Disney Theatrical Productions
Disney’s Aladdin is currently on tour across North America and is setting up shop at Baltimore’s Hippodrome Theatre November 13 through December 1. If you only know Aladdin from the classic animated film or the more recent live action adaption, the stage show will feel familiar but it does have a few differences that sets it apart from the movies. The biggest difference is that there is no Abu in the show. Instead, the stage version restores Aladdin’s three friends, Babkak, Omar and Kassim, back to the story after being replaced in the original film with Abu and Rajah.
I recently had a chance to speak with Cole Prattes, who plays Kassim in the show. Prattes has toured in several shows including High School Musical, A Chorus Line, West Side Story and Rock of Ages, was a dancer on P!nk’s tour, and has appeared on TV in the ABC remake of Dirty Dancing in the role made famous by Patrick Swayze. He also appears on the Sundance Channel series This Close. Prattes was in Providence, Rhode Island when we spoke by phone.
— CD: Hello! How’s the tour going?
★ CP: The tour is amazing. I absolutely love this. This is my second time touring, my first time out of college was High School Musical.
— CD: Awesome! Let’s get acquainted a bit. Tell our readers where you’re from.
★ CP: I’m originally from Marietta, GA, just outside of Atlanta. I was born and raised down there and then I went to college at the University of Cincinnati at their conservatory program for musical theatre. I’ve been mostly on tour for a few years, I’ve lived a little bit in New York, but mostly I’ve been going through all these places that now I’m getting to go back through, and with my wife as well, she’s also on the tour. She’s actually been with Aladdin since it opened in Chicago, almost two-and-a-half, three years ago now. It’s an incredible blessing to be out here together. She also used to tour, she was on the tour of Spamalot when I was on the tour of A Chorus Line and we were going to each individual city almost right behind each other. I always remember ‘oh, Spamalot‘s going to be there’ and so we’d have these big nights out and we never met each other. We actually found out ten years later, about five years ago, we found out that we were in the same bar in Canada on the 2008 election night watching it all happen with the casts. So we were both with other people and now we get to go to all these spots that we know separately and now we get to go together. It’s incredible.
— CD: So when you were growing up in Georgia, did you do any acting as a child?
★ CP: No, I didn’t actually start acting until … I did a show in seventh grade and started dancing at 14 or 15, I was in a place in Georgia, a performing arts magnet program at public school but I played baseball my whole life, for 15 years, and a little bit of football but mostly baseball, which is my sport and I just assumed that I would end up in the military for a little bit, my dad and my brother are both Marines, and my mom and dad are both police officers, so it just kind of felt like I’d play baseball and if I don’t do that professionally then I’ll go into the military. Then I ended up … I started dancing because someone told me it was a good way to meet girls, then I fell in love with it and I got to do my first show with my best friend when we were cast in Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. I went and saw it and I remember looking down the aisle in the middle of the show and everybody was smiling. I had never been around that and I just wanted to be a part of that energy and bringing that happiness to people. It’s the best thing in the world.
— CD: Right. I had talked with Emma Grimsley from Phantom of the Opera about how you’re sitting in this room and it’s this big shared experience which is different than a movie because you’re also sharing it with the actors as well and it’s just a different thing.
★ CP: Absolutely. There’s an odd dichotomy between the separation of the audience where you try to not only be just listening, you want to be present on stage, you don’t want to be just there for the audience but no matter what, it is an experience like no other. It’s incredible.
— CD: So that was the bite of the acting bug that got you started.
★ CP: Absolutely. I remember it like it was yesterday, and I remember the set of that show, I remember everything since it was … I’m sure if I went back and looked at it that those pyramids were not as tall as I thought, that they weren’t as majestic, but it felt … it was incredible and I’ve never forgotten that feeling, and that’s why every night when I get to go onstage … I had a director once tell me that everything we do, 98% of that we give away, you get to keep 2% and that 2% is … you get to come out after doing the thing you love all night and then they applaud. They’ve paid money and they they give you their energy, the people are spending their money but they’re spending their time, and if you don’t respect their time then that energy that they’re giving you, it’s like what are you doing?
— CD: Right. I’ve seen some shows in the past and sometimes it feels like the people on stage just aren’t giving their all, they’re just there and I’m not enjoying it because they don’t seem like they’re enjoying it.
★ CP: Of course!
— CD: I like to watch everybody including the ensemble people in the background because I like to see if they’re doing things that isn’t important to what’s happening at the front of the stage but if they have little bits of business too then it feels like they’re really into it. It makes it a much more enjoyable experience when it feels like everyone else is enjoying it as well.
★ CP: Of course! I completely agree. And I think that’s something that can get lost and that we’re really fortunate with this show, this company gets engaged and I know that I find myself constantly onstage finding new moments because this world is alive. It’s incredible. It’s amazing to be able to go onstage every night and know that there’s actually a whole world that I get to play with. You know what I mean?
— CD: A whole new world.
★ CP: Exactly, exactly. If only I’d thought of that.
— CD: Prior to Aladdin, you’ve been in some pretty big shows.
★ CP: Yeah, I’ve been very fortunate.
— CD: You were in High School Musical, Rock of Ages. I saw Rock of Ages a couple of years ago and I enjoyed the show so much more than the movie.
★ CP: Oh, I couldn’t agree more. I don’t want to disparage the movie just because I did a film, the remake of Dirty Dancing with the same audio team that did that movie, so the Anders Brothers are incredible but I don’t want to disparage that but at the same time I’m a huge fan of the stage show, it’s just so perfect and to be able to work on that show … people used to ask do you ever get tired of coming in … if you can’t come to work and sing Air Supply, if you can’t come to work and sing Bon Jovi, if you’re not into that we’re probably not compatible. It’s the same thing with Aladdin — if you can’t come in and do this show and be happy every night with putting this product out in the world, you really gotta look at your career choices because this is so engaging and so enthralling, the music, the scale of it, everything about it is … not to mention the costumes. If you haven’t seen it yet, I can’t wait for you to because it’s … the costume design is insane.
Deen van Meer
— CD: Yeah, I was reading about the number of costumes you have and the materials. I haven’t seen the show yet but I am very much looking forward it. I’m one of those people that when I see a show I want to see costumes, I want to see sets, I want to see lights, I want to see dancing, I like the big Broadway musical.
★ CP: I love that.
— CD: What show were you in before Aladdin?
★ CP: Before Aladdin, Rock of Ages was the last theatre show I’d done. I’m currently on a show on the Sundance Channel, a show called This Close, the first show written by and starring two deaf actors, and I happen to know sign language because, actually, of Disney. When I got hired for High School Musical, our director and our associate director on that were Jeff Calhoun and Coy Middlebrook. Jeff Calhoun is famous for being the director of Deaf West which did Big River, so one of the actors on that show was also in the production of Big River in Deaf West in California, and he was getting notes onstage one day and Jeff was in the back of the house and Jeff and Coy were giving him notes from the back of the house by signing, and I was like what is this, and they ended up giving me a book called The Joy of Signing and I spent the next several years getting involved with American Sign Language, studying it, and when this show came up I ended up actually knowing sign language and happened to be right for the part, so it worked out and our season two just aired a month ago. So that’s what I was doing primarily. I’d kind of stepped away from theatre for a moment just to kind of do the work I needed to do in film and TV so that I can do both now.
— CD: How did the casting for Aladdin come about for you?
★ CP: Well, I had reached out to Casey (Nicholaw, the show’s director and choreographer) because I knew that obviously Angelina’s (Prattes’ wife) is in the show and I just reached out to say that if at any point this opens up, this role’s available for an audition, I would be honored to come in and audition for you. I’d never gotten to work with Casey, obviously I’ve known of Casey’s work and I’ve always wanted to work with him, and so I messaged him and said if it’s possible … and Angelina also did Spamalot for almost four years so she knew Casey very well, so we just went and said hey if this is ever a possibility I’d love to come in for you, and he wrote back a couple of days later … and so that’s how it happened. Yeah, it was incredible.
— CD: I always like to ask from the moment you were hired to the first time you stepped on stage, what was the length of time you had to prepare? I know some people have a week’s preparation and some have the luxury of a month.
★ CP: Exactly. You know what? I’ve never had … I’ve been a replacement in West Side Story on Broadway, a replacement in How To Succeed on Broadway and a replacement in Rock of Ages. I’ve always had roughly two weeks from the time that you’re hired and when rehearsals start to the time that you’re onstage. This time we had a month and I was with so many people, there were like five or six people being put into the show, like the ensemble, we had a new Jasmine, a new Kassim, a new Omar, there are three friends to Aladdin and two of them were brand new, so we had a bunch of new people so I think they just wanted to extend that process a little which was amazing. For someone like me who had never had that time, by the time the third week rolled around I was like oh my god, I just want to be onstage. I cannot wait and when you get out there it’s everything you hope it is, it’s incredible.
— CD: So your character isn’t actually in the movie, either the animated version or the newer live action one.
★ CP: No. There’s an interesting story behind that. They (Kassim, Omar and Babkak) were actually three characters that were originally intended to be in the animated feature and then somewhere along the line they ended up being Abu and Rajah but the song ‘High Adventure’, which is a song we now have in the second act, we were Aladdin’s three friends and that was the way it was set up. So when Casey got offered the Broadway show he said ‘okay, but I’m not doing it with puppets, I’m not doing it with somebody dressed up as a thing, not happening, it’s not going to be a man who’s a monkey, I want to do it with Babkak, Omar and Kassim’, and they said okay and he got to create these from the ground up and he’s got all of these amazing insights. So these characters were technically original, the song was written back then, it was going to be this whole thing of them storming the palace and they just got traded out a little bit for Abu. And now it’s the three of us and we get to be back onstage.
— CD: Okay, I didn’t know if they had a puppet monkey but I guess not.
★ CP: They do not. There’s no monkey and apparently the tiger couldn’t do the choreography, so they just have us.
— CD: That’s good to know for people who are real fans of the movie and they’re going to wonder where’s Abu.
★ CP: Exactly. Honestly, I’m in red, Kassim is in red, so a lot of times people are like ‘where’s Abu, the little monkey, he wears the red pants’ and I’m like I guess technically that’s me and the three of us are all part of Abu honestly. I think you’ll enjoy it. It’s definitely different but I really enjoy the dynamic, and there are a lot of emotions in different ways, and I think it’s like a stage or theatre show can often be, it makes it even more honest. There is nothing you have to figure out, there’s no way you have to kind of allow your mind to roam. You don’t have to pretend a person with a puppet is that thing and you don’t have to forget about that, you just have three people. I think it’s a really nice dynamic and it’s written so well. Chad (Beguelin) wrote it incredibly, it’s really funny and all of us have our own individual quirks. It’s just enough that it doesn’t feel off.
The creative team, each of them in their own right are masters and to bring them together, what they’ve created is stunning, and this cast is absolutely incredible. Probably the best part of it is you get to onstage every night and play with people who are so incredibly talented and devoted to the craft. You know, we’ve all been a part of jobs or shows or anything in life where you have good ones and maybe ones that aren’t as good as you had hoped, and I’ve been very fortunate in my career to have honestly almost exclusively positive experiences but this one is one of the top because of the level of giving in the people here as well as the talent. I think that’s a trickle down effect from Casey and the people at Disney, it’s a great environment to work in.
But it’s tour life, and there are two kinds of ways tours can go. It can be a kind of dark time where people feel they’re away from home and don’t have anything to grab on to, they don’t have any kind of real line to hold on to and they’re just floating for however long their contract is, and then there’s tours like this where you really do feel a warmth and connection with everybody. Everybody usually says it’s like a family but honestly I think it’s more like a community. It’s just a community that I can trust. If you’re for the phrase ‘It takes a village’, that’s what this is, and everybody pulls the weight and everybody goes above and beyond and … we’re really, really lucky on this tour.
— CD: For people who are fans of Aladdin, and even people who aren’t, what is it that you desire people take away from the show?
★ CP: Aladdin is a tale about self-awareness, and what you do and how much power you have in you to do good, then you know yourself, and I’ve always loved that about Aladdin. That’s what I always felt was so incredible — the minute that Aladdin accepts who he is and isn’t trying to run around and not be himself, isn’t trying to wish to be a different person and wish to be all of these things that have his problems instantly fixed, the minute that he accepts that part of him, he literally has the power to free a genie … that’s incredible. That’s what I … or maybe that’s part of my life’s story or my brain or whatever, but that’s always been the thing that I want people to see — they are magic, they have everything they need in themselves but they do have to look inward and see what those strengths are to let them out. I’ve always loved that.
— CD: Do you have any personal messages for the fans coming to see the show?
★ CP: Just stretch your face out because you’re going to be smiling for two-and-a-half hours. Honestly, just be ready to have fun. If you’ve got two-and-a-half hours … and that’s the best part, it’s a show that’s kid-friendly but it’s not a kid’s show. This is a show that’s meant for literally people of all ages, bring everybody, come on a date night. I actually went before my final callback in New York and I went and saw it and it happened to be Valentine’s Day and it was literally a sea of people on dates, and honestly I have not heard an audience that loud in a long time. It’s incredible. Just get ready to smile, bring your whole family, come on a date, just come see it.
Aladdin plays at Baltimore’s Hippodrome Theatre November 13 through December 1. The tour will travel to East Lansing MI, Tampa FL, Fort Lauderdale FL, Orlando FL, Greenville SC, Memphis TN, Austin TX, San Antonio TX and Kansas City MO, with more to come.
Aladdin on tour
Disney Theatrical Productions
Check our Ticketmaster link for ticket availability.
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