Acting quest leads Elk Grove Village native to 'Spamalot'

Joe Bianco was wearing high heels, a dress and makeup when he got the call telling him he'd been cast as King Arthur in the musical "Spamalot" at the Metropolis Performing Arts Centre in Arlington Heights.

"I was way over in the corner of a bar when I got the call," Bianco said. "It was kind of strange."

Bianco was not talking about his attire, which he was wearing for his role as a cabaret entertainer in Strawdog Theatre's production of "Bent." After that extremely sober drama, about gay men in a Nazi concentration camp, a daffy Monty Python musical proved to be almost cathartic for the Elk Grove Village native.

"The singing isn't demanding," said Bianco, 27. "The acting isn't demanding. But it's tiring. Musicals are tiring."

This particular musical comes fraught with potential peril, too - mainly audience expectations from watching old Monty Python comedies (particularly "Monty Python and the Holy Grail") and seeing Tim Curry perform King Arthur during the original runs of "Spamalot."

"He's brilliant," Bianco said of Curry. "All he had to do to get applause was walk on stage. He's an icon."

"We wanted to make this production our own," Bianco said. "But we had to remember the world in which these jokes live, instead of telling these jokes the same way they were told before."

Bianco, a graduate of James B. Conant High School in Hoffman Estates, majored in acting at downstate Millikin University.

"I wasn't good at much else," he confessed. "Growing up, I did sports and stuff, but I was never any good at them. I never had any talent for them. Then it boiled down to just happiness."

Bianco graduated in 2010, then held down several jobs while waiting for his acting career to take root. He worked as a porter for a rent-a-car company, a personal assistant, a children's theater coach and a marketing phone bank operator.

Then, an epiphany hit him between the eyes on New Year's Day 2013.

"I woke up that morning and I decided that I was done with retail and having part-time jobs I didn't like anyway," Bianco said. "To be honest, the fear of getting a regular daytime job was far more motivational than the fear of being poor. It was fun to finally be good at something, and that made the other jobs seem like wasted efforts."

Bianco had saved enough money to give him a year, maybe two to launch a full-time acting career in the Windy City.

Financially, he broke even in 2013. Then, a real break came his way when he discovered the world of voice-overs. Most were for regional advertising campaigns.

By the end of 2014, he started booking commercial voice-overs almost every month.

So, Bianco converted his Chicago apartment closet into a makeshift sound studio. He installed a shelf, gutted the rest of the space, then placed blankets over the walls with an additional layer of egg cartons and even some professional soundproofing foam.

"I haven't quite figured out the air flow issue," he admitted. "It gets really warm in there during the summer."

"Spamalot" isn't Bianco's first role at Metropolis. In fact, he starred there when he was just 18 as Stanley, the older brother in the comedy "Brighton Beach Memoirs."

His resume also includes a number of shows at Chicago Shakespeare Theater, including "The Merry Wives of Windsor" and "Othello: The Remix."

Bianco credits his parents, Roger and Laura Bianco of Elk Grove Village, for allowing him to live his dream.

"The thing I appreciated more than anything else was that they are pretty honest and pretty tough with me," he said. "I don't think they would have supported me if they didn't think I could do it."

A few years ago, the Biancos even joined their son on stage for an Elk Grove Village community theater production of "Romeo and Juliet."

So, what does the younger Bianco get out of acting?

"In high school, we'd do shows for only one weekend or two," he said. "We had this great experience to share and then it was over. Then we'd start again. I fell in love with that process.

"In college, I made the realization that I could have a lifetime of those weekends of really hard work and really rewarding experiences, hanging out at the pub with the cast and always meeting new people."

- Dann Gire

• Jamie Sotonoff and Dann Gire want to know about suburbanites with show biz careers. Contact them at jsotonoff@dailyherald.com and dgire@dailyherald.com.

Conant grad thanks his mentors

Elk Grove Village native Joe Bianco has had plenty of mentors. In fact, his list of people to thank for his success as a Chicago actor reads like closing movie credits. It includes:

• The late Jim Hirsh and Barbara Singlemann, Elk Grove Village residents who gave him a love for Shakespeare.

• Conant High School creative writing instructor Christine Gaza, who inspired Bianco by saying, quite seriously, "I never want to go to Chicago and have you wait on my table."

• English teacher Mary K, Albamonte and counselor Dan Detzner, who pushed Bianco to chase his dream.

• Speech coach and math teacher Amar Patel, who urged Bianco to drop his senior-year math class and concentrate on drama.

• Community theater director Rich Geiger, who cast 15-year-old Bianco in his first major play, "American Buffalo."