SOMERS POINT — When Anthony Rapp finished his July workshop at the Gateway Playhouse, star-struck students all lined up to get autographs and selfies.
Rapp, who among his many stage and screen credits originated a role in the Broadway production of “Rent” and starred for five seasons on “Star Trek: Discovery,” spent a full half-hour graciously accommodating the students in the Gateway to the Arts program.
Those students will be performing “Rent: School Edition” in August.
Three of the more senior members of the program talked about the “surreal” experience of learning about the fabled production from an original cast member, and what Gateway to the Arts has meant to them.
Yullian Pereira and Mason Naman just graduated from Mainland Regional High School, where they were familiar faces in numerous Drama Club productions. Rita Caporilli is a rising senior at Holy Spirit High School and another young but veteran thespian.
“It’s insane what a small theater in Somers Point can provide to their students and in their programs. What I find so amazing about Gateway is that they always think about their students and how they can learn in creative ways,” said Pereira, who noted he is getting to play his dream role of Angel in the production.
“Today was just so surreal to see somebody who is a part of a legacy in Broadway. Last year we had Baayork Lee, who was part of ‘A Chorus Line,’ which has its own legacy within Broadway,” he said. “And ‘Rent’ is its own legacy in the sense that it provided a look into modern-day life at the time of the AIDS epidemic. It showed normal lives on an everyday basis and the struggles that people went through.”
“It was surreal because ever since I was a kid, everybody knew the song, ‘Seasons of Love,’” Naman said about the most famous song from “Rent” with its lyrics about “Five hundred twenty-five thousand, six hundred minutes.”
“Seeing in person the man who was the lead in the initial workshop, the Off-Broadway production, the Broadway production, the tour, the West End production, and then he had his own one-man show on it, it was crazy to be literally 20 inches from his face, the person who had helped create this story and bring it to life,” Naman said.
“It was genuinely so interesting to watch his process of teaching us how something as simple as how quickly we say a word or how heavily we say a word — or why we ask these questions in this show — impact the audience,” he said. “His process is so specific because he helped this show grow from the very roots all the way up. So I thought it was awesome and surreal.”
“I always credit ‘Rent’ as being the show that got me into musical theater because it was the show that got my mom into it,” Caporilli said of the 1996 production. “I was raised around all of the songs, always listening to the soundtrack, especially ‘Take Me or Leave Me,’ which I get to sing now. So it was really totally unreal and larger than life that I was learning directly from the source.”
“Being able to learn the intricacies in each moment and the power of what you say and just how to emphasize and the different factors, the way that the story plays together and how it’s built on the smallest moments that swell into huge crescendos of life and music, it’s just absolutely insane. I don’’t think I’ll ever forget it,” Caporilli said.
“Anthony was giving us a look as youth into the importance of ‘Rent’ and the importance of it at the time. And the importance of it now that it is such a pivotal moment within Broadway,” Pereira said.
“The material is like no other . … I want to showcase struggles that people go through on a daily basis during rough times and during times that we can’t even imagine. … Seeing Anthony here and just knowing that he was a part of such a powerful piece of art was such an amazing moment for us.”
Naman, who will be going to New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts, said Gateway is where he performed in his first musical and he has been returning ever since, even driving in from Indiana to stay with his grandparents so he could be in the summer shows.
“It was ‘The Wizard of Oz’ and I played the Yellow Brick Road and also the Guard of Oz. Ever since then, I’ve been coming back,” he said.
Naman credits Gateway with challenging him to be better, having him learn how to tap dance for one show, “to belt super high” for another and for ‘Rent’ to learn how to play the guitar.
“And it’s an educational experience at the end of the day,” he said.
He credited director Philip Pallitto with so much support.
“He directs my high school shows. He directs the shows here. He’s an adviser for Drama Club, he helps us out with things at the high school,” Naman said. “Throughout my life, I know that I can always reach out to him and say, ‘Hey, Phil, I need help figuring out how to book an audition or which subway line do I have to take?’ because he went to the school in the city as well.”
“I’ve gotten my life’s passion from the Gateway. I would not be performing. I wouldn’t have done Drama Club in high school. I wouldn’t be doing anything like this in my life if I didn’t have my experiences here at the Gateway,” Naman said.
Caporilli credits Gateway with building her confidence.
“It’s given me the space to grow and develop in a way like nowhere else,” she said. “The directing team is just this phenomenal group of people that really want everybody to be able to develop their own skills and move on to the best things that they can accomplish.
“It’s an environment that I love to return to,” she added. “It’s not only the people, but the theater itself. I just love to be here and I love the chance that I’ve been given to grow myself as a performer and as a person. I wouldn’t be the person that I am without like my experiences and the people that I’ve met at Gateway.”
“Gateway is like no other theater,” said Pereira, who is headed to American University in Washington, D.C. “They give an insight into show business like no other. They give workshops. They value each individual as a performer and they try to get everybody’s inner artists out.
“That’s their priority — to highlight every single person in a cast because we work together and that’s how you make art,” he said.
“It’s such a small theater, but with such big heart and such big ambitious motivations because it literally grew from the ground up.
“The people here built this theater up to what it is today, and that’s why it has such an amazing legacy because it is a heart of South Jersey,” Pereira said. “It carries so much love and so much care for their students and for their cast and for their crew, all of them.”
The Gateway Playhouse production of “Rent: School Edition” is scheduled for 1 p.m. and 6 p.m. Friday, Aug. 8 and Saturday, Aug. 9. For more information, visit gatewaybythebay.org.
– STORY and PHOTOS by DAVID NAHAN/Sentinel staff
