After going green\u2014and winning a Tony Award\u2014for her rafter-piercing origination of Elphaba in \u201cWicked,\u201d Idina Menzel solidified herself as a reigning queen of musical theater. What, then, brings the emblem back to the New York stage after over three years away? The answer, surprisingly enough, is a straight play. \u201cSkintight,\u201d to be exact, Joshua Harmon\u2019s latest Off-Broadway outing at Roundabout Theatre Company\u2019s Laura Pels Theatre. Amidst preview performances, Menzel discussed what she\u2019s learning about herself as an actor in the biting comedy and how Backstage was instrumental during her childhood days spent dreaming of \u201cAnnie.\u201d<\/p>\n
What brought you back to the theater, in a straight play, no less? Do you remember what your first headshot looked like? Did you have a survival job before being able to support yourself as an actor? How did you get your Equity card?<\/strong> Prior to \u201cRent,\u201d did you ever use Backstage to find jobs or as a resource? It\u2019s been a few years since we\u2019ve seen you onstage. Does live theater flex a different muscle? For \u201cSkintight\u201d in particular, have you found that you\u2019re learning anything new about yourself as an actor? After going green\u2014and winning a Tony Award\u2014for her rafter-piercing origination of Elphaba in \u201cWicked,\u201d Idina Menzel solidified herself as a reigning queen of musical theater. What, then, brings the emblem back to the New York stage after over three years away? The answer, surprisingly enough, is a straight […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":621,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[2],"tags":[46],"class_list":["post-620","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-interviews","tag-46"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.idina-here.com\/press\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/07\/idina-menzel-cred-nathan-arizona-web.jpg.644x403_q100.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6Srnq-a0","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.idina-here.com\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/620","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.idina-here.com\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.idina-here.com\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.idina-here.com\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.idina-here.com\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=620"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.idina-here.com\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/620\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":622,"href":"https:\/\/www.idina-here.com\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/620\/revisions\/622"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.idina-here.com\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/621"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.idina-here.com\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=620"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.idina-here.com\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=620"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.idina-here.com\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=620"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\n<\/strong>Honestly, I just love this play. I wanted to work with Josh and [director] Daniel Aukin, and I wanted to work at the Roundabout. That was the foremost thing; I didn\u2019t really care what it was. I was just excited to work with them.<\/p>\n
\n<\/strong>Oh yeah, it was shot by my mom\u2019s boyfriend, who was an actor-photographer. You could barely see my nose, it was so blown out and white. It was probably overly sexy for my age, as well.<\/p>\n
\n<\/span><\/strong>My job was as a wedding singer, that\u2019s what I did from an early age. But to me, it wasn\u2019t a survival job. It was actually the coolest job ever, to be running around at age 16, singing at people\u2019s parties.<\/p>\n
\nThe Off-Broadway show \u201cRent\u201d was my very first professional show.<\/p>\n
\n<\/strong>I went on a couple of industrial and commercial auditions, and I would check [Backstage] and watch casting calls. I remember reading Backstage more when I was a kid in Long Island, wanting to audition for \u201cAnnie.\u201d My mom wouldn\u2019t let me work as a kid, but I kept reading how you had to be under a certain height to audition for \u201cAnnie,\u201d and I would run into her room and say, \u201cI\u2019m getting too tall! I\u2019m getting too tall!\u201d And that\u2019s when I was holding Backstage, looking at the casting calls as a kid.<\/p>\n
\n<\/strong>Yeah, definitely projection of voice in the theater [is different]. There are no mics [for \u201cSkintight\u201d], and we\u2019re doing a lot of intimate scenes that people in the dark really need to hear, so that\u2019s an interesting challenge, figuring out how to use your voice in the most natural way and still have people hear you. That\u2019s different from film and TV. Other than that, I don\u2019t know if there\u2019s a big difference. The crux of defining your character and who you are and what you\u2019re doing is the same, and you still have adrenaline doing both.<\/p>\n
\n<\/strong>Every project will highlight something that you\u2019re experiencing in your own life, you know? Every single one. This particular one is about aging and youth and beauty. I just turned 47, and so I\u2019m dealing a lot with these issues, and feeling like I\u2019m getting older and looking older and [thinking] about my role in society and not wanting to make that so important\u2014and yet it still is important. This role gets inside those issues that I, myself, am experiencing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"