The Elon alum says the technical training he gained at the university was vital, but connecting with the Elon community in New York City has made his transition to a musical theatre career even better.
Andrew Stevens Purdy ’20 remembers his eyes being glued to the stage when his parents took him to a community theatre production of “Oliver” at the age of four.
“My parents were like ‘He seems to really like this,’ and they bought me a CD called ‘The Broadway Kids,” and within a couple of hours, I was singing along and performing songs for my family,” he said. “Since then, it’s just been what I wanted to do.”
And now Purdy has gone from “Broadway kid,” to full Broadway actor. For the past 3 1/2 years, he has performed in the ensemble of “The Book of Mormon,” the Tony Award-winning musical written by the creators of the television show “South Park.” He is also an understudy for one of the two lead characters, Elder Cunningham.
“The fact that I am getting to do what I always wanted to do is such a ‘pinch me’ moment,” said Purdy. “It blows my mind, honestly, whenever I get to play Elder Cunningham, just thinking of the little four-year-old that fell in love with theater and imagined maybe someday I could do this. The fact that I get to do it now is just so special, and I never take that for granted.”
Purdy graduated from Elon University with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Music Theatre in 2020, a strange time to enter the theater industry as Broadway “went dark” due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
“There was no theater industry really at all. So, I went home to live with my parents, and I was just kind of waiting it out a bit,” said Purdy.
He eventually was able to land a job as an online theater educator and moved to New York City in 2021, getting the opportunity to audition and work small gigs before landing his role in “The Book of Mormon.” While Purdy attended a performing arts high school, he says Elon made sure he was ready for the big stage.
“The technical training at Elon is so good that I feel very well equipped to do a show eight times a week and maintain my body and my voice and my energy,” he said. “I’m just so grateful for all the people whom I encountered at Elon, and people I learned from and people I learned with. I really look back on that time in my life with so much gratitude and joy.”
Purdy credits the entire Performing Arts department for his success but also acknowledges that classes outside of his major made a difference, too, including his Elon Core Curriculum course “Faces of Change: Improbably Champions of Free Speech,” which discussed “South Park.”
“Now the two guys who write ‘South Park’ are my bosses,” said Purdy. “So that’s been a very full circle experience.”
While the technical training from Elon is important for Purdy, he says the community has made a big difference in his transition from student to working actor. He’s made connections with other Elon alumni who he didn’t go to school with, but found a mutual connection, like Patrick Clanton ’14, who is now performing in “Moulin Rouge.”
“Coming here and already having so many people whom I knew and loved, and even people who I didn’t know but had gone to Elon, that just made everything so much easier and less scary and less foreign because there is a sense of familiarity and community,” said Purdy.
