Most people, when trying to figure out what they want to do with their lives, have that go-to person they talk it out with: a parent, a best friend, maybe a guidance counselor. For Central Florida actor Joshua Roth that person was a bit more removed than that.
“I went to New York with some friends and had a really amazing conversation with this random woman on the subway for like an hour,” Roth recalls. “This woman just came into my life at the right time and she asked me what I love, and I told her that I love singing and dancing and she asked me ‘then why aren’t you doing it?’”
Roth asked himself that very question—thanks to the subway lady—and the moment he got back home he began to put that plan into motion.
“When I got home from New York I registered for classes at Valencia College,” Roth says. “I took some dance classes and acting classes, I got into voice lessons. I wasn’t really in a structured program, I just put my education together on my own with courses that I was passionate about. “
Born in Sacramento, Calif., a family move brought Roth to Aurora, Colo., at the age of four. He didn’t do much in the way of pursuing any professional acting gigs, if there were any professional acting gigs to be had in Aurora, but he did spend his middle and high years performing in a variety of school productions.
“After I graduated high school, I did a semester of college in Denver before I decided I wanted to run away and came to Orlando on the Disney College Program,” Roth says.
What should have been a four-month program turned into seven months, then a year. At that year mark of slinging turkey legs and making funnel cakes at the Magic Kingdom, Roth took a trip with friends up to New York. Enter subway lady.
Roth started his training and auditioning, picking up his first paying gig in 2011.
“I was in Chicago at the Theatre Downtown, which is no longer there, and they extended the run and we made $25 for each of the extended shows,” Roth says.
Roth made it into some Orlando Fringe shows that year and then later was hired on at Universal Studios for Grinchfest in 2011.
“That was my first steady paycheck for performing. That’s where it started and I have been lucky enough to be able to make a living mostly performing ever since, of course with an odd job here and there,” Roth says.
Roth has been a familiar face on Orlando stages ever since appearing in such hits as Rent, Spring Awakening, Falsettos, Naked Boys Singing and Sordid Lives, among many others.
Roth most recently appeared at this year’s Orlando Fringe in the award-winning festival hit Wanzie With a Z, and will be the titular character in the Footlight Theatre’s production of Jeffrey.
Eric Pinder directs the Tim Evanicki Production of Jeffrey at the Parliament House’s Footlight Theatre Oct. 13-28. Roth is joined on stage by his Naked Boys Singing co-star William Bruce, his Sordid Lives co-star Jessica Hoehn, as well as Justin Ortiz, Mark Hardin, Steven Johnson, Austin Paz and Forrest Stringfellow.
Jeffrey was written by playwright Paul Rudnick in the early ‘90s. The play opened Off-Broadway on New Year’s Eve in 1992 and earned Rudnick several awards. The play was turned into a film in 1995 starring Steven Weber, Michael Weiss, Patrick Stewart, Sigourney Weaver, Olympia Dukakis and Nathan Lane. While not a huge hit, the film has taken on cult status since its premiere and is required viewing by many in the LGBTQ community. We won’t hold that against Roth though.
“I have never seen the movie, and I think I am going to keep it that way while the show is running, so I can create this character on my own,” Roth says.
Jeffrey is about a young gay man living in New York City in the 1980s and ‘90s during the height of the AIDS crisis.
“Jeffrey remembers the gay sexual revolution of the ‘70s when you would go to the bathhouse, not just to have sex, but you would hang out there with your friends and then you would have sex with your friends. It was just sexual freedom that the community had not seen, and may never see again,” Roth says. “Jeffrey sees the sexual revolution come to a screeching halt with the AIDS crisis.”
Jeffrey’s answer to the AIDS epidemic is to stop having sex.
“Jeffrey decides with all of this going on in his community, and all of this newfound fear, he has no other choice,” Roth says. “But of course, in typical dramatic fashion, a man comes into his life the moment he says he is going to stop having sex.”
The play explores not only Jeffrey’s relationships with both his friends and a man he thinks may be “the one,” but it also looks at what it means to be a gay man living with fear and despair during the AIDS epidemic. Did we also mention Jeffrey is a comedy?
“It’s a bit bizarre because when you think of any production or movie or song that has to do with AIDS you don’t think of those stories as being able to be funny,” Roth says. “One of the beautiful things about this play is it is written so that the heavy subject matter and the humor is so well balanced.”
That balance of comedy and tragedy can be tricky when you are performing for an audience where many of them lived through the crisis.
“The first thing, above all else, is to play these characters as honest as possible,” Roth says. “The writing for this play is clearly great; it wouldn’t have lasted as long as it has if it wasn’t. You trust the words and play things honestly.”
With the advances made in HIV healthcare and education, some have said that Jeffrey may be dated or not be as relevant as before. Roth says that simply isn’t the case.
“The conflicts that Jeffrey has and the situations and feelings he struggles with are still extremely relevant,” he says. “We have people everyday still getting infected. Of course it is still relevant. I think anybody who comes and sees this show is going to take something impactful away from it.”
