CONVERSATION WITH...
JESSE CORBIN
STAGE ACTOR, SINGER & DANCER
On Playing Link Larkin, Overcoming Self-pity, and Surviving New York Auditions
When Jesse Corbin isn’t doing an intense Freeletics workout or sipping on a café au lait, the 25-year-old stage performer busies himself blasting rays of positivity amongst the theater arts set around the country.
With roles in “Hairspray,” “Les Miserables,” and “Joseph and the…Dreamcoat,” to name a few, Jesse has dazzled audiences with goosebump-inducing vocals, an impressively toned physique, and his trademark ginger hair.
But it’s Jesse’s spirit that truly radiates from the stage, fueled by a desire to spread light wherever his peers see darkness. That he’s found his passion so young and already figured out a way to get paid for doing it is truly remarkable.
Yet for this Pittsburgh native, trying to make it in the cut-throat theater world is no stroll in Central Park. He hadn’t even considered acting as a career choice until he’d just about graduated college.
With humility and exquisite grace, he navigates rejection, competition, self-doubt and – more and more often – the taste of stardom. Now he’s about to begin rehearsals for his first off-Broadway show as an understudy in “The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe.”
I caught up with Jesse over the phone recently, just hours before his opening performance in “Hairspray” at the Mill Mountain Theater in Roanoke, VA, which runs through May 17th. He shared how he found his calling and how he’s determined to make his mark on the world.
With roles in “Hairspray,” “Les Miserables,” and “Joseph and the…Dreamcoat,” to name a few, Jesse has dazzled audiences with goosebump-inducing vocals, an impressively toned physique, and his trademark ginger hair.
But it’s Jesse’s spirit that truly radiates from the stage, fueled by a desire to spread light wherever his peers see darkness. That he’s found his passion so young and already figured out a way to get paid for doing it is truly remarkable.
Yet for this Pittsburgh native, trying to make it in the cut-throat theater world is no stroll in Central Park. He hadn’t even considered acting as a career choice until he’d just about graduated college.
With humility and exquisite grace, he navigates rejection, competition, self-doubt and – more and more often – the taste of stardom. Now he’s about to begin rehearsals for his first off-Broadway show as an understudy in “The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe.”
I caught up with Jesse over the phone recently, just hours before his opening performance in “Hairspray” at the Mill Mountain Theater in Roanoke, VA, which runs through May 17th. He shared how he found his calling and how he’s determined to make his mark on the world.
Photo permission courtesy of Jesse Corbin
JANEEN ELLSWORTH: Congratulations on your role in “Hairspray.” Are you nervous for the opening tonight?
JESSE CORBIN: Thanks! And no. Most shows, I don’t really get nervous for anymore. I hope all the technical stuff goes smoothly, but I’m feeling good physically and vocally.
I’m excited, more than anything, to hear people react to jokes, because after a while of rehearsing the same jokes over and over again, you want to know that people are actually laughing at them.
And during rehearsals, you want to impress the director and production staff. You sing a song 25 times and they’re looking at it to make sure you do it right. But on stage, when you do it even for just a few people, you know that all of them want to have a great time.
I just want to give them the best show possible to give me that shot of adrenaline that I need.
J.E.: You play Link Larkin, the show’s main hunk. Are you prepared to deal with the kind of attention people will give you because of that?
J.C.: Listen, I don’t know whether I’ll take Roanoke by storm as the town heart throb or not. I won’t be mad if people send me flowers and chocolates! There are so many other great people in the show that I’m not having too high of expectations, but we’ll see. If a little fan club springs up, I won’t be mad, put it that way!
J.E.: What’s the chemistry been like for this cast compared to other shows you’ve worked on?
J.C.: I think one of the best things about this cast is, from day one, there’s been a pretty unified sense that we all are working toward the same goals. No one is in this just to survive it or looks at it as just a job. There’s a lot of team spirit, so that’s been really cool.
In any cast, some people connect better than others. Little groups form. I’ve talked to other actors where they’ve felt like an outcast or didn’t make friends on different productions. But I’ve been lucky that every show I’ve been involved in has been such a positive experience, professionally and personally.
Here, there’s no one who’s exhausting or a being super diva or creating drama. There’s no enemies. And that’s so refreshing, because one of my fears going into any contract is, at what point is there going to be a fallout between two cast members? It just makes it so much harder to tell a story when you get that.
JESSE CORBIN: Thanks! And no. Most shows, I don’t really get nervous for anymore. I hope all the technical stuff goes smoothly, but I’m feeling good physically and vocally.
I’m excited, more than anything, to hear people react to jokes, because after a while of rehearsing the same jokes over and over again, you want to know that people are actually laughing at them.
And during rehearsals, you want to impress the director and production staff. You sing a song 25 times and they’re looking at it to make sure you do it right. But on stage, when you do it even for just a few people, you know that all of them want to have a great time.
I just want to give them the best show possible to give me that shot of adrenaline that I need.
J.E.: You play Link Larkin, the show’s main hunk. Are you prepared to deal with the kind of attention people will give you because of that?
J.C.: Listen, I don’t know whether I’ll take Roanoke by storm as the town heart throb or not. I won’t be mad if people send me flowers and chocolates! There are so many other great people in the show that I’m not having too high of expectations, but we’ll see. If a little fan club springs up, I won’t be mad, put it that way!
J.E.: What’s the chemistry been like for this cast compared to other shows you’ve worked on?
J.C.: I think one of the best things about this cast is, from day one, there’s been a pretty unified sense that we all are working toward the same goals. No one is in this just to survive it or looks at it as just a job. There’s a lot of team spirit, so that’s been really cool.
In any cast, some people connect better than others. Little groups form. I’ve talked to other actors where they’ve felt like an outcast or didn’t make friends on different productions. But I’ve been lucky that every show I’ve been involved in has been such a positive experience, professionally and personally.
Here, there’s no one who’s exhausting or a being super diva or creating drama. There’s no enemies. And that’s so refreshing, because one of my fears going into any contract is, at what point is there going to be a fallout between two cast members? It just makes it so much harder to tell a story when you get that.
J.E.: How does that type of discord affect an actor’s performance?
J.C.: You have a show to do. You can’t fall apart. You don’t have the option of letting your personal life affect you. At the end of the day, nobody cares that you didn’t give a really good performance because you just broke up with your girlfriend or boyfriend.
People are paying $30, $50, $100 a ticket to watch this show. They don’t care about your personal life; they want it to be a good show. You have to find a way, as an actor, to re-channel what you’re feeling. Ironically, sometimes it can be your best performance when you have all this anger or sadness that you can access very easily.
J.E.: Tell me about how you handle some of the challenges that you face in your work.
J.C.: Anytime you’re around other talented performers, it’s really easy to start comparing yourself. Like, Oh, I can’t sing like that, I can’t dance quite like that. As much as you want to appreciate the gift that each person brings, you end up comparing yourself.
At the beginning of rehearsals for “Hairspray,” I wasn’t in a great place, personally, and I was starting to question, Am I good enough for this? Should I continue to do this? So there were a couple of self-pity days in the middle of the process.
But going into the end of it, I started to feel a lot more positive and, ironically, as I started to feel more positive, my performance got better.
So I reached a point where I had to accept the fact that I can only do the best that I can do. I can only give the best of what I have.
J.C.: You have a show to do. You can’t fall apart. You don’t have the option of letting your personal life affect you. At the end of the day, nobody cares that you didn’t give a really good performance because you just broke up with your girlfriend or boyfriend.
People are paying $30, $50, $100 a ticket to watch this show. They don’t care about your personal life; they want it to be a good show. You have to find a way, as an actor, to re-channel what you’re feeling. Ironically, sometimes it can be your best performance when you have all this anger or sadness that you can access very easily.
J.E.: Tell me about how you handle some of the challenges that you face in your work.
J.C.: Anytime you’re around other talented performers, it’s really easy to start comparing yourself. Like, Oh, I can’t sing like that, I can’t dance quite like that. As much as you want to appreciate the gift that each person brings, you end up comparing yourself.
At the beginning of rehearsals for “Hairspray,” I wasn’t in a great place, personally, and I was starting to question, Am I good enough for this? Should I continue to do this? So there were a couple of self-pity days in the middle of the process.
But going into the end of it, I started to feel a lot more positive and, ironically, as I started to feel more positive, my performance got better.
So I reached a point where I had to accept the fact that I can only do the best that I can do. I can only give the best of what I have.
I can’t be someone else. I can’t suddenly get abilities or talents that I haven’t worked on or been gifted with, and I have to be okay with that.
Corbin as "Joseph." Photo permission courtesy of Jesse Corbin
Especially being in New York, as much as it’s the land of opportunity, there are so many people there trying to make it. You walk into an audition, and even if you’re not the worst person there – even if you’re great – you still look around the room and you hear that person through the door; their voice is just fierce. Can I live up to that? Or, That person is in perfect shape, and I’ve been eating pizza the last five days.
The thing with theater, there are so many details that make up determining whether you get the part or not. You could be the best singer, but if don’t have the right body type, you won’t get the part. You could be a really good actor, but if you don’t have the dancing chops that they need, they’re not going to use you.
One of hardest things is that you can invest in your talent and put in hard work, but you may not work for a while if you don’t know the right people. The guy who’s a little less talented than you but knows the director is probably going to get the role.
J.E.: So, what made you decide to get into theater in the first place?
J.C.: Before I even considered performing, I was in college for education. The decision to move away from being a traditional teacher was in my second year. I remember a class where we were describing what our passion is. I realized that I would be a kickass teacher. I would probably be very successful.
But as I was learning more about the administrative side of it, I realized I could do this, but these things would distract me from the joy that I get from interacting with kids.
I realized, I don’t know if this is something I could sustain as a passion for a long time. I knew other students in the program who wanted to be in the classroom 110%, and I was like, I could do it, but it would be half-hearted.
I wanted to change majors, and the only other department at school that interested me was the music department, so I thought I would do music and get my master’s in theater ed.
And it was towards the end of my time at college that I was performing more and more on campus and outside of school that I realized, Maybe I want to perform.
I got a job offer from a local theater company, and as I was working there I realized, This is what I want, I want to give this a shot, this is what God’s calling me to do, and as long as I can ride this wave, I will.
But I had a professor at that time who encouraged me to think it through. He said, ‘If you just want to be another performer, don’t do it. A 101 million other people want to be the next big star. You’ll probably struggle.
‘But if you really believe that you have the talent to support it and you are also being called to encourage and love and shine a light on a world that’s filled with a lot of competition and self-doubt’ – because the performing arts can be a very dark place – ‘if you believe God is calling you to be the light for these people and the one example of what genuine, unconditional love looks like, then do it.
‘No matter whether you’re performing in a small, regional theater or the movies, then you can trust that God is placing you right where you need to be.’
That’s what grounds me a lot. Whether I’m auditioning in New York or in Roanoke, Virginia, doing “Hairspray,” when I start to question my abilities or why I’m here or what’s next, I have to believe I’m here for a reason, and if for no other reason than to encourage my cast mates or help them cultivate something about themselves.
That’s more important than giving the performance of my life. If I don’t get that big audition I was hoping for, there’s something better for me down the pipeline that I’m supposed to be involved in.
Related Links:
The Roanoke Times review of "Hairspray" by Amanda Nelson
http://www.jessecorbin.com/
But as I was learning more about the administrative side of it, I realized I could do this, but these things would distract me from the joy that I get from interacting with kids.
I realized, I don’t know if this is something I could sustain as a passion for a long time. I knew other students in the program who wanted to be in the classroom 110%, and I was like, I could do it, but it would be half-hearted.
I wanted to change majors, and the only other department at school that interested me was the music department, so I thought I would do music and get my master’s in theater ed.
And it was towards the end of my time at college that I was performing more and more on campus and outside of school that I realized, Maybe I want to perform.
I got a job offer from a local theater company, and as I was working there I realized, This is what I want, I want to give this a shot, this is what God’s calling me to do, and as long as I can ride this wave, I will.
But I had a professor at that time who encouraged me to think it through. He said, ‘If you just want to be another performer, don’t do it. A 101 million other people want to be the next big star. You’ll probably struggle.
‘But if you really believe that you have the talent to support it and you are also being called to encourage and love and shine a light on a world that’s filled with a lot of competition and self-doubt’ – because the performing arts can be a very dark place – ‘if you believe God is calling you to be the light for these people and the one example of what genuine, unconditional love looks like, then do it.
‘No matter whether you’re performing in a small, regional theater or the movies, then you can trust that God is placing you right where you need to be.’
That’s what grounds me a lot. Whether I’m auditioning in New York or in Roanoke, Virginia, doing “Hairspray,” when I start to question my abilities or why I’m here or what’s next, I have to believe I’m here for a reason, and if for no other reason than to encourage my cast mates or help them cultivate something about themselves.
That’s more important than giving the performance of my life. If I don’t get that big audition I was hoping for, there’s something better for me down the pipeline that I’m supposed to be involved in.
Related Links:
The Roanoke Times review of "Hairspray" by Amanda Nelson
http://www.jessecorbin.com/