January 29th, 2010
01:00 PM ET

What’s Next…on stage

David Puente
AC360° Producer

A cross between the AC360° series “What’s Next” and the famed Proust questionnaire, AC360° Producer David Puente has devised his own set of questions for newsmakers. The Proust Questionnaire is a list of questions about one's personality. Its name is owed to the French writer Marcel Proust who popularized it at the end of the nineteenth century. At that time, it was in fashion to answer questions that revealed one’s tastes, aspirations, and aspects of one’s work and personality.



Now a divorced dad living in New York City, Will Swenson has come a long way from playing Jesus Christ in a promotional film for the Church of Latter Day Saints. Now Swenson gives life to ‘Berger’ in the Tony Award-winning revival of HAIR at Broadway’s Hirschfeld Theatre. And despite having grown up as a member of the conservative Mormon Church in Utah, he also reveals his support of gay marriage and his lack of patience for right-wing religious types, some of which he wants to excommunicate from the human race.

The HAIR New Broadway Cast Recording is Grammy nominated, and now re-released on vinyl.

1. What's better for the spirit, free love or the institution of marriage?

The best thing would be living in a society where anyone could live in the relationship of their choosing. Yes, anyone.

2. What is the trait you most deplore in hippies?

The female armpit hair thing. Sorry. Just being honest.

3. What is the trait you most deplore in yuppies?

Their cocky sense of entitlement.

4. Will marijuana cafes be the next Starbucks?

I'll hit a venti, splif-o-ganga, skinny, crazy Eddie with a shot of purple rain.

5. What’s your greatest achievement?

That my kids are amazing.

6. From flower power to greed is good, what's the next motto?

It's getting hot in here.

7. If your character Berger were to die and come back as a person or thing in 2020, what would it be?

The proprietor of the new Marijuana Starbucks chain.

6. What object from the ‘60s would you put in a time capsule?

Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" speech and a copy of "The Graduate"

7. From the 21st century?

A Radiohead album and a Junior's Cheesecake.

8. Who will march on Washington in 2020?

Pat Robertson will march asking for reinstatement to the human race, after having been voted out for his repeated, insensitive and stupid remarks.

9. What is your greatest fear for the genre of the musical?

That we will no longer create original stories and continue to rehash old movies and rely on the jukebox for a score.

10. If 1968 was the summer of love what will 2018 be?

The summer of "Ow, my back hurts-when did I get so old?"

Filed under: David Puente • What's Next
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