Thanks to the efforts of a friend of the podcast, J. Collis, we are pleased to announce we have secured an interview with Aris Sas, who achieved great fame as the originator of Alfred in the 1997 world premiere of Tanz der Vampire!
Born in New York City, Sas grew up in Austria and has had a practically uninterrupted stage career since his early childhood, which saw him step straight from the Vienna Boys’ Choir into the role of Gavroche in the German debut of Les Misérables, and eventually into roles in such favorites as Evita, Chicago, Disney’s Beauty and the Beast, Sunset Boulevard, Ibsen’s The Lady From the Sea, Sister Act, Little Shop of Horrors, Neil LaBute’s Fat Pig, Jesus Christ Superstar, Camelot, Hair, Blood Brothers, Yasmina Reza’s Art, and The Pirates of Penzance, and home-grown entertainment like Die Drei Musketiere, Top Dogs, Frau Luna, and Im weißen Rößl.
Currently, he is appearing as Ben in Michael Kunze and Sylvester Levay’s Rebecca at the Raimund Theater, but he has graciously agreed to correspond with us — when not performing or spending time with his newborn daughter — about his time in Tanz playing Alfred in both Vienna and Stuttgart in its earliest days, his personal experiences of working with the creators, and just how it was that he came to record an early English demo of “Für Sarah” which has been all over the Internet practically since it was first recorded.
Are the rumors true that Jim Steinman wanted to make him into a pop star? Does he know anything about what went down in New York? Time will tell!