Wearing a t-shirt from the National Cowgirl Museum and Hall of Fame, sitting in his meticulously designed, pint-sized apartment in Hell’s Kitchen, Jonathan Cerullo appears on my computer screen.
“Did you know the New York Times did an article on my space?” he gleams.
A conversation with the man is, in a word, fun. He’s been in the entertainment industry for decades and he has stories—and does he know how to tell them. At this point, dramatic delivery seems to be second nature to him, and a glance at his extensive resume provides an explanation: having spent most of his life performing, directing, choreographing, and producing, Jonathan is a veteran of the business of show. He’s even worked in the circus.
“I can teach you to fly on a trapeze—how’s that?”
I’m afraid of heights, but maybe I’ll take him up on it someday. For now, I ask him how he got into theatre.
“I was with my family,” he tells me. “We went to see the Broadway production of Man of La Mancha with Richard Kiley, Robert Rounseville and Joan Diener—the original cast—at the newly opened Vivian Beaumont Theater at Lincoln Center…so you realize that I’m dating myself here,” he laughs.
“I remember nothing from that production, except: when Quixote is singing ‘The Impossible Dream’ what I now know to be a mirror ball all of a sudden got illuminated and started spinning and the whole theatre just lit up with these stars and I was like, ‘oh my god, how did that happen?’ and I turned to my father and grabbed his arm to ask him, and it was the first time I saw my father cry. And I thought, can that…do that?” He points from one end of the screen to the other. “I still have that program, too.”
Nursing a bite from the proverbial bug, he started crafting puppets and putting on shows for his family: cardboard circuses and all-marionette productions of Hello, Dolly! Before he knew it, the dramatic exploits of his youth would land him at Emerson College, where he earned a B.F.A. in directing—but one of his most influential professors was a dance instructor named Marlena Yannetti. Ignoring his directing ambitions, she insisted that he move to New York to pursue a dance apprenticeship at the Joffrey School of Ballet.
“She got me into Joffrey,” he says. “I took her advice. And it served me great because as soon as I decided I didn’t want to be in a ballet company, I marched my little toe shoes uptown and started auditioning.
“I walked into my first audition—it was for the Goodspeed Opera House—and I failed miserably at it. I sang terribly, I didn’t dance well, there were like 150 other men there and I thought, ‘okay, if I’m gonna compete with the big boys here, I need to step my game up.’
“And I buckled down and I took class after class after class: vocal lessons, acting lessons, I was in there 24/7, getting myself trained to be able to go in there with a sense of confidence. Soon thereafter, I started getting gigs. I was a decent-looking guy, I could sing, and I could dance, because I had all that training. And I went from one show to the next show to the next show—I was so blessed like that.”
He played Skimbleshanks in the national tour of Cats and Big Daddy in the West Coast production of Sweet Charity, the latter with Tony Award winner Donna McKechnie. He was a regular in Broadway musicals, including an oft-forgotten show called Legs Diamond.
“That was a fascinating show,” he says. “It was the first show in Broadway history to be fully computerized—nobody knows that. Now, of course, it’s second nature. But they had never put a production, with scenery and lights and curtains, all on a computer.”
Despite his nonstop performing, he still wanted to be a director, and he would soon get his chance from director/choreographer Patricia Birch, who would become his mentor.
“Pat called me and said, ‘I’m taking you out of the chorus—I need an assistant.’ And that was it. After ten years of performing, I said, ‘That’s it. I’m done with performing.’ I never looked back.”
Years later, he’s directed dozens of pieces. Almost all of his directing has been for new work—with the exception of a recent production of The Boys from Syracuse, of which he’s very proud. Having spent decades performing and directing, he decided it was time to try something new: producing.
“When I turned 50 I said, ‘there’s gotta be something beyond this, and I need to understand the business of the phrase ‘show business’. I knew show very well, I knew how to put on a show, but I didn’t quite understand the business of it. So I put my career on hiatus, just for a little bit, and I started to work with the New York Foundation for the Arts, I started to work with the Commercial Theatre Institute and a few other organizations—it broadened my sense of this business tremendously, and I started to put together award shows for various not-for-profit organizations here in the city, and I’ve been doing that for many years now.”
But while he gained a more formal education in producing in his fifties, he had started to hone the craft years before, when on tour with Cats.
“The AIDS epidemic was just starting and nobody understood it, nobody knew anything about it. Before one show, I was watching the news and they made the announcement that Michael Bennett had passed away from complications of HIV/AIDS and I went to the theatre that night, I walked to the men’s dressing room and I said, ‘guys, I don’t know about you, but I can’t sit still. We have to do something.’
“So, long story short, we created a benefit for a local organization in Kansas City, the Good Samaritan Project, and we did a retrospective of Michael Bennett’s life, which I helped direct with several people—we all chipped in, it was like Judy and Micky putting on a show. And by intermission we raised $20,000—by intermission! And by the end of the night we raised close to $36,000, which in today’s money would be about $85,000. This was two years before Broadway Cares even existed.”
Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS is a nonprofit fundraising and grant-making organization that provides people with medical care, food, counseling, and emergency financial assistance. Since its inception, it’s been one of America’s leading AIDS support organizations.
Earlier this year, as a mysterious illness was rapidly spreading across the world, many people were comparing it to the AIDS epidemic. I ask Jonathan if the comparisons are accurate.
“Extremely accurate,” he replies. “As [COVID-19] started to bubble and come into our consciousness, and people were dying, I was like, ‘this reminds me so much of what we went through.’ I’ve gotta tell you, here in New York, I’m in midtown, and the silence that took place in the city was morbid. It was a morbid silence that was only pierced by the sirens going through the city. It opened up some wounds again, I’ll tell you that. Still does. Let’s hope this vaccine works for us.”
He adds: “It has been 40 years, give or take, since the advent of the HIV/AIDS virus, and we still don’t have a vaccination for it, just so you know.”
Since the pandemic forced venues to close, Jonathan’s had to rely on federal assistance to get by: he received a small stipend from the Payroll Protection Program for his business and has been on Pandemic Unemployment Assistance (or PUA), but that runs out in a few weeks–on the day after Christmas.
Luckily, he’s been able to find some remote employment here and there. He’s directing a rock and roll version of Romeo and Juliet, and he’s been doing a lot of dramaturgy: providing in-depth literary research and advice on theatrical work. And he reunited the cast of the Cats tour to produce another benefit (a virtual one), this time for COVID-19 relief.
“I got back together 34 cast members from that show—and we haven’t seen each other in 30+ years—and we did a tribute to the musical, and we put together a really beautiful benefit. I just did that a couple of weeks ago—that was a learning curve, oh my god. The most difficult part of that was the isolation from everybody. I was having rehearsals like this—” he indicates our virtual interview. “It’s not the same.”
Indeed, it’s not the same. The theatre world is in the process of figuring out how to adapt to this year’s unfortunate circumstances; virtual concerts and play readings have become fairly popular in the absence of live, in-person events, but the entire industry is wondering when we’ll be able to return to the stage. Jonathan has hope, and—like a true dramaturg—he’s done his research.
“I’ve been reading a lot on what London is doing, and what Australia is doing, and New Zealand, and they are doing some marvelous things with various safety protocols. One theatre replaced all its handles with ionized metal knobs that, the minute they’re touched, all the bacteria just dies. You know those little metal key things that you just—they’re making knobs out of this stuff. That small ingenuity and innovation needs to be expanded all over the place. Filtration systems, maybe there’s more space between the seats; do you get temperature checked when you walk into the space? Do you have to present a card? There are all sorts of ways we can get back to work.
“Theatre, my friend, will come back. Live theatre will come back. It has lasted for centuries. Centuries. Through every war, civilizations have been lost, they have been found, and theatre has always been there. This is a blip in the arc of our industry. Seriously.
“Today I listened to Pearl Bailey doing Hello Dolly! and watching Gower Champion’s choreography in ‘Put on Your Sunday Clothes’ was enough for me go, ‘I can do it another day. I can be here another day.’ Just to realize that what we do is important in the world, to me at least, that’s what I do. I know it sounds kind of…geeky? But the other day I listened to Dear Evan Hansen and I went ‘this is why we’re here. This is why we’re doing this.’
“I’ve wanted to give up. I’ve wanted to go, ‘I’m done.’ But there’s something that always lures me back, and it’s the music, it’s the craft, it’s the storytelling, it’s the people.
“Just remind yourself of the goodness of what we do. And that takes the sadness away from me, because I’m like, ‘oh, no, I am worth something. I am valuable. I have value in the world.’ And when you get knocked in the chin, you go ‘ouch, okay,’ and you pick yourself up. You carry on. Carry on. Until they take your last breath, carry on.” ↓
Jonathan Cerullo is a producer, director, choreographer, and dramaturg. Read more about his production company, and his prolific career, at www.jsctheatricals.com.
And check out the New York Times feature on his incredible apartment when you get the chance.
Finally, visit Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS to see what you can do to help: www.broadwaycares.org
Thanks for reading. See you next time.