Ivory-Tickler Santino Fontana Shares His Low-Key Earnest Lodgings

Santino Fontana may currently be treading the boards as rakish Algernon Moncrieff in the Oscar Wilde classic The Importance of Being Earnest, but the man himself is far more laid back than his dandy of a character. Backstage at the American Airlines Theatre, Fontana focuses on staying in tip-top performance shape with tongue twisters and throat drops at the ready alongside a remedy for stage time spent in painful heeled shoes. With music close at hand (no surprise, with Billy Elliot and Sunday in the Park with George among his Broadway credits), Fontana makes sure it isn’t all work and no play! Read on to take a look at what keeps him ticking, both on stage and off.

Photo by Jenny Anderson for Broadway.com


“These are the things that make me talk the way Algernon does, because I don't talk like him at all. Our vocal coach Liz Smith gave us these tongue twisters, and this is a book from school that I thought I would never use again.”

“This is a book Rosemarie Tichler put together, called Actors at Work. It has interviews with great actors, so whenever I think, 'I don't know how to do that!' I read this book and it tells me how.”

“I roll these balls around on my back because I wear a lot of shoes with heels, and my back hurts. They’re not just balls—they’re magic balls [laughs]. I didn't say that!”

“Ricola, of course. Because they keep my throat lubricated.”

“There’s a piano upstairs that I play to blow off steam before or between shows, and I use this fake book. It's like a jazz musician’s bible.”