Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf?

It's a pretty typical storyline: boy meets girl, boy courts girl, boy slips arm around girl's waist, girl cuts boy off.  Hey, wait a minute!  That's not how the story goes.  Que pasa, Jedi Spaccarelli?

The exercise was supposed to be about acting while singing, about bringing emotional intensity to a musical performance.  Things started off well.  Allie, although understudying for Ciara Jacobi, was doing a great job, singing the song.  Matt Rogers performed his part with typical aplomb.  But then something went terribly wrong.  When Matt slipped his arm around Allie's waist, she stiffened like the Washington Monument, thrust her hip into his thigh, and looked away . . . affecting the dreaded Triple Cut-Off.

When questioned about her acting technique, the only thing she could mutter was, "But it's Matt."  And so it always seems.  Several actors in the Broadway Knights Theatre Academy shout "Nyahh" for no other reason than Matt.  Alyssa Holston delivers her lines like she's trying to beat Animal Kingdom to the Kentucky Derby finish line because of Matt.  BKTA actors exhibit Matt-Mouth because of . . . well, I imagine that, by now, the reader can infer the answer.

To test this theory, Yoda did an improv acting exercise to ascertain whether anyone could act in Mister Rogers' Neighborhood.  The results?  With the exception of Ciara- acting under her stage name, Clara Jacobo, and, to be fair, delivering lines from Market Street Blues- every other actor approached the stage with fear and trepidation.  Perhaps Taylor Jester summed it up best, when she said, "But it's Matt."

"Good thing, it is, that a renaissance man, Mister Rogers is: an actor, a writer, a director," Yoda said of the young Jedi.  "A true asset, he is, and will be, in the dramatic arts, as learn, he continues to do."  But, as Yoda says,  there's one role even the uber-talented Mister Rogers can't pull off, a role owned by his equally talented best buddy and fellow BKTA renaissance person, Joanie Shinn.  Try as he might, Matt will never look as beautiful as Jack, in a black dress and heels.