by Christine MacKinnon
Malden Observer
July 1, 1999

It sounds like the feel-good hit of the summer: from humble beginnings, a local boy fulfills his dream to be an actor and tours with a Tony Award-winning Broadway musical.

This isn’t fiction, however. This, to Gregory C. DeCandia’s great awe, is his real life. DeCandia, a Malden native and 1996 graduate of Saugus High School is rehearsing with the cast of "Rent," and he hits the road with the company on July 6^th.

"People try all their lives, and I got it at 21," he says. "It’s an amazing experience."

As a child, DeCandia says he did some modeling; though his mother tells him she knew then he’d grow up to be a performer, DeCandia says he was really bitten by the acting bug in seventh grade, when he took his first formal acting class.

On a bet.

At the time, he says, he was constantly watching television. A girl he knew teased him about his couch potato habit and challenged him when he remarked on how simple it looked.

"I said I could do that, and she said, ‘Bet you can’t,’" DeCandia says, "So I did it."

And, he added, he was permanently hooked.

DeCandia was born in Malden and attended school both there and in Salem. While a student in Saugus High, he hosted his own cable TV show, "Twilite with /Greg DeCandia." It was the first show broadcast from the Saugus High studio.

The series had a talk-show flavor, he says, including an opening monologue, newscasts and performances by local bands. Some of his guests included selectmen Jon Bernard and Anthony Cogilano and state Rep. Steve V. Angelo.

"I wrote the monologue, but it was always horrible," he says, "If I ever make it gigantic, these (tapes) will leak out on ‘Hard Copy’ someday. I had every different hair color imaginable."

DeCandia also had roles in many Saugus High theatrical productions, playing Seymour in "Little Shop of Horrors." Pontius Pilate in ‘Jesus Christ Superstar," and Juan Peron in "Evita." One play, "Stinky Cheese Man and Other Fairly Stupid Tales" went to the state and regional finals.

"I won seven acting awards playing a frog," DeCandia says.

But his pivotal role, he says, was an Alan Strang in "Equus," a play he described as a psychological drama.

"It’s about a kid who blinds horses with a metal spike," he says. "He confuses passion with religion, sex with other things … and gets all screwed up in his head."

The entire play, DeCandia says, takes place in a psychiatrist’s office.

"It was such a strain," he says. "I was only 17, and you can’t do something you don’t know of yourself, so I had to answer a lot of questions about love and religion ... for myself, before I could portray it on stage. It was a turning point, both in acting and personally."

DeCandia answered the "Rent" casting call at Emerson College, where he has just finished his sophomore year, on May 5. He’d already seen the play eight times and had the cast album, so he was familiar with both the story and the musical numbers.

When initial auditions asked hopefuls to sing 16 bars, however, DeCandia chose U2’s "With or Without You."

After performing for several staffers throughout the day, DeCandia says casting director Heidi Marshall asked him how attached he was to his college career. "Rent," DeCandia replied, was his dream.

When DeCandia got the call to report to New York for final auditions at the beginning of June, he had just moved to New Hampshire for the summer and simply didn’t have the money.

He called the company and explained he had to pay his own rent, but then realized he did not want to let this chance-of-a-lifetime slip away.

"So I borrowed my roommate’s car, took my rent money, and went," he says. "I got to the audition and there were 25 guys who looked just like me."

But DeCandia apparently had something these other guys did not, because two weeks later, he was part of the cast.

"It happened very fast," he says.

These days, DeCandia is living in a Boston hotel and is busy learning his parts.

DeCandia has quite the rehearsal schedule; he is learning all the male roles in the show. He will be the understudy for the roles of both Mark and Roger, the two male leads, and will be responsible for performing when the principles have a night off.

"I’m not technically part of the cast until July 6^th," he said. "Then I could be on every night, or not at all."
DeCandia says he’s also becoming accustomed to having a steady income.

"I’ve been on my own since my senior year of high school, and I still can’t fathom having money," he says. "I can totally relate to the characters. I’ve had a pair of taped-together glasses for a long time; with my first check, I bought a new pair."

It’s hard work, yet DeCandia says he’s thoroughly enjoying himself. He is, after all, literally living his dream.

"It’s been a lot of fun," he says, "The rehearsals are the same as any other musical, so I’ve been pretty comfortable."

But there have been times, he added, when he’s been so overwhelmed by his good fortune he has stopped dead in the middle of the stage.

"People will ask, ‘What’s wrong, Greg?’ and I say, ‘I’m in Rent!’" he says.