By Staten Island Advance Entertainment Desk
March 19, 2012
College of Staten Island student to perform scenes from 'Fannie Lou'
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“[I]f you think about something way too much, you’re never going to end up doing it. Always go with your gut.”
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A chance encounter -- which led Jonathan Rodriguez to take a chance on a new experience -- set the stage for the College of Staten Island student to direct his efforts towards a career in theater.
“I was about 10 years old and a company called Rosie’s Broadway Kids was holding auditions at my elementary school,” Jonathan recalled. He happened to be on his way to the bathroom and saw the “huge line” of youngsters waiting to audition for the musical theater group. On the spot, he decided to audition, too.
“I was one of two children chosen,” he said. “I was just a kid, but it was like destiny. Literally, something out of the blue.”
On March 24 Jonathan, now 18, will be featured in “Scenes and Songs from ‘Fannie Lou,’” taking place at the Producers Club in Manhattan. The production is a staged reading of music and dialogue from the upcoming “Fannie Lou,” a new musical inspired by the life of voting rights activist Fannie Lou Hamer.
Jonathan plays the role of Junior, a teenager living in rural Mississippi in the early 1960’s, who is frustrated by the race-based caste system of that era.
Like Jonathan’s elementary-school introduction to theater, snagging the role of Junior in “Scenes and Songs from ‘Fannie Lou’” also was the result of a chance occurrence.
“I got an email saying there were over 250 submissions [for the various available parts] and that I was not selected at first,” said Jonathan.
Due to budget restraints, only about one-tenth of what turned out to be more than 300 actors and singers submitting resumes and head shots for the production were even called in to audition.
But an actor who’d been selected for the Junior role was unable to fill it after all, and Jonathan received another email asking if he’d like to audition. He did, and he got the part. Talent aside, he realizes that he was fortunate and that the second email could just have easily gone to any one of dozens of other actors who also had submitted materials.