Interview: DEBBIE GRAVITTE of BIG BAND BROADWAY at Westport Country Playhouse

If you love Broadway songs and Big Band music, you’re in for an amazing time with “Big Band Broadway,” starring Tony Award winner Debbie Gravitte at the Westport Country Playhouse for five performances from January 29 through February 1. Gravitte will perform with a six-piece band of piano, bass, drums, reeds, trumpet, and trombone that brings the best of both worlds – Big Band music and show tunes – under one roof as part of the “Broadway Scores at the Playhouse Series.”

Born and raised in Los Angeles, Gravitte always wanted to be a Broadway star. While still in California, she performed in Annie Get Your Gun, directed by the legendary Gower Champion. Things moved fast from there. She met the performer James Mitchell who introduced her to her first agent. “Eight months later, I got They’re Playing Our Song,” she says. Her agent recognized her special talent immediately. “I was never going to be an ingenue. I was then what I am now.” 

Gravitte started dance lessons at the age of four with “Miss Kay” in Los Angeles. “I was very loud and charismatic, but I didn’t necessarily know how to sing properly, but I got most of the leads in High School where I shouted my way through the classics of musical theatre.” She found a voice teacher, who “saved my life.” She formally trained at Los Angeles City College and Theatre Academy, at that time the best theater school in the area. “I learned so, so much,” she recalls. “I got to do everything there from acting and singing to sets and lights!.” Just 18 months later, she started working. “When I got to New York, I found a great acting class and a new voice teacher.” She continued to take classes, including voice lessons to this day, because you need everything in your quiver when you want to be on Broadway. “When people come to New York, you’re either unbelievably talented, have chutzpah, [and] have connections – or hopefully all of it at once.”

There’s no denying Gravitte’s exceptional talent. She performed in many high-octane productions including Red, Hot and Blue (Goodspeed Opera House), Blues in the Night, Perfectly Frank, Zorba, Ain’t Broadway Grand?, Chicago, and Les Misérables. She performed in London in Jerry Herman’s Mack and Mabel at the Drury Lane Theatre. She was in the West Coast premiere of The Goodbye Girl, Love Life (in Philadelphia), Fiddler on the Roof with the Lyric Opera of Chicago, and in New York City Center’s Encores! productions of The Boys from Syracuse, Tenderloin, and Carnival. She has performed in numerous concerts including with the National Symphony, Boston Pops, and more than 200 symphony orchestras in Atlanta, Pittsburgh, Utah Symphony, St. Louis, Houston, San Diego, London, Birmingham, Aalorg, Stockholm, Gotesborg, Munich, and Jerusalem. She also performed with the Royal Scottish National Orchestra, and National Symphonica of Brazil. 

Big Band Broadway is currently the perfect show for her. “Broadway has always been my first love, and a very close second is big band music,” Gravitte said. “I wanted to wed the two together, so voilà...Big Band Broadway!” Gravitte loves all kinds of music, but she is fond of Big Band music because of the “time and innocence” it evoked. “Most of it came out of World War ll,” she notes. “There was something about it. Pure entertainment took people away from what they were feeling.” She adds, “At Westport I hope that’s what they come out with: the feeling of being entertained.”

Gravitte has been around long enough to know what it takes to be a performer when she started and now. There was always a lot of work to do for an aspiring Broadway, but it was different then, Gravitte notes. When she started in show business, performers had to go out to get the trades every week to see what casting directors were hiring. “Now you can find who the casting director’s cousin is” on the Internet, she notes. “It’s almost too much information, so it’s just different.” 

The most valuable lesson Gravitte learned in her career is balance. She started her singing tours for a better work/life balance with her husband Beau Gravitte and their three children. “I have an incredible family,” she says, but now that the kids are grown, “I am so ready to go back to musical theater. I’m just waiting for the phone call.” She has twins, Sam, an actor, singer and writer, and Ellie, a filmmaker about to direct a feature she wrote. Her older son, Charlie, is training to be a professional fire fighter. She always encouraged them to “have a life, go to school, play sports, and have relationships!” 

What advice would Gravitte give to performers who are just starting out today? In addition to singing, acting, and dancing skills, they need “a lot of humor, a bit of pixie dust and patience,” she says. It’s important to know “There are thousands of people just like you and there’s only one of you. Someone told me that years ago. When you walk into an audition, and you’re not hired,” it’s because “they wanted a different version, but “Make YOU the best version…”.

This will be the first time Gravitte will be performing at the Westport Country Playhouse, but she has produced shows through her company group5productions (www.group5productions.com), two of which played at the Playhouse. Big Band Broadway will have five performances from January 29 through February 1 at the Westport Country Playhouse, 25 Powers Court in Westport. Thursday’s opening night performance will be followed by a post-show party with cast, crew, and the creative team. Tickets are $45, $55, and $65. The concert is recommended for age 7 and up and is family friendly. For full details, visit: https://www.westportplayhouse.org/show/big-band-broadway/. (203) 227-4177.