And those eyes I love to gaze in are level with mine. And, of course, there's the day that suddenly they're my height.
Their bony little wrists stick out of their jackets more. You see their pants getting shorter, more sock showing. That's part of our job, too-make the other person look good and bring out their best.Īnd then there's the growth spurts. I like to gaze in their clear child eyes, which is grounding for both of us. Mars? The baseball diamond? But I like to try to bring them to me. At first, it was a struggle for some their eyes were far away. Under the direction of Julian Webber and Justin Martin, we played games within the scenes during rehearsals to show the youngsters what we were doing was, well, play. At three minutes past eight, you must dream." A great deal of our work is simply making ourselves dream. At three minutes past eight, the curtain goes up, and you've to pretend to believe, because no one else will believe unless you believe it yourself. But we have to do this task at a precise moment. It reads: "If you're a writer or a painter, you write or paint whenever you want to. I've schlepped it from dressing room to dressing room with me over the years. But how do you explain this to a child? Decades ago, a fellow actor gave me a framed quote from Sir Ralph Richardson. We use our souls to imbue an author's character with life and breath. What is it that actors do, anyway? We pretend to be different people. Their little bodies were familiar with moving, yet acting was a whole new world for them. They were all hired because they had the potential to be trained for this rigorous part, which requires ballet, tap, acrobatics, acting and singing-not to mention academic tutoring. When I started rehearsing the show two years ago, a couple of the boys had played the role already and some were new to it. The challenging role requires three or four young actors to alternate in the part at all times. Here, Perkins describes the joys and somber realities of being grandmother to numerous children and watching them grow up.įour Billys means four times the rehearsal! I have the privilege of playing Grandma to the title character in Billy Elliot eight times a week in the national tour.
Offstage, Perkins plays mentor and acting coach to the numerous young actors that alternate in the challenging title role. Onstage, she connects with Billy as she reminisces about her youthful dreams of being a ballet dancer. (Peter Darling’s choreography is imaginative and expressive throughout).As Grandma in the national tour of the Tony Award-winning Billy Elliot, Patti Perkins plays the senile nana to the show’s titular boy. Hetherington absolutely nailed “Electricity,’’ the showstopper, and he literally took flight during a sequence where Billy matches dance moves with his older self. (He will alternate in the role with Ben Cook, Zach Manske, and Noah Parets of Sharon). The show ran for more than three years on Broadway before closing in January.īilly was played on opening night at the Opera House by Kylend Hetherington, who handled the triple challenge of singing, dancing, and acting with great finesse and sensitivity. Hall adapted his own screenplay for “Billy Elliot,’’ a 2000 film directed by Daldry, to create “Billy Elliot the Musical,’’ which won 10 Tony Awards in 2009, including best musical. Moments like that help “Billy Elliot the Musical’’ dance past a few sluggish spots, some too-convenient changes of heart by certain characters when it suits the needs of the plot, and the scenes of all-out mawkishness when Billy is visited by his late mother.
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