It’s nearing 2 p.m., show time at the New London Barn Playhouse, and Nadina Hassan and Peter Garza are strangely calm.
It doesn’t matter that theatrical sets are still being built and painted, and costumes continue to be sewn. Or that lots of cast members, including these two, have not eaten lunch yet. Or that Hassan and Garza are due on stage in less than 90 minutes to sing and dance in front of nearly 300 people, in a musical in which they’ve never performed.
The theater is home, familiar and safe, like eating a BLT and sipping a cold drink in their backyard.
“It’s so in our element that the nerves just go away,” Garza explains. “I feel the most comfortable that I can be when I’m …”
Hassan then jumps in, and the two say, without rehearsal, “… on stage.”
They are two of 15 “intern actors” currently in All Shook Up, a love story that features the music of Elvis Presley interwoven into its plot. The young male cast members wear sleeveless shirts that display muscular arms, while the women wear long flowing skirts that twirl as they twirl.
The sets behind them include a juke box, Sylvia’s Honky Tonk and the old-style gas station signs and pumps, all of which bring the 1950s flavor to life like a chocolate milk shake. Other themes, about interracial relationships and gay love, mix with the usual dangers of sex and a culture war to create an edgy sense within its innocent framework.
This stands out, because the majority of people in the matinee at this 200-year-old barn are senior citizens.
I assumed that asking Hassan and Garza about bringing these still-evolving messages to an older audience might catch them off guard. It didn’t.
“I think it was presented in such a fun way that there was no room for a reception other than laughing and enjoying it,” Garza told me minutes after the show. “And the music was so fun, and a general message of love is so universal and everyone understands it.”
And then, as before, as though these two young talents are attached at the artistic hip, Hassan finishes the thought, saying, “And especially with Elvis Presley. That is something that they may connect to. It’s a good way to send the message across.”
They’re standing on what is known as the Porch, the outer area to this old red barn, where the cast lines up after each show to greet their audience.
This is a minor league system for actors and actresses who come here from all over the country, often from theatrical colleges and universities. They want to be on Broadway, or perhaps join a national touring show. They have a good shot at getting there.
“A training ground,” says Milena Zuccotti, the Barn’s managing director. “The young people who come here are extraordinarily talented. They’re passionate, and they come and work as hard as they can for three months and then they take what they have learned here and what they have brought to New London and they take that out into the world.
“They have a lot of energy and they’re incredibly hungry.”
On the surface, though, as we get to know each other on the Porch, Hassan and Garza don’t seem like carnivores. Their chemistry is palpable, and in fact they dance together in several numbers during All Shook Up.
But they must balance affability with goals, and performing on Broadway is a tough dream.
“Broadway, definitely,” Hassan tells me, when asked what she wants. “I’m also very interested in TV and film as well, so I would hope to at some point figure out how to navigate a career in theater and film. Still, Broadway.”
Hassan is a sophomore at Baldwin Wallace University in Ohio. She’s 18 with dark hair, dark eyes and a voice that could make flowers bloom. She’s a Midwestern girl, from Michigan. She says once upon a time, her singing wasn’t very good, which is hard to believe after hearing her pipes while playing Maria in West Side Story.
“My sister was an opera singer, so I wanted to be like my sister, of course,” she tells me. “But I was so bad when I was a kid, I would sing and it was just truly terrible, but I pushed because I really wanted to do it, so I made my parents put me in voice lessons and all the theater camps and I just fell in love with it.”
Garza, a senior at Ithaca College in Upstate New York, is from Texas. He’s lean and strong, and he started dancing in first grade.
“I would set up this wooden board in my garage,” Garza told me. “When my parents would clean they would play the radio and I would start step touching and they later put me in theatrical camps. They just wanted to get all that energy out of me and I focused it on theater.”
They both ended up here after the Barn’s artistic director, Keith Coughlin, traveled the country auditioning talent. The actors sleep at several nearby homes owned by the Barn and rented out by Colby Sawyer College. They often eat next door, at a big red house.
This summer, before All Shook Up, Hassan and Garza were in Godspell, The Secret Garden and West Side Story, which featured Hassan in the starring role of Maria; Garza played Chino, Maria’s boyfriend from Puerto Rico who shoots and kills Tony, the man Maria truly loves.
All Shook up, full of ’50s rock music, comedy and, ultimately, blossoming love, was a welcome change from the serious, tragic theme of West Side Story, Hassan and Garza noted.
They were in the ensemble this time, serving as backing vocalists and dancing all over the stage, arms waving, legs kicking, hips shaking. Hassan helped make the costumes, learning to sew, while Garza, building sets, became pretty handy with a drill and sander.
The Barn employs 90 to 100 people at its summer height, including acting interns, technical interns, guest actors, designers, directors and administrative staff. The actors are paid and receive points toward joining the Actors’ Equity Association, the union that represents actors and stage managers.
Notable alum include Colton Ryan and Kathryn Allison, both of whom moved on to Broadway.
“It’s a proving ground for so many young artists,” said Mitch Marois, the marketing and administrative associate, who lives in New York City during the offseason. “I knew about the Barn for years, but I was surprised. I didn’t know how good it was going to be until I started working here and seeing the caliber of productions. Just shocking.”
The pace as show time approaches is adrenaline-fueled, yet focused. A buzz of preparation fills the air, of people walking with purpose, moving with paint on their hands and pants. There are wigs and wood in trash cans on the ground. Cast members are grabbing a quick lunch, getting dressed, hauling out the old West Side Story sets from the stage and putting up the news ones before All Shook Up opens its 12-day run, which ends Sunday.
And for many, through laser-sharp determination here, an unspoken image, with traffic and noise and excitement, also remains crystal clear.
“To move to New York City after all that, all that stuff is in the works,” Garza says. “Making a living out of my art is the ultimate goal of being happy. Broadway is always the far reaching light.”