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ACT: a new podcast series with host Dawn A. Westbrook about the craft of acting, the art of directing and embracing the process
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WEEK FOURTEEN Steven Skybell's Yiddish Tevye - a miracle of miracles!
Manage episode 437794081 series 3597253
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Born in the small town of Lubbock, Texas, Steven Skybell knew at the age of 10 as Pavel the peasant boy in the local theatre version of Fiddler on the Roof that the stage was where he belonged. A graduate of both Yale University's undergraduate and graduate theatre studies programs, in 1988 Steven stepped right off the stage at Yale Repertory and onto the boards at the Neil Simon Theatre for his broadway debut in Eugene O'Neill's Ah, Wilderness!
Classically trained in Shakespeare, ironically Steven does not think of himself as a musical theatre performer. But to everyone else? His performance as Tevye in the Yiddish version of FIDDLER ON THE ROOF directed by Joel Grey is a tour de force and the performance of a lifetime. The show was sold out and seen by celebrities and politicians such as Hillary Clinton, Hugh Jackman, Baryshnikov, Lin-Manuel Miranda (to name a few).
The production won the 2019 Outer Critics Circle Award for Best Revival, the 2019 Critics Circle Special Citation Award and Steven won the 2019 Lucille Lortel for Best Lead Actor in a Musical. The show was the brain child of both Joel Gray and the National Yiddish Theatre Folksbiene's (NYTF) Artistic Director, Zalmen Mlotek.
Steven has appeared on broadway in shows such as, Love! Valour! Compassion!, WICKED, and The Full Monty. He and his husband, Michael Cole (who is Stephen Schwartz's personal assistant), live a couple of hours north outside the city in a little town known as Mahopac, NY. They have 2 children "fur babies" named MacKenzie and Caleb both are Blue Merle Australian Shepherds. If you ever find yourself on the lake in this lovely little hamlet, you might even see Tevye slaloming across the wakes and doing some tricks.
I will tell you that that Steven is as lovely to converse with as he is on stage. Honest. Charming. Kind. Funny. Interesting. He says the trick to acting is If the thought is clear then the actor's message will get across. Steven Skybell is truly a very rich man!
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