Actor Spotlight

Driven Dallas actor has Hamilton — and cooking — in his sights

Year after year, Calvin Scott Roberts has worked on his onstage versatility. And when you look at the Dallas actor's resume, it certainly shows in the variety of roles he's taken on: 1930s musician, protective brother, abusive husband, magical king, and soon-to-be unreliable witness in a landmark murder case.

That last role would be Jim Conley in WaterTower Theatre's concert version of Parade, but before that mounts in March, Roberts is starring as one-fourth of the cast of I Love You, You're Perfect, Now Change at Theatre Three. This musical journey about dating, love, parenting, and relationships first debuted at Theatre Three 17 years ago, but the yearly production is now is being revitalized by B.J. Cleveland.

Before Roberts ventures down the highway of love (the show plays December 29 through February 12) he took the time to fill out our survey of serious, fun, and sometimes ridiculous questions.

Name: Calvin Scott Roberts

Role in I Love You, You’re Perfect, Now Change: Man 2

Previous work in the DFW area: Jesus Christ Superstar, Rent (Casa Mañana); Smokey Joe’s Cafe, Spunk, Honky, Creep (WaterTower Theatre); Memphis, Crazy For You, By the Way, Meet Vera Stark, The Drowsy Chaperone (Theatre Three); Miracle on 34th St., Mufaro’s Beautiful Daughters (Dallas Children’s Theater); The Color Purple (Jubilee Theatre); Julius Caesar, Merchant of Venice (Shakespeare Dallas); A Christmas Carol (Dallas Theater Center); The Producers (Uptown Players), and more.

Hometown: Dallas

Where you currently reside: Physically, Dallas. Emotionally, NYC.

First theater role: Santa Claus

First stage show you ever saw: Singin' in the Rain

Moment you decided to pursue a career in theater: My senior year in high school, I played the Cowardly Lion in The Wizard of Oz. During the scene after “King of the Forest,” I found myself on all fours roaring like a lion. I knew then that theater was what I wanted and was supposed to do. I’d always loved performing, but that moment was pretty definitive for me.

Most challenging role you’ve played: Mister in The Color Purple. Discovering what made him abusive was a difficult task. It’s surprising when you realize what can bring out the darkest parts of the human heart.

Special skills: Some accents, cooking, obsessing over TV shows, evil laughing.

Something you’re REALLY bad at: Math. Cutting in a straight line.

Current pop culture obsession: Westworld. Love & Hip Hop. Snapchat. Twitter. (I’m a little late.) Instagram stories.

Last book you read: Alexander Hamilton by Ron Chernow

Favorite movie(s): Clue, The Goonies, School Daze, Big Trouble in Little China, Coming to America

Favorite musician(s): Mos Def, Sara Bareilles, Emile Sande, Leon Bridges, Beyonce (duh), Michael Jackson, Prince, India Arie, Adele, Ella Fitzgerald, Christophe Willem, Audra McDonald, Frank Ocean

Favorite song: At the moment, “Don’t Hurt Yourself” by Beyonce featuring Jack White.

Dream role: Bobby in Company, Burr and Washington in Hamilton

Favorite play(s): Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune, God of Carnage, Fences (all August Wilson), Hamlet, The Tempest, Topdog/Underdog, Laughing Wild, Sexual Perversity in Chicago

Favorite musical(s): Hamilton, Anyone Can Whistle, Company, Ain't Misbehavin', Edges, Fly By Night, Evita, Dreamgirls, In The Heights, A Chorus Line, Marie Christine, Ragtime, Gypsy, Kinky Boots, The Wild Party, The Scottsboro Boys

Favorite actors/actresses: Jeffrey Wright, Audra McDonald, Cate Blanchett, Viola Davis, Chadwick Boseman, James Marsden

Favorite food(s): Pho, Italian, Doritos

Must-see TV show(s): Westworld

Something most people don’t know about you: I used to be a cheerleader.

Place in the world you’d most like to visit: Spain

Pre-show warm-up: Usually some type of annoying vocalizations.

Favorite part about your current role: Getting to play some really fun characters I don’t usually get to play.

Most challenging part about your current project: The costume changes will be tricky.

Most embarrassing onstage mishap: During a Mufaro’s Beautiful Daughter’s performance, I decided to underdress a costume I had never underdressed before in order to save time. Well, of course, I underestimated how tight I should tie the drawstring because during our finale dance number, the top pants fell to my knees in front of a billion kids!

Career you’d have if you weren’t in theater: I’d be a chef.

Favorite post-show spot: My bed.

Most memorable theater moment: Offstage, meeting Audra McDonald. Onstage, the entire run of The Drowsy Chaperone at Theatre Three. To this day it is one of the best — top three — experiences I’ve had.

Dallas actor Calvin Scott Roberts.

Photo courtesy of Theatre Three

Dallas actor Calvin Scott Roberts.

interview qa theater

A good listen

Dallas Symphony and Fabio Luisi release landmark Wagner 'Ring Cycle' set

Fabio Luisi conducting the Dallas Symphony Orchestra

Photo courtesy of Dallas Symphony Orchestra

undefined

Fabio Luisi wanted his Ring Cycle to be heard and not seen.

Wagner’s four-opera epic Der Ring des Nibelungen, approaching the 150th anniversary of its premiere in 1876, has been reinterpreted and deconstructed by directors finding various meanings in the conflicts among gods, humans, giants and dwarfs.

While most new recordings are on video, Luisi led his Dallas Symphony Orchestra in concert performances that were released on 13 compact discs by Delos on May 22 and are available on streaming services.

“Wagner conceived this as a total immersion in visual and acoustic, but I could focus really only on the music, and this was the point actually — not to be distracted by staging and not to have to cope with maybe strange ideas of staging,” Luisi said. “I think the music tells everything.”

Luisi became DSO music director in 2020 and broached the idea while dining two years later with (the now late) Morton H. Meyerson, a longtime board member.

“Fabio came back from lunch sort of giddy but sort of sheepishly saying: `Do you think that this would ever be possible?” recalled Kim Noltemy, the Dallas CEO at the time. “So, I said, well, let’s give it a try. So, we called around to see if there were people who wanted to support it and did a budget.”

After securing a waiver from the orchestra allowing for the needed rehearsals and performance length, recordings were made during four concerts from May 1-5 and six more from Oct. 5-20. Each opera was performed two or three times.

Americans in cast fill big roles
American singers featured prominently, with Mark Delavan as Wotan, Lise Lindstrom as Brünnhilde and Sara Jakubiak as Sieglinde, part of a cast that included Christopher Ventris (Siegmund), Daniel Johansson (Siegfried), Deniz Uzun (Fricka), Tómas Tómasson (Alberich), Michael Laurenz (Mime) and Stephen Milling (Hagen).

Delavan sang Wotan at New York’s Metropolitan Opera in 2013 after Luisi took over from an ailing James Levine in Robert Lepage’s much-maligned production staged on a 45-ton set of 24 rotating planks.

“We’re accessible and they know that we’re hungry and we have a chip on our shoulders,” Delavan said. “What conductors like about American singers is their technique is sound. Even a European conductor would say: Well, I’m going to give up some of the communication skills, only one degree of separation with the language, but I’m going to get a solid technique, and I’m going to get pretty good acting chops.”

Lindstrom has been in Atlanta to sing in its production of “Götterdämmerung,” the concluding night of the tetralogy, leading to what is being billed as the first complete Ring Cycles in the America South in 2029.

“The wonderful thing about it is the intimacy between the orchestra and us, because we’re not separated by a chunk of stage or a chunk a scenery or a chunk of concept,” she said of the Dallas performances. “And for people like me, who have had the opportunity to perform the role before, I have all those iterations to rely on for my portrayal that I can sort of filter myself through.”

A younger Luisi listened to famous renditions
Luisi, 67, first heard a Ring recording in Georg Solti’s famous studio set with the Vienna Philharmonic from 1958-65. He also admires Karl Böhm’s live recording from the 1967 Bayreuth Festival and Marek Janowski’s 1980-83 studio version with the Staatskapelle Dresden.

He first conducted Ring when he was music director of Dresden’s Semperoper from 2007-10. Luisi’s Dallas performances include more legato and softer sound than his rendition a decade earlier at the Met. He tries to keep an arc from the first notes of “Das Rheingold” to the final strains of “Götterdämmerung.”

“I have a deeper understanding about the meaning of this piece,” he said. “I consider the ring to be a big Bruckner symphony. So we have the introduction, then we have the first movement, this is “Walküre,” which happens to be a slow movement, and then we have the scherzo, which is “Siegfried,” of course, and then the long, long, last movement. There is a unity.”

dso luisi ring wagner recording concerts music symphony

Actor Spotlight

Driven Dallas actor has Hamilton — and cooking — in his sights

Dallas actor Calvin Scott Roberts.

Dallas' Knox Street lands all-day restaurant with coveted Katy Trail patio

Beloved Dallas public relations maven Kelly Hunter dies at 58

Dallas soars to top 10 on new list of America's best cities

A good listen

Dallas Symphony and Fabio Luisi release landmark Wagner 'Ring Cycle' set