This interview took place in Spring on 1997 as Whoopi Goldberg was taking over for Nathan Lane in Broadway's revival of A Funny Thing Happened On the Way to the Forum.

Tell us about Ken Kantor.

Well, I was born in the Bronx. I went to graduate school at Boston University Theater Arts program and was actually a New York City school teacher for three years. I taught Junior High School for two years and Elementary School for a year. I was convinced that I was never going to get any work as an actor! Finally I just figured I would give it a try and see what would happen.

How did you come to Forum?

By a rather circuitous route that began with Santa Claus, I suppose. A number of years ago I was Santa Claus for a number of friends with young children on the Upper West Side. And each year I would do Santa Claus at this one home where they would invite other friends over.

Each year there was a guest in this house who looked a bit like Jerry Zaks, but not so much as you would comment on it. At that time Jerry was just another New York actor. I never thought twice about it. Well, Jerry cast me in the First National Company of Anything Goes. I asked the friends whose house I had been doing Santa Clause at whether that was the same Jerry Zaks, and they said, yes. So at rehearsal one day, I went over to Jerry and said, You know, you've seen my work before.

He didn't have any idea what I was talking about. I told him about our annual anonymous get-togethers, and I've been working with Jerry ever since! I did two very different tours of Anything Goes. The first one starred Leslie Uggams - a great talent and a wonderful human being. The second one was with Mitzi Gaynor. Shortly after that I was with the Broadway company of Guys and Dolls for three years, which was the whole Broadway engagement, and now Forum. I've been working with Jerry a lot, and that's how I came to be in Forum - a gift from Santa Claus and Eddie Strauss, who's the musical director and I think more responsible for getting me into this show than anybody else.

What was it like auditioning for this show?

It was really rather peculiar. I auditioned for this while we were still doing Guys and Dolls. The day I auditioned was the day they postponed production for a year because Nathan was going to do Birdcage. So I didn't hear anything more about it for over a year. By the time I got back in touch with them everything had been cast. They called me in to read for one of the covers. I was getting ready to leave to do Tevye in Fiddler on the Roof the next day or so. They offered Forum to me then and there and that was that. I was the first cover hired and I think I started rehearsing about three or four weeks later.

Can you talk about the difference between Understudy and Standby? I noticed Nathan had both, and now Whoopi does as well.

Standby and Understudy, the way they're used in our show, are synonymous.

But, you're listed as one and someone else is listed as the other.

It makes no difference. None of us plays another role in the show. We all just Standby.

How do they determine who goes on?

It's purely a contractual thing. You can negotiate to be listed as a Standby or an Understudy, but essentially, it's the same thing because none of us are in the show. We're all standing by because the way the show is written there's nowhere to hide us. So the Standbys almost form a second company of Forum. There are about nine covers. We hang out on the sixth or seventh floor, in dressing rooms for the most part, except when we get to go on.

So you have to be here the whole night?

They've been very nice about it. Once we established the fact that we'd learned our parts and had gone on they allowed us to get beepers. Some of us were reluctant to do the beeper thing because we always had the feeling that the management might be trying to reach us unsuccessfully. But after eight or nine months I think we all succumbed to the beeper. The management and our Production Stage Manager Artie Gaffen, have been particularly generous with the covers in letting us use beepers and not having to be here every night. But, now with the opening and everything, we all try to stay pretty close.

Tell us about the rehearsal period.

I think they approached even the first rehearsal period as if it were a new show. Eddie Strauss's attitude is pretty much the same as Jerry's. He feels that when he comes into rehearsal and he's confronted with a scene or a song he treats it as though it were a brand new song. He asks how can he can make it work as successfully as possible. All three revivals that I've done with Jerry have always been approached with great sense of respect for the original but also the feeling that it was a new piece. Forum was explored from that point of view.

There was a great deal that was attempted that didn't quite land properly. During the preview process a lot of that was edited away. A certain amount of editing takes place during the performance of the show as well. The premise of Forum is "we shall employ every device we know in our desire to divert you." So if something wasn't diverting, out it went and we tried something else.

When Whoopi came in she got the broken-in model. As far as the text was concerned, the show was pretty much frozen. Larry Gelbart came in and did a pronoun substitution. He also did some very minor script changes, not so much to make it a role for a female but to neuter the script so that anyone could play it, a man or a woman. The premise is to look for the funniest guy you can find. If the guy is a guy fine. If the guy is a lady, then, fine too.

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