An Interview with the Gun Toting Karyn Quackenbush

An Interview with the
Gun Toting Karyn Quackenbush

by Lisa Hummel

When Hershey Theatre welcomes the touring production of “Annie Get Your Gun,” this week, New Jersey native Karyn Quackenbush will be taking the stage as the infamous Annie Oakley. Telling the tale of the sharpshooter’s rise to fame and her dalliances with cohort Frank Butler, “Annie Get Your Gun” is one of theatre’s legendary musicals and the presence of Quackenbush is written all over both the current Broadway and touring productions. A stand-by for the lead role on Broadway, Quackenbush also tours with the show, where she will continue to play “Annie” until the production ends in June. With acting “in her blood” since the age of three, Quackenbush revels in her dual positions and took a few minutes to tell MODE what it’s like to play one of the greatest female roles ever written for the stage.

MODE Weekly: Do you remember your first role?
Karyn Quackenbush: I did a show at a community theatre in, I think it was Bloomingdale, NJ. It was called something like “Oh, Canada.” I don’t know why it was Canada, I don’t remember, but I played the role of a maple leaf

MODE: A maple leaf?
Quackenbush: Yes [laughs]. And In high school I did a bunch of musicals and plays. When I was a junior, I played Annie Oakley in “Annie Get Your Gun.” Isn’t that funny how everything just kind of comes around again?

MODE: Speaking of “Annie Get Your Gun,” how long have you been involved in the current production?
Quackenbush: I’ve been in “Annie Get Your Gun” for about a year-and-a-half. I’m the stand by for the Broadway production, if Reba McEntire [Broadway star] were to get sick or has another engagement, they put me on in her place. [Starring in the touring production] doesn’t happen very often to actors who stand by for the stars, but the producers were gracious enough to send me out to play the role on the tour so that’s quite an opportunity.

MODE: Do you have a preference between the two positions — starring on the road, or standing by on Broadway? Do they differ much?
Quackenbush: I love them both equally. They’re the same and yet they’re different in that some of the staging is just slightly different. I know a lot of the times when I do a national tour they like to get a little bit more creative and say, ‘let’s do this a little bit’ instead of what they do in the Broadway Company, but it’s very subtle. I think most people, if they were to come see both shows, would see a similar show, but the touring company plays to bigger houses, I think the Mariott Marquis on Broadway has about 1,200 seats and I think we play anywhere from 2,000-3,000 seat houses, so it’s going to be a difference in energy levels on stage. You have to play it a little bit bigger so the people who are sitting in the way back of the 60th row can see you.

MODE: You spend a lot of your time watching other performers portray the role of “Annie” on Broadway. When it’s your turn on stage, do you find it difficult to create your own niche in the role?
Quackenbush: I think I have my own character. When I was first seeing footage of the show about a year-and-a-half ago, they [the producers] said, ‘you can’t do what Bernadette Peters does, because only Bernadette Peters can do what she does, so don’t try to copy her.’ And the same goes for Reba McEntire and Cheryl Ladd, all of them. It’s really important to make it your own show because if you try to copy somebody it will come across to the audience as just false, so everyone was really good about emphasizing that I do what it is that I do. As far as the character goes the producers were very gracious and very positive about finding my own.

MODE: Your co-star in the touring production is Tom Wopat (Frank Butler). As an on-stage duo you receive rave reviews.
Quackenbush: I love him. He’s so great and first of all, he’s such a wonderful actor, he’s so terrific, and I know that people know him from “Dukes Of Hazzard,” but that only shows a blip of what he’s capable of doing. He’s so talented and he’s so gracious and I think we get along really well, we have a really good time together on stage and I think the audience really picks up on that. I actually did a few shows with him on Broadway when he was working with Bernadette Peters, so we had a bit of history before I went out with the touring company. He’s great.

MODE: After all of this time, what is your favorite aspect of the role. What makes it so great to be “Annie Oakley”?
Quackenbush: That she can be extremely competitive and very good at what she does, the best at what she does but at the same time, there’s the other side of her that’s very soft and feminine and has feelings like everybody else does — falling in love and really having a relationship in your life being the most important thing, even more important than what she did for a living. The fact that really, when push came to shove, the most important thing in her life was, not her career, but the relationships in her life.

MODE: And why do you think she remains such a timeless character?
Quackenbush: I think it’s the fact that it’s a woman in a man’s world. It’s gotten better, obviously, throughout time, but I think we still have a long way to go and it’s wonderful to see a woman in a man’s world rise to the top and do it graciously.

MODE: You’ve worked in film (Isn’t She Great), television (“Law and Order”), and live theatre (“Blood Brothers,” “I Love You, You’re Perfect, Now Change”). Do you still get nervous?
Quackenbush: Oh, yeah. Everybody says, ‘oh, if you don’t get nervous, that’s bad’ and I believe that there’s something about that. Obviously there’s a difference between negative and positive nervousness and it’s more of a positive nervousness, but that’s what’s great about live theatre, anything can happen. You can be doing a show for a year and all of the sudden you can’t remember your next line, so you always have to be on your toes. Every audience is different and you want to please every audience, you want them to like you and you want them to go away feeling really good about what they just saw, feeling really good about the fact that maybe you took them away from some problems for a few hours. In a way, it’s kind of a lot of pressure, but again its positive pressure.

MODE: You’ve taken “Annie Oakley” from high school to the big stage. You’ve come a long way —
Quackenbush: [laughs] You never know, I could always go back and play that maple leaf…