You’re in the cast of A Beautiful Noise – The Neil Diamond Musical.” Tell our readers why people should come to it.

The show itself follows Neil in a therapy session. The show opens with Neil in therapy as he is now in his older age, and it goes through basically his life. And we look through this songbook that Lisa, the doctor in the show, is asking Neil to go through these songs in his repertoire, the songs that he’s written in this book. And we go through his life and what they meant to him and his life. So some of them are like, I’m a Believer, which is popular in the Shrek movie, but how he wrote these songs and what he was going through at the time, some of them have to do with loving two women at the same time, some of them have to do with cheating, some of them have to do with just living life and being a rock star. But yeah, it’s basically following his life from whenever he was a younger child and what he was going through at the time. And then it goes all the way through to where he is now and all the relationships that he’s had, the ups and downs in his career, traveling all over the world, big successes in music and the industry itself. So it’s quite an arc in his whole story. It’s really the entire story of his life told through his biggest hits.

One of his biggest songs, “Sweet Caroline,” they consider that a cultural touchstone song.

Oh, yeah!

What do you think it is about his music that kind of transcends multiple generations? We’re talking going way back to the sixties up until audiences today, they know that song, what is it that connects with every generation?

That’s a really good question. I think it’s one of those songs that has been around for such a long time because it made such an impact on a generation before, and it’s just one of those timeless songs that’s played at whenever you were at the beach or whenever you’re at a bar, whenever you’re at a baseball game. And it’s one of those songs that’s become a staple of American life and it’s just such a feel-good song. And I think just the melody and how everybody knows it, and everybody can sing along. I think it’s just a very camaraderie-based song because it affected the people in the time and whenever he was touring in such a great way.

Your character is listed with the name: The Noise. What is The Noise?

The Noise is made up of 10 ensemble members, but we each have individual names. My is named Jess, and our names are based off the actual actors who originated the role in the ensemble. So Jess Loprato is who originated my ensemble part in the show. All together we make up The Noise. Basically The Noise is the noise inside Neil’s head. We become actual figures in the show at some point. Sometimes we’re people on the street, and sometimes we are handing Neil things, or we’re his backup dancers and we’re handing him water whenever we’re on stage. But other times we’re these figures of his mind and the noise that he hears. And sometimes it’s beautiful and sometimes it’s not quite what he wants and sometimes it’s a little negative, so we bodily and physically portray the noise inside of his head.

You say that you bodily portray the noise. Looking over your resume and your skillsets, you seem like a very physical, athletic person.

Yeah.

How are you able to incorporate that? You’re from Florida and water-skied. How are you specifically able to use your physicality to kind of transform this role into your own unique performance?

I think growing up in Florida, and my dad was a professional water skier, and his mom was also a professional water skier, so we grew up in a very competitive, very athletic family. I grew up doing gymnastics. I grew up doing soccer, baseball, almost every sport, tennis, golf. And my sister was a dancer and a cheerleader and I always went to her competitions and things like that. I eventually got into dance, and I liked it, but my main path was soccer in middle school. And then we ended up moving to Memphis, Tennessee. And I didn’t really have any friends. I didn’t really know anybody there. We moved for my dad’s job. And I eventually found theater. It’s a very good source of finding people who don’t really have friends, don’t really but want to, who have big personalities. And I was really athletic and I found theater at the time because my friend Shayna told me to, she liked my personality, and she was like, “You’d be funny on stage. You should audition for this show.” So I auditioned for one of the shows show, Jekyll and Hyde. I played Spider, the whorehouse owner, which is a great first role for a high school student. I got into theater in high school, and I realized that not only was musical theater a really cool outlet, but it also really helped me make friends. And I was really good at catching on to different dance styles that were needed in musical theater. I utilized my soccer training to learn tap really quickly and gain momentum with learning more advanced steps pretty fast in the tap realm. And then I realized that, wow, I can actually do this pretty well and so I decided to audition for musical theater programs at different colleges, and I eventually found my way to Oklahoma City University.

Do you use your gymnastics background in the show?

I do sometimes. There are improv parts of this big number called Stadium Medley, and sometimes I’ll throw an aerial in there if I’m feeling super warm. I also do an assisted cartwheel over the couch in Sweet Caroline, so I do some acrobatics, but nothing too too crazy. The majority of it is dance and background dance for Neil. 

Do you ever get cheers from the audience from doing something acrobatic?

Oh, yeah. I think, maybe not cheers, but I get some claps at the end of Stadium Medley for going so hard. I try to give it my all and give it up for every single audience because it’s a new audience every single day.

Do any of the other dancers give you a little side eye or shade for doing that? Or are they doing it too?

No, I think a lot of people have their own aspects of the show that they get their praise on, and they put their whole selves into. I think mine just is making sure I keep that high high energy up for the entire show. I’m also very facially expressive, so I get some laughs from that.

If you could do any role on Broadway, either current or past shows, what is it? What’s the dream?

My dream role on Broadway or in any show has always been Race in Newsies. One of my biggest role models in this industry is Ben Tyler Cook. I really enjoy the track that he has taken through Broadway, and he’s really an incredible dancer, a singer, and an actor, and I think he story tells really amazing work through his body and choreography. He played a role in that show that was extremely emotional, and he’s a contemporary dancer mainly in that show, and that’s the track that I’m working towards being better at. I really love the way contemporary feels in my body, how it’s very flowy and active and different muscles are engaged at different times. It’s not very sharp, and I love that about contemporary dance. He’s also so confident in the way that he moves. So the roles that I mainly look at are ones that he has played, and originally that was Race in Newsies. And then I was able to play that this summer, this past summer at the Rev in Auburn, New York. That was amazing.

One last question: your resume skills include doing an impression of a Keurig Coffee Machine. So can you do it?

I can. Okay. So my Keurig impersonation is, “Er-er.” And that’s it.

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