Local Theater Star Appears on NBC's Smash

Going to Point Park University you are bound to run into people you know at auditions.  Point Park, Carnegie Mellon, and The Pittsburgh CLO are some of the Pittsburgh connections to New York that appear regularly.  Nadine Isenegger is one of those alum, and she has appeared at the CLO, in Broadway Tours, and now she can be seen in NBC's hit show Smash. 

 If Cassie in Pittsburgh CLO's "A Chorus Line" seems familiar, it could be from her days at Point Park and the CLO ensemble, or it could be you've seen her on a Broadway stage or back here as Val in a touring production of the show. Or maybe you watched the first episode of the NBC show "Smash."

"I was in the pilot. There was in an existing show that was already running when they started auditioning for Marilyn, so I was one of the dancers in that show," said Nadine Isenegger, Point Park University Class of '92. She has returned to Pittsburgh CLO, where she got her professional start, and to the role of Cassie in "A Chorus Line," which runs Friday through June 24 at the Benedum Center.
The TV series "Smash" follows the fictional production of a new musical about Marilyn Monroe, and both Ms. Isenegger and her husband, dancer/choreographer Greg Graham, have been among the Broadway stage talent getting some screen time.

Producing a musical number for TV includes allowances for camera angles and the here-and-done nature of the beast, plus the chance that your performance could wind up on the cutting-room floor. For her "Smash" number, there was another significant difference.

"Josh [Bergasse, the show's choreographer] created a whole number to different music because the music that we used in the show wasn't even composed yet," Ms. Isenegger said. "So all the movement we did was created for a different piece of music that happened to fit what they were doing in the show."

If you're rewatching the pilot, you might spot Ms. Isenegger running past recent Tony winner Christian Borle as he waits in the wings to congratulate the dancers as they come off-stage. Or you might have spotted her picture and impressive credits at Point Park. She will be there in-person next week, when she gets a tour of her alma mater and its new facilities with Joe McGoldrick, director of artistic recruitment.

From her earliest days on Broadway working on "Cats," Ms. Isenegger has been running into Point Park, Carnegie Mellon and Pittsburgh CLO alumni who "were my first connection with people in New York," she said. "There's so many Point Parkers. I go to auditions, and people who just graduated from Point Park will come up to me and say, 'You're picture is in the hallway.' I haven't been here in a long time, but I guess there's a hallway full of people and what they are doing."

 

For more information go to the Pittsburgh Post Gazette.