Broadway sensation 'Stomp' continues this weekend in Anchorage

Stomp, the Broadway sensation spawned by the innate desire in of us all to make music out of all the inanimate objects we encounter, kicks off its 28th year this week with five straight nights of shows at the Performing Arts Center in downtown Anchorage, presented by the Anchorage Concert Association. The show continues through Sunday.

“I think it’s just that genuine, playful characteristic exploring all the different sounds you can make using everyday objects,” said 6-year cast member Jordan Brooks of the show’s enduring appeal. “Everyone does it. If you’re walking down a trail and see a handrail made of wood and maybe you tap it and be pleased with the sound. Or you flick your finger on something in the kitchen to get that metallic sound and think it sounded really cool. What if I developed that?”

While all of us may have the instinct to make the mundane percussive, only the select few of the Stomp troupe have combined it into a blend of music, acting, dancing and acrobatics that have entertained crowds around the world for nearly three decades.

“I think everyone has that curiosity and you develop it into something universal, which is the music language of rhythm,” Brooks said. “It’s easy to break down the barriers of language in different countries. This show has toured all over the world and we don’t have to translate it — it’s the exact same show.”

Cast members and skits have come and gone over the years, but at its core, Stomp consists of eight cast members playing eight unique non-verbal characters.

Brooks carries the starring role of ‘Sarge,’ who is at the center of most of the skits and has the most direct interaction with the crowd.

“He’s more the leader of the group,” Brooks said. “He leads what ends up being audience interaction, even though there’s no speaking in the show; no words. When the characters start to communicate it’s all about rhythm and body language. Some of the other characters are more quirky — Mauzy is the funniest and Mauzy and Sarge pick on Potato Head to try to get a rise out of him, but every character has a different personality.”

Growing up in the Dallas area, the son of a well known Texas bandleader, Brooks first started playing drums at 6, and after graduating from the Berklee School of Music and getting his masters at NYU in 2016, Brooks responded to an open casting call for Stomp.

“I figured I could try my hand at that; it seemed a lot more fun than sitting backstage for a musical playing drums. It’s high energy, so I auditioned and never looked back.”

Naturally, Brooks landed the role of Potato Head.

“That role is primarily a role that has a lot of drumming,” he said. “There’s eight characters in the show and because the performers come from so many different backgrounds — drumming, acting, comedy, dancing, that one has quite a bit of drumming… There’s a decent amount of theatrical work and comedic timing in the way you react to something on stage. For me, the most intriguing thing when I got into the show is that you come up with some of the best tap dancers in the world who’ve never held a pair of (drum) sticks, but it comes to them so naturally because it’s already ingrained in their body. The stage show highlights performers’ strengths so you’re not going to see me doing backflips.”

As always, Stomp will open its shows in Anchorage with perhaps its best known routine, ‘Brooms’, wherein the Sarge, sweeping solely, soon discovers irresistible syncopations and is joined on stage for a routine of dance, acrobatics and unspoken appreciation for all things custodial.

“We all come out like we’re sweeping the stage after, or before, a show and it develops into a huge musical number,” Brooks said. “It’s high energy tossing brooms with acrobatics.”

Other traditional Stomp routines include ‘Newspaper’, which during its run in Anchorage will proudly feature issues of the Anchorage Press on stage. The show is ever-evolving, however, and Brooks says new concepts are on the menu for the Anchorage set.

“(The creators of the show) come up with ideas and they present them to the cast and say, ‘hey, think we could do something for shopping carts?’ and it goes into kind of workshop mode,” Brooks said. “We just added suitcases for this show — it’s looks like an airport, four suitcases with four wheels and roll them across the stage. We use tractor tires for inner-tubes — all sorts of things — it sort of just develops.”