‘Hadestown’ actor credits Jewish upbringing for his love of singing
“It’s crazy being at this level with these people and holding my own,” he said.
Theater has been in Ben Raanan’s blood as long as he can remember.
“I was always a very theatrical kid,” he said. “In all my home videos, I was putting the camera on me dancing in different costumes and things. I did all the elementary school musicals. At summer camp, I did the musicals there.”
In high school, Raanan said, he decided to take an academic rather than theatrical tract, but seeing friends in musicals and the choir helped convince him to shift his focus. He was soon the lead in the school’s musical and singing in the choir.
He moved from his native California to the east coast to attend New York University’s Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development, taking a year off in the middle of his time there because of COVID-19.
“Theater school online is not for the faint of heart,” he recalled with a laugh.
After graduating, Raanan took some time off from theater. He moved back to Los Angeles, directing theater at the Cultural City Middle School and teaching voice lessons for the last three years.
He credits watching his friend Luz Rodriguez’s journey in musical theater as the motivation he needed to perform again.
“I met her during my year off,” he said. “I was doing choir at Santa Monica Community College because I missed it and she was in that choir. She had a very similar journey to me. She studied musical theater, got very burnt out and took a long break. I got to watch her recovery journey and start performing again. We had a great conversation about how our struggles were similar. She gave me a blueprint to follow.”
The journey has paid off for Raanan. Once the 26-year-old decided to recommit to theater full time, he was cast in the touring production of one of Broadway’s biggest shows of the last few decades: “Hadestown,” winner of eight 2019 Tony Awards, including Best Musical.
“It’s crazy being at this level with these people and holding my own,” he said. “It’s been really cool to see that I’m still able to work at this level, even after having taken so much time off.”
Raanan plays Worker 5 in the hit musical and understudies the role of Hades. The actor, who previously had roles in “Bat Boy” and “Legally Blonde,” spoke with the Chronicle from Wisconsin, where the cast was finishing tech rehearsals before starting the musical’s tour on Oct. 16.
“Hadestown” will be performed at the Benedum Center Oct. 27 through Nov. 1 as part of the PNC Broadway in Pittsburgh series. It will be the first extended stay in the Steel City for Raanan, who briefly visited the city when he considered both Point Park University and Carnegie Mellon University before deciding on NYU.
Raanan, whose father is from Israel, said he believes growing up Jewish helped prepare him for a life on the stage.
“Being a part of a congregation is part of being Jewish,” he said. “You’re in a group of people all singing the same thing together. You’re joining your voice with a community of people. In a show like ‘Hadestown’ that is so full of heart and spiritual and community-oriented, it translates those early religious experiences of sitting in temple and singing the prayers or around the campfire at Jewish camp.”
Raanan grew up at Temple Isaiah, a Reform synagogue in Los Angeles, starting in preschool.
“It’s a second home to me,” he said. “It’s almost all female rabbis. It’s beautiful. I went to preschool there. I went to summer camp there. They had a day camp that I loved.”
The actor said he was a religious and cultural vice president of the teen youth group and helped to write and lead services — substituting pop songs for prayers that meant the same thing.
“I tried to hipify it a bit,” he said.
Summer camp in Malibu and NFTY in high school rounded out Raanan’s Jewish upbringing.
“Judaism is responsible for part of my love of music,” he said. “I love, love, love Jewish music.” PJC
David Rullo can be reached at drullo@pittsburghjewishchronicle.org.
comments