Wheaton native pulls on 'Dreamcoat' yet again
When Wheaton native Brian Bohr was only 6 years old, he saw Donny Osmond playing Joseph at the Chicago Theatre in the musical "Joseph and The Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat." Bohr didn't know it at the time, but he was looking at his future.
Bohr has played Joseph three times in his short performing life, twice in the past year. This fall he appeared as Joseph in a production at the Paramount Theatre in Aurora. And now he has the same role in a production at the Marriott Theatre for Young Audiences in Lincolnshire.
"I also played Joseph my senior year in high school at Wheaton Warrenville South High School," Bohr says. "I love this show. It never gets old."
Bohr started doing theater in the seventh grade, when he tried out for the school basketball team and didn't make it. "My mom was like 'See if there is something you can fill your time with'," Bohr says, adding he tried out for a school production of Tom Sawyer. "I had this little itty bitty role, but it was fun."
In the eighth grade, Bohr played the lead in "The Music Man" and was hooked. Flash forward eight years to 2012, and we find Bohr just finishing up his senior year at Northwestern, majoring in theater, with a minor concentration in musical theater.
Not that Bohr has had a lot of time to savor his senior year, what with playing the lead in two professional productions of Joseph.
"It has been very crazy," Bohr says, "but I have very nice professors who have been able to make this work into the schedule."
Certainly it has been a challenge appearing in two completely different productions of the same show in two completely different theaters. The Paramount is a traditional old-school stage, and the Marriott is an in-the-round space, with audience members on all four sides of the performing area.
"I have never done anything in the round before," Bohr says. "It is amazing! And so much fun, though it is tricky. We come in through the aisles, and in the dark everything looks kind of the same. At one entrance I put the (coat) on and start spinning around. Once I spun around and when I stopped I thought, 'I have no idea where I am.'"
He laughs, and then continues. "Still it is so thrilling to have the audience on all sides of you. There is no room to hide. You are completely exposed. It is very real. And having a narrator in the show raises the level of audience/actor connection. That is what is so great about live theater."
Bohr's family has been very supportive of his stage ambitions, even though he is the only theatrically inclined person in his family.
"I am the black sheep in the family," he says, "My sister is a guidance counselor and my brother is in finance. But you know, my parents are very personable people. And that is all acting is about - the human connection and telling a story."
The Old Testament story of "Joseph," sold into slavery by his jealous brothers only to rise to a position of power in Egypt, keeps drawing Bohr back, as does the music of Andrew Lloyd Webber.
"The music is so great," Bohr says. "And the story is applicable to everyone. It reaches everybody, and I love the lessons the show teaches about forgiveness and redemption and humility and humanity."
What has Bohr learned from Joseph? "I have learned to just let no preconceived ideas about the character or the play influence how I play him now," he says. "It has to be new every single time I play him. I can't think about how I played Joseph last fall. Or how I remember Donny Osmond playing him. I have to make it completely new."
“Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat”
Location: Marriott Theatre, 10 Marriott Drive, Lincolnshire, (847) 634-0200 or marriotttheatre.com
Showtimes: Mostly 10 a.m. Tuesday through Saturday, with extra performances the week of March 26 and no performances March 6 and April 1-12. Runs through May 12.
Tickets: $15