Failing Up

by Leslie Odom, Jr.

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  Table of Contents

  About the Author

  Copyright Page

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  FOR MY TEACHERS

  PROLOGUE

  TAKE ME TO THE WORLD

  Take me to the world that’s real

  Show me how it’s done.

  —STEPHEN SONDHEIM

  from the teleplay Evening Primrose

  Late one night in early 2016, some months before my final performance as Aaron Burr in Hamilton: An American Musical, I found myself alone in a darkened Richard Rodgers Theatre. I paused for a moment to take it all in.

  For the next week, I would be on a beach in Mexico with my wife, Nicolette. An overdue and much-needed vacation.

  After the curtain call, I’d spent a while straightening up my dressing room. I packed a large box with some personal effects. I tried to leave things tidy for the new guy(s). Burr would belong to the understudies in the building for the next week. There were three. And they were ecstatic. Who could blame them? It was the role of a lifetime, and for the following seven days, it was all theirs.

  My tiny dressing room had slowly accumulated piles of workout clothes, extra pairs of shoes, books, snacks, drawings, letters, and small gifts from fans. It was my home away from home. I did my best to thin it out in there. The new Burrs deserved a clean slate.

  Angelo, the late-night doorman at the Rodgers, had just bounced.

  “Les, stay as long as you want,” he told me. “When you leave, make sure you don’t forget anything. The door will lock behind you.”

  The Cancun flight was early in the a.m., but before I took off, I made a sharp right outside my dressing room, and followed the familiar path to the stage entrance.

  I’d never been completely alone in the theater before.

  Looking out at the empty seats, I took a mental snapshot—doing my best not to forget anything.

  For two years Hamilton had been such an enormous part of my life. The changes in the wake of the Broadway opening had been so seismic that sometimes there were nights like this one when I would spend a few moments trying to piece together … understand … how?

  Hamilton was the dream that almost didn’t happen. Only five years prior to encountering Lin-Manuel Miranda’s masterpiece, I had made the decision to move on from the business of being an actor.

  * * *

  HAMILTON was the DREAM that ALMOST DIDN’T HAPPEN.

  * * *

  I found myself at one of life’s most common rites of passage, a graduation, and I knew from past experience that there would be things I’d have to leave behind. Some things don’t travel well from one time in your life to the next. Like broken-down rides and ratty furniture—bad habits, toxic relationships, unhealthy thought patterns—there should be shedding around graduation day. The old stuff will only weigh you down.

  On the threshold of a milestone birthday, I questioned whether I needed to lighten up.

  Graduating into my thirties felt significant. The instability and unpredictability of the artist’s path was starting to feel like a child’s way to live. Things may have been intensified by another rite of passage that I knew little about at the time. There’s a cosmic correlation that happens around the age of twenty-nine known to astrologers as the Saturn Return.

  The slow-moving planet Saturn takes twenty-nine and a half years to complete its orbit around the sun and return to the exact same spot in the sky as it was on the day you were born.

  The Saturn Return is notoriously disruptive—known for upheaval and thrusting things taken for granted into question. Whether or not you believe in those influences (and I take it all with a few grains of salt) it makes sense that whenever you hit that natural cusp between your extended younger years and adulthood, you can expect uncertainty and apprehension with the onrush of big change.

  I was taking stock of where I was at twenty-nine and seriously pondering the real possibility that if I didn’t make some different choices, who’s to say I wouldn’t be in the exact same spot at thirty-nine? My chosen path offered so few assurances. Who’s to say I wouldn’t be in the exact same spot at FORTY-nine? Life on fast-forward had me circling the drain. Some paradigm-shifting advice from a mentor and practical application brought me from one of the saddest times in my life to a Broadway stage at (what felt like) the center of the theatrical universe for a time and … wait—what time is it?

  Cancun. (!!!)

  I stepped out of the Richard Rodgers Theatre and into the frigid New York City night air. The stage door dumps you into the alley behind the theater.

  The big metal door slammed and locked behind me as my buddy Angelo promised.

  A preview.

  There was another graduation looming.

  Only six months left of Hamilton on Broadway for me. There had been so much hard work to get here, and it was already halfway over.

  You can’t stay any one place forever. Box of personal effects in hand, I kept walking.

  My apartment was a short fifteen-minute walk from work. It was along the trek that night that the first principles for the conversation at the heart of this book came to mind.

  In part to keep warm, I got my legs moving as fast as my thoughts were that night.

  I’ve had a profound appreciation for the role of the mentor since elementary school. My fifth-grade social studies teacher was the first. As a kid with some behavioral issues, my story would’ve unfolded in a drastically different way without people who cared. I’ve included some of the greatest lessons I’ve learned at their instruction in the pages of this book.

  Among the mentors was—and is—a Los Angeles acting/life/empowerment coach, expert Boggle champ, and Renaissance man named Stuart K Robinson, a brilliant guy whose practical wisdom has changed many lives. And I swear I’d say the same thing even if he hadn’t let me marry his daughter.

  In the throes of my Saturn Return crisis, I asked Stu if he had any time to talk. He’d helped people through career transitions before.

  We met for food, and after listening thoughtfully to all the reasons why I had decided to leave the business (sick of this, tired of that, regular depression, tokenism, student loans, no money, add complaint here), Stuart paused for a moment to make sure I was prepared to hear him.

  I sat up in my seat. Ready to listen.

  He began, “Les, of course you can quit. That’s fine. And we can talk about what you might do next and how to go about it. I can support you in that. But I’d love to see you try before you quit.”

  * * *

  “BUT I’D LOVE to SEE YOU TRY BEFORE YOU QUIT.”

  * * *

  Try? What did he mean, try?

  As a working actor for over a decade, I had the wounds, calluses, and IMDb credits to show for it. When an opportunity presented itself you’d be hard-pressed to find many people who tried harder. Stuart knew this and still he was looking at me and telling me he wanted me to try?

  He said, “You know how to succeed when the phone is ringing. But what about when the phone’s not ringing?”

  Stu went on, “What did yo
u do for yourself today? Did you call anyone? In what ways did you take charge of your creative life today? Did you send an e-mail to someone who might be working on something you care about? Did you read anything? Did you write anything? Did you take a class? Did you practice? What step forward did you take for yourself today in the absence of the ringing phone?”

  The solution was so simple and it had completely eluded me. Stu was reminding me of that thing we all know deep down: if you are willing to take one meaningful step on your own behalf toward making a dream come true today, the Universe will meet you where you are and help you take two. The Universe will never shortchange you. When you take steps to better yourself it is never in vain.

  Make no mistake, following your dream has a spiritual component as well.

  You will train and prepare to actualize your dreams in countless ways. Try not to neglect spiritual fortification. For some, it’s a vulnerability point they don’t realize until the need becomes dire.

  Stu’s advice led me back to class; it led to a more consistent ratio of bookings when the phone was ringing; it led to a focus on music, live performing, and independent work when the phone was not ringing; it led me in a direct and traceable line all the way to Hamilton and the most creatively fulfilling, educational time of my life. It continues to this day.

  There was failure before. After, too. In drafting these pages, I try to choose personal stories and life lessons to help illustrate my thesis that spectacular failure is the secret ingredient to your ultimate success.

  You will learn and grow from the former at a rate far greater than the latter.

  Almost home now.

  Lin-Manuel Miranda stalked an impulse—an inspiration—for six years. He is, among many things, a master editor as well as a monster with the pen. Lin’s a guy who can tell you about failure. He’ll write you a song about it and that song will make you weep. And once the world was introduced to his passion and craftsmanship, he’s a guy who can tell you all about success, too.

  He picked up Ron Chernow’s biography about a complicated historical figure and wrote an entire musical odyssey that begins with the question: How…?

  He tracks the founding of a nation in the three-hour roller-coaster ride that follows, as he pulls pieces together to discover how a “bastard, orphan, son of a whore” born in squalor, in a “forgotten spot in the Caribbean” grows up to be “a hero and a scholar.”

  I love questions that begin with how. They activate the listener. You become a historian or a detective—piecing together your findings and following your intuition on the way to your response.

  We learn from the pages of history who we are and who we have been. We learn from our greatness and our darkness. We cannot predict the future, but studying where we’ve been helps us better understand where we are.

  We learn how we can do better.

  Predictions are overrated. On the Hamilton stage alone, looking out at the empty seats—no one could’ve predicted the place where we’d find ourselves from the place where we began.

  And while no one can predict exactly where your ingenuity, your perseverance, and your willingness to fail spectacularly will lead you … the smart money is on UP.

  Go get it.

  The game’s afoot. And the game is good.

  CHAPTER 1

  THE MENTOR

  When a man starts out to build a world, he starts first with himself.

  —LANGSTON HUGHES

  The delicate balance of mentoring someone is not creating them in your own image, but giving them the opportunity to create themselves.

  —STEVEN SPIELBERG

  How?

  How do you figure out what it is that you’re really meant to do in this life? How do you find your point of entry? How do you begin?

  A few people I’ve met seem to have been born to their calling, with gifts and dreams that stood out early on. Most of us don’t fall into that category. Most of us have no idea at the start what we’re meant to do or even what we’re capable of. Some of us don’t find our thing so much as it finds us. And sometimes it’s only because of some special person who introduces us to possibilities we might never have imagined for ourselves.

  Like many others, I have an early educator to thank for helping me make that initial connection. Mrs. Frances Turner was my fifth-grade social studies teacher and my very first mentor.

  I was a rowdy, unfocused ten-year-old when I arrived in her classroom, and I can’t say we hit it off right away.

  Back then, I couldn’t think of a subject more dry and joyless than social studies, and I held Mrs. Turner in contempt for having voluntarily chosen it at some point as the subject she would teach. What kind of a person would choose social studies?

  Mrs. Turner never smiled. She was all business and immune to my limited charms.

  What bothered me most, Frances seemed to understand me in a way that was unsettling.

  * * *

  I WAS a HANDFUL.

  * * *

  I was a handful. That had been the case since kinder-garten back in New York, where I spent the first seven years of my life.

  In my kindergarden classroom, we had what was known as the “Sad-Face Box.” It looked very much like the name suggests. It was a box drawn each day in the bottom left corner of the blackboard. At the top of the box, Ms. Lewis drew … well, a “sad face.”

  Looked kinda like the emoji .

  Names of the students who broke rules would go into the box. She kept a running tally of naughty kids and mine was, without fail, the very first name in that stupid box every single day. Half the time it would be so early in the day that she hadn’t even gotten around to drawing the thing yet when I’d give her a reason to reach for her chalk.

  I’d purposely speed through an assignment so she’d be faced with the hassle of finding me something else to do, or I would crack a joke that only my section of the room could hear and get a bunch of toddlers riled up.

  Ms. Lewis would draw that Sad Face and put a box around it in a fit of rage. She’d break the chalk pressing too hard as she spelled out my name. You could feel her wishing it had more letters or that she could add punctuation after it, she’d be so pissed off.

  L-E-S-L-I-E.!.!!!!!.!~!*###??!!!!=+&&@

  Children who were well behaved for the remainder of the day would find their names erased from the box as easily as they had been written.

  In a particularly nice touch from Ms. Lewis, before the end of each day, she would find a way to erase all the names still left inside the Sad-Face Box. If, for a full minute, you could manage to sit with your hands folded, your back straight, and your mouth “zipped,” if you could find some discipline and self-control for the final minute of the day, you’d start the following day with a clean slate. A kindergarten teacher’s lesson in redemption was also baked into the Box.

  Still, I didn’t have the tools yet to understand how to make myself behave like the other kids. I had no clue how to begin to put my energy to better use. It would take five more years and the help of a no-nonsense social studies teacher to help me figure that out.

  * * *

  As I got older, I realized that part of my problem was the fact that I was one of those kids who felt (to himself anyway) like an adult on the inside.

  When I turned thirty, I thought: Yeah, this is the age I’ve felt like since I was eight. Maybe even younger.

  As a kid, I had trouble with rules and unquestioned authority. My mouth got me into a fair amount of trouble. I wanted to know why I was being asked to do a particular thing before I was going to do it.

  “Put your heads down!”

  Hand raised and question posed in a polite but thinly veiled accusatory tone: “Why?”

  “If you finish your quiz before the bell, use the extra time to check your work. And no talking.”

  In a tone laced with suspicion and distrust: “Why?”

  Today I understand that in classrooms filled with more than thirty other students, my teachers did
n’t have the seconds or the engery to take my earnest but ill-timed questions to heart. Back then, I wanted my concerns to be on the record.

  Mom and Dad were fairly strict. If I found myself in some sort of trouble at school, I knew my transgressions would always have to be defensible. There would have to be a gray area that I could highlight. There would have to be Their Side, and My Side. When I pleaded my case at home there needed to be nuance and perspective. Or my goose would be cooked.

  My parents would always hear me out. They would never ever take a teacher’s word or anyone’s word completely over mine.

  That was the law, never to be changed. Until one day in the fall of 1991 when Frances Turner summoned my father for a parent-teacher conference one morning before school.

  Monday through Friday, Leslie Odom, Sr., was wound tight, tight, tight. He had the shortest fuse of anyone I knew. Dad worked in sales. He spent the bulk of our childhood years (my baby sister, Elizabeth, came along when I was six) climbing the ladder in corporate America, and while he rarely let the world know it, the pressure took a toll.

  Mom was Dad’s partner in upward mobility. She worked in the field of recreation and rehabilitation therapy for as long as I can remember. Her pure goodness and capacity for empathy never ceased to amaze me.

  Yevette Marie Nixon filled my world with light. Always slow to anger where I was concerned, she was my first teacher. She taught me to add and subtract, she read to me, and eventually she taught me to read to myself. My little sister takes after Mom, too. Sweet as can be.

  With two educated, working parents, I understood their expectation of me extremely well very early on.

  Dad’s position was straightforward: “The same way I go to work every day and your mother goes to work every day, that’s what we expect from you. School is your job. No excuses.”