Tuesday, September 24, 2024

Susan Campanaro: Where Alt-Cabaret turns Renegade Theatre

 Susan Campanaro: Where Alt-Cabaret turns Renegade Theatre

By John Pietaro

“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/

https://roadrecovery.org/

 

Susan Campanaro: Where Alt-Cabaret turns Renegade Theatre

  Susan Campanaro: Where Alt-Cabaret turns Renegade Theatre By John Pietaro “Why are you screening your calls?! Walter, I know that I’m un...