(Highlights) GAVIN JAMES CREEL

(Highlights) GAVIN JAMES CREEL

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Tony & Olivier Award-Winning Actor, Singer & Songwriter

To not honor that we are all creative, beautiful, interesting deep, rich individuals. We’re not zeros and ones on a spreadsheet. We’re not scientifically explained. We are not mathematically judged. We are imperfect blobs of emotion and bone and spirit and life and when we come together there is nothing greater than the chemistry and the alchemy of musical theater… There’s a joy, there’s a bounce, there’s an effervescence that’s part of that music. I had a great teacher in college, the head of our program Brent Wagner said, 'With lyrics, I can tell you to open the door, but with music I can tell you how.’ Lyrics are information and music is emotion.

GAVIN JAMES CREEL

GAVIN JAMES CREEL

/

Tony & Olivier Award-Winning Actor, Singer & Songwriter

To not honor that we are all creative, beautiful, interesting deep, rich individuals. We’re not zeros and ones on a spreadsheet. We’re not scientifically explained. We are not mathematically judged. We are imperfect blobs of emotion and bone and spirit and life and when we come together there is nothing greater than the chemistry and the alchemy of musical theater… There’s a joy, there’s a bounce, there’s an effervescence that’s part of that music. I had a great teacher in college, the head of our program Brent Wagner said, 'With lyrics, I can tell you to open the door, but with music I can tell you how.’ Lyrics are information and music is emotion.

(Highlights) JOHN BENJAMIN HICKEY

(Highlights) JOHN BENJAMIN HICKEY

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Actor and Director

If you are thinking about too much, you're probably not doing it right. Some nights you do it and you're just like, that just felt like it was ten minutes long and I just was on cloud nine. What was I doing? A great, great American actor George C. Scott had a great quote once, he said, "Every actor worth their salt has one good show a week and spends those other seven shows wondering what they did that made them so good that night." And nobody knows. If you could figure that out and if you could bottle that then, of course, everybody could do it.

JOHN BENJAMIN HICKEY

JOHN BENJAMIN HICKEY

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Actor and Director

I've been so fortunate to work with such great actors over the years. Laura Linney, Joe Mantello and the entire company of The Normal Heart, Nathan Lane, who I consider one of my great educators. He was a real mentor to me. He was such a professional and he was so devoted to the character and worked tirelessly to make the character in the show as good as it could possibly be. Nathan never ever did it sitting down. He's always full steam ahead and there was a great lesson in that for me to watch somebody's work ethic. It taught me my work ethic.