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<p>The news circulated through the choir, accompanied by a ripple of excitement:</p><p>&#8220;Sean Burns is coming home for Christmas &#8230;. cantoring at midnight Mass on Christmas Eve &#8230; singing &#8216;Song of the Stable.&#8217; &#8221;</p><p>&#8220;I can almost hear his voice already, in my head,&#8221; the choir master told his crew. &#8220;Now, don&#8217;t get distracted.&#8221;</p><p>The visit seems extra special for singers at St. Nicholas Church in Wilkes-Barre who watched Burns grow up. This is the first time many of them have seen him since he landed a major role in the touring show &#8220;Hello, Dolly!&#8221; which will come to Philadelphia in late February.</p><p>&#8220;He sings so perfectly, it&#8217;s like having a human pitch pipe next to you,&#8217;&#8221; said Tom Scappaticci, a tenor from Laflin.</p><p>&#8220;He&#8217;s a natural and he just loves it,&#8221; said Tina Kellar, an alto from Plains Township, who is Burns&#8217; cousin and also was his first piano teacher when he was about 7 years old.</p><p>&#8220;I don&#8217;t know what it&#8217;s like for him on stage but when he&#8217;s on the altar (as a cantor) and there&#8217;s a last-minute change he just adapts. He&#8217;s never flustered,&#8221; said choir master Edward Loch. &#8220;He has a good solid gyroscope.&#8221;</p><p>&#8220;You could say he&#8217;s been a choir member since before he was born,&#8221; Loch added. &#8220;He was here <em>in </em><em>utero.</em>&#8221;</p><p>Burns&#8217; mom, Sue, who still sings in the choir, smiles modestly when people praise her son. &#8220;We&#8217;re just so proud of him and happy that he&#8217;s doing what he loves to do,&#8221; she said.</p><p>&#8220;He&#8217;s making a living doing something he loves,&#8221; said his dad, Rich, adding he knew his son had made the right career choice when &#8220;He told me, &#8216;Dad, they pay me for doing this, and I would do it for free.&#8217; &#8220;</p><p>Burns, 29, formerly of Plains Township, was part of the first graduating class of Holy Redeemer High School, after the former Bishop Hoban, Bishop O&#8217;Reilly and Seton Catholic high schools merged, and credits &#8220;Tom Hanlon, my drama teacher senior year, who came from O&#8217;Reilly when the schools joined. His theatre class, combined with giving me a role in &#8216;Oklahoma!&#8217; that year gave me the confidence to think I could really, actually pursue this.&#8221;</p><p>After high school Burns enrolled at Catholic University in Washington, D.C., where he found &#8220;a program that would let me do musical theater with another major, so I majored in musical education, too.&#8221;</p><p>&#8220;The arts are not the most practical career,&#8221; he admitted. &#8220;They&#8217;re really not.&#8221;</p><p>Bolstered by the idea he could become a music teacher if performing didn&#8217;t work out, he went after his dreams &#8212; and soon realized he should start dancing.</p><p>&#8220;One of my mentors at Catholic U was a dance teacher and she said to get your foot in the door, you have to be a jack of all trades. My strengths are in acting and singing. I started dancing very late compared to a lot of people, so it was kind of a game of catch up.&#8221;</p><p>He&#8217;s caught up admirably, as &#8220;Hello, Dolly&#8221; reviewers attest, with the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette praising the way &#8220;Sean Burns&#8217; Barnaby dances up a storm&#8221; and The Washington Post describing him as one of four performers in &#8220;a fine cadre of singing and dancing farceurs.&#8221;</p><p>Along the way toward this plum role, Burns spent several years paying his dues in the Big Apple &#8212; attending &#8220;cattle-call&#8221; auditions and waiting tables.</p><p>&#8220;That was my life for years,&#8221; he said. &#8220;Waking up before 6 in the morning, getting downtown and getting my name on a list before the building was even open &#8230;&#8221;</p><p>But paying his dues led to some truly enjoyable gigs.</p><p>&#8220;I went from college, wondering if that first job would ever come, to working on a cruise ship where our days off were on a Caribbean island. My mom was very jealous.&#8221;</p><p>&#8220;He was checking into St. Thomas,&#8221; confirmed Sue Burns, a retired math teacher. &#8220;And I was standing outside with my students in a freezing drizzle during a fire drill. I thought, what is wrong with this picture.&#8221;</p><p>For Sean, nothing was wrong with the picture. Yes, there would be more rounds of auditions and wondering when the next job would appear, but there would also be the chance to sing the Joe Peschi role in &#8220;Jersey Boys,&#8221; to play the title role in &#8220;Peter Pan&#8221; and now to be part of a show he invites everyone to come and see in Philadelphia, where it will play Feb. 19 through March 1 at the Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts.</p><p>The musical uses costumes and sets designed by Wilkes-Barre native and King&#8217;s College graduate Santo Loquasto, Burns said, and it&#8217;s a fun, family-friendly show.</p><p>&#8220;It&#8217;s a lovely old love story,&#8221; he said. &#8220;And it&#8217;s so nice to come and forget about your troubles for a minute.&#8221;</p><p>Several local friends and relatives have already seen the show, in Washington, D.C., and said it was well worth the trip.</p><p>&#8220;He was wonderful,&#8221; said Linda Scappaticci of Laflin. &#8220;We&#8217;d go to Texas to see him.&#8221;</p><style>
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<div class="neCaption">Chelsea Cree Groen, Plains Township native Sean Burns, Analisa Leaming and Daniel Beeman appear in the touring show of &#8216;Hello, Dolly!&#8217; with Burns portraying feed store employee Barnaby Tucker. </div></div><div class="metaInfo"><photo0>https://www.timesleader.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/web1_sean.and_.friends-1.jpg</photo0><caption0>Chelsea Cree Groen, Plains Township native Sean Burns, Analisa Leaming and Daniel Beeman appear in the touring show of &#8216;Hello, Dolly!&#8217; with Burns portraying feed store employee Barnaby Tucker. </caption0><photoCredit0>Submitted photo </photoCredit0></div><div class="neFile"><img class="neImage" src="https://www.timesleader.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/web1_dolly.colorful-1.jpg">
<div class="neCaption">&#8216;It&#8217;s a lovely old love story,&#8217; Plains Township native Sean Burns said of the touring &#8216;Hello, Dolly&#8217; production, which will come to Philadelphia in late February. Dolly and the waiters sing and dance in an iconic scene from the musical &#8216;Hello, Dolly!&#8217; </div></div><div class="metaInfo"><photo1>https://www.timesleader.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/web1_dolly.colorful-1.jpg</photo1><caption1>&#8216;It&#8217;s a lovely old love story,&#8217; Plains Township native Sean Burns said of the touring &#8216;Hello, Dolly&#8217; production, which will come to Philadelphia in late February. Dolly and the waiters sing and dance in an iconic scene from the musical &#8216;Hello, Dolly!&#8217; </caption1><photoCredit1>Submitted photo </photoCredit1></div></div>
<div class="metaInfo"><subheadMeta>Plains Township native touring with musical &#8216;Hello, Dolly!&#8217;</subheadMeta></div><div class="metaInfo"><bylineMeta><p>By Mary Therese Biebel</p><p>mbiebel@www.timesleader.com</p></bylineMeta></div>