this music.

Bay Area Cabaret presents
Lillias White in a tribute to composer Cy Coleman
8 pm Saturday, May 14, 2011
http://www.bayareacabaret.org/artist-white.html
Photo courtesy of Bay Area Cabaret

 

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