I taught a class about the Tony Awards at a summer theater camp the year after I graduated from high school. So, the first time I was nominated for 'Spring Awakening,' it felt like a surreal dream: it was every childhood dream I had come true. It felt like a fairy tale.
I went to a local high school in Lancaster. Not much I can say about it; it was pretty much your typical public high school back in Pennsylvania.
I smile a lot in my real life.
I did have AOL Instant Messenger when I was in middle school.
I'd rather be a working actor and not hiding anything in my personal life.
If I've had roadblocks along the way for being gay, I'm not aware of them.
After 'Spring Awakening,' I wanted to do things that are really challenging and outside my comfort zone: things that scare me a little and make me grow.
Playing King George, for me, was a lesson in stillness and timing.
The difference between being in the closet and out of the closet as a gay man is such a huge shift. I feel so connected still to that 22-year-old, but the idea that I was not open with that part of my life - which I am now so open about - is sort of surreal.
I was born and raised in Lancaster, Pennsylvania - in Amish Country!
When I was doing 'Spring Awakening' the first couple of years I was living in New York, I was gay, and I was living with my 'roommate,' who was my boyfriend but was my roommate to everyone else.
I'd always done musicals, and so living in the world of straight plays and working with off-Broadway actors and living in that community was a completely life-changing experience.
Just follow your joy. Always. I think that if you do that, life will take you on the course that it's meant to take you.
Trying to sound good at 10 A.M. is the worst.
In a play, you can adjust your performance to audience reaction, but in a film, it's like you're trapped in a bad dream watching yourself act, and you're in the audience.
It's daunting, taking on the task of representing the gay community, because there are so many different facets and different schools of thought and behavior.
I think the first Broadway show that I saw was 'Beauty and the Beast,' and that was in 5th or 6th grade. Our school would take bus trips up to see shows, and so it was on one of their bus trips that I got to see 'Beauty and the Beast.'
When you get to really involve yourself with a piece and the other people, and you get to feel like it's a community and you're all building something together, it helps me to produce better work, I think.
I wanted to work with Michael Mayer because I'd seen 'Thoroughly Modern Millie' six times.
I love interacting with an audience. I love just being myself in front of a crowd.
