[{"sender": "Jeffrey Epstein [jeevacation@gmail.com]", "recipients": ["soon yi previ"], "timestamp": "3/24/2014 7:06:50 AM", "subject": null, "body": "When I was 8 years old, I watched my trial-lawyer father play Horace Vandergelder in the Livingston, N.J., \ncommunity-theater production of \"Hello, Dolly!\" He entered wearing an enormous marching-band bass drum \n(the character is in a parade), and he roared to his sobbing niece, \"Dammit! How am I supposed to play \n'Yonkers My Yonkers' with all that bellowing in my ears!\" It was the most exciting thing I had ever seen. \nI was a melancholic child. Worried, anxious. I never felt as if I belonged anywhere, as if I were a foreign \nexchange student living among the other kids, who seemed predestined to love sports. Add to that alienation the \nfact that my parents were going through a divorce, and I was truly treading water. But in that junior high school \nauditorium, I felt like I'd discovered a secret I didn't even know was being whispered. There was a place where \nI might belong: It was the Theater, and I was sold. \nA few years later, at Stagedoor Manor in Loch Sheldrake, N.Y., I joined an intensive theater boot camp for kids \njust like me. The second I stepped off the bus, I felt like baby Simba when he's lifted into the air in \"The Lion \nKing\" and all the animals sing. Everyone was affectionate; everyone hugged; no was called \"gay\" for doing \nanything that wasn't masculine. (My insecurity about this had shamefully kept me from doing theater in \nschool.) It was utopia, and I never wanted to leave. \nPhoto \nFrom left, Helene Yorke, Zach Braff and Lenny Wolpe in the musical \"Bullets Over Broadway.\" Credit Sara \nKrulwich/The New York Times \nIt was there I met Michael Larsen, the musical director of the camp. He told me that I wasn't just a camper \nhaving fun, but that I also had talent. And he was tough — sometimes he'd scream at me — but I knew it was \nbecause he thought I had a shot. (Michael was the first of many gay men instrumental in guiding me to where I \nam now, which is why I try to speak on behalf of gay rights whenever I can. But I suppose that's a different \nessay.) \nAt 18, I was cast as Woody Allen and Diane Keaton's son in the film \"Manhattan Murder Mystery,\" my first \nmovie role. And now, after studying film and theater at Northwestern University, playing J. D. on \"Scrubs\" on \nTV for nine years and directing two films, I'm working with Woody Allen again. I'm typing these words in my \ndressing room at the St. James Theater, where on April 10 I'll open in \"Bullets Over Broadway,\" a musical \nadaptation of his hit film. I play David Shayne, a struggling writer in 1929 New York who agrees to cast a \nmobster's ditsy girlfriend in one of his plays in order to get it produced. \nThe St. James is where Yul Brynner opened in \"The King and I\" in 1951; where hits like \"Oklahoma!,\" \"The \nPajama Game,\" \"Gypsy,\" \"The Who's Tommy,\" and \"The Producers\" played, and where, in 1964, by the most \nsurreal of coincidences, Carol Channing first descended an endless staircase in \"Hello, Dolly!\" I sit in Dressing \nRoom 201, where many of the great luminaries of the Broadway stage — Patti LuPone, Nathan Lane, Mandy \nPatinkin — have paced waiting for the intercom to chime, \"Places for Act I, please.\" This is the sanctuary that a \nlittle invisible boy in New Jersey dreamed he'd one day find. \nPhoto \nZach Braff in a 1988 production of \"Godspell\" at Stagedoor Manor. Credit Stagedoor Manor \nIt's my first time on Broadway, but not my first time onstage. My first job straight out of college was in George \nC. Wolfe's production of \"Macbeth\" at the Public Theater, starring Alec Baldwin, Liev Schreiber, Angela \nBassett and Michael C. Hall, and I've since appeared Off Broadway in shows at the Delacorte and Second Stage \nTheater. \nContinue reading the main story \nSuzy Menkes on the fashion designer L'Wren Scott \n• A Times selection of noteworthy cultural events in New York City and beyond  \n• Net-a-Porter means \"ready to party\" \nContinue reading the main story \nAdvertisement \nThe first day of rehearsal for \"Macbeth,\" Alec Baldwin sat down next to me. \"Who do you play?\" he asked. My \nvoice quivered: \"Ummm, I play Fleance and Young Seward.\" He paused. \"Oh — so I kill you twice.\" Each \nnight, as he drove his broadsword through my heart, I thought, \"I've made it!\" \nIn the sixth season of \"Scrubs,\" the show's creator, Bill Lawrence (also a major fan of musical comedy), \ndecided to do a musical episode. It was the first time I had done musical comedy since I was at camp, and it \ninstantly reminded me how much I loved it. My favorite song from the episode was called \"Guy Love.\" In it, \nDonald Faison (my best friend in real life and on the show) and I sang about how our homoerotic love for each \nother was nothing to apologize for. (\"It's guy love, that's all it is.\") The experience replanted the seed, and I \nmade a promise to myself: One day I would sing on Broadway. \nPhoto \nZach Braff, left, and Donald Faison on \"Scrubs,\" which had a musical episode in its sixth season. Credit ABC \nI'd be curled in the fetal position spooning a pillow right now, though, if it weren't for my current director, \nSusan Stroman. Directing and choreographing a musical is the most epic undertaking for one human being, yet \nSusan (or Stro, as the cool Broadway kids call her) handles it with aplomb. \nAnd she's not just choreographing the actors and dancers, but also the magnificent set designed by Santo \nLoquasto, which moves in ways I didn't know scenery could move. It's a dance of men and women and \nmachines and winches and elevators and lights. The wings of the St. James are very narrow, so when a giant \npiece of scenery disappears from the audience's view, the most elaborate game of Tetris begins, as the \noutstanding stage crew turns and lifts and twists; not an inch is wasted. The second the orchestra strikes the first \nnote of the overture, no one stops moving until the final curtain hits the deck. \nDuring \"Manhattan Murder Mystery,\" I had every word of my lines memorized down to the punctuation mark. \nI'll never forget: The first thing Woody said to me was, \"We're probably not going to say exactly what's on the \npage so ... you know ... just try to keep up. ...\" While we've been in previews on \"Bullets,\" he and Stro have \nbeen giving us notes each day on the previous night's performance. One night, I dropped a great joke by \naccident. He said to me with a smile, \"You'll probably get a bigger laugh if you actually say it onstage.\" \nAll the people on Broadway are the best at what they do. All dancers want to work with Stro, so she gets the \nbest dancers in New York City. Is there an oboist in the orchestra? You can guarantee he's the best oboist on the \nisland of Manhattan. Need to recreate the look of 1929? The six-time Tony winner William Ivey Long is here to \ndesign the costumes. And the voices! I am in awe. There has yet to be a time when I don't get goose bumps \nwhen Betsy Wolfe, who plays my girlfriend, belts out the final notes of our duet, \"I Found a New Baby.\" \nIn TV and film, where I've had the bulk of my experience, the best moments of the day are edited together to \ncreate the best version of what you've captured. It's a different art, with a different process. But when the \ncurtain rises at 8:05 every night at the St. James, the audience is being treated to a ballet of moving parts as \nintricate as a pocket watch. Whether it's the 19-piece orchestra under the stage, the crew in the wings or the 30 \nperformers on top of it, the gears turn, the set spins and a tiny hidden smile creeps across my face.\nZach Braff is an actor, writer and director. His new film, \"Wish I Was Here,\" opens July 18."}]