Alan Green traded cleats for choreography
Two paths presented themselves to Alan H. Green when he was a rising sophomore at Rice University. Football and singing both offered twisted and difficult career paths. He chose to trod the one that didn’t involve cleats.
But a quarter century later, Green’s decision to give up a football scholarship to sing has worked in his favor. He returned to Houston last month as part of Theatre Under the Stars’ production of “Sister Act,” which continues this week.
Green talks during a break in rehearsals for the show. “I’m not needed for the nun scenes,” he says.
The TUTS production is Green’s second pass through “Sister Act.” He appeared in the original production of the Alan Menken and Glenn Slater musical on Broadway in 2011. Green plays Curtis, the gangster in pursuit of his girlfriend (played by Texas native Simone Gundy), who hides out in a monastery after she witnesses him kill a man.
“I love the idea of playing a gun-toting, bad-guy gangster,” Green says. “It’s funny because in the first part of my career I played more heroic, valiant characters. But in this season, where I am now in my career, I get to play a lot of bad guys, which is fun.”
Green was born in Pittsburgh. When he was a child, his family moved to Baytown. He says his sister was the family member poised to be a singer. “I was her little backup doo-wop guy,” he says.
He grew up following his academic interests, though he was
also good enough at football in high school to earn a scholarship to Rice University, where he was poised after his freshman year to fill a void left behind by standout running back Trevor Cobb.
But something happened. Unlike most football second acts, Green’s had nothing to do with a catastrophic injury. Green had been singing at Second Baptist in Houston in a manner that drew added attention. He received invitations to sing at other churches’ religious functions. As a freshman, he was an active singer in a music ministry “all while at Rice on a football scholarship studying law,” he says. At the end of Green’s freshman year, singing opportunities arose. And as the Owls football team prepared for its next season, Green found himself in a hurdler stretch when his epiphany emerged.
“They’d recruited me to replace Trevor Cobb,” he says. “He was
one of the best running backs in the country. I thought, ‘If they invested so much in me, I have to stop now.’ I went to Coach (Ken) Hatfield’s office and quit. I went home and told my parents. And that was difficult. My mother loved watching me run the football. My dad was, ‘OK, what do we do?’ I thought, ‘If you’re going to pursue this music thing, you need to take voice lessons and figure out how to do this.’ ”
He says the late Rice vocal department head Virginia Babikian was enamored with the idea of a college football player migrating to her department. Still, Green had to audition. Amid a cast of singers doing arias, he offered a song by contemporary Christian singer Larnelle Harris. Babikian heard something special. He was in. However, there was another outstanding matter: “How to pay for Rice,” he says. He thought academic scholarships offered
before he took the football scholarship might still be available, but “that’s not how scholarships worked.”
Green gambled on himself. He arranged to meet with the school’s head of admissions and rolled in a TV and VCR from the school. He played a clip from CNN of himself singing at a prayer breakfast for the White House, captioned “Rice University student Alan Green.”
“I told him if this was the kind of publicity they wanted, I needed scholarship money to start my sophomore year,” Green says.
The next three years found him at the Shepherd School rather than Rice Stadium.
He graduated and was offered a contemporary Christian record deal, which pulled Green to Nashville.
Sailing to success
While in Nashville, Green auditioned for a cruise-ship job that sailed from Florida to the Bahamas then up to New York. All his castmates left the ship to do auditions in the city. He quickly was offered and turned down a part in a national tour of “Ain’t Misbehavin’ ” with the Pointer Sisters. Three months later, Green was cast in “Play On!” on Broadway.
He knew he had the voice to get work. Green decided to study acting more seriously. As someone in his 20s, he also wanted to see the world. He auditioned for a role in a German production of “Miss
Saigon,” and the producers wanted to hire him but failed to meet his contractual demands. So he did the first national tour of “Smokey Joe’s Café,” a revue built around songs written by Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller. When that tour ended, the “Miss Saigon” team in Germany made another offer. Green was able to travel the world and land a role in a formidable production.
“I’ve been kicking around since,” he says.
With Broadway work as a backbone, Green has been quite busy for the past 20-plus years. On Broadway, he landed a job in “Sister Act” in 2011, “School of Rock” in 2015 and “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” in 2017 with television and commercial appearances as well.
Back in H-Town
But “Sister Act” offers a chance to put his feet back to the floor for a full-fledged musical. He says TUTS had offered him parts in the past, but scheduling proved complicated. Yet he was fond of TUTS artistic director Dan Knechtges, who is directing this production. They had lunch months ago, and Knechtges told Green TUTS was planning to do “Sister Act.”
Green knew the show. And he knows the town. He says he has hardly been a stranger to Houston during the pandemic. After Broadway shut down and travel looked to be compromised, he headed home to spend time with his mother, sister and twin nephews.
Back home again, he says “there’s more than a little emotion knowing I’m going to be in a theater with my hometown folks.”