Vanessa Hudgens Cast to Play Gigi Lead on Famous Broadway Musical Beginning 2015
Actress Vanessa Hudgens has been announced to play the lead in the Broadway play Gigi.
"So excited to play Gigi in @GigiOnBroadway! I hope y'all will have a chance to see me in it when we open at @kencen!!" Vanessa tweeted.
The Gigi play features the memorable tunes "Thank Heaven For Little Girls," ''I Remember It Well" and "The Night They Invented Champagne". The score also includes a few songs added to the score in 1973, including "Paris is Paris Again" and "I Never Want to Go Home Again."
The 25-year-old will join the cast and have a "pre-Broadway" run at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., starting on January 16, 2015, with Eric Schaeffer directing and Joshua Bergasse choreographing. The show will then eventually transfer to a Broadway stage.
Hudgens is already vocal practices two times a day and memorizing her lines.
"I think, as an actor, the ultimate dream is to be on Broadway. I think it's the true test. There are no second takes. You've got to bring everything you've got for the most critical of audiences," she told ABC Wednesday. "It's an honor, if anything. I'm over the moon."
"I've never been so ecstatic about a project before," she said. "I genuinely feel like a child, beaming from ear-to-ear, being taken to Disneyland for the first time. It's something that I actually feel I was born to do."
She grew up doing musical theater and says that's "what brought me out of my shell. So being onstage is something I feel very comforting." She starred as Mimi in "Rent" at the Hollywood Bowl in 2010.
Gigi is a musical with a book and lyrics by Alan Jay Lerner and music by Frederick Loewe. It is based on the novella Gigi by Colette and 1958 hit musical film of the same name. The story concerns Gigi, a free-spirited teenaged girl living in Paris at the turn of the 20th century. She is being groomed as a courtesan in her family's tradition. Before she is deemed ready for her social debut, she encounters the bon vivant bachelor Gaston Lachaille, whom she captivates as she is transformed into a charmingly poised young lady.
