Like many a young actor in this town, Jason Frazier is looking to make it big in
the entertainment world (with a special focus on his first love, theater). Having
already made a splash in Sacred Fools’ A Dr. Jeuss Christmas, for which he
received a BackstageWest Garland Award honorable mention for Best Actor
in a Play, he is now rehearsing what looks to be an April 2008 highlight, a
starring role in the upcoming Cell Phone Funeral (more about that later).  We
sat down with Jason in the Beverly Hills garden apartment he shares with his
partner, Disney animator/director Elliot M. Bour, for a chat with this truly multi-
talented young actor.

Like many twins, Jason and Eric were dressed alike as children.  For Christmas, “I
would have a red shirt and green pants and he would have green shirt and a red
pants and we’d look like Christmas lights! And all through school, we had the
name tags. Thankfully they didn’t do the rhyming thing, like Jason and Mason or
Eric and Derek.”

October 2003 marked Jason’s arrival in Los Angeles, which he describes a “two pronged decision. It was pursuing acting, cause this is where it happens.  You gotta be here.”  The second prong was that this was where Elliot made his home, the couple’s long-distance Internet romance having blossomed over an eight month period while they were still separated by a couple thousand miles and connected only by the Net (shades of You’ve Got Mail). Romantics take heart.  After eight months, “I flew for the first time ever, coming from that small town, out here for a week. And we met, and it was amazing, and he was exactly who he said he was, and we melded. And then two months later, packed up my stuff and said, ‘Coming out.’” And he did.
 

Jason’s first (and still favorite) big starring role was in December 2005’s A Dr.
Jeuss Christmas, in which he portrayed the evil, snarling rich kid, Simon
Thaddeus Mulberry-Pew. “John Mitchell was our director, and I so thank him
for casting me in that part. I think you have to kind of cast nice people as
mean, because you can’t cast a bitch, because they’ll be impossible to work
with.” Besides, it was fun to be evil, especially as “my favorite character in
Aladdin is Jafar, and he was a villain, and I liked the witch in The Wizard Of
Oz. Very fun to be evil.”  Part of the thrill of being in the show came from the
fact that it took three callbacks for Jason to get the part. “I don’t know how
many guys read for Simon, but what an education that was, watching,
listening to their takes on it. He was so different as played by all these
people.”

One of Jason’s biggest thrills recently has been appearing with A-list voice-
over actor Debi Derryberry (voice of Nickelodeon’s Jimmy Neutron) at the
Geffen Playhouse in Mix It Up, part of their Saturday Scenes series for children.
“It’s fun because that’s an audience of children and they’re just happy to
see you and they think you’re amazing. It’s fun to just be able to perform at
no consequence. You can put it out there and they’re gonna love it,
whatever you do.”  Jason and Debi will be taking the show across the U.S.
“We’re doing Houston. We might do New York. Maybe Las Vegas and
Orlando.”

In the next year, Jason hopes to “get with a theatrical agency, start going
out for film and TV, and continue to do theater because that’s my first
passion really, and I’m probably always going to be best at that. I don’t
want to pigeonhole myself, but I just like being there with a live audience
and you can do more experimental stuff.  I like the immediate connection,
the immediate feedback.”

In what kinds of roles does Jason see himself as the most “cast-able?”

“I love characters, so that’s the answer in a nutshell.  I like people that are
maniacal, or really sad, or really funny.  I like people that you can take to a 10
or an 11. I like multilayered characters, and I think I prefer comedy to drama,
although I’d love to do a good drama someday and work those muscles
out. But comedy comes more naturally to me, so comedic sidekick,
intelligent, funny, sort of a comedic wisecracking guy.  Those roles are great.”

Jason also works as a freelance graphic designer. He designed
LAStageScene’s myspace page and our gorgeous logo, among others. “I
seem to take to it naturally. I don’t have a degree in design or anything, but
I think I have good design sense, good with colors. I designed the stuff for
Jeuss, our big banner and our programs, posters, and all that.” (Check out
Jason’s work at his graphic design website.)

Talk about multiple threat, Jason also composes music. When asked if he took
piano lessons as a child, he responds, “No, no, and here’s the thing. I can’t play. I
don’t play the piano but I can compose and write songs. I learned about music
all backwards. I always loved music. If there was ever a great moment in a piece
of music, I’m like ‘What’s causing that harmonious blend of chords and all that
stuff? Well, I’m going to set out and find out how all that happens. So I opened
up an encyclopedia and learned about music and taught myself about theory,
chords, and then I started writing songs.  But I can’t play, so don’t ask me to
play one of my compositions cause it’ll sound like ‘Clang Clang.’

“I would love write a musical, maybe a musical revue for Celebration Theater in
particular, because they were heavy into that. In the early 90s they did Naked
Boys Singing, and before that they had The Gay 90s. I want to talk to Michael
Matthews (Artistic Director of the Celebration) and get him to return to doing
that. So I would love to maybe in the future write a little musical revue for them.
Maybe I could pull from my own life growing up in a small town, having a twin
who’s straight, just all the crazy shit that ends up happening.”
 

Another creative outlet that Jason enjoys is sitting down in front of the TV screen
and redubbing classic (and not so classic) films, such as Mildred Pierce, Mommie
Dearest, and Die! Mommie! Die!, hilarious clips which can be viewed on their
YouTube page.

“We were bored one day, and we didn’t feel like going out, so we’re like, ‘Let’s
do our own voices.’ We sat and first did it with Aladdin, improv-ing it, coming up
with our own lines. We’re fans of Joan Crawford, so we said, ‘Let’s do it with
those movies. She’s a raving lunatic.  There’s a lot we can play up with that.’ 
We saw ‘Mommie Dearest’ with an audience at the Arclight.  It was like a mostly
gay audience that was completely responding to every moment in the movie,
laughter nonstop, and there’s the moment where she flips her head around and
I did like a ‘whoosh’ sound right there in the theater. And everybody in the row
with us laughed, and I was like, ‘You know what, Elliot, we’ve got to do
something with this.’  So then we recorded it and put it on YouTube, and people
are enjoying and responding to it, and now we’re just brainstorming what the
next step should be.”

One possibility might be a screening of a camp classic (a la Mildred Pierce) in
front of an audience with Jason and Elliot providing the voices live and
audience members invited to dress up “very classic, old school Hollywood.” Stay
tuned.

In the meantime, and most important for Jason, is the April 11 opening of
Cell Phone Funeral, written by John Trapper, at the Actors’ Playpen Theater
in West Hollywood, in which he plays the role of Barry.

“Cell Phone Funeral is about this guy Patrick who’s at a gay bar cruising, and
also there is this guy Zachary, and he ends up through some twist of fate
running over Patrick and killing him with his SUV. Patrick’s very conservative
family three thousand miles away has to plan the funeral. His mother is an
alcoholic estranged from her sister, and now they’ve got to plan a funeral
and come together. All the information about Patrick is in his cell phone,
who he knew, what he liked, so they have to use his phone to know who to
invite. So they do that at the funeral home, and it’s this parade of
characters, drag queens, assorted bath house managers, a priest named
Father Bobby. The funeral director, Salvatore, he’s a hoot, he’s just this Latin
spitfire, very funny.  And it’s the family getting to know Patrick by the stories
his friends tell, and it’s humorous, and it’s heartbreaking. There’s some real
poignant moments.  This is a show to come to laugh at but there’s a
message underneath the laughter. I’m so excited.

“I’m Zachary’s best friend Barry, and I definitely idolize Zachary for some
reason, whether just his looks, his taste in clothes…  He’s the more straight
man, as it were, and I get to be sort of the loose cannon.”

Jason got this part in the usual way.  He auditioned.  But it was an audition
that almost didn’t happen. Not knowing that Actors’ Playpen was right next
door to Working Stages, Jason accidentally went into the wrong theater.
“There was a show about to perform that night, and the lobby’s full, and I’m
sitting there with my headshot and resume, and I went, ‘This does not feel like
an audition.’ And I started panicking, because by that point I was late for the
audition. I was walking down the street pacing, and I was like fuck fuck fuck
fuck fuck… and there’s the Actors Playpen right next door. So I sucked it up
and was like, ‘You need to do this. It’s going to be a fun show, you’re right for
it.’ I went in, calmed down, and I read. And I heard the next day that he
wanted me to be Barry, and that’s so good when you don’t have to wait five
days to hear back.”  Quite flattering for Jason, especially when he found out
that they’d been casting this show for weeks, and he got the part of Barry on
his very first try.

“This is my first experience where every night we’re doing two shows.  We’re
doing an 8:00 and we’re doing a 10:00, and there’s no understudy so I’m doing
every single show. What’s fun about this show is that I get a character that’s
just as crazy, fun (as the role in Dr. Jeuss), but the show doesn’t ride on my
shoulders.”

Besides Jason’s role in Cell Phone Funeral, you can look forward to reading
more about him in a pair of upcoming articles in BackstageWest, one on when
actors should say ‘No’ to parts and the other on what makes a good (as
opposed to a bad) headshot. (Hard to believe that Jason could be anything
less than photogenic, though.)

We wish Jason Frazier much success in his career(s) and look forward to Cell
Phone Funeral’s opening night on April 11th.

                                                                                       --Steven Stanley

Jason's MySpace Page

Jason's Official Website

Cell Phone Funeral on MySpace