Kinky Boots Star Stark Sands Credits Pippin For Helping Him End College in 'An Absolutely Perfect Way'

Valentine’s Day is a yearly celebration of love—so what better way to mark the holiday than by asking stage stars to reminisce about the musical that sparked their love of theater? Read on for a treasure trove of musical memories and inspirational stories from your favorite Broadway actors.


STARK SANDS (Charlie Price in the forthcoming Kinky Boots)

Musical that sparked my love of theater:
I started doing theater in high school, and though The Sound of Music was my first show (as young Kurt "I'm incorrigible" Von Trapp), it was an old videotape of Pippin that hooked me. It was a tape of an ‘80s stage production with Ben Vereen and William Katt, and it was mesmerizing to me.

The closest I came to performing in the musical was:
The stars aligned my senior year at USC, when not only was Pippin selected as the year’s big musical, but I was cast as Pippin alongside my best friend Charl Brown (of Broadway's Motown: The Musical) as the Leading Player. It was an absolutely perfect way to finish off our college experience.

To this day, when I hear or see the show I…
...get goosebumps and fall into an immediate nostalgia coma. Performing in Pippin was a turning point for me as an actor—it was my first musical lead, so it forced me to be a leader by default. It prepared me, in many ways, for the path that I'm now on. I have nothing but great memories from the production and they all come back when I hear the music.

The most memorable production I’ve seen of the musical is:
I got to see Jeff Calhoun's brilliant L.A. production in 2009, which incorporated deaf actors using American Sign Language. Pippin was played (and signed) by Ty Giordano and voiced by Michael Arden. I'd never seen anything like it—both actors utilized their talents to tell the story simultaneously, and for a musical that is acknowledged from the start as a performance troupe putting on a spectacle ("..Sit where everybody can see!..."), it worked perfectly.

My dream cast of a Broadway revival would star:
You can't do much better than Diane Paulus, Patina Miller and MJT! Cannot wait to see it—I'll be able to catch an early preview before our performance schedules become identical. So excited to be a part of the same season.

Click here for other theater stars' Showmance stories.