Today we’d like to introduce you to Andrew Rothman.
Alright, so thank you so much for sharing your story and insight with our readers. To kick things off, can you tell us a bit about how you got started?
My grandparents were great lovers of music and theater. My grandmother sang with the Cleveland Orchestra Chorus for several decades, and my grandfather had a collection of jazz and classical music that was unparalleled. So it was with my parents, who were both singers, musicians, and community theater performers in their spare time. My older sister joined in on the stage practically as soon as we could walk. I was in my first community theatre production at age 5 or so. My parents started performing at Chagrin Valley Little Theatre in the early 1980s and my sister and I hung around the place during rehearsals, eventually taking our own places in the spotlight.
After I returned from college (I attending U. of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music, getting a BFA in Electronic Media), I volunteered to build CVLT a website (they had none) and eventually took on many volunteer duties there, including headshot and press photography, videography, publicity, computer assistance, and writing, scoring, starring in, and playing in the orchestra pit for shows. I got CVLT going with their first online ticketing system and have co-written/starred in nearly a dozen of the annual murder mystery fundraisers.
Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
If anything, I would say the biggest struggle is finding balance. All of us who get involved in the arts as volunteers do so because we’re passionate about what we do, and when people are passionate they can sometimes get over-invested or too precious about the work. Personally, I tend to spend an inordinate amount of time perfecting the things I work on, which can lead to exhausting myself or just cutting too much into my family time. I have definitely had to cut back on my involvement in the organization since becoming a father! I was absorbed in two complex back-to-back projects at CVLT when my first son was born, and I learned quickly that I was not going to have the time to support the theatre and my wife and child at the same level of quality simultaneously.
And of course, there’s also trying to balance the arts with the day job. Fortunately, the owners of the software company I’ve worked at since 1999 have always been very supportive of my creative work!
As you know, we’re big fans of you and your work. For our readers who might not be as familiar what can you tell them about what you do?
You might say I’m a polymath. I have a natural talent for singing and acting, studied the drums for several years on scholarship at The Music Settlement, taught myself guitar and a bit of piano, and trained myself in web design, photography, and the Adobe Suite. Although I studied audio and video production in college, I ended up finding my career in the computer world, teaching myself to write Javascript, HTML, CSS, PHP, and so on. I’ve played drums with at least a half-dozen local bands (jazz, rock, reggae, pop) on stages big and small (still playing with a couple of groups on and off), and was drummer/singer at Pickwick & Frolic on E 4th Street for a number of years.
What sets me apart, I think, is my ability to ply my wide variety of skills on a project. I’m sort of a one-man production house. For example, in 2013 I brought the comedy “Cannibal! The Musical” by Trey Parker (South Park, Book of Mormon) to CVLT’s smaller stage, The River Street Playhouse. For that show, I directed and designed the show, raise money for and installed/programmed a new sound system, created and edited my own sound design, arranged/sequenced all of the backing music tracks, and composed some of my own underscorings for scenes and transitions. I also designed the poster/t-shirt artwork, did all of the actors’ headshot photos, and laid out the playbills.
Similarly, for the most recent “Murder By The Falls” event (an annual fundraiser at CVLT), I took what is normally an in-person show and turned it into an online game. This involved co-writing a 50-page murder mystery script with my sister (we’ve written nine of them now), filming 13 scenes in as many locations with 25 actors, editing and putting special effects together on all of the videos, creating a series of fake newspaper pages containing puzzles of my own design, and co-created a custom web interface to allow the audience to unlock and watch the videos as they worked out the clues. I also did all of the artwork for the event. It raised several thousand dollars for the theatre.
I’m also proud of some of my performances out front. I had the unique pleasure of working alongside the late Dorothy Silver, grande dame of the Cleveland theatrical scene, in Interplay Jewish Theatre’s production of “The Revisionist” by Jesse Eisenberg, and I was the first person (aside from the author) to stage and perform Mike Daisey’s pivotal “The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs” in full. I also cherish having performed the role of ‘Jamie’ in two productions of “The Last Five Years” (CVLT and Weathervane), and ‘Eugene’ in “Biloxi Blues” (CVLT).
Can you talk to us about how you think about risk?
Certainly, the most recent Murder by the Falls project was a massive risk. During the pandemic, the theatre closed down and I was in charge of handing streaming of shows so we could stay active. I handled filming and editing a couple of shows, as well as re-editing and prepping older material for broadcast via the web. When it came time to plan for Murder by the Falls, CVLT put their faith in my ability to create a web-based event without any of us really knowing how it would work out. Even I only had a vague notion of how some of the pieces would fit together until a month or so before the event was to take place. In the end, it all worked out, but I wasn’t sure of any of it until the event got rolling and people were saying how much fun they had and how well it was put together.
Generally speaking, I think of myself as indecisive and not particularly risk-taking, but if I’m excited about something, I always go all-in.
Pricing:
- CVLT productions are generally $19 for non-musicals, $21 for musicals. Discounts are available for students/seniors and for groups. Our second stage (if it reopens) is generally $13 admission.
Contact Info:
- Email: drew@arothman.com
- Website: arothman.com
- Instagram: https://instagram.com/arothmanmusic
- Facebook: https://facebook.com/drewrothman
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/arothman
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/user/arothmanmusic
- SoundCloud: https://soundcloud.com/drew_rothman
- TikTok: @ohlookitsdrew
