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| SCENE CHANGE: Lee expected to go into medicine. |
| Thad Russell |
IN THE SUMMER OF 1994, Michael
K. Lee auditioned for a part—any part—in the second national
tour of the blockbuster Broadway musical Miss Saigon. Lee, who
was about to start his senior year in psychology at Stanford, had also
tried out the previous summer and been called back, but that didn’t
give him any edge the second time around. He waited for hours while Equity
actors and those with agents went first. Finally, in the third round,
when anyone off the street can try out, he sang his songs. He had never
taken a singing lesson in his life.
Lee, a modest and friendly Korean-American, says of his audition, “It
was a little easier for me to be seen, because the talent pool of Asian-American
men is smaller—though I still had to wait five hours.”
A month later, the producers offered him a principal role as the fiancé
of the title character.
After that life-changing news, Lee had some fast shuffling to do. He took
23 units in one quarter, graduated two quarters early and quickly arranged
four voice lessons for himself. Rehearsals began a few weeks after he
left the Farm.
Lee stayed on tour with Miss Saigon for 12 months, then spent five
months on Broadway with the show. Since then, he’s managed to avoid
selling his blood or waiting tables. He performed in the Broadway production
of Jesus Christ Superstar (he found his role as Simon Zealotes
particularly satisfying because it is not traditionally slated for an
Asian), toured with Rent as a company member and understudy, and
received an L.A. Theater Award nomination for Best Actor for his performance
in the rock opera Beijing Spring. In between he’s made a smattering
of independent film and television appearances. More recent credits include
work in a Barry Manilow revue—Could It Be Magic?—that
opened in Chicago and a role last fall in Stephen Sondheim’s Pacific
Overtures with Palo Alto’s acclaimed regional company TheatreWorks.
Next on Lee’s agenda is the Asian-American rock musical Making
Tracks, playing in Seattle March 12 through May 12.
He’s done it all with only
a little more voice training, but that evidently hasn’t fazed directors
or critics. “He has a powerful voice, and his tonal quality is astounding,”
wrote Talkin’ Broadway critic Richard Connema. “Mike’s
voice, charm and charisma touch everyone who sees him perform,” says
East-West Players director Tim Dang. And from Robert Kelley, ’68,
artistic director of TheatreWorks: “Michael is a thrilling, intense
and charismatic actor and singer on stage. He’s also a wonderful
collaborator behind the scenes.”
Lee’s journey to the Great White Way started in Salamanca, N.Y.,
a small Native American reservation town near Buffalo, where his was the
only Asian-American family. From earliest childhood, he liked to perform,
Lee recalls. “I loved Grease, and I wanted to be Danny Zuko
. . . I loved putting on my brown leather jacket and getting up on my
couch and using that as a stage.”
Neither Lee nor his parents took those antics seriously, so instead of
taking voice lessons, he learned to play violin and piano, like many Korean-American
children. Paradoxically, it was through playing in the Greater Buffalo
Youth Orchestra that he developed his aptitude for singing.
“Most of my voice training comes from driving back and forth between
Buffalo and my hometown for orchestra and listening to the scores of Les
Mis and Phantom of the Opera and trying to imitate the singers,”
Lee says. “Oftentimes, I’d have the windows down, singing my
heart out. Unbeknownst to me, I was practicing the whole time.”
Those dry runs served him well as a high school senior, when he revived
a nearly defunct drama club and starred in its production of Joseph
and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. “It was a big hit
at school,” he says. “I mean, as big as hits get in Salamanca,
New York.”
People at home joked that they would see him on Broadway someday, but
when Lee entered Stanford, he expected to follow his older brother and
father and take up the stethoscope, not the stage. So, apart from performing
in Gaieties his freshman year, he immersed himself in chemistry and calculus.
“I had a miserable, miserable freshman year,” he says.
As a sophomore, Lee auditioned successfully for the campus a cappella
group Fleet Street Singers—“one of the pivotal points of my
life.” The following summer in Los Angeles, he worked 10- to 15-hour
days as an intern on a film crew. His stipend was $75 a week, for making
coffee and sweeping cigarette butts. He also telemarketed B-grade pornographic
videos. “You don’t know what life is like until you have to
pitch interracial pornos to a video store owner in Mississippi,”
Lee quips.
What kept him sane that summer was a musical theater class he took at
East-West Players, the nation’s foremost Asian-American theater company.
At first, however, even that didn’t look so promising.
“I got there, and I had this image of a great theater company in
mind, and it looked like a garage. There were 12 people in the class,
but no one could really sing, and I was the star of the class,” Lee
recalls. “Not what I had envisioned!” Still, he went on to roles
in Sweeney Todd, Pacific Overtures, Beijing Spring and A Funny
Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum with the Players, and it was
a friend from that class who urged him to try out for Miss Saigon.
Despite his accomplishments, Lee, 28, says he still feels as if he is
living a dream. In September 2000, his hometown honored him with his own
block on its Walk of Fame; he describes the evening, during which he gave
a performance, as surreal.
“Seeing how I live day-to-day and 90 percent of the time being unemployed
and looking for work—it’s not something that I would deem worth
honoring. I still live like a college kid with my college buddy, and we
go out for a drink every night. My friends are getting married and having
kids, and I’m still playing ‘What do I want to be when I grow
up?’”
But when he had to go onstage the night after September 11, Lee experienced
“something of an epiphany” and recorded his thoughts. “What
I do, though I get so much out of it, is not for me, but for others. Sometimes
as artists, we lose track. But people come to us—the court jesters,
the clowns, the gypsies of the world—to forget about real life. Today,
the almost full house was with us so intimately, and they thanked us at
the end, with their applause.
“It was the first time I heard it. It was a good day to be an artist.”
Laura Shin, ’97, is a freelance writer
in New York. |
