Austin Colby (’11) was studying Music Education, with a goal of teaching students like himself to sing, when professor and musical theatre coordinator Kate Arecchi challenged him to think bigger.
“You’re going to graduate, and you’re going to get your teaching degree, and then you’re going to go be an actor,” he recalled her saying. “And I was like, ‘Nah, I don’t think so.’ But she was right.”
Colby, who plays leading character Tom Buchanan in The Great Gatsby on Broadway, started performing professionally a few months after graduating. Key roles have included Rolf in The Sound of Music at the Kennedy Center and Prince Hans in the first national production of Disney’s Frozen. He was also part of an off-Broadway production of Jersey Boys.
Since March, Colby has performed full-time as antagonist Tom at Broadway Theatre. Original to the show’s ensemble, he made his Broadway debut playing the butler and serving as understudy for Tom and title character Jay Gatsby.
“It was a very big honor — a big, daunting task,” Colby said. Prolific actor Jeremy Jordan originated the role of Jay Gatsby until passing the baton to Broadway regular Ryan McCartan in January. “They’re just extraordinary talents with big shoes to fill, so it was always an honor to take up the role and give them a break. But definitely intimidating.”
Colby has also performed regionally in dozens of shows, including Come Fall in Love at The Old Globe in San Diego, California; West Side Story at the Signature Theatre in Arlington, Virginia; and Smokey Joe’s Café at the Arena Stage in Washington, D.C.
“I always say theater kind of rescued me,” Colby said. “It offered me an escape, which I think is a really beautiful thing. And what’s nice is, I think it also offers the same thing to audiences when they come see a show — a bit of an escape.”
A Richmond, Virginia, native, Colby followed his older siblings into high-school choir and musical theater before realizing a genuine love of music performance.
“I applied early action to JMU and got in and didn’t apply anywhere else,” he said. Having heard that Madison “had a really good music program and education program, that was a clear choice for me,” he said. He gave passing thoughts to pursuing a career in music performance, but his joy of working with children set him on the path to a degree in teaching.
“I had done a little bit of theater, but I really was a bad actor — so bad,” Colby said. That changed after Arecchi heard him perform the National Anthem at a faculty event and invited him to audition for an upcoming musical.
She later arranged for him to take extra acting classes, while providing the leadership and support that helped him grow as an actor and performer. “Kate just really took the time and believed in me and cast me as Curly in Oklahoma! and trusted me with that,” Colby said. “[She] took me under her wing.”
After college, Colby still assumed he would teach, but he soon realized he needed a change. When a friend living in Baltimore, Maryland, asked him to audition for a show, Colby jumped at the chance. He landed the part, moved to Baltimore and started securing steady theater roles in Washington, D.C., before gradually working his way to New York.
Colby’s road to Broadway might be atypical, but he believes his studies gave him an edge. “Getting an education degree, I learned so much more about the voice anatomy, pedagogy, music theory, being able to read music, being able to understand choral music and singing in a choir,” he said. In a collaborative setting like a musical, those skills are useful every day.
He also credits his wife, Caroline Bowman, with helping him realize his dreams of living and performing in New York City. Bowman, who later starred as Elsa alongside Colby’s Hans in the national tour of Frozen, met Colby through friends in Maryland.
“What’s great about the D.C. area is you can live there and get established and be hired as a local,” Colby said. “I had gotten to a place where I was pretty comfortable, and while the shows don’t last much longer than three months, they like to cast well in advance. So you could line up shows you wanted to do throughout the year, and then know that, ‘Great, I’m going to have work for this period of time.’”
He knew that moving to New York would force him to abandon that comfort zone while also placing him in the center of the theater world, where everyone was vying for the same roles. But it was a risk he had to take.
“The timing was right, and I did it,” Colby recalled. “I didn’t get work for a little while, and I worked for a catering company; I walked dogs; I was a personal assistant. I did all these things just to pay my bills, until I got to a place where I booked a job and could work consistently and make a living off of a theater salary.”
Now living in Washington Heights, Manhattan, Colby is glad for a steady role. “I’m still auditioning, because it’s one of those industries where you’re kind of always working for different artistic endeavors and maintaining a kind of momentum,” he said. “But it takes the stress out of the auditions having a job at the same time. ... It’s a relief, and in a way allows me to focus more on the positive side of auditioning than the stressful, negative side.”
Auditions have paid off, landing him the recent role of Carson in this year’s Hallmark Channel movie Sisterhood, Inc., starring Rachael Leigh Cook and Daniella Monet.
While on the lookout for other opportunities, Colby hopes to also enjoy the moment.
“I find personally that I’m constantly looking [so much] for the next thing that I forget to sit and appreciate where I am in the present,” he said. “Where I am right now is somewhere I’ve always wanted to be, but now that I’m here, I’m thinking, ‘OK, what’s next?’
“I have had those moments and have had to force myself to say, ‘OK, take a second; be grateful. Acknowledge where you are. Give yourself a little bit more time to sit in this, and then you can say, ‘OK, what’s next?’”
