Growing up in Washington state, Santino Fontana (B.F.A. ’04) assumed his higher education path would center around music and his love for vocal performance. That dream felt closer to reality when, at age 17, he was selected as one of 20 students from across the country to participate in the 2000 cohort of YoungArts, a national competition that identifies exceptionally gifted artists in several disciplines.

YoungArts flew Fontana to Miami for a week that included theater workshops led by three master panelists, one of whom was an acting teacher named Kenneth Washington. The two struck up a connection, and when Washington asked Fontana about his post-high school plans, Fontana responded that he wanted to go to music school. 

“I think that would be a mistake,” Washington replied and walked away.

Shocked and a bit angry, Fontana followed him and asked why Washington had responded in such a way.

“You’re an actor,” Washington replied. “You should be studying acting or getting a liberal arts degree. Or both.”

That response turned out to be the start of a life-changing relationship for Fontana, who has gone on to enjoy a wildly successful performing career, with roles that include the Tony-award-winning starring role in the Broadway run of Tootsie, the voice of Prince Hans in Frozen, numerous film and TV roles, and vocal performances with symphonies and orchestras across the country.

After YoungArts, Fontana stayed in touch with Washington, who helped him get auditions to acting schools. As Fontana remembers it, at some point during the audition and application process, Washington casually mentioned that he was starting an acting program at the Guthrie Theater in association with the University of Minnesota. Washington didn’t push this option on him, but Fontana had grown to trust him. So, he applied and was accepted. A callback weekend in Minneapolis solidified his decision to join the inaugural class of the University’s BFA Actor Training Program.

Fontana says that the training he received at the U of M was foundational to his approach to storytelling. “We had a whole class freshman year around fairy tales ... [where] we improvised our own versions of them with our class.” Fontana says that to prepare for roles, “We always asked ourselves ‘Who am I? What do I want? What is the wound? What is the thing that I’m lacking? What is the thing I’m trying to fix or help or make better? And what are the obstacles in my way?’” Those questions are still part of his role preparation today, “whether that’s a big bad wolf or the weather or your own mortality—it’s all story.”

Fontana says that studying liberal arts—a requirement of the program—also helped shape his career, citing a vocal disorders course he took for a science credit. “I’ve scoped people, which for people who don’t know, means you basically stick a camera down someone’s throat and you’re able to see their vocal cords and learn the different pathologies and how they’re formed and how they happen and how to avoid them. That’s very helpful.”

While his mentor Washington died in 2014, Fontana has maintained his ties to the U of M, even giving the College of Liberal Arts commencement address in 2015.

UMN senior lecturer Lucinda Holshue, who worked with Fontana on voice training when he was a student, credits his warmth and interest in others as key to his ability to inhabit people’s narratives. “He’s generous to the actors that he’s working with and to the faculty who are training him,” she says. “He’s always chatting up people and learning their stories, which I think is a mark of a really good actor.”

Holshue says that generosity of spirit was on full display when Fontana was honored by the Guthrie Theater, where he starred as Hamlet during the 2006 season. “He met with some of the BFA seniors afterwards, and he really was so generous to them,” she says. “He’s really interested in passing the work on."

That reciprocity seems to be key to Fontana’s world-view. “What I chose to pursue in my life is all around the idea of sharing a story with a group of people, a group of strangers, and being united by that shared experience and that shared story,” he says.

When asked if he has a favorite memory of his work's impact, Fontana describes meeting a young man who had experienced numerous challenges, including relearning how to walk with leg braces. That man told Fontana he sang songs from Frozen while doing physical therapy.

“Meeting him was just such a huge reminder of how you don’t know what people are going through, and you don’t know which project or which thing you did is going to end up touching them,” Fontana says. “And his reaction to getting to talk to me and how that is associated with him relearning how to walk and being able to conquer it, I mean, that’s insane.”

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