Broadway star, IU alumna Nicole Parker mentors students at IU Department of Theatre and Drama
Nicole Parker has a really good memory.
During a visit back to her Indiana University alma mater in late March, the Emmy Award-winning comedian entered a classroom at the Lee Norvelle Theatre and Drama Center in jeans and sneakers to conduct the first of two master classes with current IU musical theater students.
Broadway star Nicole Parker, formerly of MADtv, paid a visit to her alma mater, the IU Department of Theatre and Drama, to work with current musical theater students.
She started by asking each student to share their name and favorite musical -- then demonstrated her amazing powers of recollection by reciting the 20 plus names back perfectly in reverse order (only Francesca Arogstegui, a late arrival, threw her off. Parker mistakenly called her "Gretchen" for most of the class, much to the delight of Francesca's classmates).
Parker graduated from the IU Department of Theatre and Drama in 2000 and went on to perform at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival and Second City in Chicago, later appearing on the Fox sketch comedy show "MADtv" (2003-2009), where she developed a cult following with her parodies of celebrities such as Jessica Simpson, Ellen DeGeneres and Amy Winehouse. She has appeared in films including the parody movie Meet the Spartans (2008) and Judd Apatow's Funny People (2009) and starred in Broadway's Wicked as the green-faced witch Elphaba.
With her former instructor Ray Fellman at the piano, Parker invited the students in the "T300: The Great American Songbook" class (team-taught by Fellman and Terry LaBolt) to share the song they'd been working on.
First to volunteer was Matt Birdsong, clad in a Star Trek T-shirt and Nike shorts. He did a nice performance of the humorous song "I Love to Singa," by Harold Arlen and E.Y. Harburg, ending with a final, campy "ta-da" gesture, arms spread wide. Parker said that the final movement encapsulated the over-the-top feeling he should bring to the entire piece.
"I think you should be in your body 100 percent," she said, asking Birdsong to bring his shoulders down and breathe. "I want to see that singing makes you the happiest person in the world. Try moving around a bit. You sound fantastic singing it -- just let it be a release; have as much fun as you can. You have great energy; I'm just trying to get it to come out more."
She suggested Birdsong take a breath 16 measures into the song and spread his arms wide to express his sheer joy, making it almost uncomfortable for the audience.
Birdsong applied all of her suggestions in his next attempt, inspiring a standing ovation from Parker and cheers from his classmates. "That was awesome," she said. "I feel like I just believe it that much more."
Nicole Parker reacts to a student's performance in the class "T300: The Great American Songbook," during her late-March visit to IU.
Next, Cosmo Clemens sang Louis Armstrong's "Sweet Georgia Brown" with such a campy ferocity, Parker asked him what the song was about in his mind. "I picture it as . . . I am the slut. It's my Sasha Fierce," joked Clemens, referring to pop singer Beyonce's alter ego. Parker urged him not to leave the interpretation at a surface parody and pressed him further on the origins of Georgia's aggression.
"I'm going to go the exact opposite of what we just did (with "I Love to Singa")," she said. "Because you're so physical, I want you to try being a little more coy. Make us have to work for it. Just flash a little leg, do a little shoulder--don't give it to us all at once. There can be more power in stillness."
For C.J. Pawlikowski, who sang the ballad "I Thought About You" by Jonny Mercer, Parker suggested he try singing the oft-repeated line "I thought about you" with a different emotion each time, all the while stealing frequent looks at his cell phone to see if the girl he was thinking of had called yet.
To bring more emotion to the ballad "The Very Thought of You," by Nat King Cole, Parker suggested Ryan Dooley undo the laces on his shoes and act so distracted by his love that he spent the whole song trying unsuccessfully to tie them. "It's all very day dreamy, very Lloyd Dobler," she said, catching herself in an '80s movie reference (Say Anything, starring John Cusack). "Anyone know who Lloyd Dobler is? John Cusack? 'Oh, that's that old guy my parents like,'" she joked.
Francesca-Gretchen Arostegui got up to sing "These Foolish Things," finally correcting Parker about her name. Parker laughed at her mistake. "This is Francesca, not Gretchen, you guys, so stop calling her Gretchen!" After the first run-through of the song, Parker suggested Arostegui look through a folder and pretend to be paging through a photo album while thinking of the one she loves.
During a brief Q-and-A session at the end of the class, one student asked if there were any classes Parker wished she had taken at IU ("yoga"). "The one thing I would say is a minor in anthropology or sociology. It couldn't be better for a performer, the study of human beings," she said, mentioning that among her favorite classes was a sociology course that broke down physical and verbal communication cues from scenes in movies.
Finally, there was time for only one more question. "Would you sing for us?" asked a student.
The class was rewarded with a song from Parker's cheeky one-woman musical, Suitcase Full of Lies, inspired by an (inadvertently) hilarious one-woman show by Suzanne Somers that Parker had seen.
In Suitcase Full of Lies, Parker takes on the persona of Jillane Jenkins, an aging actress from the fictitious 1970s sitcom "She's Got a Job!" who has written a musical that helps her deal with the painful childhood memory of . . . her father's eczema. After reciting a few of the show's memorable lines -- "Daddy was never the same again, and neither was I, or things" -- Parker left the group with a Halloween-themed song from the play.
While Parker-as-Jillane Jenkins whole-heartedly belted lines like "Eczema . . . it's the end of ya . . ." and "That night behind locked doors I counted my tears instead of my candy" the students and faculty present shook with laughter until it was time to say their goodbyes and file out, humming and chatting, to find their next class.
This story was originally published May 6, 2010.
