Coby Getzug as Moritz
Photo: Andy Snow
Coby Getzug is having a pretty exciting season. The 18-year old actor has gone from doing an Equity 99-seat production of Big the Musical for West Coast Ensemble to the Broadway revival of Brighton Beach Memoirs to The Lieutenant of Inishmore at the Ahmanson, all in the span of a year and a half.
He's back in Los Angeles this week playing Moritz in the national touring production of Spring Awakening at the Pantages February 8-13 and thrilled to be doing what he loves.
Coby, what is it like being out on your first national tour and performing in your home town again?
It's so exciting. All week I've been getting phone calls and text messages and emails from people saying that they're coming to see the show. Most of my family is in LA so my parents have friends coming, and my grandparents have friends coming. And I'm super excited to show my cast LA because half of them have never been here before. It's going to be a really great week.
I first saw you in West Coast Ensemble's Big the Musical and you've been pretty busy jumping back and forth from coast to coast since.
Yeah, I did Big the summer before my senior year and then a couple weeks after the show closed, I found out I got cast in the Broadway revival of Brighton Beach Memoirs so I actually spent the first semester of my senior year in New York. Then I came back to LACSA (LA County High School for the Arts) for second semester, did Inishmore at the Ahmanson over the summer and now this. It's been a really crazy year and a half.
Is LACSA where you received most of your training?
During high school I didn't really have time for many outside classes because the way the school is set up is kind of like a college conservatory. You have academic classes in the morning until lunchtime and then you have arts classes after lunch until 4:00. It's split up into four different arts disciplines and I was in theatre so I had five different theatre classes that rotated throughout the week. I also worked with The Children's Theatre Group of Southern California and took classes at the Adderley School, which is another children's theatre group in the Palisades.
Where did you audition for the Spring Awakening tour?
A lot of the cast members had auditioned before but I was never old enough. I just turned 18 last March and I was in New York City looking at colleges when my agent called. He said they were having auditions for the new tour and asked if I wanted to audition. Of course! I went in for the audition and was planning on flying home the next day. They called me that day and told me they wanted me to come back a few days later and so I ended up staying for 4 or 5 more days. A week later I got a phone call that I was cast.
How many callbacks did you have to go through?
I had my first audition, which was for the director and the casting directors, then I had a work session, and then I had a final callback, so it was really quick.
Had you seen the show before you auditioned?
I saw the original production on Broadway with the original cast and I was completely blown away. I think I was 15, but at that time it was so far away that I never thought that I would ever be a part of it. Then later I saw the first national tour when it came to the Ahmanson. So to be in it now is a dream come true.
What kind of preparation did you do for the role once you were cast?
Our director, Lucy Skilbeck, was the associate director with Michael Mayer in London so she used a lot of Michael's methods. One of the first things she had us do was read the original Frank Wedekind play, which was a huge help in understanding the characters and the world they came from. We also had our own individual research projects looking up different aspects of life in the 1890s. For me it was attitudes on suicide in that time period - the German view of it as well as the religious viewpoint. So that definitely helped a lot.
Did you find out anything in the research that surprised you?
Nothing surprised me that much, but it's interesting to see how so many similar viewpoints then are still the viewpoints now, and how attitudes on topics like homosexuality, abortion, and suicide in the 1800s are the same today. That's why I think the show will always remain relevant because there are always going to be teens that are going through those things and there will always be people around them who have those attitudes. I think that's one of the huge strengths of the show because it deals with issues that kids go through everyday.
