From Simple to Stardom - Daniel Sovich
Esteemed Aurora Alum and future Broadway star, Daniel Sovich is pursuing an acting career at the renowned NYU after he graduated from Aurora in three years. After one year in NYU’s acting program, he changed majors to psychology.
He says his parents did theater growing up, in fact they met in a show at Chagrin (West Side Story). Their participation and support quickly got him to follow suit and begin acting. His family was, “always musical and theatrical family so the support was always there.”
When he arrived in NYC, his friend who acts on the popular show RiverDale got Sovich an agent from CESD agency - who specializes in young adult undiscovered talent. This agency got Sovich auditions for things like Stranger Things season 2 and Spider Man: Homecoming.
While those auditions were unsuccessful, the audition for his Off-Broadway show, Downtown Race Riot was in August for the role of Jay 114. Sovich says, “Jay 114 was the character I initially went for - I had to come up with an Italian accent on the spot but I got called back, so it went well, she even said the accent sounded really natural.”
Off-Broadway technically only means a few things. First, It means that the theater is literally off of broadway street, so it’s an adjacent street. Secondly, there is an audience cap where if the audience doesn't exceed a certain number of people, 300, then it’s considered off-Broadway.
Downtown Race Riot is a portrait show, meaning it’s all in real time, where the whole show takes place in America in 70s where a ton of Italians beat up everyone of color - “point is racial tensions were high, but Washington Square park is a safe haven even now.”
The show takes place the morning of the event, where Sovich’s character and his character’s friend try to convince the main character to come downtown to the riot.
Sovich says he has formed great relationships with the other cast members, including a Golden Globe nominee and Oscar winner - who is helping him with auditions for other shows and whatnot.
He told me a story about how one of the friendships in his cast developed: “Somehow it started that my friend and I would come offstage during the show and knock on the door of one of the adult actor’s dressing rooms, he would crank up some classic rock music and we would just jam out. We never say a word to each other, we just know what’s about to happen and it’s become tradition.” Sovich says he hasn’t had any struggles with the role, in fact has taken over his responsibility as a supporting character rather than a larger lead role. He says, “the character is a supporting role, I’m happy for that because I don’t want to jump right into a huge role so that I can prepare for a bigger role.”
Sovich says they have put a huge amount of work into it, but has been fun the entire time. He says, “the reviews for the show have been mixed, sometimes i’ll get positive feedback and sometimes i’ll wish I didn’t read it, but the fight at the end of the show is always incredible. We took a month to choreograph that last scene fight, and every review says it is one of the best choreographed fights they’ve seen.”
The show ends on December 23rd, make a trip up to NYC
to see one of the Greenhouse’s esteemed alumni perform.
