For Broadway stars, a chance to connect, create amid closures
Branford native launches Broadway Song Shoppe
Want Broadway star Jackie Burns, who played Elphaba in “Wicked,” to sing “Happy Birthday” to you? How about an anniversary serenade from Bryan Terrell Clark, who played George Washington in “Hamilton” and Marvin Gaye in “Motown the Musical”?
For years, the website and app Cameo has given fans the chance to get personal messages from TV and movie stars, reality-show celebs, athletes and other famous people.
Now, The Broadway Song Shoppe website, founded by Branford native and Broadway musical director Greg Kenna, is doing the same with stage stars.
Kenna said the inspiration was both Cameo and the COVID-19 pandemic, which put everyone on Broadway out of work.
“I found myself without work or a creative outlet. We all lost our livelihood,” said Kenna, who has worked on “An American in Paris” on Broadway and other productions throughout the world. “This not only provides an opportunity for singers to make money, but an opportunity to create art again. They hadn’t been able to do that in so long.”
Kenna co-founded the service with NYU classmate Nic Rouleau, who starred in “The Book of Mormon” for more than six years. Rouleau is one of seven Broadway singers who are available through the website.
Others performers includeclark, Burns; Nikki Renee Daniels, who also starred in “The Book of Mormon; Jay Armstrong Johnson, who played Raoul in “The Phantom of the Opera” and Chip in “On the Town”; Lauren Marcus of “Be More Chill”; and Desi Oakley, who played the role of Roxie Hart in “Chicago.”
Rouleau, who had just finished playing Cornelius Hackle in the national tour of “Hello Dolly!” when the pandemic shut down Broadway, said in addition to providing an income for actors, The Broadway Song Shoppe is a way to “keep a connection with the Broadway community.
“My favorite thing about being a part of this community is the fellow actors I work with and the audience members and fans who see the shows, connecting with them at the stage door, seeing the same people coming back performance after performance,” Rouleau said.
The shoppe “allows actors to come into people’s lives in a way they wouldn’t normally have access to and celebrate milestones with them,” Rouleau said.
People who want to buy videos must go to thebroadwaysongshoppe.com. Customers choose their actor, then their song style: celebratory, romantic, sentimental or Disneyesque. Then the site asks for specific details about the person the song is for including the name, event, their likes and hobbies and anything pertaining
to the song that might be used in the lyrics.
Kenna — who performed at the Stony Creek Puppet House as a youth, and performed in shows at Hartt School of Music at University of Hartford and at Yale University and attended NYU — writes a song using the personalized information. The chosen actor records it.
The songs celebrate a variety of occasions, including college acceptances — “A letter just arrived, from a place called NYU, and the news boils down to this, they want you. So tell your puppy Charlie and everyone who works at Applebee’s that your new address is Broadway NYC” — and wedding anniversaries: “Well it’s been 10 long years since you first met in line at Trader Joe’s. And how you made it through that first bad date, nobody knows.”
Kenna emphasized the social-distancing advantages of The Broadway Song Shoppe.
“They make [the videos] at
home on their phones. It’s a really accessible work opportunity for the actors,” he said. “They do it on their own time, in their own home, they don’t have to travel, they don’t need special equipment. They just open their camera and record.”
After the actors turn in their videos, Kenna and Rouleau run them through music and video editing software before sending them to the customers. The cost for each mp4 is about $175 to $200.
The website launched about three weeks ago. Kenna and Rouleau hope to recruit other Broadway actors who want to make some money in their spare time.
In the meantime, Kenna is working on a future stage project, a musical called “A Walk on the Moon,” based on a 1999 Diane Lane movie about a romance that started at Woodstock. Kenna worked on the world premiere of that show in San Francisco.
“We’ll be going back into production to do it next spring, with Jackie Burns,” he said. “As I work toward that, I hope to bring more people to work with me on The Broadway Song Shoppe.”