Interview: Jenna Pastuszek of ME, MYSELF & BARBRA at Westport Country Playhouse

It’s a well-known piece of advice that if you want to improve your craft, learn from the best. Whether Jenna Pastuszek knew that from experience or instinctively, learning from the best has been her guidebook as she navigates her career as a performer and storyteller.

On April 24, the day of Barbra Streisand’s 83rd birthday, Jenna will perform her show Me, Myself & Barbra, a special one night only event at the Westport Country Playhouse.

The event is more than just a tribute to a show business legend. Jenna created the show after years of admiring Streisand. “When I was at NYU I met Barbra,” she recalls. “Not literally but figuratively. My professor, a man named Michael Ricciardone, a 6’3 Italian bodybuilder who loved wearing a tight pink polo shirt, introduced her to us in a homework assignment. He said, ‘Listen to her first three albums, and write me a paper about your favorite.’

“Immediately, I was awestruck. Her vocal stylings, her artistic choices, her musical arrangements, the way she told stories that I could follow just by closing my eyes and listening. He made us listen to these albums because she recorded them when she was our age. Before winning her six Emmys, before her 15 Grammys, before her first and second Academy Awards, before being honored with a Special Tony.  I was overwhelmingly inspired by what she had accomplished at my age. I was also sporting a neon purple bow tie working as a cater waiter, stealing mini kosher hot dogs from bar mitzvahs, and I knew that now that I knew the origins of Barbra, my own artistry would never be the same.”

Their artistries are not the same, but it turns out that both Jenna and Barbra have some things in common besides having mesmerizing eyes. Both have Ukrainian heritage. Jenna is tremendously proud of being Ukrainian. Barbra’s path in the entertainment business was on her own terms. So is Jenna’s. Barbra co-wrote Yentl. Jenna created not just Me, Myself & Barbra, but Get Happy: A Celebration of Judy Garland. She calls the package of both shows the Original American Idols Series. Who knows? There could be more.

Writing these shows demanded fresh material about their backgrounds and how she related to these singers. “I tell well-known facts about them as well as lesser-known stories and sing forgotten gems. Both women are really ‘people who need people,’” she says. “They are so generous with sharing their time, talents, gifts, songs, and stories with audiences and touching lives just by publicly being themselves. I want people to know that young artists and performers today can still relate to these two women and learn a thing or two about life and performing from them. It's so important to know history, and know who and what came before you, especially as an artist, so that you can understand how things came to be the way they are today, and also so that you can choose how to move forward yourself, by either repeating history or taking a novel path.”

What did Jenna learn for herself? In June 2019, Jenna was invited by the East Lynne Theatre Company in Cape May to do a Judy Garland tribute for their annual gala. Jenna was unfamiliar with her other than having heard her sing “Somewhere Over the Rainbow.” A former history major, he did research on the star. It was a success, and her team planned to bring it to The Green Room 42 in New York in May 2020. Like many other performing artists, she had to adapt her venues to work within COVID guidelines, so she started to perform outdoors. “Get Happy! became my pandemic story. What happened to a millennial artist on the cusp of "making it" before her dreams and industry came to a crashing halt. It's a story of perseverance, passion, dedication, longing, dreaming...which, while different, also are many words one could use to describe Judy's story.” She added some advice she picked up during her research on Judy. “Be yourself. Judy taught me that too when she told Liza (before winning her first Tony): "Always be a first-rate version of yourself rather than a second-rate version of somebody else." That certainly holds true for Barbra.

Jenna loves comedy and has been performing in 44: The Unsanctioned Obama Musical, which will run in May and June at the Kirk Douglas Theatre in Los Angeles and September at the Studebaker Theatre in Chicago, with more dates and cities to be announced. “Laughter really is the best form of medicine. This musical is very healing to see during this very troubling time in our lives. It's far enough removed from current political happenings (the current President, for example, is not mentioned whatsoever), so it allows people to escape to yesteryear and experience a sense of nostalgia.”

She is also fascinated with storytellers because she is “always amazed at how they bring people’s lives and events to life.? She recalls singing to the trees in her backyard when she was growing up. “I had intricate storylines for my Barbies and my American Girl dolls and I sometimes didn't like playing with other kids because they weren't interested in telling the same story that I had already made up. My neighbor came over one day and asked my mom if she knew that I was singing to the trees in the backyard. She then suggested that my mom either put me into musical theatre classes or therapy, so my mom decided to start with theatre (therapy came later). The director of the musical theatre program in my town realized that I had talent and propelled me into classical voice training with the best teacher in town, who notoriously only worked with high schoolers. She made a special exception for me and took me under her wing.”

What was her most challenging role? “My most challenging role would be Eva Peron. It was the first time I was challenged with playing someone who was complicated, and I had to release the need/desire to control how the audience felt about me/her. I had to let her story be her story and allow people to take what they wanted from it. Playing Eva taught me that it was okay (and frankly more interesting) to risk looking ugly on stage in service of getting what my character needs/wants.” What kind of characters interest her? “I love playing women who discover and then own their power in whatever their given circumstances may be. People like Eva, people like Daisy Hilton in Side Show. I'd love to play Mother in Ragtime. I'd love to play Mama Rose someday.

Jenna also teaches singing and says, “I am my best performing self when I am teaching, and I am my best teacher when I am performing. I truly feel like I am a real teaching artist. My students inspire me to keep going, to keep fighting to be seen and heard, to keep reaching higher and striving for success. They teach me to trust, to connect, to be vulnerable, to be fearless, and to be passionate no matter the odds.”  

If you remember jingles such as “See the U.S.A. in a Chevrolet…,” you should know that Jenna also writes them. “I miss jingles,” she says. “I can still hum you jingles of products and companies I first heard about when I was a kid.

“Collaboration is key for writing. You have to find a writing partner you trust, who you can get really messy with and who will also tell you honestly if/when something isn't working.

Indefatigably, Jenna also writes a blog for her website, www.jennapastuszek.com. For blog posts, she draws from what she and her clients experience. “I try to write the blog to my 20-year-old self or to the self I was before I found the incredible mentors that I have now (Joan Lader, Jen Waldman). I write to express myself and hope that by sharing my own fears, questions, and thoughts, it might encourage someone else to be brave enough to also share theirs.”

See Jenna Pastuszek at the Westport Country Playhouse on Thursday, April 24 at 7:00 p.m. Tickets for the show only are $40.00 to $45.00. You can enjoy a pre-show cocktail party and the show for $50.00 to $55.00. The Westport Country Playhouse is located at 25 Powers Court in Westport. For tickets, visit www.westportplayhouse.org/show/me-myself-and-barbra/.