Episode #15: Jenn Colella gives new meaning to the word “irresistible.” The second I laid eyes on her, I fell hard, and the love affair continues. I daresay that goes for anyone who’s ever met her. She is the most fun-loving, open-hearted, life-affirming person working in the theatre, not to mention ridiculously gorgeous and outrageously talented. She made her big Broadway debut in the lead role of Sissy in Urban Cowboy, and I was the lucky duck who got to write her first song in the show, “Another Guy,” which she sings on the podcast today. Recorded 4/2/06.

Seems like playing Sissy in Urban Cowboy started a casting trend for Jenn, as she subsequently appeared in workshops of The Great American Trailer Park Musical and Ring of Fire, the Off-Broadway production of Slut, the musical, as well as Twyla Tharp‘s new piece, The Times They Are A-Changin’, which recently finished its premiere engagement at The Old Globe Theatre in San Diego. Let’s hope that this show (or High Fidelity, another upcoming Broadway-bound musical) will put Jenn back on Broadway where she belongs.

In the meantime, if you act fast (i.e. tonight), you can catch Jenn singing with the amazing Jason Robert Brown at Birdland, April 4th, where you can hear another one of her original songs from Urban Cowboy, JRB’s “Hopalong Heartbreak.”