BWW INTERVIEWS: SPAMALOT Cast Celebrate Final Tour Stop Oct. 6 - 18 in the O.C.

COSTA MESA, CA - After nearly four years on the road, theTony® and Grammy® award-winning MONTY PYTHON'S SPAMALOT will toss its last cow at the Orange County Performing Arts Center, with two final weeks of performances playing through October 18. The record-breaking national tour will have played 1,408 performances over 101 separate engagements throughout North America. After the final curtain falls, an estimated 3.6 million people will have seen the touring production since it began in Boston, Massachusetts in March 2006. TV personality John O' Hurley-best known for his recurring role as J. Peterman in the hit sitcom Seinfeld, as well as his recent appearance on Dancing with the Stars and as the current host of Family Feud-returns to play King Arthur in the tour's final two weeks. He played the role during both the Las Vegas and Los Angeles runs.

For a lengthy tour like Spamalot, cast changes are the norm. The role of King Arthur alone has been played by a revolving door of veteran actors including Michael Siberry, Gary Beach, and Richard Chamberlain. One would think that life on the road performing the same show for almost four years sounds grueling and repetitive, but for cast members Christopher Gurr and Paula Wise, both of whom have been with the company since the start of the tour, it has been a fun, rewarding, and remarkably life-changing experience.

Living Life on the Road

Gurr, who also has occasionally stepped into the role of King Arthur at various stops of the tour, regularly plays the parts of Sir Dennis Gallahad's Mother, Sir Bedevere, and a Concorde. Before climbing aboard the Spamalot (not-yet-dead) wagon, he spent several years, not only as an actor, but as a stage director as well. As an actor, he often found that he needed to keep his previous job in check. "Your brain has to work in a different way. Plus, I had to drop things... as an actor, it's important that I am not watching the whole performance happen. I need to take care of what I need to take care of for myself as an actor. Directors watch everything and I mean, nit-pick everything."

A plethora of regional credits was ample preparation for his multi-role appearances in the tour. Spamalot is Gurr's most high-profile show to date. "I've definitely been laboring in the field of not-for-profit theater my entire life before Spamalot," Gurr explains with a grateful laugh. "This is certainly my first big commercial job. It's the first job that I've ever had in theater that, if a flight attendant asked me what I did for a living, then I had to answer her...now, I wouldn't have to explain to her what it is. Once I say 'I am on a tour of a Broadway show called Spamalot,' they know exactly what I'm talking about."

Once he started his quest for the Holy Grail, he found that he thoroughly enjoyed life on the road. "It's great!" exclaims Gurr. "You're either made for it or you're not, and I have found out-because this is my first big long tour like this-that I'm made for it. I'm absolutely wired for this kind of travel. Part of what's made this job such a good job is that the travel has been excellent."

Though homesickness is an understandable emotion that actors on a long national tour often encounter, Gurr found that he embarked on the tour just as his life was at a crossroads at home, and therefore had no problems leaving the life he had prior to Spamalot, nor was the transition to life in hotel rooms difficult.

"My life just before this tour was made up mostly of working with regional theaters as a director. So, I still averaged 6-9 months out of the year away from home doing projects," he points out. "You see, the life I had before actually doesn't exist anymore. The partner that I was with at the time, she and I have separated, so I no longer live in that house in Kentucky before I took this job. So I sort of have a clean slate once I leave this show. So, that should be interesting."

You CAN Take It With You

Wise, on the other hand, will depart the show with a rather significant, very human piece of the tour when she journeys on. A veteran of several high-profile productions including Broadway shows Urban Cowboy and Saturday Night Fever (it's only a coincidence that both shows were based on John Travolta movies), Wise met and fell in love with fellow cast member Matt Allen after he joined Spamalot nine months into the tour. She is also walking away from the tour with a car-full of memories from her nearly four-year cross-country trek.

Unlike her fellow cast members, Wise chose to drive herself around the country during the tour instead of taking flights. "You live out of a suitcase or two, and you learn to become really savvy in what you want to wear and what you pack," explains Wise. "Lucky for me, I drive the tour. I have a Prius and I load my car up, rooftop high! I have a lot of stuff I want with me. You know, the more you can make life on the road like home, the easier it is."

This included having her two dogs, a juicer, and her workout weights-so much more than what a mere two suitcases can hold that the rest of her fellow cast mates lug around from airport to airport. "It makes it really hard," Wise sympathizes. "So I think that's why a lot of people leave, I mean, besides the fact that they may have loved ones at home...it gets challenging. It gets hard living in and out of a hotel." Her solution for making things more like home: she opted to rent vacation homes rather than stay at the ritzy hotels near the venues. "It makes a world of difference!"

While driving the country proved to be eye-opening, exposing her to the lush beauty and the diversity of the American landscape, there have been drawbacks. "We did 26 one-weekers in a row last year, and so every Monday morning-our day off-we're moving locations. Sometimes my drive could be 2 hours. Sometimes it could be 16 hours! So, it can be frustrating... I'm in the car my entire day off!" At one point, during the tour's engagement in Atlanta in 2006, her car was even stolen. "I didn't know people did that!"

Taking Spamalot across the country for almost four years also illuminated appreciative small towns for Wise. "You come into a smaller town, and you're treated like a movie star!" Wise admits. "They're just so gracious and thankful. They say things like 'Oh thank you for coming, the last show we had here was Cats!' It cracks you up. And then you go to the big cities like L.A., San Francisco, Chicago-where they get a lot of theater-you definitely get a different audience. Most of them are very theater-savvy. So you get this kind of feeling that they're thinking 'I'm not going to love you until you prove yourself!' But then, at the same time, that same audience also knows Monty Python. The Black Knight comes out and they go crazy! So the audience has been a great mixture of people. The big cities are as stimulating as the little ones, because in the little cities it's more intimate. The people want to talk to you and get to know you, and they're so nice and appreciative. It makes you think that they're still a lot of great humanity out there."

An Actors' Life for Me

For Gurr, traveling as a part of a group of actors comes naturally. Even at a very young age, Gurr knew he wanted to be an actor. "I was in my first show when I was 6!" he declares, proudly. "At the age when most little boys are asked 'what do you want to be when you grow up?' Most will say fireman, policeman, doctor...blah blah blah. I always wanted to be an actor. And, specifically, I always wanted to be musical theater actor."

His early influences included multiple spins of the My Fair Lady and Camelot cast albums before graduating to the Cabaret soundtrack. But before that breakthrough, his boyhood showbiz dreams began while listening religiously to lighter fare. "When I was a really little boy, when I sat in my room... what I listened to constantly were the album soundtracks of Disney movies! And I think that's what has influenced my theatricality in the first place. I thought there was nothing better than a Disney villain and the sound of a Disney villain." Ironically, after graduating with a BFA in Musical Theater performance, Gurr went on to star in "mostly straight plays" by the likes of Shakespeare.

Wise, by contrast, didn't know she wanted to be a dancer until later in life, let alone had any desires for a career in musical theater. She was more of an athlete in high school, but danced "just for the fun of it." Her passion for dance soon won, though, over her love of art and architecture. Soon after graduating college as a dance major, she packed up her life and moved to Los Angeles to pursue her dance dream. Music video work led to a four-year gig dancing on JAmes Brown's tour. At 27, she decided to audition for her first Broadway show (Saturday Night Fever) and got the part, even though she had no prior experience with a singing audition. "I'd like to say that I've come a long way in my vocals since that first time," she admits. After stints on Broadway's Urban Cowboy and the Las Vegas production of the Queen musical We Will Rock You, she headed back to New York.

"I went to see Spamalot in previews, in 2005, on a date," she recalls.  "A Wednesday matinee. I had no coffee, no wine in me-and yet I laughed like nobody's business! And then I thought, where the hell was I? Obviously, Las Vegas. But I thought, I have to be in this show! So later that summer, they announced auditions for the tour. On my birthday, September 13, they called me and asked me to be on the tour!"

Thanks for the Memories

As one of the few females in the male-dominated musical, Wise cherishes the role she's inhabited for the entire tour. "It's great! It's awesome!" she boasts, when asked how it felt to be one of the six females in the cast. "You really get to stand out! It's really neat to have a smaller show where you're not hidden. But you know, I have to admit, it gets a little boring sometimes. I wish we females did a little bit more in the show. But you know, it's so funny... I'm lucky. Four years later, my back isn't broken. I'm healthy, I'm happy, I can do the show for many, many years."

But sadly, she knows the end is near. As the tour comes to a close, both Gurr and Wise admit that it's the people that they will miss the most. "While we certainly had our fair share of changes throughout the tour, there are only I think six of us that are still here since the tour began," remembers Gurr. "I love these guys! It's the happiest group of theater people I've ever worked with, and we've been together a very long time. I mean, theater people usually have very touchy egos and are scared to death! That's the truth! And I think that's why sometimes we [actors] behave badly, and we almost always have that kind of thing going on when you get a bunch of actors together crammed into a room. But we had next to none of that during the entire life of this show! And I know I'll never have a group like this ever in my life. It's kind of like leaving college. The time I've spent with this company is the same amount of time it takes-if not more-since unlike college, we don't get summers off. It's kind of like being in your own little university!"

Wise agrees. "It's really nice to know that everyday that you're going into a workplace that is so happy and positive and the people are so great. It's comforting. It's something I'm really going to miss. I mean, for almost four years, seeing a lot of the people and seeing them leave too, it's sad. And then new people coming in and liking them too...Once it's over, it will be really sad, but I know I'll see them all in New York."

When asked what shows they may want to do next, Gurr has a wishlist, mostly of shows currently on tour so that he could go back to what he really loved: being on the road. "I would so love to be Scar in The Lion King. I would even love to play Dr. Dillamond in Wicked! Basically I would love to go on the road and do a show that's big, popular, and I can be unrecognizable in the role. That's my favorite kind. I love it when I walk out of the stage door and no one knows who the hell I am!"

As for Wise, she knows what she's not going after. "Having success in this job is knowing exactly your type and where you fit in. Someone like me is not going to audition for Phantom of the Opera, because I'm not a ballerina. Someone like me is not going to audition for Nine because you have to be a really strong singer. And me, I'm a really a great dancer that can sing. So, you have to know where you fit. Casey Nicholaw (Spamalot's choreographer) has a new musical coming out called Minsky's which I would love to be a part of. It's kind of right up my alley, that style of dance."

Their post show plans involve going back to what they left behind before launching head-on into the long-running tour. After handling family affairs, Gurr is planning the big move to New York. Wise, in the meantime, plans to take the rest of the year off and enjoy the holidays with her family, whom she has not seen in a long time because of the tour's schedule. "And then come January 1, I'll have to think about reality again," she jokes.

The end of the long running tour signals mixed feelings for both actors.

"Being in this business of no stability, this was my stability," Wise says humbly. "It was me letting go of that feeling of 'Oh no, that's over... I need another job! Now another! And another!' Being in Spamalot was a nice, steady, four years in a place that I love!" Gurr, also has complicated feelings for the show's end. "You know, this will be, like, my 1,400-th something performance of the show. Now, don't get me wrong, I've never gotten tired of it, although I'm sure once that first Tuesday-October 20th-rolls around, when I won't have to put on the chain mail, I doubt I'll be missing it."

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Tickets to MONTY PYTHON'S SPAMALOT at the Orange County Performing Arts Center start at $28.75 and are available online at OCPAC.org, at the Center's Box Office at 600 Town Center Drive in Costa Mesa or by calling 714.556.2787. For inquiries about group ticket discounts for 15 or more, call the Group Services office at 714.755.0236. The TTY number is 714.556.2746. The 2 p.m. performance on Saturday, October 17 will be sign-language interpreted.

Bank of America is the Title Sponsor of the Center's 2009-2010 Broadway Series. Cox Communications is the Media Partner of the Broadway Series.

Visit www.ocpac.org for more information. For more information on the national tour, visit: MontyPythonsSpamalot.com