Two U of A alums come home to Tucson for 'Hairspray'

There must be something in the water over at the University of Arizona College of Fine Arts.

Last month, 2020 UA musical theater alumnus Naphtali Yaakov Curry played Donkey in the Broadway tour of “Shrek the Musical” at Centennial Hall.

Next week, two UA grads — fall 2018 musical theater grad Sarah Hayes and 2023 dance grad Alyssa Jacqueline — make their Broadway tour debuts when Broadway In Tucson brings the musical comedy “Hairspray” to Centennial Hall. The show runs April 23-28.

“We’re both really excited to go back to the UA and Centennial Hall to perform,” Jacqueline said during a tour stop last month in St. Paul, Minnesota. “It’s such a cool full circle moment.”

Jaqueline plays Shelley, a redeemed antagonist on the “Corny Collins Show” — think big-city version of the national dance show “American Bandstand” — known to try to steal the spotlight. Hayes plays Velma von Tussle, the widowed station owner who conspires to promote her daughter Amber while pushing antiquated, racist beliefs.

While “Hairspray” is a musical comedy, it’s also one with a pressing social message that Jacqueline said still resonates today, some 22 years after the 1988 John Waters film was turned into a Broadway musical.

“Hairspray” is about full-figured teen Tracy Turnblad, who dreams of performing the Mashed Potato on the “Corny Collins Show” and landing a role in the teen dance cast. She wins the contest and turns her newfound celebrity into a campaign to integrate the white only show and change history in the turbulent 1960s Baltimore.

“The story deals with heavy topics like body image and racism. It’s unfortunate, but it’s a story that we still need to be telling,” Jacqueline said, adding that the message seems to resonate with the audiences.

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“When you walk out of the theater you have this inspiring feeling to go out and just be the change that this world needs to see,” she said.

Jaqueline, a Westchester, New York, native who started dancing competitively at age 6, landed the show last October, five months after graduating from the UA in May 2023. A dance major, she wasn’t involved in any theater productions on campus, but she spent her summers throughout college doing stock productions and learning theater.

Thanks to the COVID-19 pandemic, she spent her senior year online and started sending out audition tapes. Her virtual audition for “Hairspray” included dancing for the popular number “The Nicest Kids in Town.”

That taped audition landed her an in-person audition and numerous callbacks before she was cast as Shelley. She also understudies the role of the ditzy, socially-awkward teen Penny Pingleton.

“It’s such a blessing and I’m having the time of my life,” said the 23-year-old, whose parents saw “Hairspray” in New York when it opened in 2002 and got to see it again with their daughter on stage a lifetime later.

Jaqueline said she and Hayes are ready once they get to Tucson to be tour guides for their fellow castmates, showing them around the campus as well as popular UA haunts.

“Everyone in the cast is really excited to be going to Tucson and not just because of the warm weather and beautiful scenery but because they know I went there and I loved it,” she said. “I’m a Wildcat at heart and they are really excited to see my world. I am really excited to be the tour guide and lead them around.”