Longtime pro performer values PHAMALy

One-time solo act takes comfort with the 'energy of love'

Lisa Bornstein, Rocky Mountain News

Saturday, July 8, 2006

The Physically Handicapped Amateur Musical Actors League is an introduction to the stage for many.

For Leonard E. Barrett, the group better known as PHAMALy represented a road back.

It had been 10 years since Barrett, a professional musician, had been onstage when he took a young disabled man from his church to see PHAMALy's 2003 production of The Pajama Game. Everything changed.

"This is the first group I've ever seen that I want to be a part of," Barrett thought. "It woke up a corpse. I had basically put it (performing) in my back pocket."

The next summer he stepped on the PHAMALy stage and began a series of starring roles that drew acclaim and continue with the title role in The Wiz, opening Friday.

Born 51 years ago in Jamaica, Barrett grew up in Philadelphia and was accepted as an acting student at the prestigious Carnegie Mellon University - which he left his freshman year.

"I stayed there long enough to realize that it was, well, boring," he says. "I got what I needed, speech and voice."

He left and worked in a steel mill, then enrolled at the Rochester Institute of Technology to study photo processing. He worked six months in that field.

"I just one day came home and said, 'I can't do this,' " he recalls. " 'I want to sing.' "

Barrett turned that desire into a flourishing career in Atlantic City starting in the 1980s until 1993. He fronted several bands, then took out a $30,000 loan and bought a synthesizer, which he taught himself to program. Now he was a one-man show.

"Folks would come to see it in awe while I'm onstage surrounded by all these Christmas tree lights," he remembers.

Eventually, though, performing the hits wore on him. He bought $1,000 worth of tricks at a magic store and incorporated them into his act, thinking, "If I blow it, they'll laugh. If I do it, they'll applaud."

He felt increasingly removed from his first love, jazz.

"I was making a lot of money, but it was hard," he says. "If you're not doing what you want to do, it doesn't matter how much applause you're getting."

One night a college friend stopped by and saw Barrett singing, doing magic tricks and impressions of Tina Turner, Tom Jones, James Brown and Prince.

"He looked me straight in the eye and said, 'You're doing a lot to keep yourself interested, aren't you?' " Barrett says, "and that was the wake-up call."

Sometime later, Barrett moved to Colorado with a girlfriend. He now lives in Fort Collins and makes his living from a variety of freelance work. Barrett is the kind of guy who seems able to teach himself anything - he works as a headshot photographer, an actor in medical training and teaching computer software.

He was sucked into PHAMALy, but only as a volunteer at first. He was invited to a PHAMALy Valentine's Day party in 2004, and asked to sing.

"After I was done, the first question I got was, 'What's your disability?' " Barrett says.

It was an obvious question, because with a booming baritone-tenor voice and gleaming smile, Barrett's multiple sclerosis seems hidden. He was diagnosed 13 years ago, and believes that six hours of meditation a day is keeping the symptoms in check.

At the party, he shied away from audition invitations until co-founder Kathleen Traylor rolled up to him in her wheelchair.

"She put her arms around my neck," Barrett says. "She whispered, 'Please come,' and my heart melted."

He was cast as Sky Masterson in the 2004 production of Guys and Dolls and wowed audiences with his suave performance.

"When I started rehearsing those songs, it was the first time I'd ever sung lyrically, and this voice emerged," he says.

He's gone on to play the narrator in Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat and the role of Belize in Angels in America with Bas Bleu in Fort Collins. This fall he will play the title role in Bas Bleu's production of The Dresser, and plans to assistant direct the holiday show.

"I really think, you can see by the smile, directing is where I am headed," he says.

He's also recently come out with his first jazz CD, Mellow, which he recorded with pianist Ken Myers, whom he also met through PHAMALy.

First, though, it's The Wiz, appearing as one of the few black cast members in the historically all-black musical.

"There's certain ways I don't think, and that's one of them," he says of any discussion of color. "There's no purpose, and there's no joy in it. That's it."

Despite the outside opportunities, Barrett doesn't plan to leave PHAMALy behind. "I hate to sound like a Hallmark card, but there is such a beautiful energy of love.

"They're genuine, they're extremely open, hardworking. There's nothing hidden about them - it's right there on their sleeve."

The Wiz

• When and where: Opens Friday; 7:30 p.m. Fridays, Saturdays and July 24, 2 p.m. Sundays; through July 30, Space Theatre, Denver Performing Arts Complex

• Cost: $20 to $28

• Information: 303-893-4100

bornsteinl@RockyMountainNews.com or 303-892-5101