Closeup: Meet musical theater hyphenate Julia Rifino
The scene: In the not-too-distant future, some Broadway casting director is hollering into a phone: “Get me a Julia Rifino type!”
In the two years since the pandemic loosened its grip on bay area stages, Spring Hill’s Julia Rifino has become a breakout musical theater star, on both sides of the bay. She’s a strong singer, a bubbly actress and a skilled dancer, and – thanks to her standout work in Stageworks and Straz Center productions of Avenue Q, and Jobsite’s Alice cabaret – she’s good with puppets.
What we have here is a definition of a quadruple threat.
Rifino (and friend) in “Jobsite’s Alice.” With Jeremy Douglass (left), Colleen Cherry and Kasondra Rose.
Alice, which closed Sunday, found Rifino onstage for almost the entire show – she was the title character’s singing puppeteer, and so where Alice went (down the rabbit hole, through the looking glass et al) Julia went, too.
She’s in the cast of The Great American Trailer Park Musical, opening Friday (and running through June 29) at Stageworks. There is a preview performance Thursday.
Take a breath, girl.
“I’m on the lookout for my limit, in terms of the break time between shows,” Rifino laughs. “It’s a lot to balance, but everybody that I’ve been working with has been so gracious with my schedule and making things work, and coordinating times. And I am beyond grateful.”
Recent audiences saw her in Mamma Mia! at American Stage, Shout! The Mod Musical at the Straz Center, The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee at Stageworks, Leonard Bernstein’s New York at freeFall and the aforementioned Avenue Q.
She recently began a new collaboration with freeFall, as a scenic painter (she worked on the set for the current show, OZ) and artist and graphic designer in the marketing office.
“As a child, my first passion was art,” Rifino explains. “I took private lessons outside of school with an amazing art teacher, Mary Petricone at Your Art’s Desire, and I just loved it.
“I was a very shy child, and I would hide and sing – so people wouldn’t look at me, but they would hear me in the back seat of the car, singing.
“I think that working in community theaters in Spring Hill and New Port Richey really helped me kind of build those skills, so that I could pursue both passions – art and performance. And now, getting to paint for the stage, and also perform for the stage, is just a dream come true. Because I found a balance.”
Spring Hill, in Hernando County, doesn’t offer a lot of opportunity for aspiring singer/actor/dancers who want to get better and make stagework their life’s work. Rifino studied drama at Nature Coast Technical High School (and handled her first puppets there), and from there went to the University of Tampa, where she earned a BFA in musical theater.
She worked shows at Universal Studios in Orlando, and spent nine months as an acting intern with Florida Repertory Theatre.
Dues summarily paid, Rifino began to get noticed by the creative movers and shakers in Tampa and St. Pete.
Stageworks’ “The Great American Trailer Park Musical” opens Friday. From left: Susan Halderman, Candace DelRio, Cody Carlson, Jamie Giangrande-Holcom, Julia Rifino, Heather Krueger and Ben Sutherland.
From there, all road lead to The Great American Trailer Park Musical. “I play the character Pickles,” Rifino says. “She’s 17 and she’s not the sharp knife in the drawer. One of her lines is ‘I hear I’m dumber than a box of hair.’
“But she’s got a huge heart. She says what’s on her mind – and sometimes it’s embarrassing to hear what’s on her mind. But it’s so much fun, working with this very talented cast.”
Stageworks artistic director Karla Hartley says she was glad she could get Rifino in her Trailer Park. “She has a youthful look about her, which is helpful – but mostly, she can sing her face off, and she is a very talented actor. And she’s been a joy. She has great comedic timing. And I’m hopeful that she’ll stay in the area for quite some time.”
Until that inevitable call comes in from Broadway, Rifino’s hands are happily full. When she’s not working in some show or other, she’s drawing or painting.
“Painting, outside of doing it for a theater, is something I’ve always kept a little bit closer to my heart,” she explains. “But I would really like to branch out – I’ve even thought of doing murals, and putting a little more time – when I have a little more free time – into painting. Hopefully for a gallery or something like that.”
Details and tickets for The Great American Trailer Park Musical here.
