Get Tickets to THE PROM: www.broadway.com/shows/prom/
Tony nominee and comedic genius Brooks Ashmanskas discusses starring in THE PROM as actor-turned-do-gooder Barry Glickman and more.
Here are some of the must-read highlights:
ON PERFORMING IN THE PROM
“It’s wonderful. It’s a great group of people, which is the most important part. It’s a great piece. I’m so glad people are responding to it in a positive way because I really love it. We’ve been working on it a long time. It’s thrilling to go to work every day. It’s not like work. It’s like recess."
ON HIS "DISGUSTING" LAST NAME
“It’s a nightmare. I went into audition for The Producers way back when. Literally, Mel Brooks was like, ‘Your name! I love the first name. The last name is disgusting!’ He was right! He was absolutely right. If I were to change it, I would make it into like Brooks Glitterati. Something fun!”
ON WHAT HE LOVES MOST ABOUT PLAYING BARRY
“It’s a pleasure to play a more fully realized human being. I think there’s nothing wrong with being funny or making people laugh. There should be more of that. I’m pleased that people sometimes find me funny. But in a really wacky, crazy character, if you can find one moment of a little humanity, it makes all the funny stuff even funnier and also deeper on the other end. This part really offers quite a few opportunities for that. It’s lovely.”
ON HIS REAL PROM DATES
“I went to both my junior and senior prom with friends. I went to my junior prom with my friend Kelly Jones. She was a great pal of mine-beautiful blonde. She was the most beautiful, and I wore a dinner jacket and tried to look like James Bond and didn’t. I went to my senior prom my friend Valerie Kline. We were in a show together.”
ON HONING HIS FAMILY FUNNY BONE
“When I showed interest in the theater at a very young age, they leapt on that. My father was wildly funny. My parents were both funny. Mom was pretty direct funny. She was a teacher when I was younger, and then when I went to college, she opened up her own florist shop: The Enchanted Florist. I call her The Enchantress. Dad was very dry. He was a federal judge. They were wildly smart people. The dinner table-my brother is very funny. My sister is very funny. I’m the youngest, so I would sit and listen to them and try to figure out what my in was. I was probably four or five years old, and I remember-because my family was so funny and their friends were funny-I can remember sitting around the campfire and I took over the conversation with some bad impression I was doing.”
ON COMING OUT TO HIS PARENTS AT A YOUNG AGE
“I came out to my parents when I was very young. My father, being a judge, he had a stenographer who was gay. He and his boyfriend would come over for dinner. My mother, being the sweetest woman, would sit the three of us kids down and say, ‘They’re like your father and I. They’re just both men.’ I apparently said, ‘Oh, like me.’ My parents were stunning people. They made it very easy for me.”
ON WHAT HE WANTS TO BE WHEN HE GROWS UP
“I’d like to own a nice bed or breakfast in Maine or somewhere in New England and grow tomatoes and be away. I could do that a couple of days a week. I’d like to find that balance as I get older.”