For Dante Sciarra it was tough getting noticed in the box office of Trinity Repertory Company. Especially if you hoped to become a big-time dancer. Now, if the folks at Trinity look across town this week to the Providence Performing Arts Center they’ll find Dante on stage, a member of the ensemble, but in the engaging role of the Jury in “Chicago,” which opens tomorrow night.
Born in Providence and raised in Johnston, Sciarra said the dreams he had as a young teen “to land a Broadway gig” are the same dreams he has as a veteran dancer, now 36 – “I still have that dream,”– but now he adds, “either it happens or it doesn’t.”
Beyond Cash Donations: How New Forms of Giving Are Transforming Not-for-Profit Accounting
Evolving Funding Landscape for Not-for-Profits Not-for-profit organizations are being asked to do more with less,…
Learn More
The doesn’t comes along with being 36 and at a level in his career where he’s now in his second touring show, when the kicks might not be as high as they once were, but when the body still has a lot of life left.
”These 18, 19, 20 year olds have to know they have a lot of work to do,” Sciarra said. “There are a lot of 30 somethings who still have a lot of kick out there. We might not be able to kick as high, but we still have a lot of kick out there.”
It’s been a long road for Sciarra from his graduation at Johnston High School in 1982 to what his dreams told him would be an instantly successful theatrical career in New York City. “I came right to New York and tried to do what all of us in this profession try to do – audition and land jobs and work,” he said. “It wasn’t happening, so I moved back home.”
A couple of years later it was back to New York for two years and another try at regular work, and then back home where he spent nine years at Theater By The Sea, working up from the ensemble to roles like Don Lockwood in “Singing in the Rain.”
In his third stint in New York – with lots of stops in between – he considers himself “very fortunate to be a working New York actor, which is something that is rare. When I say that I mean I’m able to pay my rent and feed myself, without having a survival job, like waiting on tables.”
Along the way there was that stint in Trinity’s box office. And, for the record, Oskar Eustis, Trinity artistic director, said that since Dante emerged from the box office onto the stage, Trinity has twice offered him roles that Dante said he turned down because he was working elsewhere at the time.
He has been in the ensemble of “Sunset Boulevard” with Petula Clark and at regional theater from Theater by The Sea to the Goodspeed Opera House in Connecticut.
But not much in Rhode Island, with the exception of Theater By The Sea and the occasional tour that stops at PPAC.
Sciarra said there are few opportunities for actors in Rhode Island, particularly when it comes to musicals. Sciarra’s training and career has taken a path in song and dance, and even at Trinity, Eustis said, the opportunities for such roles are infrequent.
“To the degree you want to get to the next level you do need to move ‘outside Providence’,” Sciarra said, playing off the name of the film in which he played a disco dancer. “What the mayor is doing with the performing arts is wonderful, but you’ve got New York, Connecticut and it seems things have skipped Rhode Island and gone right to Boston.”
Sciarra said there’s Trinity, the hugely successful repertory company that primarily presents dramas and comedies, and Theater By The Sea, a summer theater that presents a variety of productions, most of them musicals.
He now dreams of the day when he can have a place in New York, where he can go when he has work there, but live in Rhode Island, and find work there as well. “For me, if I had the opportunities to be home and work at home, I would not be here in New York paying the rent that I pay.”
But for now, Sciarra confines his visits to Rhode Island for family matters and the occasional road show that stops at PPAC (he was here for ”
Sunset Boulevard” as well). But this trip really combines the two.
He was back in Rhode Island in June for the funeral of his 52-year-old brother. It may have brought a large family closer, eight children (12 if you include stepbrothers and stepsisters), ranging in age from their early 30’s to mid 50’s.
”Definitely it is much more excitement for me to come back there,” Sciarra said. “So much changes so quickly in that state. It is much more exciting for me to come home. I’m doing what I worked and sweated for and for what my family worked and sweated for.”
