When Sutton Met Joan
The other day, when posting a video of Sutton Foster, I mentioned that when she won her first Tony Award in 2002 as Best Actress in a musical forThoroughly Modern Millie, in her acceptance speech she thanked her acting teacher Joan Rosenfels. And I noted that I had gone to grade school with Joan at North School in Glencoe, Illlinois. I haven't seen Joan over the years -- she moved to New York and I went to the West Coast, though I did cross paths with her parents. And to stretch the definition of "seeing" someone, I did see her in an episode of Law & Order when she played someone who worked for an insurance company, giving evidence to the investigating police. So, in an augmented world, that sort of counts.
But just to let you know I wasn't lying to you, here's the acceptance speech. It's a particularly emotional moment because Foster was famously a total unknown who had replaced the original star in an out-of-town tryout of the musical. One other thing to note in her speech -- she references her brother, and the reason it gets such a response from the audience is that, being a theater crowd, they know that he himself was currently appearing in a Broadway musical at that same time, as well, the show Urinetown.
(And hey, to bring things full circle, one of the people presenting the award is Jerry Orbach, who of course starred in...Law & Order) --
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