CTC’s A Year With Frog & Toad Has SCSU Connection

MINNEAPOLIS (WJON News) -- The Children’s Theatre Company’s (CTC) presentation of “A Year with Frog & Toad” opens this weekend and the musical has a St. Cloud connection.  Jay Goede plays Frog and attended St. Cloud State University from 1982 – 1984 before transferring to the University of Minnesota, and then Yale.

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Goede says he was originally an art major at SCSU before transitioning to acting and has moved back into the art world:

“So I kind of did a full 180 back to the degree I always wanted to do, didn’t get a new degree but I’m now a painter and it’s what I enjoy and I do other things on the side and its been a great, great thing.”

Goede played Frog 21 years ago at the CTC and is reprising his role. He says it has been fun and also challenging to be playing Frog again:

“I never thought I’d be asked to do a role I created 20 years earlier so its been a blessing, its been a challenge, I’m 20 years older which means my frog legs don’t stretch the way they used to.”

Goede has performed on Broadway, done voice work in movies, and had roles on television He says it's special to be back:

“To get to revisit something as magical as Frog and Toad and to find new things in it and to, and you know even though I’m 20 years older I’ve looked at it as a new opportunity to see the play and to see the job again and to see Children’s Theatre Again.”

He says at the same time it is a bit odd to play the character for a 2nd time with CTC:

“I couldn’t ask for a better experience but its,  it’s a bit of a, you kind of step out of it sometimes while you’re in it and just marvel at the reality change and it’s, I don’t know how to describe it, it’s, and there are days I can’t remember what I did and nor do  I want to remember what I did.”

A Year with Frog and Toad is the only show from Minnesota to be nominated for 3 Tony Awards and is based on the books by Arnold Lobel . The play opens Saturday at CTC in Minneapolis and runs until June 16^th.

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