Interview: Farah Alvin of FARAH ALVIN at The Green Room 42

Farah Alvin has the soul of an artist. A performer from an early age, the veteran of several Broadway shows and many plays off-Broadway and around the country, Farah was raised in an artistic family with very interesting stories in the family vault. Never one to turn away from any creative pursuits, Ms. Alvin has many interests away from the stage, interests that include needlework and healing. Now a mother with a little artist of her own, this one-time nightclub singer returns to the work that got her started in the business with a new show debuting at The Green Room 42 on November 17th, a show focusing on the music of her youth: the music of the '70s. As the days draw near to her opening night, Farah and I got on the phone one night (after Lionel's bedtime) for a chat about life in the biz, and the biz after a baby.

This interview has been edited for space and content.

Farah, you started on Broadway in Grease in 1994...

'94. They opened in '94 and I joined the company in '96.

Did it hurt your eyes walking up to the Eugene O'Neill every day for work?

Yes, it did. Yes, it did. Yeah. That pink theater with the words, the unintelligible words to "We Go Together" written all over it. But inside it was also equally neon. You know, our costumes were Willa Kim costumes and they were also hot pink, hot green, hot blue.

Oh, I saw this. I saw that show. Yes. Yes. There was a hot orange wig on Jennifer Holliday when I saw it.

Yeah, that began on Billy Porter, who was our original Teen Angel. And it was like a big foam wig that was supposed to look like the top of an ice cream, like a fountain soda. You know, cause of fifties soda shop, ice cream soda... it was supposed to look like that

Since that first show, you have not stopped working once... You've done Broadway, off-Broadway, special events. What has been the key to your success in the New York theater community?

Well, I think that there's two things. The first is tenacity. I think that it takes... you know, people will talk about being in show business and needing to have a thick skin. And I think it's something beyond that. Even if someone tells you no, you think "Uh.. they're wrong." And maybe it's a kind of delusion that keeps you going when someone tells you no. But I've also been so fortunate. There are very, very talented people in this business who don't have the kind of opportunities come their way that I have had come my way. I worked very hard, but I've also had a lot of really wonderful helpers and legs up that helped me along the way. I also would say that kind of contributes to the second thing, which is that I love my work, and I love the people in my community and I try and let that show when I'm working with people. So I think I'm nice (laugh) most of the time. I have a great time when I get to work. I feel really lucky when I get to work. And when people like you, when you establish strong relationships with other people who also like their work, they want to keep asking you back again and again. Also, I think I've evolved. I've also been a lot of people. I moved to New York when I was 19 and I'm not 19 anymore. I've grown, I've changed. I've allowed myself to be who I am at the different phases of my life. I haven't tried to hold onto something, some idea of myself. I think allowing yourself to change and giving people the time to catch up to who that is... being patient. That helps too.

You've done everything on stage from name roles to pit singing to dance captain. What's the most difficult work you've had to do in your career?

The most challenging things I've done are these kind of marathon roles... For a while, I was doing constantly two-handers where the two characters never leave the stage. I did an off-Broadway show where there were just two of us and we had almost an act practically to ourselves. I did a part in the Inner Voices series. I did a one-person musical that was incredibly challenging musically, physically, emotionally. I played Fanny Brice in regional theater, I played Mrs. Lovett in regional theater. These shows that require so much of your brain and your heart and your physical body. Those are the most challenging but I also think in a lot of ways the most rewarding or like, you know, running marathons and you can say, I did it. And you have to concentrate hard and push yourself. It can be difficult sometimes to take a job that looks very prestigious from the outside or that's a great money job, but is artistically very unfulfilling. And that's just part of show business. You don't always get to think that what you're doing is amazing, but you still have to do it and sell it and make it great for the audience, find a way to love it. And that's good. That's consistently a difficult challenge. But all after it's absolutely not

You are getting ready to open a new show at The Green Room 42 on November 17th. This is not your first outing as a saloon singer, though is it?

It is not my first outing as a saloon singer! I did my first... I think around 1998 I did a show at, Eighty Eights, which no longer exists. That was a more kind of like "Hey New York. This is me. This is what I have to say about life. Here is my fabulous loud high belts voice." I sang everything from show tunes to Whitney Houston songs in that show. And we extended that a number of times. I was nominated for a Mac award for that show. And then I never really did another cabaret show. I had a band for about seven or eight years. I released a solo album of original work, and then I did a number of live shows out with the band, but the last one I did was in 2000, I want to say. So it's been a minute.

How do you like nightclub singing?

It's something I actually grew up doing. A little fun fact: I grew up in Los Angeles, and I was very tall for my age and I wanted to work in TV or commercials, or wherever I could act. And you can't because of child labor laws. They want, for TV and for theater, they want kids that are older than they are to look younger than they are. And I just didn't. So my mom was trying to find places for me to sing and she found a bunch of clubs that had open mic nights in West Hollywood. She took me down to the gay bars and I would go and sing my show tunes. There was a club called the Rose Tattoo and I would go and sing my songs, 10 years old and then 11 years old, and go home and go to bed, and go to elementary school the next day.
So I've been sitting in clubs since I was 10 years old.

Why did it take you ten years to put together a new act?

Well, I had a baby and he's not a baby anymore and I think for a long time... I don't know... I was writing my own music and I was feeling more like I wanted to say my own words. And I think there's something that feels right, now. So, thankfully... it was quite lovely... The Green Room 42 reached out to me and asked if I would be interested. And I'd been kind of playing with some ideas in my head for what I would like to do if I did a cabaret show. I didn't want to do a repeat of in my forties, a version of what I did when I came to the city when I did my show at Eighty Eights. I also didn't want to do a, like a best of Farah Alvin because my career has been varied and been very interesting. But I'm not Patti LuPone, I'm not Audra McDonald. I don't want to, you know, I've been wanting to do my greatest hits. Yeah, that seems silly to me. So I had a couple of ideas kind of bouncing around in my head, and when they asked me and gave me the opportunity to put one into action I called my dear friend Marc Tumminelli, who's directing this show, who's collaborating with me on this. And we came up with this idea.

How different is it, putting together a new show with a five-year-old?

It's complicated. I mean, my time is not really my own. And so, for example, this morning, you know, we'd wake up at 6:50 in the morning, I got him up, got him watching a TV show or PBS kids, I made him a plate of yogurt and toast. And then I sat down and seriously began scheduling with my backup singers and my band. Then having to multitask and, you know, all creative people have to move. You have to move constantly: but it's different, right? It's advanced level! He also does not love it when I sing. As hilarious as that might sound. He'll sometimes say, "mommy, that's too loud." We were having rehearsal here with me and one of my backup singers the other day and he was curious, but also not totally approving. So he's a harsh critic. I think he likes it when I sing gently, you know, I'm his mommy, so when I'm singing a lullaby or something sweet, he's happy. And when I'm singing something loud, it's kind of... you know the very first thing that I did, right after he was born, was an Andrew Lloyd Webber Show at 54 Below and I sang Gethsemane, of all songs, super loud, super powerful, super passionate. And I remember he was sitting on a, you know this little guy who couldn't have been more than a few months old, was sitting and listening to me and I was so impassioned and my voice was so, you know, rocking and fierce that he started to cry. We've passed that stage thankfully. I think he may even come and see this one. He's a really good audience member now. And it should be pretty family-friendly.

This new show is music from the 70s - will there be anything from your old friend, Saturday Night Fever?

Well, you know, we're kind of steering clear of THAT seventies thing. I've done it in symphonic concerts all over the country doing a 70s show that again is almost all disco. I love disco music. I think we have right now we have one disco song in the show, but to me, the 70s has this sort of... I could have done five different types of 70s shows because it's fantastic rock music and innovative, interesting rock music. But my mother's music growing up was these incredible singer-songwriters from that era who were telling these very personal kinds of stories, really poetry. In some cases simple music, and other cases it's very complicated and sophisticated music. I'm finding that that's what our setlist is going to be. And there are some new standards. Also, we've gone through a couple of different iterations, you know different kinds of ideas for the show. There's something that feels very personal about this music for me and I'm discovering, as I talk to more people about it, that these tunes are very personal for them as well. So I think, the kind of songs you used to put on when you, you know, I went to my mother's record collection. I was a teenager and I would put on, you know, Janice Ian or Paul Simon or Joni Mitchell when I had big, strong feelings and I didn't have any way of getting them out. I didn't have a means of expressing myself. It was like these people who had somehow lived what I was living with, in my mind. And that's how I related to this music. I think a lot of people do too.

What are the chances we will get a new Farah Alvin cd soon?

Well, you know, that would be fun to do. If anybody is interested in funding that project, please contact me directly. I would love to be back in the studio. I was, in fact, working on another Farah Alvin CD of my original music six years ago and then got pregnant, and was actually pregnant while we were recording. So that's sort of in the mix, but I would love to be able to transition this show into something that could run longer. We have a full band and some really exciting arrangements from my musical director, Michael Holland, who's a kind of genius who will suddenly sort of, what do they call it, mash up two songs together. These are kind of different than a medley, almost two songs that you didn't even realize sort of belonged hand in hand. We've got a lot of really nice stuff like that in the show and I think if we can get some momentum, I would love to record this music, record our arrangements of this music. So it's definitely something I'm interested in.

You are the child of two artists. They were visual artists and you are a performing artist. What do you think is going to happen with Lionel? Is he showing any artistic tendencies at five?

He's very visual. I think he's an Alvin in that respect. I'm an anomaly. My parents were... my dad wasn't shy, but he was not a performer, and my mother is really a very shy person. I guess I just came out of the womb in full performance mode, singing, singing on pitch. My child was not that way. He is a little bit shyer. He does like to make people laugh. If he's a stand-up comic I will be beside myself. But right now it seems to be, you know, he's always been very visual. He'll look at something... He'll take two pieces of paper and put them together and go "Look, mommy, I made a sailboat" and it'll be that shape. I remember one time he was eating a piece of bread and he said, it looks like a camel. And it had just sort of been chewed into a camel. He says abstract things, which I think is not something I... I'm a music person. I don't see things like that. So he always had an eye for that stuff. Right now he says he wants to be a lighting designer, so we'd be very happy with that.

What was it like, being the child of two artists?

It was interesting. It was different, you know, I didn't realize it was different at the time. It wasn't just, they think that they were artists, but also that they were artists in Hollywood. You know, that there were some things that were really normal in our home that probably were not normal in other people's homes. My parents were very creative. I think they would've been disappointed if I hadn't been a creative person. So my creative pursuits were encouraged when, you know, when my kid wants to draw something, we go for a box of Crayolas; and when I wanted to draw something, it was the most expensive top of the line prism color or professional artists high-quality Strathmore paper. So creativity was constantly encouraged and they're very liberal and very open-minded. Obviously, as I told you, if my mom tried to find me places to sing, there wasn't any fear of the seedy underworld of show business. But it was also very helpful, I think for me - maybe part of the reason that I have been a successful business person when it comes to show business is that I have had very realistic expectations of what it means to be working artists. Cause that's what I grew up in. And my parents never did anything but work as artists my whole life. So they were very successful, but they also were very serious about it. And I was taught to be very serious about it.

Now, did you know that I have a painting of your arm that hangs in my living room?

I did not. Is it an ET poster?

Yes, it is!

Oh my goodness!

Do your fans, do your public know that your daddy did the illustration for the ET poster?

My daddy did the illustration for the ET poster and my hand was the model for Gertie's hand in that poster. There were no photographic references at the time for any of the characters. I mean the images in the film because they were trying to keep the look of ET completely top secret. So, at some point, my dad got like some kind of puppet model or a photograph or something of ET's hand. My, you know, he photographed my hand and then posed it. And then he created that image that mirrored the Sistine chapel - the image of God touching Adam's finger, ET touching Gertie's finger over those over. That was his concept after having never...I think he read the script or the treatment of the script. It all came from his imagination, which is pretty amazing. Anyone interested can Google John Alvin and you'll see hundreds of things that you remember from your youth movie poster art.

Farah, what's the most impressive thing you've ever knitted?

Laugh You know the answer to this question?

No.

I knit my own wedding dress.

NO!

I really did. Yeah. I designed it and I had the yarn hand dyed and I knit my own wedding dress and I will say it did grow... knitted things tend to expand a little bit. By the end of the evening of the wedding, it had grown a little bit. But it looked quite beautiful that way. I used a lovely cashmere and silk blend. It had a little gold lurex yarn and it was a really pretty halter. And I was very proud of it

I am definitely going to need a picture of that wedding dress.

Ok!

For information and tickets to Farah Alvin's show at The Green Room 42 please visit their Website

For all things Farah Alvin visit her Website

The self-knit wedding dress!

The ET poster by Farah's dad, John Alvin, featuring Farah's arm and hand.