After receiving her business degree years ago, Gwen Stewart assumed that by now she'd be busy climbing the corporate ladder. Instead, she's reprising her role as Mrs. Jefferson/ "Seasons of Love" soloist in the musical Rent: The Broadway Tour.
Stewart got started in show business by "kind of a fluke," she says. "I met a woman ... who found out I could sing ... and she kind of dared me to go on an audition. I took her up on it, and got the gig."
Stewart (seen below in front and at left) continued to go on auditions and get more gigs, including roles in The Wiz and the Tony-nominated Big River, as well as TV shows Charmed, All My Children and 24.
But she says Rent, which is at the Auditorium Theatre from Tuesday, April 21, to Sunday, April 26, is "by far one of my favorite shows I've ever done and probably will ever do" because of the positive effect it has on audiences.
We had a chance to speak with Stewart from her hotel room in Chicago about the play's initial run and how it feels to take on the character again.
How did it feel when Rent first exploded in popularity 13 years ago, winning the Tony Award and Pulitzer Prize?
It was bittersweet because we lost Jonathan [Larson, Rent's writer and composer] before our first public performance, so that was heartbreaking and surreal. But we continued, and it just kind of snowballed into this amazing thing and ended up going to Broadway.
Do you play the role any differently than you did during the play's initial run?
There's always the differences ... I'm 13 years older [laughs]. And you're always looking for new nuances and ways to step it up and be different. But the characters are the characters, and you play those characters honestly.
What do you love about the show?
The thing for me is seeing how it's changed the lives of so many people because the themes of Rent are varied — there are themes of friendship and family and community, and you love and you lose. ... There are a lot of subjects that people don't want to deal with on a daily basis — homosexuality, lesbianism, homelessness, drug abuse — and I feel like this show keeps these issues at the forefront without banging you on the head, and I think that's what good entertainment does.
