What would Chita do?
Theater journalist Eddie Shapiro talks about interviewing the grand dames of Broadway
Can you imagine just sitting on a couch, talking to Chita Rivera? Or Patti LuPone? Or Angela Lansbury?
Eddie Shapiro’s done it. And more. And he’ll talk about it at the Kaplen JCC on the Palisades in Tenafly. (See box.)
Those conversations were a logical if fantastic opportunity for Mr. Shapiro, who grew up, first on Long Island and then in Manhattan, loving Broadway.
“The first show I went to was Lynn Redgrave as Saint Joan” — that was 1977, with the Redgrave sister as George Bernard Shaw’s Joan of Arc — “and I was 5. I couldn’t understand what was going on, but I loved it.
“I loved cast albums. I went to musicals — my first big one was Doug Henning in ‘The Magic Show.’ It was the ’70s — I saw ‘Annie’ and ‘The Wiz’ and the all-Black revival of ‘Guys and Dolls.’
“I listened to all the cast albums, and I memorized the liner notes. I was obsessed.”
Mr. Shapiro has turned that obsession into a career; he’s a theater reporter and reviewer, and he’s written three books about Broadway.
“I started with ‘Nothing Like a Dame,’ which is conversations with some of the great women in musical theater. That was 10 years ago; now I’ve written two more.” Those books are “A Wonderful Guy,” which did for men what “Nothing Like a Dame” did for women, and “Here’s to the Ladies,” which has more conversations with great Hollywood women.
How was he able to get those interviews?
“As a Jewish New Yorker, I have a great deal of tenacity,” he said. “I’d been writing for different magazines and newspapers for some time, and I also was the director of the AIDS walks in New York and L.A.” — the two cities between which he splits his time — “and I had worked with some of the women already. I’d interviewed Chita Rivera and Kristen Chenoweth, so then I could say that to Angela Lansbury. The first ones were harder, when they didn’t know me from Adam, but the next ones were easier.
“Some people were harder than others. Patti LuPone said no to me six times before she said yes. It took time. But it was an absolute thrill. And as you can imagine, there is joy in sitting down with people you idolize, but it’s also nerve-wracking.
“But I’ve always come away with life lessons.”
He told stories about three of those lessons.
The first came from Chita Rivera. “I asked her what it’s like to be known as a Broadway dancer, but now, at her advanced age” — Ms. Rivera, who performed when she was in her 80s, died earlier this year at 91 — “she would do cabaret, and show up on stage. The audience had expectations, but that was no longer what she was bringing to the table. So what was it like to know that you’re showing up being different?
“She said, ‘I could spend a lot of time focusing on things that I can’t do any more, but I can focus on the things that I can do.’
“And that is so brilliant and so useful.
“I do an event at Disneyland annually — I produce Gay Day, which is a massive three-day weekend, every fall — and after I interviewed Carol Channing, I spent the day at Disneyland with her and her husband.
“She was 89 then, and her husband was 90. It’s like crossing Times Square with a nonagenarian. You have to be very careful, because one misstep could be very consequential. So I started out very gingerly — but they wanted to do everything.
“Carol’s husband, Harry, got off the Peter Pan ride and stared at the carousel next to it. I asked him if he wanted to ride it, and he said yes. They both said yes.
“So I think that he will want to take a bench — Carol does — but he takes a horse. He puts one foot in the stirrup, but he can’t get any farther, so I pick him up and put him on the horse.
“And he has the time of his life.
“After that, he would call me fairly regularly and tell me about the joy I brought to him, and I would always thank him for the joy that he brought to me.
“At the same time, my mother was depressed about her own aging, and here were these two very old people showing me how to squeeze every bit of joy out of life. I don’t know what my own aging will be like, but this is exactly the way I want to age.
“The third is very poignant. It’s from the actor Gavin Creel, who died just a few months ago at 48. I first met him in Washington in 2009, and he told me that he always tried to live by the idea of being a force for good.
“He said he got that from his mother — to always look around and see what’s good here. Actors like to kvetch, he said — and I can be that person! — but instead of being that person, if, say, I am standing on line in Starbucks for half an hour, and the person standing in front of me hasn’t decided yet what she wants when it’s her turn, you can get annoyed, but instead you can decide to look around and see what’s good around you.
“It’s a practice, and it takes work, but it’s a much better way to go through life than being constantly annoyed, which I always am anyway…”
So, Mr. Shapiro said, just as acting teachers often train their students “using the analogy of a toolbox — I’m giving you a bunch of tools, and when you’re in an audition or onstage you can figure out which of the tools to use — I feel like I was gifted with a bunch of tools for my life.
“I never saw that as being part of this journey, but it is an incredible gift.”
His books include interviews with Jews — “Joel Gray and Idina Menzel talk about their Judaism and how it influences their work and their careers” — although “the books aren’t explicitly Jewish. But I am Jewish, and you can’t have theater with no Jews,” he said. This book tour is his fourth through the Jewish Book Council.
Mr. Shapiro has a message for his audience at the JCC U. “One of the things I really like about these presentations is being able to engage people in conversation,” he said. “It’s much more fun than lecturing at them. So I leave a healthy amount of time for questions and answers, and I want people to know about that in advance, so they can think of some questions.”
So consider yourselves warned. Come prepared. Mr. Shapiro will be.
Who: Eddie Shapiro
What: Will talk about “Here’s to the Ladies: Conversations with More of the Great Women of Musical Theater”
Where: At the Kaplen JCC on the Palisades in Tenafly
When: On Sunday, November 10, at 11:30 a.m.
How much: $20 for JCC members, $25 for everyone else
To learn more or to register: Go tojccotp.org and click on Adults, and then Lectures and Learning
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