courtesy of Greg Jbara
Advice From ‘Dad’
tony-winner greg jbara has a noodle in his head
PrintA humanities professor from Columbia once told Greg Jbara, Juilliard ’86, that she could always tell who the actors in her classes were. Unlike dancers or musicians, actors “always walked in and found the seat farthest from the door. They were interested in making the biggest entrances and exits,” Jbara recalls.
Now a Tony award-winner for his role as “Dad” in “Billy Elliot,” Jbara has been making entrances and exits on stages almost since the moment he graduated. The actor received his degree from Juilliard, but he took all of his academic classes through Columbia to finish the undergraduate degree he started at the University of Michigan.
A professor from Columbia came to Juilliard’s Lincoln Center campus to teach artists weekly, according to Jbara. The program in which he participated appears to be different from the current Barnard-Columbia-Juilliard Exchange, although representatives from the Juilliard School did not reply to further inquiries about the program.
When Jbara tells people he took classes at Columbia, they respond by saying, “Ooh, ahh, that actor has a noodle in his head!” The rigorous academics of his Columbia courses appealed to him. “I really looked forward to those Thursday classes—they were fun,” he says. Though he began studying physics and theater at Michigan, Jbara’s Columbia classes focused on the humanities.
“I enjoyed physics, but I realized that there were people who were a lot better at it than I was,” he explains. In his Columbia courses, though, Jbara felt as though he was “enlightening himself.”
Jbara learned a great deal about himself as a person and the theater business at Juilliard as well as at Columbia. At the end of each year, Juilliard students met with their teachers in a conference where they received advice, presumably about their acting.
After his first year, teacher Robin Neff Williams advised Jbara to “date other women.” The second year, he recommended that Jbara “get a dog.”
”I didn’t follow either piece of advice,” he laughs. Only years later did Jbara realize that it was life experience that Williams sought for him. Williams saw that Jbara was with a woman who took care of him too much and recommended that the actor seek out another kind of relationship. Williams also thought Jbara should learn to be responsible for another living thing, like a dog.
Jbara’s personal education complemented the practical, business-oriented one he received at Juilliard and Columbia. As he says, an actor’s success is “not just about talent or even someone being marketable, but it is about who can be the best salesperson,” which Jbara realized after learning that only about six of his 26 classmates from Juilliard are working as actors today. Luckily, says Jbara, “I come from a big family, so talking to people and making my voice heard has never been a problem.”
Jbara certainly made his voice heard to the likes of PBS and popular acting agencies. The day after PBS aired a televised performance of “Live from Lincoln Center” that honored the 80th anniversary of the Juilliard School in Jbara’s fourth year, three agencies contacted Juilliard to express interest in him. “I was in two contrasting pieces that really showed me off,” he remembers, “and I am actually still with one of the original three agencies that called Juilliard that day.”
Jbara may be naturally bright and talented, but he has also received plenty of help. When he was working alongside comedian Jerry Lewis in a 1995 Broadway production of “Damn Yankees,” Jbara noticed that Lewis made sure to learn the names of the entire cast and crew on the first day. Lewis’s gesture set a comfortable and supportive tone for the production. Jbara credits Lewis for making him realize what a difference little things like taking the time to learn people’s name makes.
More generally speaking, Jbara believes that personal relationships are paramount to the success of a production. “I cannot imagine how the Broadway production of ‘Billy Elliot’ would have worked if the creative team had not been made up of the same individuals who produced the movie,” he says. “They didn’t just try to recreate the movie onstage.”
Jbara is excited by the creative energy that this team contributes. He calls his current role ”the best job I’ve ever had. Not that I haven’t had other good jobs, other great jobs before. But having a regular job on a successful Broadway show is so unusual.”
He credits his performance in part to his offstage life. “Without being in the happy marriage I’m in now,” he says, “and without having had the experience of being a father, I wouldn’t have had the right experience to fuel my heart.”
Jbara’s insight into his professional and personal lives proves that this actor really does have a noodle in his head. He thrives on knowledge and experience. Jbara loves to be challenged and excited, whether by taking Columbia classes, creating a role on Broadway, or even locating a keepsake from his alma mater.
When Jbara graduated from Juilliard, the first thing on his to-do list was to buy a class ring. There was only one problem: Juilliard did not make class rings. Jbara rose to the challenge and contacted a ring company so that he could have one made for himself. Now, perhaps coincidentally, class rings are made for Juilliard grads regularly. How’s that for a grand exit?
19 November 2009
vol. 7, issue 10
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