Interview: Josh Tower

Stepping into a role as iconic as Aaron Burr is no easy task, but Josh Tower is up to the challenge and brings a distinct skill set to the part that makes him an especially strong fit.

Prior to Hamilton’s return to the Peace Center, June 7-19, Tower spoke with Asheville Stages about his formative years in Chapel Hill, early experiences with Lin-Manuel Miranda’s beloved work, and the show’s capacity for change.

Edwin Arnaudin: I understand you’re a fellow Carolina grad?

Josh Tower: Yeah! I graduated back in ’98. I got my MFA there. I went to undergrad at Temple University, but I worked at PlayMakers Repertory Company for three years and did their professional actor training program.

EA: Was it just the reputation of that program that drew you there or were there other aspects?

JT: At the time, there was a specific teacher there that was suggested by a teacher that he had trained back at [American Conservatory Theater] — which is in San Francisco — years ago, one of my professors at Temple University. And so I went kind of predicated on his reputation at the time. It was a crazy three years, but it was also one of the few programs that's attached to a repertory company. There's Denver Center [for the Performing Arts] and maybe The Old Globe [at the University of San Diego] and La Jolla Playhouse — they’re connected. Kansas City Rep[ertory Theatre] is connected to the MFA program [at the University of Missouri-Kansas City]. So you can get a chance to work with professional directors, actors, guest artists who come in, as well as being potentially cast in shows. You're already working at a professional clip by the time you're done, so it really worked out well for me.

EA: Either during those years or since, have you been to Asheville or do you have much of a history with the western part of the state?

JT: No, I really haven't been I back. Then, I had taken trips to Asheville, but it's been a long time. And even just coming down…I toured through Charlotte, so pretty close to Chapel Hill, about five years ago with Motown [the Musical] five or six years ago, and just in that time it's built up so much. Every one of these cities — Raleigh, Durham, Chapel Hill, Charlotte, Winston-Salem, Greensboro — had changed dramatically. It's very cool, but it's really interesting. My landmarks are all gone. Restaurants have changed. Unless it was a building on campus or something, my landmarks are gone. [laughs]

Like, there's a Whole Foods in Chapel Hill? What?? I don't remember what the old one was called. It was a Whole Foods type store, but it was not that. It was, you know, like Feed & Fare or something like that. It was some cool name that was pre-Whole Foods.

EA: Yeah, we had one of those here called Greenlife and it was kind of the hippie grocery store and it's since been bought and turned into a Whole Foods.

JT: Yeah, exactly. I mean, there are still a few of those mom and pop type situations fighting to hang on, but the prices go up so much because they've gotta compete. And you want to give them a chance, but you're like, “Oh my God! I just spent $200 on a chicken breast and organic avocados.” [laughs]

EA: Well, I’m definitely looking forward to the show coming to Peace Center. I was lucky to see the 2018 touring show and now I feel like I know the songs a lot better — I saw the original cast, Disney+ version, so I’m really pumped to see it again. So, just to start off, I'm curious about your journey to getting to Aaron Burr and what you see as the turning points in your career that really helped you prepare for this specific role?

JT: I did this little video, just randomly — I'm not a huge social media person, but I visited PlayMakers the other week and there was a guy named Mike Rolleri, who was still there, who was the head electrician. It's been like 35 years that he's been at the program. And so I said in the video that I initially I cut my teeth at Temple University and PlayMakers Rep, just learning the text work, the skills of text work and scanning through texts and building character and stuff like that. I really learned a lot. Also, I appreciate all the "no"s that I've gotten in my career that really leads you to — at least for me, for someone with my temperament — to push that much harder and to lean in that much harder, to commit that much harder.

I started my journey with Hamilton as George Washington, in one of the original workshops, opposite Leslie [Odom Jr.] and Daveed [Diggs] and Lin[-Manuel Miranda]. Renée [Elise] Goldsberry was not Angelica. It was Rebecca Naomi Jones at the time, who was also fabulous. But Philipa Soo and Ephraim Sykes…and the new Oscar winner Ariana DeBose was in the ensemble of that. You could see the potential, but my old friend Chris Jackson was already doing George Washington, and he was doing something else where he couldn't do that particular workshop. So when I stepped in, I stepped in knowing that this was already Chris' spot and I was just there for a little while.

But it was such a such an honor and a thrill to be involved at that level. We do lots of workshops in New York City and in LA and Chicago of new works — new plays, new musicals. And, man, some of them, you know when you're sitting in there are just duds. But the music, largely — while they had a lot of songs that they changed and they cut since those workshops — and there was, of course, no choreography. I mean, you just got up with your music stand and you said your piece and then you sat down. There was no choreography at all. Andy [Blankenbuehler] was still building all of that. But you knew even then that that was going to be something special.

Anyway, the show happens, I don't get into the Broadway company. They had auditioned me for some other roles, including the King, and, for whatever reason it didn't fit. And they kept auditioning me over the years — and this is probably like a couple years after the show is running and the tours were happening —  for George Washington, which really sits low. Chris Jackson and I did [The] Lion King together and I would sing "Endless Night" in the original key and Chris would sing it in the lower key. We're just different vocal types. My hotspots are much higher than Chris's hotspots. He's a beautiful high baritone and I'm more tenor baritone.

So it just didn't fit, and it got to the point where I told my agent, and my agent told the Hamilton people, "Hey, thank you so much, but no, thank you. You know what he can do. If you would like to hire him for George Washington, please do. If not, let's, you know, there's other shows to do. [laughs] Other projects to do. Hamilton happens to not be the only show on Broadway." But I said, "If Aaron Burr ever opens up, I would love to be seen for that." And so that's what happened. Another guy who I actually did the workshop with, Nick Christopher, was playing Burr. And Nick had kind of bounced around the Broadway company as an understudy and the standby and this and that. And he got to do Burr on the tour and he was leaving. And so they saw me and I got it. It just fit me much, much more.

Probably my favorite musical theater role is Judas in Jesus Christ Superstar, and Burr, on a lot levels, fits those kinds of parameters for me — the kind of misunderstood villain. And so, it worked out, and here I am a few years later — maybe three years later, including the pandemic year that we didn't perform. But it's been an amazing journey and it's really cool to go around the country and share this piece. But all those "no"s that I've gotten throughout my career and all that foundational training that I've gotten has really helped me prepare for this show and this role in particular.

EA: You mentioned Judas, and also Salieri from Amadeus pops to mind as kind of this adversarial role.

JT: Exactly! I haven’t played Salieri yet. [laughs] I saw David Suchet play it on Broadway and it was incredible. I mean, those [Royal Shakespeare Company] guys are all good. But yeah, that would be something that I'd be interested in. If they wanted to see a Black Salieri, I'm in. [laughs]

EA: And, you know, Burr is not one of the more rap-heavy parts in this show, but do you have a pretty firm hip-hop foundation from your personal history?

JT: Yeah! I mean, I’m old enough to really be there at the early inceptions of hip-hop and rap, like the late ’70s with all that stuff coming out of the Bronx. I grew up in Philadelphia, outside of Philadelphia, so we had our own. At that time, Will Smith was starting to happen — or Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince. And there was lots of urban stuff happening in Philly, New York — all over the northeast. Boston. So, I feel like all of my favorite hip-hop people are kind of throwback type people or else just old school hip-hop. I think a lot of Lin's flavors and sentiments, as far as his likes and dislikes, all kind of fit what I liked as far as hip-hop. So, yeah, I feel like I'm in the pocket, at least.

EA: Are you someone who has their top five MCs ready to go if somebody asks?

JT: [laughs] Are you asking?

EA: Sure! [laughs]

JT: Well, my contemporary ones are probably Common, Mos Def, old school Kanye [West], before the crazy. And then like going back, I really love A Tribe Called Quest. I love Melle Mel and Eric B and Rakim. But then there's all these other little groups like Nice & Smooth and a whole bunch of people that had kind of one-offs. Big Daddy Kane is in there; Kwamé. There's always people who have these one-off kind of dance numbers or else maybe two or three albums and then they kind of fell off. Busta Rhymes is in there — he's still around. But yeah, the influences are there, and I definitely love Biggie and that whole kind of East Coast, West Coast rivalry.

It's cool to see some of these people still around, but of course now they're movie stars. They don't make a lot of movie stars out of the contemporary rap people. They really did the trend-setters — Common's in there, and Mos Def's got his films. But when it was DJ Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince, and Ice Cube and NWA, and all those guys who came up, they're all the TV or movie people — Queen Latifah, Ice-T. It's so interesting to see that happen because they were the trendsetters. They were the ones that really changed everything and made people recognize hip-hop. And there's a lot more people who didn't become movie stars who are still producing and still in it, but it's just interesting that it's the people who really set the pace, where people are like, "Oh my God! They created that whole sound and we love them. Let's get them in!”

Now it's happening that way with musical theater people where people see Hamilton, the Disney+ film, and they're like, "Oh, those musical theater people, some of them can act!" Luckily, they had Leslie and Renée, who were already TV people before that, who are strong, strong, strong actors, first of all. I did Lion King with Renée, opposite. She was Nala and I was Simba. And she was doing TV back then. She'd go shoot One Life to Live in the morning and then come do the show at night. And you knew back then, that kind of tenacity and talent is  going to go really far. And she was just one of the nicest people, so I'm happy. Leslie is as well. All those people, I'm so happy to see them doing their thing.

EA: Burr is also one of the few male leads who doesn't switch characters in the second act. And I was curious if you're envious of your cast-mates that get to take on that challenge or are you more thankful for the consistency of the part?

JT: Well, I think it's a little of both. I really like the morph of doing two characters. I feel like I'm kind of a character man in disguise. I really liked that morphing and I would love that. But there is something for Burr's journey — I kind of play him the last…probably since we got back from the pandemic…with this idea that he's in purgatory and he's got to tell the story over and over. He bounces in and out of just enough of being in the story and then talking to the audience and telling us where we are and who we're talking about and how he feels. And then he jumps back into the actual timeline of the story. So, in this particular case, I really like the arc and the singularity that he has.

EA: And lastly, just thinking about since Hamilton's debut in 2015 and the tumultuous national and global history that we've experienced since then…Hamilton has been kind of a constant. How do you feel that the show's themes have evolved or taken on deeper meanings for our country, for this world, in the last seven years?

JT: I think the country, along with the show and its timelines and the happenings within the timeline, is incredibly cyclical. We just kind of go in this big circle. I mean, we're talking about gun control just in the last couple of days, and this is the time when they wrote those rules because those Redcoats were coming into their new colony, which they stole from the Native Americans.

It is really incredible. And so you kind of understand in our piece, “Oh, that's why that second amendment exists, because these guys come in.” And a lot of them were already there. I mean, they were all British and all Irish; they're all immigrants. That's one of the points of the show: if you weren't from the Americas, you're an immigrant.

And so it's interesting that all of those things, as far as the actual timeline, become very cyclical. The rules of engagement, as far as battle, or specifically dueling: one round, one shot; if you miss, you miss. Not, you know, 22 rounds in a clip. Not multiple people gunned down for no reason. There was a point. And there's not necessarily a point to war, but it's just more clear on some level at that time.

And then just the overlying thought of this immigrant theme that we as African-Americans, Asian-Americans, Indian Americans — brown people, yellow people are playing all these roles that are historically Anglo, that are white people from generally England, France, Scotland, Ireland, or a mixture of types of people from there. And so I think that thought of the melting pot that is the United States, contemporarily, is such a reflection of us — of the country.

And I think that's an incredibly powerful thing and really beautiful. I think the show brings together... it's not even like-minded people. It's curious people, then there's fans, then there's people who like history, then there's people who like hip-hop, and people who like R&B. And there's musical theater people who are like, “Oh, I've got to see the amazing musical theater piece!” But they all come into one space. There's no politics, there's no guns that are being waved around in our theaters. We're all sitting there and, for lack of a better word, when you are laughing, grieving, crying together, you are, in a sense, meditating together. That's what yoga is. You go in that room and meditate together and we get to do that for three hours a night.

And I hope to God that it is healing and inspiring. I don't know that it's ever going to necessarily change people's minds about where they stand, but maybe they ask a different question or ask themselves a different question or start a new conversation with someone that they never talked to you before. Or just one of their loved ones, like, “How do you feel about this?” And so I think it has had an effect on the country and it's one of the few shows that does that and can do that because it does deal with the very nature of our country: the politics, the violence, the war. We just touch on slavery, which is so big in itself that Hamilton couldn't possibly handle taking that on and tell the stories of these individual people.

But you know, we, as a company, talk about slavery and that it existed at the same time, and that these very people had slaves. So they're not excused from any of that stuff. They’re incredibly flawed — like we all are — individuals. And so it's a really thick, complicated, beautiful piece that really is a reflection of both the times and the history of the country. And I think you're right: I think it has that effect on the country and will continue to. I think it's just one of those pieces.

Hamilton runs June 7-19 at the Peace Center. For details and tickets, visit peacecenter.org.

(Tower headshot courtesy of Hamilton; cast photos by Joan Marcus)