Zazz Queen Angie Schworer Steps Into the Spotlight in The Prom

“I get to do everything that I do. A little dance, a little acting, a little singing, a little bit of zazz.”

Angie Schworer is talking about Angie, her featured role in the well-loved new musical comedy The Prom on the latest episode of the new Broadway.com show Front Row. Angie, the character, is a Broadway hoofer with a lot of cred and an ability to add some spark to a situation (aka “Zazz,” her big Act Two number.) The same description applies to Angie, the Broadway star.

This break, perhaps the biggest in Schworer’s 27-year Broadway career, came courtesy of The Prom director/choreographer Casey Nicholaw, who called the character “Angie” after Schworer during the show’s development before actually offering her the gig. Having first met as chorus kids in Crazy For You, Nicholaw is one of many powerful showbiz friends and supporters; she met Jerry Mitchell on her first Broadway show and went on to work as his assistant on The Rocky Horror Show and one of his high-flying Pam Am girls in Catch Me If You Can and Susan Stroman kept her dancing for years. (“And I tell her every time I see her,” Schworer says.)

It was Stroman that gave Schworer a job in the ensemble of The Producers in 2001, and the opportunity to understudy Cady Huffman in the female lead of bombshell Swedish secretary Ulla. When the sensation hit the road, Schworer got the role, and then wound up replacing Huffman on Broadway, where she played out the show’s final four years opposite countless Bialystocks and Blooms. “I would still be doing it to this day if my body could,” she laughs. “But those splits get harder as you get older!”

Schworer began studying dance near her childhood home at the Ziegler Studio of Dance in Covington, Kentucky—“half hour of tap, half hour ballet, half hour jazz.” Mostly she was interested in gymnastics and cheerleading until she landed the role of Lois Lane in Kiss Me, Kate at Northern Kentucky University. After school, she worked at Walt Disney World, MGM Studios and as an actual Atlantic City showgirl before making her debut in The Will Rogers Follies. “Tommy Tune liked me,” she shares. “Cy Coleman wished I sang better, but they still hired me. Always something, right?”

Eleven shows later, Schworer is back to living full-time in Manhattan with second husband Richard Bird after a New Jersey sojourn to raise Bird’s kids. Although she realizes jobs in the ensemble are less likely in the future, she keeps a positive outlook on her career. “I’m not worried,” she says. “I never worried about that part. I just sort of took it, you know? Scrappy Angie just sort of took its it came, so I’m going to continue doing that.”

Mostly, she can’t believe her luck landing the role of a lifetime at this stage in her career. “Getting to take over for Ulla was a big, big, big deal,” she remembers. “This is otherworldly. I don’t really know how to put it into words. If you would have told that little Kentucky girl that was doing round-off back handsprings down the hallway that there was going to be a role on Broadway [for her] that was called Angie? I wouldn’t have believed it.”

Watch Broadway.com's Front Row segment on Schworer

Photos by Caitlin McNaney for Broadway.com | Styling: Sarah Slutsky | Hair: Morgan Blaul | Makeup: Rachel Estabrook | Video Directed by Alexander Goyco | Produced by Paul Wontorek | Location: Manhattan Cricket Club