12 North Shore Towers Courier n February 2016 That’s Entertanment! ABY STEPHEN VRATTOS merican author, teacher and theatre and film historian John Kenrick is a walking smorgasbord of entertainment. Always popular among the residents of North Shore Towers, in the past year he’s given audio-visual presentations on Danny Kaye, for the University Club; Katherine Hepburn, for the Women’s Club; and most recently, Joan Rivers, for the Country Club, a standing-room-only affair that attracted more the 180 people, packing the breadth of the VIP Room from the entryway to the stools surrounding the bar at the back. The affection is equally shared with Kenrick. “I love doing anything I can at The Towers,” he revealed. “The audience is so responsive; great, fun people!” Conversely, the students, which Kenrick teaches don’t have the same sense of history and Kenrick has to explain who people, like Danny Kaye and Red Skelton, are. During one class, the mention of the Irving Berlin patriotic anthem, “God Bless, America,” prompted a student to raise her hand and ask if it were a musical. Kenrick responded by showing the girl a video of the song, which she watched with a blank stare. She’d never heard it before! “Towers people know everyone!” Kenrick enthused. The Astoria-born, native New Yorker attended Monsignor McClancy Memorial High School in East Elmhurst, where he maintained a very respectable B+ average, before graduating and moving on to Cathedral College of the Immaculate Conception in Douglaston, where he studied English and theology, the sort of educational track one would expect to lead to a monastery rather than the Great White Way. “Back when I was taking classes, if you were interested in musicals, you had only two options: studying straight theater or opera,” Kenrick explained. “You have to have a love of liturgy to be in theater, so…” After college, the theater aficionado returned to Our Lady of Mount Carmel in Astoria, his old elementary school, to teach, starting a children’s theater after his arrival. Word of mouth spread about the quality of his productions that soon the Schubert organization came knocking, hiring Kenrick as an assistant. One can only wonder to what heights he attained with the shows he put on at the elementary-school level to attract the attention of such a prestigious theatrical power. His first production was the original 1982 Broadway production of Torch Song Trilogy, which starred Harvey Fierstein, who also wrote the play; Matthew Broderick and Estelle Getty, among others, and won the Tony Award for Best Play and Drama Desk Award for Outstanding New Play. It wasn’t long before Kenrick was working Speaker John Kenrick wows NST once again with independent producers. His work includes the 1994 Broadway revival of Grease, the original ,Photos by Dawn Steinberg and John Kenrick
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