The Official Raúl E. Esparza "Spread the Love" Thread- Page 87
The Official Raúl E. Esparza "Spread the Love" Thread
greatdct
Broadway Legend Joined: 7/28/05
Chrysanthemum62001
Broadway Legend Joined: 2/14/04
#2151Pretty
Posted: 9/26/05 at 2:38pm
I checked the old article from the Herald. (Best one ever.) He is definately an only child.
Must be his brother in law. So cool!
"What a mystery this world. One day you love them and the next day you want to kill them a thousand times over." The Masked Bandit in THE FALL
greatdct
Broadway Legend Joined: 7/28/05
Chrysanthemum62001
Broadway Legend Joined: 2/14/04
greatdct
Broadway Legend Joined: 7/28/05
Chrysanthemum62001
Broadway Legend Joined: 2/14/04
greatdct
Broadway Legend Joined: 7/28/05
#2156Pretty
Posted: 9/26/05 at 3:11pm
Oh my goodness...
I really don't have the right words. That was the most touching thing I have read in a long time. I didn't cry until the end... but wow. I respect him more and more every day. What a sweet, sweet man with a heart of gold.
Thank you for sharing that with me!
Updated On: 9/26/05 at 03:11 PM
greatdct
Broadway Legend Joined: 7/28/05
#2159Pretty
Posted: 9/26/05 at 4:12pm
awwww. Poor baby. 
Anyway, I think when I spoke to Alix she said he told her it was his brother in-law. Maybe she just made a typing mistake.
heh. Cooties. I haven't heard that word since like sixth grade! 
*pets screen*
Chrys, if that's the same interview you PM'ed to me a few months back, aaaaah. I cried!
greatdct
Broadway Legend Joined: 7/28/05
greatdct
Broadway Legend Joined: 7/28/05
greatdct
Broadway Legend Joined: 7/28/05
greatdct
Broadway Legend Joined: 7/28/05
greatdct
Broadway Legend Joined: 7/28/05
greatdct
Broadway Legend Joined: 7/28/05
#2170Pretty
Posted: 9/26/05 at 5:38pm
He did seem to be, which was excellent. I sort of get afraid lately that he'll be snippy. He'd sneeze and then return dutifully to his "wedding picture" pose. Poor baby.
He seemed taller yesterday. Maybe I was just having a nervous moment that manifested itself in a height complex.
#2171Pretty
Posted: 9/26/05 at 5:41pm
Hello all...I definitely couldn't say one word to Raul...I just said hi and thats all i could do...i feel like a dork. I had him sign my flea market poster and taboo program. One of these I will learn how to talk...and I had soo many questions for him. I will send pics when I unpack after being in the airport for 12 hours....grrrr.....
"Hold up your head. Never be afraid to shine. Viva la difference in my body and my mind. All out with loneliness Such a waste of time. Come in from the outside" ~ Taboo
Chrysanthemum62001
Broadway Legend Joined: 2/14/04
#2172Pretty
Posted: 9/26/05 at 5:57pm
Due to popular demand, I'm just gonna post the article here:
*Just so you know, this quite an old article.* An oldie, but a goodie...
A series of high-profile roles has made South Florida's Raul Esparza a hit on the New York stage
BY CHRISTINE DOLEN
cdolen@herald.com
NEW YORK - Raúl Esparza learned to sing when he was a little boy in Miami, sitting on his grandmother's lap as she taught him all the old songs from Cuba.
Now he's all grown up, starring in Cabaret and holding the theater world in the palm of his hand. Who could have known, all those years ago, that the music of a homeland he has never seen would stoke the creative fire that has taken him all the way to Broadway stardom?
'It feels incredibly fast,' says Esparza, 31, whose performance as the Emcee in Cabaret has put its own dark spin on a role made famous by Joel Grey and Alan Cumming.
'I haven't been [in New York] very long, so it's a blessing. But there's also a kind of numbness. I keep waiting for the other shoe to drop. Good things happen, and I go, `That's nice.' '
Among those good things: his rousing turn as Riff Raff in the wild Broadway revival of The Rocky Horror Show; the lead in the Off-Broadway production of Jonathan Larson's Tick, Tick...Boom!; doing Cabaret opposite Brooke Shields, then Gina Gershon, and now Molly Ringwald; and cocktails with Stephen Sondheim to discuss his starring role in Sondheim's Sunday at the Park With George this summer at the Kennedy Center.
Numb? Maybe. But Esparza is also aware of how fortunate he is.
'Every day on the way to the theater, I walk through Shubert Alley [near Times Square] to remind myself of where I am,' he says. ``Some people work their whole lives and don't make it to Broadway.'
Esparza has, mainly through years of hard work honing a talent that has now won him a place at the center of America's theater universe. And those who know about such things are sure he's the real deal.
'Once or twice a year, Broadway [gets] a new home-grown star, who for their fame is not depending on television or film, but on the theater,' says Sam Mendes, director of Cabaret and the film American Beauty. ``Raúl is the genuine article, and his performance as the Emcee gives full vent to a talent we will see a lot more of in the future.'
Todd Haimes of New York's Roundabout Theatre Company, who cast Esparza as a replacement Emcee in Cabaret, is even more effusive.
'I think Raúl is one of the most extraordinary young talents I've ever seen,' he says. ``He's got a great voice, and he's a great actor. It's hard to define star quality, but you know it when you see it. Raúl is going to be a big star.'
A LONG ROAD
But like any 'overnight' success, he's been working toward this moment for years.
Esparza's talent first surfaced at Miami's Belén Jesuit Preparatory School, where he staged play after play -- in English and Spanish -- and funneled the profits to charity. He made his professional debut 13 years ago, just out of high school, in the world premiere of Luis Santeiro's Mixed Blessings at Miami's Coconut Grove Playhouse.
The only child of Cuban exiles, Esparza was born in Wilmington, Del., where his mother María Elena met his father Raúl on a blind date. His mother, now a Miami travel agent, concedes her son got lots of attention but says it didn't ruin him.
'When you have an only child, you devote yourself to that child to the extent that it makes you ache,' she says. ``He was very pampered, but he has given us back the same love. Because he has been brought up with love and not a lot of grief, he's always had a tender nature. There's not a mean streak in him.'
Beatriz Jiménez, his Spanish teacher and mentor at Belén, remembers Esparza's creativity and drive.
'I met Raúl when he was in the seventh grade, about 12 years old, and even at that age, you already knew,' Jiménez says. ``I've taught for 30 years, and he is the most outstanding person and student I've met. He emanates an energy, a love of learning. He can direct, write, sing, act. He's wonderfully fluent in both Spanish and English, and he has a tremendous understanding of both cultures. We didn't have a performing arts program at Belén, but he helped create one.'
Esparza founded a club called ALPHA -- the letters signify acting, literature, photography, history and art -- and under its auspices did numerous plays. His leadership won him the 1988 Silver Knight Award in drama, and he and a fellow student took national honors in the Catholic Forensic League competition for their scene from the play Amadeus.
He didn't do as well with the National Foundation for Advancement in the Arts competition, where one judge suggested he didn't have a future as an actor.
'When Raúl told me he'd decided to go into acting, I told him it was a tough road,' Jiménez recalls. ``How do you know how to keep going or when to quit? You have to listen to yourself.'
Esparza did that, beginning at Florida International University, then earning his degree from New York University's Tisch School of the Arts in 1991. From there he moved to Chicago, where he built a reputation at the city's top-tier theaters, acting in such high-visibility productions as Slaughterhouse-Five at Steppenwolf and Cry, the Beloved Country at the Goodman.
Things were going so well, in fact, Esparza and his wife Michele, his high school sweetheart, imagined building a life in Chicago -- despite the fact that Esparza found his ethnicity perceived differently there.
'As soon as I left Miami, I realized what being in a Hispanic minority is,' he says. ``In Miami, being Cuban is the center of your power. The parts that movie and TV people want to see me for are Latin things. Then I get there and they don't think I'm Latin enough.'
Yet it was a major Hispanic role in theater that eventually led him to move to New York -- and to Broadway. He won the role of Che Guevara in a major touring revival of Evita, and though his decision to play the revolutionary didn't thrill his exile family (his paternal grandfather had known Guevara in Cuba), the raves he won as he traveled the country in 1998-99 did. The show didn't play South Florida, so his family and his former teacher traveled to the Fox Theatre in Atlanta to see him.
'That was a difficult role for him, especially coming from a Cuban exile background,' Jiménez says. ``He did so much research, and he created a very three-dimensional Che. He was conniving, fiery, passionate, intense, very dark.'
And convincing. Says Esparza's mother María Elena: 'We took my mother-in-law and father-in-law to Atlanta to see him. My mother-in-law said, `I want Che out of there. I want my grandson back.' '
`STAR PERSONALITY'
Harold Prince, the original director of Evita, saw Esparza's portrayal at a run-through and a performance and agrees that he's destined for big things.
'He has real star quality and huge energy. He's smart and quick and funny,' observes Prince. ``Then I saw him in Tick, Tick...Boom! and didn't realize at first he was the same boy. He's got star personality.'
Che led Esparza to an audition for Rocky Horror, which got him the Riff Raff role and put him on New York's fast track. He left that show to create the part of Jonathan in Tick, Tick ...Boom!, and his next show was to have been a major Roundabout revival of Sondheim's 1991 musical Assassins.
Then came Sept. 11.
'I had a feeling similar to the one I had after Hurricane Andrew, when just seeing Bryan Norcross on TV would make me break into tears,' Esparza recalls. ``I didn't want to do the show. I could smell the burning. It felt pointless.
``The stage manager and I worked every day volunteering. But I met people from all walks of life who said Tick, Tick ... Boom! -- which is about continuing after you realize it's not going to be easy, and that what you choose to be in life is up to you -- had inspired them.'
After the disaster, Assassins (which contains lyrics about a character wanting to fly a plane into the White House) was scrubbed. So the Roundabout's Haimes shuttled Esparza into Cabaret, where he has become the show's most dynamic Emcee since the Tony-winning Cumming, giving a performance that is one part Marlene Dietrich, another part unhinged victim of evil.
He'll leave Cabaret at the end of April and go into rehearsals for Sunday in the Park With George, part of the Kennedy Center's $10 million, six-show, summer-long Sondheim Celebration (he's also cast in the festival's production of Merrily We Roll Along).
Eric Schaeffer, artistic director of the festival, cast Esparza in Sunday in the Park in the dual roles of artist Georges Seurat and a contemporary artist named George, roles originated on Broadway in 1984 by Mandy Patinkin. It's a huge part, but one Schaeffer says he knew right away that Esparza could handle.
'Georges has to have an intensity, but deep within he has a troubled soul,' Schaeffer says. ``Raúl sang Finishing the Hat, and he got the creative drive of the artist and the sadness within it. The contemporary George is the trickiest, and once again he captured the spirit, the frustration, the soul-searching.
'It doesn't happen that often in an audition that you say, `That's the person.' That you get chills by the end.'
HEARTACHES
Offstage, Esparza's life has been rougher since his move to New York. His wife decided to move back to Miami and her extended family rather than relocating to New York.
Yet though they are separated, Esparza says, ``We speak every day. She's the light of my life. We grew up together. Lived side by side. We're going through a process of getting to know each other again.
``Every good and bad thing that happens, I want to share with her.'
Another loss has been more permanent. While he was playing Riff Raff in Rocky Horror, his parents brought his maternal grandmother, America García-Pell, to see her grandson on Broadway. It was her 93rd birthday, Dec. 22, 2000. A few days later, the extended family gathered in Wilmington, Esparza's birthplace, to celebrate Christmas.
'I fell asleep on her lap, as she was stroking my head,' Esparza says. 'When I woke up, she said, `You haven't done that since you were a child. I could die tomorrow a happy woman.' '
The next day, García-Pell had a stroke. She passed away Jan. 18, but Esparza spent many of those last days by her side, leaning in close to her ear, softly singing her favorite Cuban songs. And now every time he steps onstage, a part of her is with him.
'After my grandfather died, she would put drops of his Guerlain cologne in a handkerchief and carry it with her,' Esparza says. ``Now I wear it onstage in Cabaret.'
"What a mystery this world. One day you love them and the next day you want to kill them a thousand times over." The Masked Bandit in THE FALL
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