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AMSTERDAM - This year the tenth studio album of the American progressive metal band Dream Theater was released. Black Clouds & Silver Linings entered the US Billboard Top 200 at the sixth position and in the first week more then 40.000 copies were sold. But even with this success, the 46 year old singer James LaBrie is dreaming about a Broadway career. The most important obstacle: time.

It sounds like a joke, but LaBrie is deadly serious: he has Broadway ambitions. ThDe singer of the band that scored it's biggest hit in 1992 with Pull Me Under would really enjoy a career in theatre. “In the end, that's something that I would like to do. I'd like to experience a play in that kind of setting. I want to take part in auditions, if it's for Les Miserables or an other play that fits well with my voice.”

Dream
According to Labrie the possibility to realise his dream depends on the amount of time he can free for it. It's important for him to have enough spare time to focus himself completely on a play. “It depends if I can find an opening. I can't say: 'I've got two months of, I'm going to do this play'. That's not how they work on Broadway. The demand that you're available for at least six months or maybe a complete year.”

His availability also depends on his colleagues of Dream Theater. “Dream Theater could say at a certain point: 'let's take a hiatus of one or two years'. If that happens I have a chance to jump on a different train.”

Lyrics
That different train would be Broadway at his best, where they not only sing but also act. LaBrie is very consciences about that and says that singing also can be a form of acting. Especially if you sing someone other's lyrics like LaBrie does. “At first I read the lyric and I search in myself what it means to me. Then I talk to the one who wrote it and ask him the literal meaning. With his interpretation and mine I create something where I can connect with emotionally.”

In the time to come LaBrie can let himself go with all the lyrcs because Dream Theater planned a tour in Australia. Broadway has to wait a bit longer.

Lucas van Eck

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