(upbeat electric guitar)
Hi, I'm Richard H. Blake.
I'm currently starring as Lorenzo
in A Bronx Tale: The Musical
and we're gonna talk about my resume today.
So what I love about Bronx Tale
is that it's my first father role on stage
and being a father in real life now
is the best thing that's ever happened to me
so getting the chance to play a dad
and a dad that I would aspire to be
is really fun.
It's that transition in life that happens
plus I just love the message of the show.
It's about family.
It's about following your heart
and the choices we make in this life.
(upbeat rock music)
I was running down from my dressing room one day
for the court room scene at the end of the show
right before Gay or European
and I was feeling particularly spriteful that day
so I was like bouncing down the stairs
and there's an overhang, it's like a cement overhang,
and I was just like jumping down from flight to flight
and I literally jumped, smacked into the concrete overhang.
So I smacked my head hard
and I was like (grunt) but then I continued to go down
and I was like ow, ow,
and I got on stage and we're behind the desk
and it comes rolling on and I turn over
and I look over at Kate Shindle
and she looks at me and she's like,
just like blood just like starts dripping down my face.
Don't jump down stairs, kids.
It's not safe.
One night in the second act,
I come running on with the gun
and I'm like, who goes there?
And as I run on and I like, land,
the power blows.
Like, Rent power blows.
And come to find out there was a fire
a couple of blocks away
and it blew up a transformer.
It knocked out the power for like eight city blocks.
And so we waited and it was like a good 20-25 minutes
before they realized they weren't gonna get the power back
so instead of just ending the experience there,
they decided they were gonna roll out a piano on stage
and have Elphaba and Glinda sing For Good for the audience
just with a piano, no mics, we had no power, this and that
and all the crew got flashlights and came on stage
and stood there and lit them with flashlights.
And we were done so we got changed
and we all went out into the audience
and watched it and this is a huge, massive theater
and everyone held up their phones to light up the theater
in the audience
and it was so quiet
that in this massive theater with no amplification
you could hear Elphaba and Glinda crystal clear.
It was so powerful
and it was such a, I think, an amazing evening
for the audience and such a cool sort of experience.
(electric guitar riff)
Tommy Devito is one of my favorite roles I've played to date
but when you forget lines as Tommy Devito,
and I'm not saying that that happens, but it may,
it's a tough thing because Tommy Devito
doesn't really do anything but talk the whole show.
So if you drop some things here and there,
you kind of mess up the rest of the cast
and they all just sort of look at you
like uh, where are we supposed to go with that dude?
(happy rock music)
One of the great things about that show
is I got to dance and sing.
It was one of like the last dance shows I did
or have done and it had big kicks in it,
kicks that I could not do anymore.
Back then I could kick my face.
It was fun until you rip your pants
when you kick your face
and then you've gotta turn upstage
with your butt facing the audience
but your pants from where your belt loop starts
all the way down to about the middle of your thigh
is completely open.
You have to reevaluate the choreography.
(happy rock music)
It was my first walk into Shakespeare
and I got to get stabbed in the back every night
with a real knife so that was cool.
You're like, how did that happen?
I had this back plate that they built.
They plastered my back and built this plate
with this huge piece of foam on it like this thick
because they used a real knife when I died
and in the fight scene, in the scene,
they literally would take a knife
and stick it in my back
and then I crawled to my mom
with the knife sticking out of my back.
I mean, that was kind of cool.
(upbeat electronic music)
We lasted five shows, five performances
but I am still the youngest person
to have their name above the title in a Broadway show
because of it so thank you for that.
And at the time I was offered the opportunity
to be on the Mickey Mouse Club
when the show, when Prince of Central Park
was coming to Broadway,
and they flew me down to Florida.
I had to meet with Michael Eisner
who was the head of Disney at the time
and had this great contract offered to me and all this
and so we get done and my dad turned to me
and he goes, so what do you want to do?
And I said I want to do the Broadway show
and he was like really?
So I did this Broadway show
that really was one of the best experiences of my life
even thought it was a huge flop.
You have to have those.
That's a full career when you have those.
You learn so much from those experiences
and so much about this business from those experiences
and they replaced me on the Mickey Mouse Club
when they had to find who with a couple of guys
named Justin Timberlake and Ryan Gosling.
So everybody wins.
(upbeat rock music)
So when I first started Rent I was covering Mark and Roger.
I'm on stage.
I'm Roger, I'm sitting on the table,
waiting for Out Tonight to start,
and I'm facing stage right.
So I'm facing stage right, can't see anything else,
literally sitting Indian-style, this and that.
Out Tonight starts.
A girl who was on for Mimi that day,
when she went to do one of the moves,
she fell over the railing
and was literally hanging on by like her toes.
Like she put her foot around it
like a circus performer.
The audience is gasping.
People are, I have no idea what's going on, right?
Because she never missed a beat.
Erica Munoz, that's her name.
And she was amazing that she did not fall, thankfully.
She ended up pulling herself back up
but literally people were running down the aisles
like they were gonna run up and catch her
and I'm just sitting there like this.
Because I had no idea.
She comes in, find out later
that she almost plunged like 30 feet to her death.
And I'm really glad that didn't happen.
Hey, so those were some stories from my resume.
Come check me out in A Bronx Tale: The Musical
at the Longacre Theater.
(upbeat piano music)