Michael Brindisi had a problem. The year was 1996, and the artistic director of Chanhassen Dinner Theatres had to replace an injured actress in his show Crazy for You. Was there anyone in the country who knew the exact role in that Gershwin musical? More to the point, would any of the professional thespians in that small group be willing to move to the suburbs of Minnesota to play it?
Thankfully, in preparation for staging the show, Brindisi had traveled to Denver a few months earlier to see it performed at another dinner theater. At the Country Dinner Playhouse, nicknamed “The Barn” for its gambrel-roofed auditorium, he had learned what the audience responded to, what they didn’t, and how he could do it better. But his most valuable takeaway had nothing to do with songs, choreography, or sets.
The needle he found in the Barn’s haystack was then-unknown actress Amy Adams.
“His laugh was the thing that struck me,” Adams tells Racket of their initial meeting backstage in Denver. “He had such an affable energy and a lot of curiosity and a clear enthusiasm for what he was doing.”
Brindisi, the longtime artistic director, president, and co-owner of Chanhassen Dinner Theatres, died unexpectedly last month after a brief illness, just two days before his latest production of Grease opened. The 76-year-old’s artistic legacy is cemented in Minnesota through the theater he not only helmed but financially solidified when he joined a new ownership group that purchased it in 2010. But his influence will live on far outside of the western Twin Cities suburbs, too, through the many actors he discovered, championed, and mentored who went on to captivate much larger audiences than the 540 seats in CDT’s main theater.
Amy Adams is perhaps the biggest star to come out of the Brindisi school of dinner theater, having gone on to win the hearts of moviegoers across the globe (and countless awards) after starring in four shows at Chanhassen in the late 1990s. Other stars in the making include Caroline Innerbichler and Laura Osnes, who both went on to lead recent Broadway musicals.
When Adams looks back on her career leading up to Hollywood, she says she feels Brindisi was pivotal to her success.
“I truly believe I would not be where I am,” she says when asked what her life would be like if Brindisi hadn’t plucked her out of the Colorado circuit. “I know that sounds like a big statement, but there’s so many [things], not only the opportunities that were held in Minneapolis, but the family and the community. I don't think I would have had the confidence to move to L.A. without the experience of CDT, and knowing that I truly believed I always had a home to go to.”
Adams was thrust into the middle of this tight-knit, perfectionist stage family immediately upon moving from Colorado to Minnesota, where she'd live and work for several years. She was given a videotape of the Crazy for You choreography, wildly different from her Denver production, and tasked with learning it quickly. Tony Vierling, who was the dance captain of the show at the time, remembers using the video to teach her the steps in his living room in south Minneapolis.
In the midst of this whirlwind, Adams says Brindisi was, “the biggest cheerleader. Any concerns that I had about learning the choreography quickly, he was like, ‘Nope, we're going to make sure you know it.’ And he kept his promise.”
Brindisi’s deep affection for actors could be traced to his own career treading the boards, on Broadway alongside John Lithgow, in a national tour of Grease, and at CDT. While other directors may be hands-off after opening night, Adams says Brindisi “was constantly invested, whether it was constructive criticism or just an enthusiastic note.”
After Crazy for You, in which Adams moved up from a supporting role to the lead, she was cast in State Fair as a dancing pig and “cooch dancer” in 1997, followed by larger parts in Brigadoon and Good News! in 1998.
“[Michael] gave me a lot of roles, and even if I thought I couldn't quite handle them he instilled a lot of confidence in me,” she says. “Michael entrusting me with that, that was a big part of me understanding that I could push myself to do things I was scared of.”
Adams was under Brindisi’s wing when she auditioned for Drop Dead Gorgeous, the 1999 cult classic shot in Minnesota that would become her first movie credit. She was starring as Jean MacLaren in Brigadoon when it came time for filming, but Brindisi said her job would be there for her when she was finished. “I don't know that I would have gone and done Drop Dead Gorgeous, or I would have had a lot of conflict about leaving the show [if that hadn’t been on the table],” she says. (Fun fact: In a 1998 program from CDT, Adams’s bio mentions she has a featured role in the upcoming film Dairy Queens, an early DDG title that was scrapped.)
When she made the decision to move to L.A. and make a go of it in Hollywood, she was in the middle of a run of Good News! playing flapper Babe O’Day. If she left, Brindisi would be forced to go through the same fire drill as when he first called in Adams to fill the hole in Crazy for You. Still, he encouraged her to go for it.
“He was very supportive of people's growth,” she says.
Brindisi was just as concerned with giving actors a nudge out the door when he felt they were ready as he was with fostering a home for them, and thank god for that. Otherwise, Adams may never have gone on to give us Doubt, Arrival, her recent Golden Globe-nominated performance in Nightbitch, and, this author’s personal favorite, Enchanted, where she got to flex those Chanhassen chops.
“I really debated whether or not I even wanted to leave at the time that I left,” she says. “Because I knew I was leaving behind something that I loved.”
Thanks to Brindisi’s life’s work, Adams can come back anytime. A quarter-century later, Chanhassen Dinner Theatres is still standing strong, selling out performances, and casting actors about whom Minnesotans will say, “I knew them back in the day!”
Chanhassen Dinner Theatres is hosting a memorial event for Michael Brindisi on Monday, April 7 at 2 p.m., which will take place on the main stage and be live-streamed online. Find more info here.
