Ricardo Vazquez was in a jam. He needed to take publicity photos for his upcoming role as the buff title character in "Elliot, a Soldier's Fugue" at Park Square Theatre, but he was still playing Augie Garcia, the burly godfather of Minnesota rock 'n' roll, in "River Road Boogie" at the History Theatre.
What to do?
"Timing is everything in our profession," he said. "I learned to play guitar for Augie and will do what it takes for Elliot."
Fortunately, he'd already been going to the gym for a few months. But he had to get a buzz cut and shed 15 pounds for the role.
"I love to work," he said. "I love to dig into these characters."
That's a good thing because five years ago, the twenty-something actor had a quarter-life crisis. Fresh out of the BFA program of the Guthrie Theatre/University of Minnesota, he moved to New York and was working north of the city with a company that did tours of Shakespeare.
"New York requires you to believe in yourself 120 percent, but I started wondering if I'd made the right career choice," he said. He was being typecast as a young lover and he wanted to play other roles. So he came back to the Twin Cities, where he had grown up, for a vacation. After pounding the pavement, he snagged jobs at Mixed Blood Theatre and elsewhere, including the title character — a prison convict — in Luis Alfaro's "Oedipus el Rey," produced by Teatro del Pueblo and Pangea World Theater.
Two years ago he won an Ivey Award for best emerging artist on the Twin Cities theater scene.
