Susan Campanaro: Where Alt-Cabaret turns Renegade Theatre
“Why are you screening your calls?! Walter, I know that I’m unmanageable, but I have to drink (gasp); I’m an artist!... ...ummmmm, It’s Walter, my manager. Excuse me, officers: do you have a call-number here?”
Such a harried message on a lost New York night is but
one example of Lavinia Draper’s sordid stage life. Sometimes things open in a
jail cell or a notorious night on the town. The fictional but increasingly
renown creation of actor/vocalist Susan Campanaro, the bedraggled, hysterical,
often seductive and always powerful characterization is nothing if not
shape-shifting. For Campanaro, a performance mainstay at the Stonewall Inn and
throughout the circuit, here and abroad, Lavinia is simply a counterpart. And
with each successive performance including theaters in London and Brighton,
followed by 24 performances in Scotland’s Edinburgh Fringe Festival, the
character, and her presence grows. This month, Campanaro/Lavinia and the show’s
composer-pianist Lynn Portas storm the 17th annual United Solo
Theatre Festival, September 25. You’ve been warned.
***
Susan Campanaro carries bits of downtown grunge in every
fiber, though formal arrival to this city occurred after formative years in Connecticut
and Florida where her father ran a Palm Beach clothing store and managed
nightclubs. Campanaro began studying dance at age 12 and then attended the
local performing arts high school, majoring in theatre and endeavoring in
performance wherever possible. Upon graduation, she came to know members of the
Blacklight Theatre of Prague who’d defected to the US and, as Ta Fantastika,
began playing West Palm Beach. Campanaro was among the young artists who’d
joined the troupe and were given the opportunity to travel with them to Asia
instead of attending college. The decision was not a difficult one.
After returning from the road, Campanaro attended
Palm Beach Junior College (now Fla State), but left for New York the summer before
graduation. It was June 1988. “My brother was a hairdresser living on 48th
between 8th and 9th Avenues and I was temporarily staying
with him”, she explained. “One day I was up on his rooftop praying over how I
can get this done”, to remain here, working in the arts, and not return to
school. “I was a club kid, 22- years-old, hanging out and dancing, and then my
photo was published”, and the extra attention found the budding performer in
multiple music and karaoke videos. “I began working at the Slide and met people
who guided me toward relevant career moves”. Soon, a role in the off-Broadway
production of John Patrick Shanley’s Danny and the Deep Blue Sea
followed.
In this period, Campanaro also worked Trixie’s on 45th
St. “It was an entertainment bar. I was a host, but also singing”, and it was
in this venue that she first endeavored into performance art: “I created a
style blending singing and comedy”, bending, transforming these into the still
developing genre. And then, one night in 1991, she was introduced to the
director of Tony and Tina’s Wedding, the off-off Broadway smash that
would ultimately run for decades. “At 24 years old, I was playing ‘Nancy
Marsala’, the singer in the band. I met such amazing artists at this mock
Italian wedding. One of course and most important, musical director Lynn Portas;
the other was vocalist and actress Maria Gentile, whom I’ve worked with, side
by side, for many years”. MAC Award-winner Gentile both performs and bartends
at the Stonewall and the Duplex, among others.
Campanaro then began working with Road Recovery (she
currently serves as Creative Director), a music industry-driven non-profit
dedicated to helping young people battling addictions. “We had a comedy
show with performances at the Stonewall, and at the Center on 13th Street”. Encouraged
to work in cabaret by the award-wining artist Nancy Timpanaro-Hogan, and noted
vocalist Lina Koutrakos, Campanaro was moved to work in this intimate discipline.
“Lina is my mentor. I took her class and after the
showcase, the owner of 88’s Piano Bar, Era Rable asked me if I wanted to do a
show, so I created The Actress, my first cabaret, in 1993. It was so
much fun. Super silly and people loved it.” And the cabarets kept coming, with
Susan both performing and directing: “Don’t Tell Mama, the Triad Theatre, and
the Duplex with very successful Happy Hour shows, daytime sing-alongs and on
Monday nights we had an amazing line up of Broadway talent.” This lasted through
the ‘90s.
Campanaro returned to the cast of Tony and Tina’s
Wedding, holding the starring role as Tina, twice touring Japan, where she
met dancer/choreographer Janine Molinari with whom she co-founded Theatre for
Young Audiences. And in this milieu, ‘Lavinia’ was developed. “I came up with
this 29-year-old kind of hard-edged Broadway boozy, Lavinia Draper. And the
character stuck. I just kept doing her. My friend Poppi Kramer, the comic--she
is no longer with us but she was my girl--and she told me, ‘Keep doing Lavinia’.
Over years, Lavinia grew older and more stories of her life on Broadway (including
as the reported understudy to Betty Buckley in Cats) became part of her
history.”
Campanaro brought the Lavinia act to her variety shows
at the Duplex, growing the concept with pianist Darius Frowner. The notorious
Ms. Draper then moved to the now-defunct Therapy Bar, where Campanaro thrived
for a decade. “Then I started to go out to Cherry Grove on Fire island and do
spots as Lavinia with Brandon Cutrell’s Broadways at the Beach. I would kill!”,
she offered, still glowing with enthusiasm. Campanaro’s act gained headline
status and has since been a regular at the Ice Palace. When not tearing up
these venues, the Lavinia character has been at the helm of the NYC Pride
Parade.
Doing Time with Lavinia,
the musical (“an exploration of Lavinia’s life”) truly came to be when
Campanaro asked Lynn Portas to write the show’s songs and background music. The
current pairing has been a highlight of both women’s careers. “Lynn is a genius
so all I had to do was write a monologue about some horrible situation either I
or Lavinia had gotten into, and she’d write a song. So eventually we came to this
beautiful, heartwarming tale of Lavinia Draper, a woman always in a vulnerable
and compromised situation, but still finding the glimmer of hope.” In
2022 Campanaro and Portas brought Doing Time with Lavinia to the United
Solo Theatre Festival, and it took home two esteemed awards: Best Composer and
Best Musical.
With a few moments’ spare time, Campanaro in 2023 went
to the UK to direct Tony and Tina’s Wedding, and also filled several
nights performing as Lavinia at a south London comedy club. Doing
Time with Lavinia came to play two theaters in London as
well as spots throughout London and Brighton, leading to the Edinburgh Fringe
Festival whirlwind. “I did 24 performances in 22 days”, Campanaro stated. “They
loved singing Lynn’s music and inspirational lyrics. The thing about this
musical is that you are uplifted. We need that in this crazy world we live in.”
Storybook-like, the pair received news while I
Scotland that United Solo asked them to bring Doing Time with Lavinia
back to open its 2024 season, Wednesday September 25, 7pm, right on Theatre
Row. It’s been one helluva ride.
https://unitedsolo.org/nyc-spring-2024/
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