Maya Lagerstam as Storyteller 1 and Tyler Joseph Ellis as Storyteller 2 in The North American Tour of SHUCKED. Photo by Matthew Murphy and Evan Zimmerman.

Okay, he gushed. Ryan Fitzgerald had just seen Shucked at the invitation of the show’s writer, Robert Horn — or as the actor says only half-jokingly, “The man. The myth. The legend” — and, yup, now he was gushing.

Fitzgerald, who is in the ensemble of the first national tour of Shucked, met the writer of Broadway’s Tootsie and television’s “Designing Women” while working on Hercules at the Paper Mill Playhouse in 2023. “He got all of us in the company and said, ‘My show’s on Broadway right now. I would love for you all to come and see Shucked,” recalls Fitzgerald who was raised in Longmont, Colorado. “Not only did I laugh my heart out, I sobbed.”

For a show with slightly fewer puns than South Dakota’s Corn Palace has ears in its mural façade, that last bit might come as news. Although the story of the small fictional Cob County town that must reach beyond its borders when a mysterious blight hits its beloved crop actually does have a touching amount of sweet corn pathos.

The Cast of The North American Tour of SHUCKED. Photo by Matthew Murphy and Evan Zimmerman.

“I sobbed because I was just like, oh, my gosh, this show is everything I want to be in. It is so light-hearted, yet so deep, so rich and so silly,” Fitzgerald says on a video call, his laptop stationed in the kitchen of a shared Airbnb for the Dallas-Fort Worth leg of the tour.

And so, he walked up to Horn, still crying and now gushing. “This is incredible!” he told him. “This is like what we want to see!” And “I’ve been wanting to do something like this since I got to New York City!” And finally, “You built that!?”

Consider that moment the delightfully corny part of the Ryan Fitzgerald show. But, not unlike Shucked — which won a Tony Award and was nominated for eight more, including one for Horn’s book and one for Nashville luminaries Brandy Clark and Shane McAnally’s original score — his story has its share of grit and gumption. What happened next was far more intentional and disciplined. Or as he says, with an impish smile, “I started scheming.”

When the tour was announced, he knew he had to “advocate for myself,” says Fitzgerald. He texted Horn. “I want to be in Shucked,” he wrote.

“I want to be in it. I obviously have my eye on certain things, but whatever it is, I will jump. And ask, ‘how high?’ on the way up.” — Ryan Fitzgerald

After Fitzgerald got an audition for a lead role, he messaged Horn again. “I don’t want to mess this up. Even if it doesn’t go my way, I want to walk in with my best foot forward. I want to leave a good impression. Because you never know, right?” Horn gave him some insights into the characters and, says Fitzgerald, “really put me on the right path so that I was in that place so I could flourish.

“The rest” — with multiple callbacks and a troupe of people to wow — “was history,” he says. Fitzgerald landed a role in the ensemble.

If you shuck the great outcome part of that account, you’ll discover an invaluable get-to-work kernel. One that Shawn Hann, Fitzgerald’s theater teacher at the Denver School of the Arts back in the early aughts, recognizes immediately.

“I see a work ethic,” she says, pinpointing that certain something in her former students who’ve become theater professionals. “Because DSA is a sixth-through-12^th-grade program, to see that when a kid’s a 10- and 11-year-old — the priority, the focus, the drive — that’s crazy. And then as they get to high school, it’s more about creativity and being a good person. Ryan’s a good person,” Hann says.

“I really do feel like for the kids that go on, it’s a selflessness. It’s not, ‘what can I get from this?’ It’s ‘what can I do for you? How can I be in this ensemble? What can I give to you?’” — Shawn Hann, Denver School of the Arts

A performing arts incubator, the Denver School of the Arts can be foundational to building a robust arts-forward city, that in turn bolsters the nation’s arts identity. Think of it as cultural infrastructure. And during her 25 years, Hann has fashioned an alumni network that spans the theater and entertainment industries.

The Cast of The North American Tour of SHUCKED. Photo by Matthew Murphy

As a kid, Fitzgerald saw Fame at a community theater in Longmont.  “Wow,” he remembers thinking. “I was talking to this girl, and I said, ‘Wouldn’t that be so amazing to go to a place like that where you could focus on these things?’ And they said, ‘Well, that actually exists. There’s one in Denver and you should audition.’” His first year, Fitzgerald would get up at five, catch the bus from Longmont to Denver and then a city bus to DSA in east Denver. “I think from an early age, that sort of focus, that dedication, that diligence, I guess, really, really led into my work ethic.”

Shucked is not Fitzgerald’s first Broadway tour hoe-down. In his twenties, he traveled with the international tour of West Side Story. Still, there’s something a little mind-bending about returning to his hometown to be in a production at the Denver Center. (Last season, Fitzgerald appeared in the Arvada Center shows Beautiful and Cinderella.) Something worth gushing about.

“We saw Phantom of the Opera there. We saw Thoroughly Modern Millie. We saw Grease. We saw all the things there,” he says. “Coming home, I can’t believe it. And I can’t believe that I get to sign a thing on that wall.”

DETAILS
Shucked
Oct. 7-19 • Buell Theatre
Tickets