Broadway actorSidney DuPontnever let anything stand in his way.
As a young boy, DuPont was diagnosed with a cholesteatoma —a skin-lined cystthat invades the middle ear and eats away at the eardrum — and around 5 years old, he began to lose the ability to hear in his left ear.
Though he had multiple surgeries in an attempt to save his hearing, nothing seemed to work. Up until now, DuPont never spoke about his hearing loss as a professional actor for fear that it could be used “against” him.
“My parents never let me look at it as a disability, and I just never saw it as a disability,” he tells PEOPLE, adding that he always had a bucket list full of dreams and was determined to one day make it to Broadway.
The actor, 30, stars inParadise Square, a Civil War-era musical opening Sunday at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre that brings together the Black and Irish American communities through song and dance.
DuPont grew up in Philadelphia. “They were calling it Killadelphia at the time,” he says. “They just started the war in Afghanistan, and I remember there were so many deaths in Philadelphia that year.
“Gun violence… That’s what I was being raised in. And so there was a lot of internalized fear, and I kind of retreated inside, and I think that music and dancing and theater and acting and storytelling saved me.”
Despite being hearing impaired, his parents supported his love for the arts and “made sure that my dreams, that my reality, was open,” he adds. “That I never saw Philadelphia as being the only place to be.”
One may think that signing in harmony would be DuPont’s biggest challenge, however, he says that he was most concerned about his equilibrium as a dancer and the ability to stay in line with rhythms and beats.
Never miss a story — sign up forPEOPLE’s free weekly newsletterto get the biggest news of the week delivered to your inbox every Friday.
At the High School for Creative & Performing Arts in Philadelphia, his teacher Dorina Morrow treated him the same as every other student in the class. “She never, ever, ever let it be a thing for me,” he says. “She was like, ‘No, I’m grading you exactly the same. You can do this, and I know you can.’ And she fought for me to have an internal meter inside of my body at all times, so whether or not the music has shifted, no matter what has happened, there’s an internal meter and a confidence that comes with that, that I am controlling the rhythm.”
DuPont has been withParadise Squarefor over five years, since its early developmental phases including its out-of-town tryout at Chicago’s James M. Nederlander Theatre.
Kevin Berne
Taking the stage nightly has been a “gift,” he says. “Nina Simoneonce did an interview… The question was, ‘What’s freedom to you. What is free?’ And she said, ‘What’s freedom to me?Freedom is no fear.’
“She was like, ‘It is something that very few of us get to have,’ but there are times and moments on stage where she has felt free, and at the end of my [11 o’clock] number… It’s not in the script — the lyricist did not write this into the show — but right before my last note in that number, I say, ‘Tonight, I’m feeling free.’ I remember the first night it happened in Chicago, and it wasn’t planned, I didn’t think, ‘Oh, this is what I’m gonna say.’ It was actually how I felt in the moment, and it kind of changed everything for me.”
He adds, “Stepping into your purpose, and your intentions all aligning at the same time, there’s just simply nothing like it. And I hope that people feel that, and I hope that specifically the Black and brown people who come to the show, that they feel that — seen.”
Paradise Squareis currently playing at Broadway’s Ethel Barrymore Theatre.
source: people.com
