Shucked, the Tony Award Musical, Is at Overture February 4-9: A Whole Lot of Corn
by Jonathan Gramling
There are advantages to growing up in a small town, not having big-city distractions that take away from one developing their natural-born talent. Miki Abraham, who plays the character Lulu in Shucked, grew up in Paducah, Kentucky, a small city oin the banks of the Ohio River. One of the big things they had going on was community theater.
“There was a little community theater in my hometown called The Market House Theater,” Abraham said. “I started doing shows there from a pretty young age. I was seven-years-old in my first play that I ever did. It was ‘Annie Jr.’ And I got to play Annie, which was pretty exciting. I didn’t know at the moment that my parents were prepping me. ‘We don’t know. Don’t get disappointed. You audition and you never know what is going to happen.’ And then I got the lead role and they were like, ‘Oh, okay. Maybe there is something here.’
It seems Abraham always knew that they wanted to pursue acting as a career.
Miki Abraham as Lulu and Ryan Fitzgerald in The North American Tour of SHUCKED (Photo by Matthew Murphy and Evan Zimmerman)
“My mom tells the story that even before I was in the show at the theater, I would view a lot of the talent shows and talent competitions that we would have like at our county fair,” Abraham recalled. “And my mom says that when I was four-years-old, someone asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. And I said that I wanted to be a star. I heard that story a lot growing up. The first professional show that I ever saw was a touring production of 42nd Street. I was maybe around nine-years-old. That was the first time that I realized, ‘Oh, this can be something that I do when I grow up. This can be a job that I have.’ It was from that moment on that I became obsessed with 42nd Street for a while and then it was like, ‘Oh, I will be on Broadway.’ It has always been the trajectory.”
Abraham performed in the theater until they was 18-years-old. They graduated from high school and headed for Hollywood.
“I was on the reality TV show ‘The Glee Project’ that was in 2011,” Abraham said. “And so I spent some time in LA and then I came back to Kentucky to go to college. I went to Northern Kentucky University.”
Abraham headed for New York City in 2015 after earning a BA in fine arts in acting and has been acting ever since in Broadway and Off-Broadway productions.
Shucked is the first Broadway show and the third national tour of a Broadway show that Abraham has performed in. They worked their way up from being an understudy of Lulu to actually starring in the role. Being an understudy forged Abraham into an actor who could meet any challenge that presented itself.
“There is a lot of being told in the afternoon that you are playing the part you understudied for that night,” Abraham said. “I wasn’t in the show every night. And I understudied all of the female ensembles, which is four roles. And then I also understudied Lulu. I have five characters in my brain. Sometimes, they would come to me in the afternoon when I was in the middle of a matinee as an ensemble character and they would say, ‘Hey, tonight you’re Lulu.’ I was like, ‘Okay.’ It’s a lot of switching hats and being ready for whatever they ask of you. You absolutely have to memorize all of the dialogue for all of the characters. It’s a hard job. It takes a very specific brain to do it. You have to be able to compartmentalize.”
Shucked is centered in the small rural farming community of Cobb County. It has a one-commodity economy, the growing of corn.
“It’s a community that thrives and survives on corn until one day, the corn dies,” Abraham said. “And the hero of our story, aptly named Maizy, decides that she is going to go out into the world and find help to bring back to the community to help fix the corn. It’s about leaving your comfort zone and welcoming in people who maybe because you were set in your ways that maybe you were never going to have people come in or outside of Cobb County. So it’s a story about accepting people and also understanding that our capacity for love is much larger than we think it is. And our capacity for change — even though it is scary — is much wider than we think it is. And that is all wrapped up in a lot of corn puns in a musical comedy and original story written by Robert Horn.”
Abraham plays one of the main characters Lulu, who is Maizy’s cousin.
“Lulu runs the whiskey distillery in town,” Abraham said. “And when I think about her, I think of her as the rock of the community. She knows everything that is going on with everyone, even if they don’t know that she knows. She is kind of the voice of reason in a lot of situations. No one has ever left Cobb County. But it is insinuated that Lulu maybe had left at some point. There is something about her. She’s a little bit more worldly than everyone else in town.”
While one might wonder why one would go to a show about small town America, a play filled with corny jokes, Abraham emphasizes that it is filled with laughter and high entertainment value. And there is a message in there somewhere for everyone.
“The message is what you take from it,” Abraham emphasized. “I try to be careful whenever I’m talking about what this show means because I think just like any good piece of art, it means something different to everyone who watches it. But I do think that it is a really great respite from anything that is going on in your life regardless of what it is. I think it is good for anyone at this moment in time to sit in a theater with strangers around them and laugh.”
Shucked is playing at the Overture Center February 4-9. Abraham encourages everyone to come out and check out the unknown.
“I always encourage folks to come and see original shows,” Abraham said. “If there is ever a show that you don’t know anything about up against a show that you do know something about, I think you should always choose the original show. You should always go see something you know nothing about. If you are hearing about Shucked and you are thinking, ‘What the heck is this about,’ I think you are our target audience. I think coming in blind is the way to go. Just come and trust us and laugh.”
Come enjoy the corn fest.