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Preview: Actor makes commitment to The Wedding Singer and misses own play's run

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Though he has never sung at a wedding, Kodie Rollan feels very much at home playing the title character in Front Row Centre’s production of The Wedding Singer.

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“I’m Filipino and we have a tradition called the Debut, which celebrates a girl’s 18th birthday. I’ve certainly sung at my share of these Debuts. I also fronted my own band in high school and university so I have a pretty good insight into Robbie Hart, the wedding singer,” says Rollan, who is also no stranger to the 1998 Adam Sandler film on which this musical is based.

“I am a huge fan of Adam Sandler so I’m very familiar with the original movie, but I purposely chose not to watch it once I decided to audition for Front Row Players’ stage musical version. I didn’t want to do my version of Adam Sandler. I wanted to find a way to make Robbie Hart my own.

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“There’s so much of Robbie in me that it was easy to build the character. Robbie and I are both diehard optimists and hopeless romantics. I love that Robbie wants love to be really truthful.”

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In The Wedding Singer, Robbie is excited that after having sung at so many weddings he is going to have his own but on that fateful day, Robbie’s fiancee Linda does not turn up at the altar. Instead, she sends a note saying she wants to marry a rock star not a wedding singer.

In true musical comedy fashion, Robbie meets Julia, a waitress whose upwardly mobile boyfriend Glenn has commitment phobia. It takes Robbie and Julia longer to realize they are the match made in heaven than it does the audience and that’s meant to cheer them into each other’s arms.

Front Row Centre’s The Wedding Singer runs in the Beddington Arts Centre at 375 Bermuda Drive N.W. June 14 to 29.

Robbie (Kodie Rollan) and Julia (Ellen Sullivan) in Front Row Centre’s The Wedding Singer.
Robbie (Kodie Rollan) and Julia (Ellen Sullivan) in Front Row Centre’s The Wedding Singer. Calgary

As excited as he is to be playing Robbie in this production, there is one slight hitch for Rollan.

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He is also a playwright and his latest play, Ya Burnt, is running at the 2019 Ignite Festival of Emerging Artists opposite the opening of The Wedding Singer.

“I’ve seen rehearsals of course, but I won’t see it in front of an audience which hurts a little,” says Rollan.

“Ya Burnt is a political satire about the 2017 Fyre Festival, which was billed as a luxurious music festival on Great Exuma Island in the Bahamas. It was a complete disaster and the promoters … were accused of fraud.”

Ya Burnt is being directed by Rebecca Fauser, who directed the Calgary production of the musical Bare A Pop Opera which Rollan co-produced with Alex Bergen.

Rollan definitely sees the irony in the fact he is performing, producing and writing when his theatre degree from Queen’s University is in Arts Leadership.

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“I dabbled a bit in performance at Queens. I was in the musical Bring It On in my final year. When I graduated, I applied to theatre companies across Canada, and Alberta Theatre Projects hired me for a year as an intern and that brought me to Calgary in 2017.

“Being around so many artists at ATP inspired me to pursue as many avenues of theatre as I can.”

Starring opposite Rollan in Front Row Players’ The Wedding Singer are Riley Galarneau and Harrison Bentley as Robbie’s band mates, Lyndsey Paterson as Robbie’s former fiancee and Ellen Sullivan as the girl he should be marrying.

Tickets for The Wedding Singer are available by phone at 403-246-8505 or online at frontrowcentre.ca.

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