When actress Roz White comes to New Orleans next week as one of the stars of the Broadway National Tour of “Hell’s Kitchen” at the Saenger Theatre, it will be a homecoming.
She lived in the city between 2002 and 2005 while working as a singer on Bourbon Street. Whenever she comes to New Orleans, one of her first stops is to see the French Quarter musicians she worked with two decades ago. They often call her up on stage to perform with them again.
“I worked at the Famous Door, and at Fat Catz Music Club performing Top 40, R&B and jazz numbers,” White said. “Almost all of the musicians I worked with back then are still there.”
White plays the role of Miss Liza Jane, the character Ali’s pivotal mentor and teacher. Ali is the Alicia Keys character, as “Hell’s Kitchen” is the 16-time Grammy Award-winning artist’s story of her own rise through the ranks to become a pop icon.
It was a 15-year project for Keys, from writing the musical to its first appearance on Broadway in 2024. While the musical theater production of “Hell’s Kitchen” is still at the Schubert Theatre in New York City, the touring company will visit more than 30 cities in its first year on tour.
White is now celebrating 40 years as an arts professional and educator, with a bachelor’s degree in musical theater from Howard University and a master’s degree in education. For White, she knew early on that being onstage was her calling, from her childhood days in Washington, D.C.
“At the age of 12, I saw ‘Dreamgirls’ at the National Theater in Washington, D.C., and knew I wanted to do this professionally,” White said.
Then she entered the Duke Ellington School of the Arts in Georgetown at age 14. “In the 11th grade there, I was literally taken out of choir one day by a professional in the industry who had me learn a song, and subsequently put me in a production of ‘Bubbling Brown Sugar’ at the age of 16,” she said. “By 19, I was in my first tour, doing ‘Dreamgirls.'”
When White was coming up back in the ’80s, there weren’t a lot of roles for young Black girls. And, there wasn’t a lot of hiring against racially stereotypical lines. You would have never seen a Black “Cinderella” or a reboot of “My Fair Lady” with a Black Eliza Doolittle. But times have changed.
The company of the North American Tour of Alicia Keys’ “Hell’s Kitchen” performs onstage.
“When I was learning my craft, it was right around the time that storytellers were beginning to write new musicals about the Black experience, so while I was at Howard University, I was very militant about only wanting to learn the Black musical theater canon,” explained White.
“I knew ‘Jelly’s Last Jam’ and ‘Bring in da Noise, Bring in da Funk,’ but then, I was cast as Adelaide in ‘Guys and Dolls,’ a traditionally White production, and realized I should have paid more attention in school to the entire musical theater catalogue.”
The one thing White’s mentors always told her was that if the roles were not there, she would need to learn how to write herself into the room. That meant telling her own story by coming up with an idea and formulating it into a production.
She started experimenting with that concept at Howard when she wrote and performed “The Woman I Am” for her senior project. Since then, she’s told other women’s stories as well, with her self-penned cabaret performances in “Pearl Bailey by Request” and “Roberta’s First Take,” the story of songstress Roberta Flack.
Interestingly enough, White’s role in the touring company is a bit of a full-circle moment. She was originally called in for the Broadway company to understudy the role she’s now playing, but she had already booked a gig in Arizona and couldn’t come in for the audition.
She had expressed disappointment to her castmates, who told her that she shouldn’t worry because the role would come back around. Miraculously, she had no sooner finished that production in Arizona when she was called in to audition for the touring company of “Hell’s Kitchen.” Performing for Alicia Keys, she got the role.
She trained for weeks, learning how to play a piano onstage, which has no sound, knowing her hands had to sync up with the orchestra below her playing the actual keyboard. As White tells it, she knows where middle “C” is on the piano, but beyond that, she’s not much of a pianist. With a lot of practice, the audience believes it is she who is playing the tunes on stage.
White will be with the touring company well into 2028. Asked how she felt about such a long run, she didn’t miss a beat.
“An actor’s dream,” White noted, “is steady employment. And with a production of this caliber, it’s just a thrill!”
“Hell’s Kitchen” runs from Dec. 30 to Jan. 4, except on New Year’s Eve. Tickets are available at saengernola.com, BroadwayInNewOrleans.com, or by calling (504) 287-0372.
Email Leslie Cardé at [email protected].
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