SALT LAKE CITY, Utah, April 10, 2023 (Gephardt Daily) — Utahns can be transported to 1960’s Baltimore this spring as the beloved musical “Hairspray” comes to town.
Gephardt Daily had the chance to speak with Kyle Hess, who is the associate company manager of the national tour of “Hairspray.” The show is coming to the Eccles Theater in Salt Lake City from April 11 to April 16.
Hess grew up in Roy and attended Weber State University then Utah Valley University. He’s worked with the Hale Center Theater in Orem, Utah Opera, Pioneer Theatre Company, Sundance Summer Theatre, and more.
Hear the podcast below:
DAISY: So hello, this is Daisy from Gephardt Daily and I’m speaking to a Utah native this morning, Kyle Hess, you’re the associate company manager for the national tour of “Hairspray.” Super exciting, and you guys are coming to the Eccles Theater here in downtown Salt Lake City April 11 to 16, and I was just asking you, the tour stop currently is Portland, Oregon.
KYLE: Yep, Portland this weekend, Seattle next week, then we’re in great Salt Lake.
DAISY: Yay! So I understand, Kyle, that you were raised in Roy…
KYLE: I was, yeah.
DAISY: And I wondered what was your path to getting into theater?
KYLE: Yeah, so growing up in Weber County, we spent a lot of our summers, Weber State used to have an amphitheater behind the old Browning Center. And they used to do Shakespeare in the Park, and they used to do a lot of music concerts and that kind of thing. So my folks would take us up to Weber State, and we would watch the theater with the community up there, in that old amphitheater behind the theater.
DAISY: And did you get the bug at that point? I mean, were you like, I love this?
KYLE: I would say, I grew up as a choir nerd. So there’s a wonderful program in Weber county called Kids are Music, and it’s run by Mark and Janette Bishoff, and I started doing that in fourth grade. And I did that all the way through my senior year of high school, so I did it for eight years. I would say I was more of a performer but didn’t really catch the theater bug until my freshman year of college. I went to Weber State my freshman year of college and worked with Jim Christian and Tracy Callahan and Catherine Zublin and John Bizzel. And just fell in love with theater that, that year and then have never left it since.
DAISY: Yeah. And that’s a great program at Weber State. I’m familiar with all those those people and a lot of theater kids come out of there, I know. And then I understand before you joined the “Hairspray” tour, I was seeing that you you’ve worked all sorts of places; Summer Theatre at Sundance, Hale Orem, Utah Opera, what was what was that period of time like? It sounds busy?
KYLE: Yeah. So I did my first two years at Weber State and then I did, I finished my degree at Utah Valley University. And UVU was a very small program when I was there. They were definitely growing, they were trying to essentially get as many opportunities as possible and my mentor’s name was Lisa Elzey. And she taught at UVU. And she taught at BYU and she just really encouraged me to get as many experiences as possible. So one, one year, I was trying to find additional opportunities and I just Googled theater internships paid. I applied to Disney World, Cirque du Soleil, Utah Shakespeare and Oregon Shakespeare and ended up between my junior and senior year of college going down and working for Disney World as a theatre technician. And so it really, there’s a ton of opportunities in Utah you just have to reach out to these theaters and find out when their casting phases are, what their hiring process is, and they’re always looking for good help.
DAISY: So, and that took you more to the technical side of theater at that point?
KYLE: Absolutely. I’ve never been much of an actor so I definitely stayed more in the backstage, so I did a lot of tech work and stage management. And then obviously now as associate company manager for this show.
DAISY: Yeah. And what was that path to joining a national tour, I wondered?
KYLE: Yeah, so a buddy of mine from college, his name was Darick Pead, and he had done three or four tours with our company, which is called Networks. And so I had always known about Networks and then during the pandemic when everything shut down, I had heard that Networks was restarting touring. So I had applied for a position and didn’t hear anything. And then through some turnover, I end up getting a call and they hired me pretty quick, I would say, with less than a week’s notice I was in St. Louis on the national tour of “Hairspray.”
DAISY: Wow. So what was that like?
KYLE: It’s, I would say the joke is is remember when you’re in high school and you had those like theater dreams that you had to go on stage or you have to like run a track that you’ve never been rehearsed and you don’t know what you’re doing? The shocking thing is that’s actually how it works. That theater is incredibly fast, is incredibly detailed. So I had a week of training with my boss at the time. His name is Jack Stephens, and he was with me for the week in St. Louis. And then he basically like tapped me on the shoulders and said: “You got this, kid,” and I was doing the job with minimal support from across the country. It’s pretty wild, but it’s pretty fun.
DAISY: So what does an associate company manager do; what are you responsible for?
KYLE: Yeah, so the company management department is essentially the logistics of the tour. So we cover payroll, human resources, housing, travel. We try to facilitate to make sure that all the other departments can operate to their best. So we’re basically a giant support role. So we take care of the operational side whereas a stage manager would take care of like the stage responsibilities, company management, takes care of almost everything else.
DAISY: But you’re touring with them? You’re on the road with this cast? And it’s really funny because I was looking at the at the website and I looked at the company page and I and I kept scrolling down and I was like, this is a big cast, like you have a lot of actors on tour with you.
KYLE: We’re a big company. So we travel with 63 which is a very large company, especially when you think of terms of, we have to book 63 flights and we have to get 63 people into hotel rooms and make sure that 63 people are paid every week and that they have you know all the proper information of what life on the tour is like, but it’s not overwhelming. It’s a lot of fun.
DAISY: And for those that haven’t seen “Hairspray” as a show or a movie, it’s, it’s such a fun show.
KYLE: Yeah, we’re pretty lucky. We have one of the funner shows, it’s very rewarding that at the end of every single show, the entire audience is dancing and singing along and just having a great, a great time. “You Can’t Stop the Beat” truly is probably one of the best finales in all musical theater. It’s really, really fun.
DAISY: Oh, amazing. And so as a as a Utah gentleman, do you have a lot of friends and family coming to the show when you come here?
KYLE: I do. I’m really lucky. So my whole family’s coming to the show and a lot of my friends are coming to see the show. Brooklyn [Pulver Kohler] who was Tracy in the national tour 10,15 years ago. She also lives in Salt Lake City and still works at Desert Star and at the Hale Center Theatre and she’s coming to see the show.
DAISY: I know her and love her, she’s so great.
KYLE: Love Brooklyn, yeah, absolutely love Brooklyn. It’s gonna be a big party because the cast is very excited to come to perform in Salt Lake City. So I don’t know if most people back home know this but the Eccles is a famous venue and these productions fight to get into the Eccles. It’s actually one of the better facilities across the country.
DAISY: Really?
KYLE: The three loading docks are fantastic for the crew. The dressing rooms are bright and spacious and the audiences are so warm and so fantastic that Salt Lake City is a hotspot on the national tour circuit, so I’m really excited to share it with everybody.
DAISY: And people love their theater here, they really do.
KYLE: I’m definitely feeling the love. It’s it’s going to be a great week in Salt Lake City.
DAISY: And then what are you planning? I think I saw on your Facebook that you, you were you were maybe planning to show the cast and crew some Utah sites. What have you got in mind?
KYLE: Obviously if the weather allows I think the Living Room hike is going to be fantastic because you can go up there and see the entire valley. I think we’re going to try to go to the Tabernacle Choir concert on Sunday morning. And then we talked about going up to Emigration Canyon to Ruth’s [Diner]. There’s just a lot of things to do in Utah. I think a lot of them actually want to try to go skiing or sledding to take advantage of the the late snow this year.
DAISY: And do you do you guys tend to do that in every city you go to, do you go out and kind of hang out and do stuff?
KYLE: Some of the cities yes, most of the cities, no, I think every once in a while the rigors of tour add up to the company and you know, it takes a lot of rest to do what we do, eight shows a week. But I think Salt Lake City is going to be the exception just because there’s so much to do in Salt Lake City, and so much to see.
DAISY: And then Kyle, kind of what’s coming up. I mean, is this tour kind of indefinite at the moment for you or do you have other plans after, or?
KYLE: That’s a great question. So we work in season contracts. So our show goes through June 25. And then on the 26th we’ll all travel back home. Most of our cast are from New York City. So a lot of them will go to New York and start auditioning for other projects. As the touring world works, you know, everything that’s gonna go on the road next season is getting built and structured right now. So over the next month, I would say I would expect a lot of us to get job offers to do another show next year, whether that’s another season of “Hairspray,” or a different show altogether. I would say a good amount of us will be working next season. We just work contract to contract.
DAISY: Do you have an eye on, I mean do you would you like to stay with the “Hairspray” tour or do you have your eye on the show that you’d like to join, or is that kind of confidential information?
KYLE: I guess I would say this, I have loved working on “Hairspray,” I’ve been with “Hairspray” for a year. I would love to experience another show with a different group of people. That’s the best part about touring is everything is in segmented amounts. So we know we’re in a city for a week. We know we’re gonna play this many shows that week. And then it’s it’s actually a rather quick lifestyle because if you live your life in weekly chunks, you blink and a month is gone. It’s always… I would love to work on another show. I would love to work on another year of “Hairspray”, just depending on what came up. But if I had to choose, I think I would choose the next adventure after a year of being on the show.
DAISY: And just finally, do you have a dream show that you would like to work on?
KYLE: A dream show I would like to work on, that is really interesting. I don’t know if you got to see the national tour… or the production Marianne Elliott’s “Company” in New York. That’s going on tour next season. That show is magical. I would love to work on that show. I’m really lucky that I’ve got a relationship with our company, it’s called Networks. So they have some really fun ones. They have “Funny Girl” this year. They do “Les Mis.” I think everybody’s in love with “Les Mis.” That was my first national tour at the old Capitol Theater (in Salt Lake City).
DAISY: Amazing. What a cool life.
KYLE: It is it’s so much fun. It really is.
DAISY: And for people that haven’t got tickets yet, I think the best way to get tickets and more info is hairspraytour.com, right?
KYLE: That’s correct. Yeah. And then we have a link for obviously Salt Lake City, but any other city that’s on the tour, you just click that link and find some tickets.
DAISY: Amazing. I really appreciate your time. Kyle, it’s really interesting to talk to you.
