Interview Transcript

Beginning:

I had been doing theater since I was three years old, I got on stage for the first time in 1994, I sang it with a group of kids for the opening act, for maria from sesame street on tour. she was like every town she came to they would like hire kids from that town to be the opening act and i got really into community theater when i was 9 or 10 and then I just never really looked back[00:00:50.26]

In 2011 i was 19 or 20 and I moved to New York like 6 months later. [00:01:07.09]

I did a production of 42nd st in Stoneham Massachusetts, I was in the ensemble in the back corner tap dancing my little heart away it was fun it was a close to like growing up i had been like the darling in the community theater, iI was always like the lead it was a cool experience to like work in an ensemble which is really one of my favorite things to be a part of a show from that aspect, and to become the star of the show in your own head[00:01:52.04]

Middle:

I booked the national tour of flashdance the musical in september of 2015. I played Gloria who is not in the movie but in the play she is a the main characters best friend and she really wants to be a pop star she  wants to be a performer. no one will let her perform at the club they all works at because they think she sucks. and then her bf runs away to move to new york. and her best friend is in love with someone[00:02:49.05]

so they all work at like this family friendly nice strip club and she goes down the street to like this seedy strip club where they  do drugs and they are naughty and it's like so stupid and so like i played this character who like takes a wrong turn.... its silly so yea i played that[00:03:14.09]

i had been auditioning for 4 years and i hadn't booked a job and then in the same week i booked two gigs i shaved my head and then the next two auditions i went to i booked so then i did a production of rent on staten island and then days after i booked that job i got flash dance, and then when i was in performances for rent i was also in rehearsals for flashdance. and then the day rent closed we went on the rode for flashdance. [00:03:46.14]

it was a dream come true especially when i booked it, because i was in like a weird place in life where i was thinking about letting go of theater. the family i had been nanying for for many years, they werent gonna need me anymore so i thinking of getting an office job. and like let go og the dream so when it happened it happened all at the right time and it all fell into place and it was a dream come true like the amount of people who get to tour is really very small so it felt really special.[00:04:33.17]

though dreams often turn out to be not what we thought it would be. so going into it felt really incredible the experience itself was like nothing i could have fathomed. [00:04:53.01]

highest points is weird it's literally a high every night that you're on stage and just the fact that every night, because it really was every night  in a new city that you're in fron to f thousands of people bringing them some kind of joy, silliness, entertainment, and there's nothing in the world i love to do more than to sing. so to get to d that every night was amazing[00:05:33.03]

w ewent to new zealand we took the tour to new zealand for two weeks and when wwe got there we were on a bus from the airport and theres was this giant building sized poster of me on the building and like no one told me that was going to happen so in a vain sense that was pretty awesome[00:05:52.09]

some f my best memories of tour is like it being in like the hotel late at night with my crew just hanging out in hotel bathrooms late at night with my people like those are the things i think i'll remember forever [00:06:12.11]

lowes, touring is really really hard, it's like physically exhausting and mentally exhausting, in a way you cannot prepare for not just because you're performing every night but because you're spending most of your time on a bus like we would spend 8 hours a day on the bus and that in istlefl is physically and mentally exhausting and also like you're on a bus with a bunch of strangers essentially and like there were like a lot of personality conflicts. [00:06:59.13]

and it's hard to be away from home for so long. like the monotony and the drudgery of everyday waking up at 6 getting on the bus being on the bus all day getting off the bus doing the show [00:07:04.10]

it was a lot and m a person that like i need stability and the feeling of groundedness and you kind of lose that when you're on the road[00:07:18.05]

honestly i don't regret a single thing, like if you asked me like two years ago id be like why did i do this in retrospect there's really nothing i regret i maybe drank too much tequila, i could've been a little better to my body and made some healthier choices i got into one embarrassing fight in a bar i guess i slightly regret that moment but no i don't regret doing it i don't regret really any choice i made while i was on tour. it was a good time [00:07:56.24]

it is very hard to adjust to real life the real world like coming back to your home and your family after tour. our tour we were on the road for about nine months in total but we had a lot of mini breaks we'd be out for like 6 weeks and we would come home for a week, when i initially saw that schedule i was relieved by that i'll see my partner and i'll get to see my home and my people in the city and recoup a little bit but it kind of made it harder it was always this back and forth when we finally really finished the four months after that were the hardest months of my whole life.[00:09:08.19]

being in the city and being around a lot of people after spending months and months either like on the bus which is like you have your own private space and like you spend most of the day just kind of like in your little cubby isolated unless you want to engage with other people, but like it was very solitary and we spent a lot of time in hotels off of highways in the middle of america we didn't see a lot of people or spend a lot of time around a lot of people so just readjusting to life in the city with like so much commotion and so many people i wouldn't go out of the house for months without sunglasses and headphones on regardless of what time of day it was. it was like sensory overload[00:10:10.02]

our tour we had a lot of problems interpersonal problems on our tour, tech problems on our tour which made things like really stressful and it felt like this experience that was kind of dramatic and only like the people that were there could really understand and even though i was coming home to my family and my partner like all of my loved one and these people that i missed so much i felt like they didn't understand what had just happened with me[00:10:42.10]

when you're getting to do what you love every single day for months and months and months even when its not perfect to then come back and be like well it's over now you never given up the thing about show business so every time something ends it's like this weird grieving process. [00:11:09.21]

initially coming off of it i said i would never do this, this is a once in a lifetime experience which to me was weird because i spent like 20 years like this is the thing i want more than the whole world, like i didn't know if i wanted to do it again, like maybe theater isn't for me. which is how i ended up back in school[00:11:56.14]

i think realistically i wouldn't do a one nighter where you are in a different city every night but if i booked a real equity gig that has a sit downs at major cities that would be cool, and i think the whole experience really taught me how to be true to myself as a performer and the show was good for me it was well suited to me, but you know i wouldn't do a tour that wasn't a show i was really passionate about or a role that i was really passionate about and i would ask for more money, but maybe one day[00:12:42.00]

End:

it feels like a goodbye a lot of the time but i don't think that's actually what it is, actually i was like when i came home i kind of like hit the ground running really hard on theater thinking you know i have this tour credit i'll have a little more cred and i was taking a lot of more classes and i was trying to get an agent going to a lot of auditions and i was sitting in a class one night just like hating my life, just cuz like i love to sing but like i don't like the political games of theater and all of the people pleasing and dick sucking, not literally but like the metaphorical dick sucking that goes on to get jobs[00:13:43.20]

and also its like such a game of chance and i don't like that i like to be in charge of my future which was what i was thinking when i was sitting in the class and i was very unhappy with myself and my surroundings and situation and like in that moment and i was like oh i'm going to go back to school that night i was searching online and like a friend of mine was like in the msw at hunter and he was talking about hunter and i looked at the website and found the media studies program and was like this is exactly what i want to do[00:14:21.28]

one of the things i really realized about myself when i was on tour was how much i want to create my own work and be my own boss and i really struggled with the idea- when you work in theater it's a lot of waiting around to be told you're what somebody else wants. and a lot of trying to fit into this really unachievable mold of what producer directos want , and i was just kind of over that, so i decided i wanted to come back to school to like make shit, make my own stuff[00:15:04.13]

but i cannot fathom life without performing like this semester has been really hard for me i've felt a deep grieving process just for the lack of performing in my life, and it's hard to like look at the big picture and it's hard to say what i'm doing right now is only going to last for a couple of years and then ill be able to do a lot of things with it.[00:15:33.12]

theater is always going to be there for me and i'm not going to grow into my real type for another 1 5 years so it's probably best if i like do some other things with my life and find little ways to sing when i can, but yea ill be back. [00:15:49.13]