TStar: An Awakening star is born
May. 19th, 2008 02:34 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
hesAn Awakening star is born
May 14, 2008
Richard Ouzounian
Theatre Critic
"To tell you the truth," says Kyle Riabko,with his most engaging grin, "the thing that scares me the most is the fact that my ass is going to be showing and my grandparents will see it."
The 20-year-old rocker from Saskatchewan, who was virtually unknown a week ago, is talking about the fact that he starts playing the lead role on Broadway next week in the Tony Award-winning, hotter-than-hot musical about youthful sexuality called Spring Awakening.
In an exclusive interview with the Star just before he left for New York, Riabko talked about his crazy career on the Canadian music scene that started when he was 10 and brought him Broadway stardom on his very first trip to New York.
Regina-born Riabko's family must have known something was up at the age of 4, when he took his mini-hockey stick from the Saskatchewan Blades and played it like a guitar all night at a family reunion.
But he really let everyone know what he was about at one of the Saturday afternoon jam sessions at Buds on Broadway in Saskatoon.
"I heard these guys playing the blues and I thought, hey, that's a part of me. I hurled myself up onstage and started playing without ever having had a lesson in my life.
"But that's been my theme all along: dive in the deep end of the pool and survive."
You might find statements like this a bit hard to accept were it not for Riabko himself. He's a guy who radiates a total simplicity and lack of ego that must have been what attracted the producers of Spring Awakening to him.
Riabko admits he was a bit of an oddball in school, combining his passion for music with a career that was running out of control.
When he was 12, along with a bunch of guys 16 to 18, he booked a tour of Eastern Canada with a group they called Bluesway Express.
"We just went right into it," he says guilelessly. "There we'd be, playing a bunch of stinky old bars to an audience that consisted of two old drunks and a hooker."
He kept touring during the summers and learned that "all you need is a gig to play, some food to eat and a toilet to s--- in."
When asked how he possibly kept himself together in such a potentially corrupt environment, he attributes it all to "the good influence of my parents. I wanted to impress them in moral as well as professional ways."
He admits he was lucky in his younger years. "By accident I surrounded myself with good people. Now I do it on purpose."
But back at home in high school, he was going through "a kind of Bruce Wayne/Batman kind of thing. All week long I'd be with kids my own age, then on the weekend, I'd be flying off somewhere to play a bar gig."
By the time he was 16, he'd recorded his first album for Columbia and it did well enough but never hit the heights.
"You hear a lot of clichéd stories about second-album blues," he says with a hint of sadness. "Well, I moved to Toronto and wrote hundreds of songs, but they didn't make anybody happy.
"After two years of pouring my guts out and barely getting a reply, I sent them a letter and quit the label. My friends all thought I was a knight in shining armour."
But what do you do when you're 20 and you've just walked away from one of the biggest labels around?
If you're Riabko, you follow your star.
"I'd done some shows in high school and when someone asked me if I'd think of acting, I said sure."
He appeared on the Canadian series Instant Star and drew the attention of some American agents who brought him to New York, where he found himself auditioning for Broadway musicals before he'd ever even seen one.
The one that grabbed him when he finally went to it was Spring Awakening.
"Duncan Sheik's music did it for me," he admits, "and I also loved that it was so funny as well as so painful and that it didn't seem like a conventional musical."
His audition went well and before too long he was told he'd be taking over the leading role of Melchior, first on Broadway, and then in the national tour that Mirvish Productions will bring to Toronto in April 2009.
"It worries me a bit," he confesses, "that I'll be doing the same show over and over again for so long, but I'm sure it will help me grow.
"My fantasy is to be considered by people as a multi-faceted entertainer and human being who has something to give to the world."
And if he's gone this far before his 21st birthday, that fantasy has a very good chance of becoming reality.
May 14, 2008
Richard Ouzounian
Theatre Critic
"To tell you the truth," says Kyle Riabko,with his most engaging grin, "the thing that scares me the most is the fact that my ass is going to be showing and my grandparents will see it."
The 20-year-old rocker from Saskatchewan, who was virtually unknown a week ago, is talking about the fact that he starts playing the lead role on Broadway next week in the Tony Award-winning, hotter-than-hot musical about youthful sexuality called Spring Awakening.
In an exclusive interview with the Star just before he left for New York, Riabko talked about his crazy career on the Canadian music scene that started when he was 10 and brought him Broadway stardom on his very first trip to New York.
Regina-born Riabko's family must have known something was up at the age of 4, when he took his mini-hockey stick from the Saskatchewan Blades and played it like a guitar all night at a family reunion.
But he really let everyone know what he was about at one of the Saturday afternoon jam sessions at Buds on Broadway in Saskatoon.
"I heard these guys playing the blues and I thought, hey, that's a part of me. I hurled myself up onstage and started playing without ever having had a lesson in my life.
"But that's been my theme all along: dive in the deep end of the pool and survive."
You might find statements like this a bit hard to accept were it not for Riabko himself. He's a guy who radiates a total simplicity and lack of ego that must have been what attracted the producers of Spring Awakening to him.
Riabko admits he was a bit of an oddball in school, combining his passion for music with a career that was running out of control.
When he was 12, along with a bunch of guys 16 to 18, he booked a tour of Eastern Canada with a group they called Bluesway Express.
"We just went right into it," he says guilelessly. "There we'd be, playing a bunch of stinky old bars to an audience that consisted of two old drunks and a hooker."
He kept touring during the summers and learned that "all you need is a gig to play, some food to eat and a toilet to s--- in."
When asked how he possibly kept himself together in such a potentially corrupt environment, he attributes it all to "the good influence of my parents. I wanted to impress them in moral as well as professional ways."
He admits he was lucky in his younger years. "By accident I surrounded myself with good people. Now I do it on purpose."
But back at home in high school, he was going through "a kind of Bruce Wayne/Batman kind of thing. All week long I'd be with kids my own age, then on the weekend, I'd be flying off somewhere to play a bar gig."
By the time he was 16, he'd recorded his first album for Columbia and it did well enough but never hit the heights.
"You hear a lot of clichéd stories about second-album blues," he says with a hint of sadness. "Well, I moved to Toronto and wrote hundreds of songs, but they didn't make anybody happy.
"After two years of pouring my guts out and barely getting a reply, I sent them a letter and quit the label. My friends all thought I was a knight in shining armour."
But what do you do when you're 20 and you've just walked away from one of the biggest labels around?
If you're Riabko, you follow your star.
"I'd done some shows in high school and when someone asked me if I'd think of acting, I said sure."
He appeared on the Canadian series Instant Star and drew the attention of some American agents who brought him to New York, where he found himself auditioning for Broadway musicals before he'd ever even seen one.
The one that grabbed him when he finally went to it was Spring Awakening.
"Duncan Sheik's music did it for me," he admits, "and I also loved that it was so funny as well as so painful and that it didn't seem like a conventional musical."
His audition went well and before too long he was told he'd be taking over the leading role of Melchior, first on Broadway, and then in the national tour that Mirvish Productions will bring to Toronto in April 2009.
"It worries me a bit," he confesses, "that I'll be doing the same show over and over again for so long, but I'm sure it will help me grow.
"My fantasy is to be considered by people as a multi-faceted entertainer and human being who has something to give to the world."
And if he's gone this far before his 21st birthday, that fantasy has a very good chance of becoming reality.