Jared Bradshaw

Age: 28

Currently: Channeling David Hyde Pierce, Jonathan Groff, John Travolta and more in the long-running satirical revue Forbidden Broadway: The Roast of Utopia.

Hometown: McDonough, Georgia, "30 minutes south of Atlanta."

Thriller! Like many a musical performer, Bradshaw got his start in church, singing behind his Baptist minister dad. "I learned to read music from the four parts in the hymnal," the cheerful, fast-talking actor says. At age 11, he made his community theater debut in the chorus of The Music Man alongside his mom who played Eulalie, and "got the buzz," as he puts it. "We did all the great Rodgers & Hammerstein shows and Oliver! and The Fantasticks, and I got a lot of good roles." His not-so-secret obsession as a teen: Michael Jackson. "Say what you want about his personal life, but onstage, there's nobody better," Bradshaw asserts. "I had 154 Michael Jackson CDs and 112 LP albums and posters from floor to ceiling in my room. My mom said, 'He could be drinking or doing drugs. If this is it—he's a Michael Jackson fan—it could be worse!'"

Hearing Voices: After earning a B.F.A. from Shorter College in Rome, GA, Bradshaw booked a gig on Disney Cruise Lines and built his resume at regional theaters favorite role: Jamie in Jason Robert Brown's The Last Five Years before moving to New York. By the time he landed an audition for Forbidden Broadway two years ago, he'd seen Gerard Alessandrini's long-running revue seven times and owned every recorded version of the show. "I knew a lot of the skits going in, and I had notecards of 15 or 20 voices I thought I could do, from Gwen Verdon to Anthony Rapp to Mandy Patinkin," he says. "I kept doing people a cappella, and they felt I had an ear for it."

Parody Tonight: Flexibility is key at Forbidden Broadway, which shifts skits constantly to keep up with what's happening on the theatrical scene. Among the new material sure to be carried over into the forthcoming fall edition dubbed Rude Awakening are Bradshaw's funny take on Tony winner David Hyde Pierce in Curtains "Slow People" and his jerky bouncing as Spring Awakening star Jonathan Groff "Totally Bleeped", complete with a microphone buried inside the fly of his knee-length pants. "At first, Gerard was sort of appalled by Spring Awakening," he says of the Tony-honored parodist, who tends to favor classic musicals. "He said, 'I can't believe they're doing that onstage! It's like porno.' But then he saw it another time and appreciated it. He's adding a 'Bitch of Living' skit, and he wants to invite the whole Spring Awakening cast when it's finished."

Star Sightings: Bradshaw's amusing personal website includes snapshots of him with stars ranging from his hero Patinkin to Bernadette Peters who quipped "Aren't you talented!", Norbert Leo Butz, Audra McDonald and the god of Forbidden Broadway himself, Stephen Sondheim. All reacted well to the show, he reports, even Raul Esparza, whose onstage counterpart gets a huge Tony statue snatched from his grasp in a rather vicious Company parody, "Being Intense." "He was such a good sport," Bradshaw says of Esparza. "I said, 'Thank you for coming; we were so nervous.' And he said, 'I was prepared. Steve [Sondheim] told me, 'They have fangs, but they love you.' I thought it would be worse than it was.'"

Broadway Dreams: Though he's seen every show and spoofs up to 17 of them every night at the 47th Street Theatre, Bradshaw has yet to make his Broadway debut—and he's itching to. "I'd love to do Avenue Q or Jersey Boys," he says. "I would love to be Corny Collins in Hairspray. I've auditioned for Spamalot a couple of times. You've just got to keep plugging." One problem: Bradshaw feels he looks a bit older than his actual age. "A lot of my friends can play high school, but I can't," he explains. "People say, 'Are you 31?' And I say, 'Nooo, I'm 28!' But I look at my heroes—Brian d'Arcy James, Norbert Leo Butz, Marc Kudisch—and they hit their stride in their 30s. That inspires me."

Cute Couple: Bradshaw met his girlfriend of four years, Wicked ensemble member Lindsay Northen, when they co-starred in Return to the Forbidden Planet in Charlottesville, VA. "Our first kiss was a stage kiss in rehearsal," he says sweetly, adding, "This is a big week for us: Lindsay is going on as Glinda in Wicked for the first time while Kendra Kassebaum is on vacation, and her parents are bringing us a King Charles Cavalier Spaniel puppy. Four years together, and we're getting a child." But what about a wedding? "That's definitely a possibility, but an off-Broadway salary is not the most secure thing in the world," he says. "We're best friends. We do everything together, and we're so lucky to be working in New York right now. Neither of us is going anywhere."