Amy Toporek, a familiar face from the JCC’s summer camp and performances of its band, the Shabbatones, has a lead role in the national touring production of Hairspray.
June 12, 2008
Summer campers at the Jewish Community Center of Central New Jersey have enjoyed Amy Toporek’s presence for years — both as a counselor and as the bouncy, sock-it-to-me singer with the JCC’s own band, the Shabbatones. They nearly got to enjoy her talent again this year, but fate stepped in.
Just over a month ago, Toporek, 23, landed a lead role with the national touring company of the hit musical Hairspray. She plays the vulnerable and spunky Tracy Turnblad.
Amy and her sister Rachel, also an oft-returning counselor with the JCC’s Camp Yachad, have grown up immersed in Jewish community activities. Their mother, Vivian, is a former president of the JCC and a leading volunteer there. Their father, Jacob, was one of the founders in 1982 of the NJ State Association of Jewish Federations and is now its executive director. The family has belonged to Congregation Beth Israel in Scotch Plains and Temple Beth O’r/Beth Torah in Clark.
The sisters have also grown up on a hearty diet of show biz. “My parents were always saying, “Yeah, let’s go to a Broadway show,” Amy Toporek said, speaking by phone from the family’s Edison home during a brief hiatus from touring.
As her mother tells it, her daughter’s big break has been wonderfully exciting but not a shock. The family has always been enthusiastically supportive of her talent and pretty sure she would make it. She herself was much less certain.
Graduating from Rider University in Lawrenceville in 2006 with a major in communications and a minor in theater, Toporek thought about becoming a casting agent. In her MySpace profile she says, “I have a disease known as Broadway Tourettes; I’m pretty much a walking show tunes library.” Matching others with the right role seemed like a safer route than putting herself out there.
“I always wanted to sing,” she said, “but I didn’t know if wanted to take everything that comes with it.”
‘Like a dream’
But then she decided that if she didn’t give it a try, she would regret it. While working in the JCC’s Kidzone, she tried out for every role she could, going to one audition after another, and came near to landing a part in another hit show. “I just knew this was what I wanted. I decided to do everything in my power to make it happen,” she said. She was called back 12 times to audition for the Hairspray role.
And then, in the last week in April, the call came. The actress playing Tracy in the national company had broken her ankle. Toporek met with the casting director and director the next morning, and rehearsals began the day after. A week later she had her first performance, in Toronto.
The company went from there to a theater in Utica, NY, and then to New Haven, Conn. They had a three-week break before flying this past Monday to San Francisco for a 12-day run of the show. After that, they will be in Dallas, and after that — Shanghai and Beijing. “Yeah, it’s pretty amazing,” she said.
Though she will be missed at Camp Yachad, her colleagues there are proud of her achievement.
Mike Goldstein, the JCC’s director of family services and codirector of the camp, has played in the Shabbatones himself and knows Toporek well. “She anchored the Shabbatones for years. When she’s up on the stage, she owns it,” he said.
His nickname for her is “Diva.” “It’s a loving jab at her magnetism and her great voice and her presence on stage,” he said. “She definitely has a God-given ability, but she has also worked hard to develop it. We’re very proud of her.”
At a performance in New Haven, Amy Toporek steps out as Tracy in the national touring production of Hairspray.
But being thrown in at the deep end like that has also meant a lot of hard work, especially with the dancing. “I’m not a technical dancer and i
t’s been really tough,” she said. “I have to build up my stamina. It’s exhilarating but I’m still out of breath by the time I come off stage.”
On the plus side, the exhaustion has made it easy to sleep in all those different hotel rooms, and getting enough sleep is a crucial part of her plan for staying healthy on the road.
A few things were working for her as she took on the role of 16-year-old Tracy. For one thing, she had seen the show six times and was passionate about its whole ’60s ambience. She had also made a point of learning from those 12 auditions, putting into practice all the “notes” she was given. And for all her apparent confidence, Toporek said, she remembers how she felt in high school, craving recognition and inclusion.
Winning this role in one of the most popular shows around has given her confidence a big boost. “It’s like, ‘Wow, I can do it,’” she said. “Who knows what else I can do!”
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