Latest / Ask The Experts / TINA with Roz White

Transcript

TINA with Roz White · Ask The Experts

• 0:00
  Eight forty five, thirteen ten Wiba Oh Yeah. Coming to the Overture Center
• 0:07
  June eleventh through the twenty sixth Tina The Tina Turner Musical Broadway Overture is always
• 0:14
  just great, great shows, amazing talent. We're talking top level talent at
• 0:20
  the Overture Center. And joining us this morning is Roz White, speaking of
• 0:26
  amazing talent, who plays Zelma Bullock, who is Tina Turner's mom. Roz,
• 0:31
  thank you so much for joining us this morning. I'm pretty excited to
• 0:35
  have you on with us. How's the show going? I know you're obviously
• 0:39
  you're traveling around the country. How's the show been going so far? The
• 0:43
  show is amazing. We still having a great time in all of these cities.
• 0:48
  The people absolutely love the show. And you know, we're a tight,
• 0:51
  tight group now because we've been out almost two years, so we rolled
• 0:54
  it right along. Yeah, that is amazing. I'm going to ask you
• 0:57
  about about the Tina Turner music, well, but I want to ask a
• 1:00
  little bit about and let folks kind of get to know you a little bit.
• 1:03
  You are and for people that they may recognize your name or or folks
• 1:08
  that follow Broadway, you are you are quite the quite the performer. How
• 1:14
  does this show rate with some of the other other shows that you've had a
• 1:18
  chance to perform in. Well, this show is huge. I mean it's
• 1:22
  it's about an icon. And I've spent a lot of my career doing smaller
• 1:26
  shows with four or five, maybe eight tast members at the most, and
• 1:32
  I do a lot of one woman shows as well. So this is a
• 1:34
  big show and it's twenty six people on stage every night, and so we
• 1:40
  are a family. This this experience. For me, the backstage is more
• 1:46
  of what I'm really learning so much about myself. I'm a teaching artist and
• 1:49
  so I work with kids all the time. We've got kids in the cast.
• 1:52
  Everybody in the cast is younger than me, so be an example.
• 1:56
  But I also get to learn and see myself repeated all of these really talented
• 2:00
  people. So for me, the show on stage is huge and it's you
• 2:05
  know, the story that we're telling is important because we need to free people
• 2:08
  from abuse, but also we need to let people know that they can achieve
• 2:13
  whatever they put their minds to as long as they focus and have good people
• 2:16
  around them. And when Tina got the white people around her, that's when
• 2:21
  we started to see started really to see her career take off. So this
• 2:23
  show for me is just life mirror mirroring itself. Why would I try to
• 2:28
  use the word like mirroring. It's a good word for sure. Talking this
• 2:36
  morning with Roz White, she is with the Tina the Tina Turner Musical that's
• 2:39
  going to be coming to the Overture Center just about a month from now.
• 2:43
  Tickets are available overture dot org. That's overture dot org. It's going to
• 2:46
  run Tuesday the eleventh, June eleventh through the weekend the sixteenth. Again.
• 2:51
  Details up at overture dot org. Robs Whatside, what brought you to to
• 2:54
  becoming an actress? What what made you say? You know what I want
• 2:58
  to I want to perform like this. I want to be on that big
• 3:00
  stage. It's a little bit about your background. Well, I was born
• 3:04
  and raised in Washington, DC. And Washington, d C is the home
• 3:07
  of the area called well we have an area where indigenous people live. And
• 3:14
  so about four years old, my stepdad took me to a show where there
• 3:17
  was dancing and singing and I said I want to do that, and he
• 3:22
  thought I wanted to get up on the stage, you know, and just
• 3:23
  participate right then. But I was like no, no, no, no
• 3:25
  no, I wanted to do that. So about four years old I discovered
• 3:30
  my love for music and my love for being on stage. And I started
• 3:34
  very very early and Christmas pageants in preschool, then with the glee club and
• 3:38
  then Performing Arts Ensemble, went to Performing Arts High School, got my Musical
• 3:42
  theater degree at Howard. I've been in this business for forty years this year.
• 3:46
  You start when you were in very young, as you mentioned, and
• 3:51
  with that too, I think sometimes people wonder what is your life like like
• 3:54
  day to day for you? Obviously exciting with the shows, but to also
• 3:59
  probably very exciting getting to getting to spend a week or so in different cities
• 4:03
  and kind of seeing the country. What's what's the day like for you?
• 4:08
  Well, when I'm out on the road, And this is the great the
• 4:10
  question, because when I'm out on the road with the tour, I like
• 4:14
  to get up early ish and go to the gym first. First things first,
• 4:17
  get my body together, and then I like to, you know,
• 4:20
  go out and discover what the city has to offer. I'm a nature person,
• 4:25
  so the botanical gardens is a place that I'm always going to try to
• 4:28
  find, and even in the desert, I found botanical gardens with these cactals.
• 4:31
  It was great. I love trees. And so because my character says
• 4:35
  a lot of mean things and and van to kids and and had to fight
• 4:40
  physically in the first part, the first thing you see them will do is
• 4:43
  fight her husband. So I need to do things that are the opposite of
• 4:46
  what I'm doing on stage. So I'm around nature. I'm doing peaceful things,
• 4:50
  going to museums. I actually will go to a restaurant and sit alone
• 4:55
  as people will come up and say, aren't you Ugentina or you know that
• 4:58
  kind of thing, And it's great than see that people recognize the art that's
• 5:01
  coming into town. So that's my day right now. I'm actually on vacation
• 5:05
  and I just did a concert last night, so my day can go from
• 5:10
  calm to crazy and zero point two. Yeah, you've got a love it
• 5:14
  and you've got You've got some kiddos as well, so I'm guessing that you're
• 5:18
  very good handling anything that comes your way. Right, Absolutely, that's not
• 5:24
  the growth. But I had lots of training when they were growing up.
• 5:26
  Oh, it is fantastic. Talking this morning with Rob's right white, she
• 5:30
  is portraying Zelma. But look who's Tina Turner's mother. Of course, we've
• 5:33
  got Tina the Tina Turner Musical coming to the Overture again. That's going to
• 5:38
  run the eleventh, June eleven through the sixteenth. Tickets and more information available
• 5:42
  at overture dot org. That's overture dot org. Let's talk about your portrayal
• 5:46
  of Zelma. And you mentioned this is not a this is not a low
• 5:50
  energy role, and you're clearly not a low energy prayers a very fiery role.
• 5:56
  What's that like kind of stepping into a different persona than me, maybe
• 6:00
  the type of person that you are. What's that like like for you?
• 6:02
  Riz? It was it's been healing for me. I lost my mom right
• 6:08
  before I got this job, and so I feel like this was her gift
• 6:12
  to me to say that you can go to the next level. And my
• 6:15
  mom has been my biggest cheerleader my whole life. You know, she always
• 6:18
  wanted me to, you know, be a star, and you know when
• 6:21
  moms wants you to be a star. But she wasn't a stage mom.
• 6:25
  So but and so Zelma is the mother of the Queen of Rock, but
• 6:30
  she didn't know it. And this is what I try to bring to the
• 6:32
  character. She's human. She didn't know that she had a star. She
• 6:36
  had a little kid that was rambunctious and like to run around and jump,
• 6:40
  and she was a tomboy, and she wanted her just to sit still and
• 6:44
  my and pay attention and listen to her mother. And it was a hard
• 6:47
  time for Zelma. Were talking about nineteen thirty nine, picking cotton in rural
• 6:53
  Tennessee. She wasn't happy, and her husband thought that the best way to
• 6:57
  get her in line was the puncher in the face. So I could play
• 7:00
  a woman who people don't understand because she's mean to the kid, But she's
• 7:03
  meaning to the kid because he's getting beaten up and she's trapped in this world
• 7:08
  that she knows there's something better for her, similar to what Tina felt inside.
• 7:13
  But just imagine Thelma's stardom was moving away from that rural area and having
• 7:18
  her own home with nice things and a good job so she could take care
• 7:21
  of her family. Tina's something more was becoming an icon. It's just we
• 7:29
  were given to our children. We pour into our children what we can.
• 7:32
  We do the best we can, and they're supposed to go further than us.
• 7:35
  So for me, Thelma succeeded because even though she was rough on Tina,
• 7:40
  she was very much favoritive of Ike because he was giving money and he
• 7:46
  was providing stardom for her child and for her life, her family. But
• 7:50
  and sometimes parents get confused like that and they take the side of the ex
• 7:56
  because they were they were good to you, they gave you money. But
• 7:59
  she didn't understand everything that she went through actually Tina was going through to the
• 8:05
  abuse, and so it's a very complex role. I have to to go
• 8:09
  through. I have to age forty years by the end of the show,
• 8:13
  and you know, watching someone take their last breath and you don't just to
• 8:18
  get that closure is rough. And so I have upmost respect for Tina Turner,
• 8:22
  but I also have empathy for Delma because she's a mom that was just
• 8:28
  doing the best she could with her circumstances. This sounds like it's going to
• 8:31
  be an absolutely fantastic production. Cannot wait to see it again. We've got
• 8:35
  We've got Roz White on the phone. She is part of Tina Turner's uh
• 8:39
  that Tina the the get the exact are Tina that the the Tina Turner Musical
• 8:45
  of course is going to be at the overture. A lot of Tina's in
• 8:48
  there and forgot and for good reason. And let's talk real quick about about
• 8:52
  the rest of the cast and and and the talent around you is is that's
• 8:58
  gotta you mentioned uh working with some younger folks as well as that's got to
• 9:01
  be just absolutely great for you to see these young talented people getting upon and
• 9:07
  sharing the stage with them. It's just incredible. The curtain comes up on
• 9:13
  the show and you just see legs and the crowd goes nuts. That's the
• 9:18
  the first night that happened. I was like, this is something special.
• 9:20
  Well way before that, let's go back to the rehearsal room when both of
• 9:24
  our teenas, because we have two, got a chance to do their numbers
• 9:28
  for us. We have literally two rehearsals a day. We had to rehearsal
• 9:31
  with one Tina and then rehearsal with the other teena. They alternate shows because
• 9:35
  of the heaviness of the role, you need a day to recover. So
• 9:41
  we'll have one Tina on Tuesday night and we'll have a different Teina on Wednesday
• 9:43
  night, and so it gets your tops, you know, really strong to
• 9:46
  play against these different actors. Like I said, we have children in the
• 9:50
  show. The young people are extremely talented, so brilliant and bring such peace
• 9:56
  and love with praying backstage before the show and the little girls come over and
• 9:58
  they hands can we pray? It's so precious. And then you know,
• 10:03
  we have this great band that travels with us. We get horns and a
• 10:07
  guitar and percussion in each city, but we have five musicians that travel with
• 10:11
  us and our conductor Danny, she's, oh my goodness, such a great
• 10:18
  spirit and she just has that band smoking every night. So the music is
• 10:22
  hot, the performers are talented, the crowd is going nuts. It is
• 10:26
  the ideal situation for any performer. If you don't love what you do,
• 10:31
  then you shouldn't be doing this show because you can't help but feel the love
• 10:35
  and the energy. People loved Tina Turner, and we sing twenty five of
• 10:41
  her songs in the show, and I mean, the crowd is just right
• 10:45
  there with us telling We're telling the story of her life and the crowd is
• 10:50
  very appreciative. At the end, I get a lot of feedback that people
• 10:52
  learn things they didn't know, which is very important to me as a teacher,
• 10:54
  and that they had an amazing time, and that they understood some of
• 11:01
  the choices that people made in their lives a little bit better. Not to
• 11:03
  excuse people abusing anyone, but there is an understanding of what can happen when
• 11:09
  you're not healed. Roz. I'm very excited to get to see you,
• 11:13
  Roz White. Of course, who is with the with the production of Tina,
• 11:18
  the Tina Turner Musical. It's gonna be at the Overture Center coming up
• 11:20
  June eleventh through sixteenth. Tickets available right now overture dot org. That's overture
• 11:26
  dot org. As more word is getting out, I guarantee tickets are going
• 11:30
  to sell it, so you're definitely gonna want to get it to the website
• 11:31
  this morning overture dot org. Buy your tickets. Roz. I love talking
• 11:37
  with you. I am so excited to get to see you perform and get
• 11:39
  to see this performance. You have a fantastic day. And while you're here,
• 11:43
  check out obric Beautiful Botanical Garden here in Madison and you'll absolutely love it.
• 11:48
  So thank you for ticketing. So much for having me that, thank
• 11:50
  you for having me. That's exciting. I can't wait to get to Madison.
• 11:54
  Roz White with Tina Tina the Tina Turner Musical. Roz, thanks again
• 11:58
  for your time. If you want to see the show, we do have
• 12:01
  a pair of tickets for opening night. We'll take to caller Roz. Roz
• 12:07
  will take three caller number three this morning at six oh eight three two one
• 12:11
  thirteen ten. That's six oh eight three two one thirteen ten. We'll get
• 12:15
  you a pair of tickets to Tina the Tina Turner Musical. Again. You
• 12:18
  can buy tickets and tickets and information available at overture dot org. That's overture
• 12:22
  dot org caller number three right now six oh eight three two one thirteen ten.
• 12:26
  That's six oh eight three two one thirteen ten. More of Madison in
• 12:31
  the Morning is next here on thirteen ten. Wiva