Mo Rocca Will Do Stint in Spelling Bee; Other New Cast Members Set

Mo Rocca, the special correspondent to The Tonight Show and an alumnus of The Daily Show, will appear as vice principal Douglas Panch in the Broadway musical The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee for a limited engagement beginning April 17.

That same day, the show will welcome performers from the San Francisco/Boston company: Aaron J. Albano as Chip Tolentino, Stanley Bahorek as Leaf Coneybear, Jenni Barber as Olive Ostrovsky, Sara Inbar as Logainne Schwartzandgrubiennaire, and Greta Lee as Marcy Park. Jared Gertner, the sixth speller from the San Francisco/Boston company, joined the Broadway cast on January 30.

Also new to the Broadway Bee will be Jennifer Simard (Forbidden Broadway, The Thing About Men) as Rona Lisa Perretti, a role she performed on the national tour; and James Monroe Iglehart, from the San Francisco/Boston company, as comfort counselor Mitch Mahoney.

Rocca is a humorist and author, known for his tongue-in-cheek field reports and commentary. In addition to The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, CBS Sunday Morning with Charles Osgood, and The Daily Show, he has offered television commentary on everything from the Super Bowl to
Senator Barack Obama’s name. A frequent contributor to MSNBC’s Countdown With Keith Olbermann, he also serves as a judge on Iron Chef America.

He is a regular panelist on NPR’s Wait…Don’t Tell Me!, and he is the author of All the Presidents Pets. Rocca’s stage credits include the 2005 San Francisco Symphony productions of Gershwin’s Of Thee I Sing and Let ’em Eat Cake, which he starred in and co-adapted; and a Southeast Asian tour of Grease, in which he played Doody. He holds a B.A. from Harvard University, where he served as president of the Hasty Pudding Theatricals.