10 Minute Q & A with BRUCE SABATH - OR - Wall Street's Loss is Our Gain!

Full Given Birth Name?

• Bruce Guggenheim Sabath – Guggenheim is my Mom’s maiden name, and even though all her relatives have names like William, George and Samuel, we don’t seem to be at all related to any copper fortune.

Where ya' from?

• Rochester, NY – Kodak Town!

All time favorite Band or Singer?

• James Taylor – I’m a guitar player, and listening to his music, and trying to play his riffs is really how I taught myself as a kid

Favorite Role you ever Played?

• Richard Nixon in Frost/Nixon

Favorite moment in HA?

• So many, but I have to give it to the Nurse’s climax and, um, “aftershocks” in the scene with the College Boy. Brilliant.

Pets?

• A shelter dog (sort of a cockapoo) named Chase, and an orange tabbycat named Simba.

First Equity Contract Role?

• John Dickinson in 1776 at West Virginia Public Theatre, exactly ten years ago, this summer!

Favorite Breakfast Food?

• Bacon. Or Lox. No, definitely bacon.

Most Played Song on your iTunes?  Answer truthfully, don't try to be cool.

• “Fantasy” by Earth, Wind and Fire

Performer you most want to work with?  Dream BIG!

• A toss-up between two Kevins: Spacey and Kline

Wackiest On Stage moment EVER?

• In the 2006-07 Broadway revival of Company, the “color palette” was most definitely monochrome – black, whites, glass and chrome. So one night, the lighting system went haywire, and the scrollers (the computer-controlled motors that change the colored gels on the lights) started running through every color in the rainbow through most of the opening number. It looked like we were doing the show in a disco - definitely a bit different from what we were used to. It was as if the ghosts of the theatre were paying homage to the psychedelic lighting effects of the seventies, when Company was born.

The Theatre Bug bit me...

• at age 11 when I got to sing in the “urchin’s chorus” in Act II of La Boheme at the Rochester Opera. Then at 13, I got to play Tevye in “scenes from Fiddler on the Roof” in a middle school chorus concert. By the way, I played that role in high school and again in college, and I can’t wait to play it at a more realistic age!

Have you ever wanted to be something other than an actor?

• Well, that’s a question I don’t even have to speculate on, because for a long time, Iwasn’t an actor. I was passionate about acting in high school, spending most of my spare time on stage, but I pretty much gave it up when I got to college, believing that I should “grow up” and do something “serious”. So I studied applied math and computer science, then got my MBA, and spent many years as a Wall Street investment banker and then as a corporate strategist. It all made sense! But I finally figured out I was barking up the wrong tree, and came back to my first love.  I left my last “hi-rise job” at American Express, and spent two years studying intensively with Bill Esper and other brilliant mentors. That was thirteen years ago. I’m so happy to have seen the light!

Secret Talent, that few know about you?

• I do Muppet voices – from Kermit to Cookie Monster.