Broadway star A.J. Shively joins Cheddar News to talk all about 'Paradise Square' and the musical's 10 Tony nominations. 

Between Bells

Actor A.J. Shively Talks 'Paradise Square' and His Tony Nomination

Welcome back to between Bells, everyone. If you haven't seen paradise square yet, you're missing out. The musical has taken Broadway by storm landing 10 yes, 10 Tony nominations and of course critical acclaim. The place the play takes place in 1863 and is a historical take on the five points area of Manhattan where free black and free Irish immigrants lived together. But things suddenly then took a turn for the worse. When a federal draft for the civil war was announced. Leaving the community at odds, take a look, the striking sound of different people finding to survive and the city's biggest llama on the street and disrepair. I built a little heater. Mhm comme Paradise Square and joining us now is Star of Paradise Square Actor AJ shyly. AJ welcome to the show. The show is up for 10 Tony nominations, including best performance by an actor which you're up for. I saw it opening night, I was blown away by your performance along with their fellow actors. It was a packed house with thunderous applause What's it mean to have all your hard work be recognized, Man? It means a lot. It means a lot and it's been a lot of hard work for a long time. You know, I joined the project in 2018 back in its developmental phase. Um and it's the show has grown and changed so much and I as an actor have grown and changed so much. Just being a part of it. We were supposed to come to New York in 2020 and were sidelined by the pandemic. Like so many other shows and just getting to broadway felt like a dream come true. So the fact that we've been recognized in in such a fantastic way with all of these, these accolades and these nominations is it's just it's unbelievable and well deserved, I have to say, your costar Sidney Dupont is also up for the best performance by an actor award. You two are phenomenal. The whole cast was do you two have a friendly bet going on about who's going to take it? How are you to handling this? Oh man, we're just happy to be in it together, like all of these being at all these events, having a friend there, because we've been developing these characters together for so many years. Um it's just it's great, it's great. The two of us Together Team. Always. I love that in the production. Of course you play Owen, tell us more about your character for the viewers, our viewers that may not have seen it and where you drew inspiration for your role. So I play Owen Duggan who is a fresh off the boat from Ireland, leading the great hunger um his aunt and uncle um who work and live at the Paradise Square Saloon, which is run by Mellie Freeman, a free woman, free black woman who is married to my uncle um they've paid my passage and uh it's his story is really about what it means to be starting fresh in America following the american dream. Um and when you're a new kind of vulnerable, open mind, what can happen to that? And it, it does, it connects personally to me because this is how, and when my family came to America, I'm irish and we were one of the millions of people who fled Ireland um seeking, seeking a better life, a more stable life in America. My family just wound up in the midwest instead of in new york. AJ I, when I walked out of the play, I was blown away by the dancing and I said to my friends, I'm like this is the best choreography, it has to be nominated if not win the dancing is, is so exciting and so impressive. But irish stepping in this show is amazing. Was it a challenge learning this particular style? Because rumor has it and tell me if this is true because I don't believe it, you've never danced before. It's true, I mean it's true. I did not grow up dancing, I grew up doing taekwondo, so you know, I had some body awareness, um there are forms, you have to learn the forms and I did, I went to the University of Michigan's Musical theater program, so there was dance training there, but I haven't danced since then, I graduated and was deemed a singer who can move um and uh in the developmental phase, I didn't have a dance audition for this when I joined, it was so early and they thought there might be, they said there might be a moment of irish dance, are you comfortable with that? I said, sure, why not? Um And Bill T. Jones, our choreographer, his, his philosophy, is that the best art comes from beyond the lines that you draw for yourself. Um and he certainly pushed me beyond what I thought I was capable of and I, I have to credit our irish fusion choreographers, Garett Coleman and Jason Ramos for creating movement that makes it look like I'm an expert for training me on how to execute this movement. Um and and and our associate choreographer, Chloe Davis also instrumental in creating movement and just like not physically how to do it, but mentally how do you go? And it's just that it's like being an athlete, it's like being an endurance athlete, how do you mentally get through a five minute dance solo when you're not used to that kind of thing? And those three people really got me through and the best part is that they're all also in the cast. So we get to do we get to tell this story together every night, I gotta tell you, I am rooting for you for best choreography. I was blown away the beauty of this place, how it's rooted in history right here in new york, did you know much about lower Manhattan's famous five point slum and the relationship between free black and irish americans in this country and in the city, I had never heard that. I had never heard that part of the story. Um I've seen gangster in new york and you know, if you hear about Tammany Hall and hear about the dead rabbits and that kind of that, the tantalizing stuff like that, but I had never heard of this, this amalgamation of society. I had never heard of the draft riots at all, um that there was a, the biggest civil insurrection in our country's history happened in new york city and hundreds of people were killed um that the kind of black diaspora from New york city happened because of this, that the reason Harlem was there to have the Harlem renaissance, the reason black people were, there is because of these events down in Northern Manhattan. Um I it's not that this wasn't written down, it's not that it wasn't part of the historical record, it just wasn't, it wasn't tied, it wasn't spoken about and I feel very privileged to be speaking it now to be, to be including americans in this story of really the birth of american culture, right? This was the american melting pot. It's all these different flavors, the immigrants coming in. It's it's the born free black people, you know, business black business owners in the 18 sixties, in Manhattan, right? You never think about this, of course it's true, It's the self emancipated people, black people coming from the south, um, combining all of their cultures into something new, which became american culture. This is where tap dance was was invented, right? This is these dance halls kind of involved into vaudeville which evolved into broadway, which, you know, musical theater, which is what we're doing. It's completely full circle and it's truly a privilege to be part of of the cast is incredible from someone who saw the play. I was blown away. I'm rooting for you. We're gonna be on the red carpet. AJ. Please try to stop by cheddar. We'd love to talk to you next sunday and good luck AJ shyly star of broadway's Paradise Square. Thank you so much. Have a great show tonight.