Derek St. Pierre on His Wild Ride From Student to Rock of Ages Scene-Stealer

Age: 21

Hometown: Pittsburgh, PA

Currently: Making his Broadway debut (and splitting sides) as Spandex-clad, candy-loving German sweetie-pie Franz in the outrageous 80s rock comedy Rock of Ages.

All in the Family: For St. Pierre, a path to the stage was paved (before he was born) when mom Venise, a draper and costumer, married dad Norman, a tech-theater whiz and props master at Carnegie Mellon University, back in 1981 in true theatrical style. “They met doing a show in Pittsburgh,” St. Pierre explains, “and had their wedding party at the theater. Which probably explains a lot about me!” The younger of two biological children, the future actor wasn’t the only one to inherit his parents’ artistic streak: big brother Chris is now a muralist and set designer, while foster brother Vinnie is a writer. St. Pierre describes life among his creative clan as eclectic: “It’s enough to grow up with two theater parents, but they’d also take on crazy odd jobs, like building parade floats or making puppets. I didn’t realize this was weird until I started bringing friends home. They’d go, ‘What is all this stuff?’ I mean, we have a 15-foot giraffe in our front hallway. There’s props everywhere. It looks like a funhouse.”

Backstage Baby: Fittingly, St. Pierre grew up behind the scenes. “Most of my childhood memories are in a theater somewhere, especially the Public Theater in Pittsburgh, where my mother was working, and at Carnegie Mellon with my dad," he recalls. "I was an adorable [kid]. The stage manager would let me run around and knock on all the actors’ doors for their five-minute warnings.” By age six, St. Pierre had graduated from honorary production assistant to stage player. “Any time they needed a ‘kid’ for the shows at Carnegie, my parents nominated me, with my consent. But let the record show that my first real performance, where I was cast and not volunteered, was in kindergarten—I played a bunny rabbit.”

Star Pupil: By fourth grade, St. Pierre decided to go pro. “I wanted to do it for real, not just fun. I picked out a local performing arts middle school and high school, a conservatory, everything. I had a plan,” he says with a laugh. While ambitious for a nine-year-old, the plan played out. By college St. Pierre found himself studying musical theater at Boston Conservatory…where Rock of Ages found him during a senior year audition workshop with New York’s Telsey Casting. St. Pierre was given sides from a hit Broadway tuner featuring 80s rock songs: “I didn’t know the show at all—hadn’t seen it, hadn’t heard of it, didn’t know the soundtrack. It wasn’t the kind of show I would have ever seen myself in.” The casting agent disagreed. “She had me read for the role of [over-the-top German scene-stealer] Franz. When I was done she said, ‘You know, you could actually play that.’ It was nice to hear, but I knew she wasn’t going to cast a college student that day, so I forgot about it.”

Right Out of the Gate: Broadway didn’t forget. Two weeks later, the casting agent dialed St. Pierre for a formal audition to replace Rock of Ages’ departing Franz, Tom Lenk. “It was my first real audition. But there were also 16 other boys who looked just like me, who I thought were better. I walked away feeling it was a great experience and not much else.” He didn’t walk far: “I was about to catch a bus back to Boston when they called and made me an offer. I freaked out on the corner of 79th and Broadway. I mean, screaming!” Ten weeks shy of graduating, St. Pierre had just six days to get permission from Boston Conservatory to finish school from Broadway (they agreed), pack and move to New York before beginning rehearsals, a whirlwind the performer still finds dizzying. “I expected to graduate, pound the pavement, audition like crazy and maybe dance in a Broadway ensemble,” he admits. “To have a role land in my lap while I was in school is nuts.”

Rock and Rolling: St. Pierre thanks his castmates for making the transition from student to star as painless as possible. “The longest run of a show I’ve ever done is four weeks. Doing eight shows a week for three months on Broadway is the ultimate learning experience,” he says. One of the biggest on-the-job skills he’s learned? Rolling with the punches. “During one show in my first month, electrical problems delayed the second act for almost 90 minutes. Everyone pow-wowed and found a way to make sure the audience enjoyed themselves—some actors did a live Q&A on stage. Joel, our guitarist, did an acoustic set with Constantine [Maroulis] and cast members singing. When the problem was fixed, we got right back into character and continued the show. It was a reminder that live theater isn’t perfect, but you get through even the rough stuff. I’ll never forget that.”