Q&A: LESLIE MCDONEL

Dallas — Dallas native Leslie McDonel remembers being at Starplex Amphitheater in Fair Park as teenager, sitting in the front row for a Green Day concert after their debut album Dookie had come out. She had already performed onstage herself—playing a Cratchit kid three times in the Dallas Theater Center's A Christmas Carol in the late '80s and early '90s—and she recognized the band's love of performing.

Little did she know that more than a decade later, she'd be performing in a musical based on the band's work, and even performing with Billie Joe Armstrong a few times.

McDonel, who has also performed at Dallas Children's Theater and Casa Mañana when Joel Ferrell was artistic director there, was an understudy who performed quite a bit in the year that Green Day's American Idiot was on Broadway. Now, she's playing Heather in the tour, which is winding up a two-week run at the AT&T Performing Arts Center's Winspear Hall, closing on Sunday.

TheaterJones chatted with McDonel briefly about the show.

TheaterJones: What kind of crowds are coming to American Idiot?

Leslie McDonel: It's people of all ages. Some people are coming because they love Green Day, some come because they love really good theater, and some come because they love rock 'n' roll but don't know anything about this album. It's all different types of people and they all end of leaving with respect for the part that they were less familiar with, which is kind of cool.

Have you always been a Green Day fan?

Yes. When Dookie came out, I saw them back at Starplex in Fair Park, I think it's called something else now.

It's been a lot of names. It was Smirnoff for a while, and strangely didn't serve vodka. It was Superpages.com Center, and now Gexa Energy Pavilion.

Right, well before it had a corporate name, I was in the front row, leaning on the stage. I didn't get the album American Idiot until I was cast in the show, but when I heard all the songs that I didn't already know, I thought it was amazing.

Billie Joe Armstrong performed in the show on Broadway a few times, and you performed with him and the band at the Grammys. Were you ever star struck?

Being in an exciting Broadway show is already an amazing experience, but being up there with a huge rock star, with the way the audience is screaming, it is a bit of a rock star feeling for you. It was more that I felt lucky to be performing with him, and he's one of those people where you don't feel nervous around him. I was more in awe of him than anything.

Is it more difficult to perform a role like this, which is sung-through and you're relying on previously written rock songs to build your character, without the help of dialogue?

I completely embrace the idea that you have to be very inventive as an actor, and it's different than anything I've done. There's so much there in the text that you can create this whole world of your character, and I love that challenge, of finding new stuff even after all this time.

How about the singing? Is it tough on the voice?

I have the singing role in the show that's more light, it's the "soft" character, I'm the mother, the nurturing one who wants it to work, and I'm pouring love out to him. So when they were teaching me Billie's songs they put them up to a higher key. It's not hardcore rock, it's ethereal and I'm not using vibrato or anything. I'm not doing the hard screaming or anything.

And with that, she does a punk-worthy scream.

Full interview at TheaterJones: HERE