BWW Interviews: Jerome Harmann-Hardeman of DIRTY DANCING

Hold on to your britches, ladies! DIRTY DANCING, written by Eleanor Bergstein, has been adapted for the stage in a hot new production that audiences across America have been going crazy for! That's right... Johnny, Baby, and the rest of the Kellerman's gang in the flesh are headed from city to city bringing the steamy love story right to you.

For those unfamiliar, DIRTY DANCING is a story about a young girl's quest to grow up. Baby, about to head off to college, goes on vacation with her family where she is introduced to a whole new world of passion by Johnny, a blue collar kind of guy trying to find his place in the world. If you've seen the movie, not only will the story and music be familiar to you, but also the scenery. This production employs the use of video screens to create a very cinematic set that allows the characters to move from location to location in a split second. It's very cool, if I do say so.

Jerome Harmann-Hardeman, who plays DIRTY DANCING's Tito Suarez, spoke with me in detail about this energetic, charming, and entertaining show that is sweeping the nation, and his journey from being a research oriented student to a singing and dancing artist.

I want to bring up how you got into show business, because I read your bio on your website and it's not the typical "I've wanted to do this my whole life" story that I hear all the time. It's very funny. So, I would like you to tell me how you started acting.
How I got into this business? Ok. I was in school, originally going to Syracuse, and I met people... well, a girl, of course... who was involved in theatre and television. She was getting her master's degree in Communication, but she was approaching it from the production end of TV and theatre. So she continued to ask me to do little projects for her because, you know people in school say "I'm gonna do it" and then they don't, or something comes up or they're too busy. One time she asked me to do a... I think it was a Donald Duck Grapefruit commercial demo... and I said, "Sure!" So we went into a TV studio on campus and we did the whole thing and she said, "Oh, you know you could... you might be interested in doing something like this." And I said, "Nah, not at all, I'm just helping you out." But then she had to do a graduate theatre production, and she decided to do THE RAINMAKER, and her star actor dropped out I mean literally at the last minute, the week before it was supposed to be presented. So again she asked me if I would do it. And I said, "Sure! You know, if it's like the other thing, which you said I was great at, how difficult could this be?" And she hands me the script and I was like, "What am I supposed to do with this?" She says, "Well... you learn as much as you can, we'll go through the blocking." I had no idea what she was talking about. She says, "And the other parts you can just read." And I said, "Well, will the other people be reading?" She says, "No, they already know it, but you know it's the last minute so..." So I'm like oh what did I get myself into?! So I go to the rehearsal and I'm a complete idiot. It's speak up, we can't hear you, do this, cross over there, you go upstage (what's upstage?), go up! And umm... actually from that really horrific experience I was hooked. I said this is something I have to... I know nothing about. And you know with my ego and everything I just wanted to nail it. So I started... I said no I'm going to learn how to do this stuff, and these terms, and you know all of this. I watched the other people's rehearsals, the scenes from the audiences, and I saw how it was all black until they turned the lights on and then all of a sudden the lights made everything more specific, and I said, "Oh is that what I look like out there?" The whole idea became so romantic to me. I just said, "I want to be a part of it." So I kind of got involved, but I didn't really. It wasn't until I came back to New York City to go to grad school down there that... once I had started school I thought, "Ahh that theatre thing is always in the back of my mind, so I should at least try to take some courses." So I took some courses at Brooklyn College. I just continued to get more and more and more involved.

And then I met another girl and she was involved in dance, and I thought, "Well let me go into the dance class. This'll be fun." And that was a disaster as well because, you know, I had never touched my toes, never tried. It was horrific. But, once again, I was really enamored by the whole process and how bad I was at it... I mean just bad. Because everything else you did in school you kind of just had to show up. You know you ask a question, and you learn the information, you write it down, occasionally you would speak in front of the other students, and that's the long and the short of it. But this was so 100% of your attention, of your focus, and it was really unlike anything I had ever done. I was really hooked. By the time I was... I was already out of college... but by the time I was like 24 I was like, "Oh yeah, I think this is what I want to do." My parents looked at me like I had lost my mind. I got a job at an art gallery to support myself, and I said to myself, "I'm gonna save some money, I'm gonna take some classes, I'm gonna figure this out."

And one day I was sitting in a café reading Backstage, and there was this guy who sits next to me and he says, "Are you in show business?" And I said, "No, it's something I really want to do, I'm just looking for things here and there." And he says, "Do you sing?" Ok... I haven't mentioned anything to you about singing. Because I didn't do any. So I said, "No. I don't sing. I don't know anything about singing." He says, "Do you know songs?" I said, "Of course I know songs." He says, "Do you have sheet music?" I said, "No. I don't have sheet music. What is that?" He says, "Well you need sheet music. Sheet music has the notes and everything so you know the song." Anyway... long story short... he says to me, "There's an audition up in Harlem and they're auditioning today, so if you can get a hold of sheet music..." He told me where to go and I went. I don't know... well... I think I know why they offered it to me... you know that has to do with... almost on the verge of, "Well, he's young, he's kind of cute I think, and..." Yeah... I would have to say [that's why] because I had no idea what I was doing. The only reason they would hire me is because they thought, "Oh well, you know, we don't know what this kid's about. Maybe there's something interesting about him." But, they did. And I went into this choral group, and most of the people in the group had already graduated from college in music from schools like Eastman [School of Music], and you know... Manhattan School of Music. I mean they really knew what they were doing. And so I was playing catch up there for a year. Bob [Robert] Bass was the head of the choir, he was the conductor of the choir. He was also the conductor of the Collegiate Choir in New York City. So I had to take private voice lessons, I had to learn solfege, I had to learn an instrument, I had to practice these harmonies... which I had never... I had no idea what a harmony was. And you know, you just do it. You do it, and you're young and you feel like well if they can do it, I can do it. But of course it's not near the same level, but you don't really know that because you don't know anything. And, my ignorance was what kept me involved. My total lack of... the fact that I was in the wrong place.

Well, you say it's the wrong place but look at the career you've had. Maybe it was exactly the right place!
In the end it was the right place. But had I had a little bit more sense I probably would've backed away. I just didn't have the sense to know that I didn't know what I was doing. Luckily it all worked out and I kept going and going, and you know working at it and working at it. And everybody was actually really nice. I have to say that also. Everyone was very nice. They kind of understood that I didn't know what I was doing. They said, "Oh, you have a sweet voice." I didn't know what that meant. I thought oh you have a nice voice. No, it just meant it wasn't irritating.

It means good effort!
I went on and on until I knew, and we sang big pieces. You know we sang The Messiah, and all of the classical... what was the... they did a very famous... uhhh, Carmina Burana. Carmina Burana was the first thing I had to learn with no vocal training. The tenor line. Every night I would go home with these cassette tapes and just listen to them, and eventually it sunk in. It was quite an education. I stayed there and they eventually disbanded the choir after I was there for about eight months, and I asked if I could stay and learn how to dance properly. They agreed and they gave me a small scholarship and I stayed there, and after a while they said, "Well you know you're old to be a ballet dancer and you don't really have that agility, but you seem to like this whole thing. What do you want to do? Are you interested in musical theatre?" And I said, "Sure." And they knew a lot of people so they said, "Ok, this is probably what you need to do, this is the direction you should go in." And that was really the beginning of my musical theatre career. They sent me on a couple of auditions, which I didn't get, but by them pointing me in the right direction I began to understand what it was I really needed to do and what I wanted to work on. And the rest, as they say, is history.

It's really kind of incredible that you just sort of jumped in the deep end.
I did, and here I am 25 years later.

So what is it that you were studying in school initially? What were you heading towards wanting to do?
I wanted to be a doctor. At least I thought I wanted to be a doctor. Not necessarily a practicing physician, but more in the research end. That was something that I was always good at in school and it seemed like the natural direction for me at the time. Of course everybody was for that. A lot of my friends were pre-med, so all of that was kind of the logical choice. We didn't really go to the theatre when I was young. My older sister was very artistically inclined, but even when she went to college she majored in education. And my younger sister majored in physical education. She never used it but she's now the assistant director at the graduate school for film writing at NYU. But we didn't really get involved in the theatre.

So really, college was your first exposure to theatre period. Not just acting yourself, but to watching performances.
Yes, it was.

Do you remember the first professional show that you ever saw?
The first professional show that I saw was JESUS CHRIST SUPERSTAR. And then after that I saw a production of ON GOLDEN POND.

You have quite a diverse background now. You've done live theatre, you've done TV, film, voiceovers, and a lot of times we see actors who are great on stage and not so great in front of the camera and vice versa... they're great on camera and not so much on stage. Is it difficult for you to jump from one to the other?
Originally, it was. The television thing was more natural when I was younger, but when I started doing theatre it was harder for me to go from theatre back to TV or film because I had become a lot more theatrical. I have to say that I don't think dance helped me at all because the kind of bigness that you need in a Broadway show to get that across to an audience as far as a dancer is concerned is the exact opposite of what you need to do on television. I had a hard time really going back and forth. Often I'd go to auditions and they'd just say, "Aww, yeah, you're just too big. Tone it down like 1,000%." And I didn't know what they really meant. I have kind of a loud voice anyway and it was just like, "Man, you need to go back and maybe take some acting classes so that you can know all of these things together and try to find a middle ground or at least know what we're talking about when you come in for auditions." That helped. I have to say that really, really helped. But, yeah, it's not so easy, but television is something that I always wanted to try. I never did as much of it as I wanted to do.

Is there a particular show that's on right now that you would like to be a part of?
Oh, there are a ton of shows on right now that I'd like to be a part of. I would certainly like to be a part of this whole new HBO phenomenon, or the whole cable phenomenon. I would love to do Scandal. I would love to find something that I could do realistically in Game of Thrones. In that I like the heightened sense of language. I love language and that's a show where you can use that language and it's not off-putting. The Sherlock Holmes series... I'm not sure it's doing well or what they're doing with it, but I also love that. And I love the fact that there is so much cross casting now and interracial casting with most of these series. There was a time when you had to kind of do The Jeffersons or you know it would just be guest stuff, and you're not the star, you're going to be the guest. It's much more exciting now.

Yeah, and even in the theatre too now we're starting to see a lot more colorblind casting, which is wonderful because it opens doors for so many actors to play all kinds of different roles that maybe they otherwise wouldn't have gotten to play.
That and the audience wouldn't have had a chance to say, "Oh, I see how that works." It is... It's a fascinating time to be in the theatre. It's a fascinating time to be in the world in general.

I don't want to talk about this too much, but I saw that you are involved with the new ANNIE movie. This is kind of a double question: What did you do in the movie, and how did you get involved with this project?
Ok. So, I used to be a dancer. And now I'm old. In terms of dance I'm like ancient. But, my agent doesn't understand that. So last year ANNIE was auditioning for the film, and they called me and they said, "The choreographer for ANNIE would like you to come in." And I said, "For what?" And they said, "To dance." And I said, "No." And they said, "No, no, he really, he knows your age and he really wants you to come in." And I said, "Ok, fine." So I went in and we, you know... I was... there was no one within twenty years of my age in that room. And I thought, "Ok, maybe the old woman didn't show up." I went in and I went, "Ok I'll do it, but what can I say? Here I am." So I do the audition and I kind of needed to make fun of it. You know, there was no way I could take it seriously. I was very loosy-goosy about the whole thing, and he calls me back about two weeks later and he says, "Oh, they want you to do it."

Well how about that!
Yeah, that's what I said! I said, "Well, what do they want me to do?" He said, "Yeah, they want you to be one of the dancers." And I said, "I will die. Literally. I will die." And they said, "No, it's just gonna be... you know... like easy, easy dancing. Easy dancing." Oh my God, so that's what I'm doing in this movie. I am dancing like a twenty-year-old.

What numbers are you in?
It's called "Easy Street," and it's with Cameron Diaz and Bobby Cannavale together. So they're at this club, and of course you know it's a musical, so they're kind of getting involved in this and that. And of course they burst into song, and when they burst into song strangely enough maybe 14 people in the club know the choreography.

Well, come on, that's the beauty of musicals! Everybody knows the same song and dance.
Yeah! So yeah, that's what I'm doing in ANNIE.

I remember watching the ANNIE movie with Carol Burnett and Bernadette Peters and Tim Curry, and that's such a funny scene! You see just how slimy these people are, but it's also really funny. It's a snarky little song.
Oh yeah. And I don't know if it's gonna be a good movie or not. We haven't seen any of it except for the outtakes that everyone else has seen. We were invited to the opening, but I won't be able to go. It'll be interesting. It's a whole new take, I think.

I think it's neat because it will bring... I mean this is now I think the third ANNIE movie that they've had... but it will introduce musical theatre to a whole new generation of kids. It's neat that they're re-doing these classics to get more people interested.
Oh yeah, no, I don't disagree with you there.

Well, let's get a little into DIRTY DANCING, because we have not talked about that at all, and that is what you are doing right now. So, I'm probably going to get a little bit of hate for saying this, but I don't actually think I've seen the movie all the way through. I've only seen bits and pieces, so can you tell me what DIRTY DANCING is all about?
DIRTY DANCING is a coming of age play about a young girl who's about to go to college learning about herself, and a guy who definitely has a chip on his shoulder and a bit of an inferiority complex, although he's very good at what he does. Basically the chip is he's from a blue collar neighborhood... he is blue collar... and his learning to trust people, learning to trust himself, and to accept the life that he's in and the fact that he can make it better if he makes the decision to be involved in that life, and not let life take him where it will. It gets lost... I think the story gets lost in The Time of My Life song and the lift and in all of that. They [Baby and Johnny] only come together because Penny, who is Johnny's partner, gets pregnant by one of the guys who's working there for the summer. You have this really intense and extremely controversial subject with abortion, which, again, because of the whole musical theatre aspect of it, Penny gets just pushed into the corner. But that's the catalyst of them coming together and learning about each other, and you know not believing and then believing. The rest of us are... I don't want to say that we're superfluous, but when we are... basically we're a little salt, we're a little pepper, a little paprika... you know, we add volume to basically a two person play. I'm not sure that it has any roots in Greek theatre or... you know so often these plays if you take them to their bare bones they are the plays of Aeschylus or something like that... and in this case, this is our writer's [Eleanor Bergstein] life. Her parents used to take her to Grossinger's up in New York state, and when she was a teenager, this is something that kind of happened to her, and she wrote it down. She made it into a screenplay. So this is a slice of her life that she thought was interesting. And she wrote the play a well.

How does your character, Tito Suarez, fit into the story?
Well I... Ok in the director's mind, and in the writer's mind, my character is... Max who is the owner of Kellerman's... basically when Max started the whole Kellerman's resort, I was the musical director, and it's been over 20 years, and we have become very close friends since then. And when Neil, his grandson's parents die, Max took Neil in. So Max basically raised Neil. And because I was always there I'm kind of Neil's other guardian. So that's where I fit into this group. And so I know Johnny as well, although that development or that relationship is not fleshed out. We have a couple of scenes together where you kind of get the impression that we know each other, and we have a relationship, but it's not really fleshed out.

So this is a show that's so iconic, it's nostalgic for a lot of people. When they buy tickets to the show they know what they're coming to see, they expect certain things, they know these characters, they know the songs, they might even know some of the dances. How do you guys take this beast and make it fresh, make it new, make it exciting, but also keep that sense of familiarity that the audience is looking for?
Well Eleanor [Bergstein] has... because Eleanor wrote the movie AND she wrote the play... so a lot of the dialogue is exactly the same. We have some different transitions in order to make it make a little more sense. Most of the characters are a little more fleshed out than they are in the film. The other thing is the set design. The way the entire thing is revealed on stage is very clever because when they first started this they had a huge set and they were trying to move all these things back and forth... you know first we have Kellerman's then we have... basically we have that... and they stage that now and they do a great deal of it with a video wall. And when you see it you will say, "Wow, that sounds like it doesn't work, but it REALLY works." So lots of our scenes... they continued to keep cutting our scenes down and down and down so that they're more like film scenes. We literally do film lights so we can go from the golf course to Kellerman's in a second. We can go from a wheat field to the lake... literally they do it in one second. For the audience, you know, it's just like what? And it's so visually beautiful. I mean it's not like a projection where it's kind of cheesy... no this is... it's really stunning. You go to the cabin and then we have a couple of moving pieces on stage to give it a little bit more of a three dimensional quality, although with the actors and the way that the projections are done, it even looks 3D without the few moving pieces that we have. So they do it like that, and I think the audience really appreciates that and they appreciate the speed of that.

I see so many shows now are using this really cool technology to do their sets and I feel like with every show that I see there's something different, there's something new. It's really cool.
Oh, yeah! And we do all the songs live. So that's another thing. Even in the movie they... it was almost all recorded. We do everything live.

Well let's talk about the music. This show has a lot of music that... I mean people know the music. What's it like to perform all of these popular songs?
It's great. I mean, it's a great thing for us and we have great vocalists. It's interesting, I should say, because sometimes people will sing along. And luckily there's enough distance so that it doesn't really affect us, but they'll also say the lines too, and that can be a little off putting sometimes. They love the fact that the music is done live. Sometimes they don't believe that the music is live because our band is so good. People will often say, "Wow! You guys... that's really just lip synching, right?" And we'll say, "No, no, all of those songs are live. All of the harmonies, everything is live." And the kids love it too because in DIRTY DANCING we do numbers from the late 50s and 60s, and plus we do all of that big hair band 80s music. Everybody in the audience finds something that they just hang on to that they really love, or that they are very specific about, "Oh yeah that was my favorite song," or "I remember when that song came out this is what I did." The majority of people always say, "Yeah, when DIRTY DANCING came out I was 9 years old and my parents wouldn't let me see it, but we snuck and saw it anyway."

So this is not the first time you have done a touring show, right?
No.

Ok, so what is it like touring as opposed to doing a show that's in the same theater every night or doing television or movies?
Ok, first of all, it depends on how old you are. If you're really young, touring is wonderful! You give up your apartment if you ever had one... we have a couple of people in the cast who never even had an apartment. They were sleeping on someone else's couch and auditioning, and so now they're just out in the world making money, socking it away for when they actually finally move to New York. But when you get older I think touring is different because a lot of the older actors in the cast... you know we're married. Everyone is... I think all of guys are married who play the older characters. A lot of the younger characters are married. So that's difficult. You know, if you have a home, you want to be there, but this is the job so you're away from home for long periods of time. My wife comes to visit quite often. And some of the other cast members' wives and partners and husbands come as often as they can. But often you're away for... we started... we left town in August, and some people have only seen their wives or husbands one time since then at some point. Yeah, so that's difficult. You know, the other part is it's a little bit of a strange kind of artificial world for a year. You're living in hotels, people are cleaning up behind you, you send money home, you pay your bills, but you don't have that consistency of being grounded. So that makes touring... and even for young people, that makes touring very difficult sometimes. It's a little bit of a different world, so you try to stay grounded and you try to stay in touch. We've done a lot with Broadway Cares, and that helps. That keeps us connected to New York and to the world in general, and we try to do a lot of things together out as much as we can. And, it's not for everybody. Lot's of people start on tour thinking it's great and then after six months they say, "Ooh, I need to go home. I don't like living out of a suitcase. This is not really my cup of tea." As opposed to when you just work on Broadway... there's nothing like it. You know, you go to your Broadway gig every day, you can do other things... like in New York I can do voiceovers, you can do the occasional TV show if it comes around. You can work, you can actually take another job... drive a taxi. And so... you know work on your world famous novel that may or may not ever get published. But when you're on the road all of those things become a little bit more distant and different. But it is a job and you try to keep it in perspective and you try to keep yourself prepared also. Keeping healthy can be difficult on the road. You hang out, drink too much sometimes and think, "Oh my God I have to sing these high notes tomorrow." Yeah, you know, going to the gym... I do yoga almost every day, so I've got to find... I do bikram yoga, so I have to find a studio or two or three that has the same schedule that will work for me here, travel out to them... often God knows where they are... and I try to go as often as I can. I go during the week every day, but on two show days if I don't go at 6:30 in the morning I can't go. But it keeps me grounded and it keeps me physically fit and I don't get sick that often, if ever, and that helps. That helps me, that's my routine, but it's hard to do on the road.

Well we're glad you're on the road and bringing this show around! To wrap things up, give me three words that you think perfectly describe DIRTY DANCING.
Three words... The first would be energetic... highly energetic. The second would be charming. There's a lot of charm in the show. And the third would be entertaining.

Make sure to check out DIRTY DANCING on tour in a city near you! You're guaranteed to have the time of your life! For tickets and more information go to http://us.dirtydancingontour.com/.

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