Life Is Like a Musical

by Tim Federle

  9 DON’T CROSS YOUR ARMS WHEN THE DIRECTOR IS TALKING

  I never realized just how much you say when you say nothing at all until I stood in front of a group of fifty auditioning dancers, and saw what it looks like when they’re looking at you. It can be overwhelming to be in charge. You are constantly scouting for signs that people are on your side.

  When I was a dancer, I was so stressed about making a good impression that I’d spend entire auditions checking out the competition, nervously fidgeting, and only smiling when it was my turn to shine. Then when I became the person who helped run the room, I realized just how many of my physical tics had probably gotten in my way as a former dancer. I wish I’d known then what I know now about how to signal to your leader that you’ve got her back.

  First off, the key to approximately 90 percent of adulthood is appearing more interested in something than you actually are. Seriously. So, hack number one: When you are attempting to appear at worst neutral or at best enthusiastic—especially when you don’t feel particularly jazzed about something—simply uncross your arms. That’s it.

  Anytime you want to convey the message “I like what you’re saying,” put your arms by your side or your hands on your hips. This may feel unnatural, but it’s an instant physical makeover that says, “I’m cool with you!” (That’s all most people want, by the way—to know that people around them are cool with them.)

  From an evolutionary standpoint, when we crisscross our arms, we give off the impression that we are shielding and thus protecting ourselves—because we are literally the only mammals who walk upright, and thus don’t naturally protect our vital organs. We cross our arms when we are unsure, nervous, or sussing out a situation. Here’s something I already know about you: When you are interviewing for a new gig, getting feedback from a superior, or simply attempting to have a “big talk” about an especially prickly topic, you probably cross your arms. Honestly, it is your body’s default when you’re having a complex conversation. Once you start looking for this in others, you’ll realize how many people walk around with protective armor up, even when they don’t want to be so closed off.

  I saw this firsthand when thirty kids at a time would come in to Billy Elliot auditions. Invariably, my eye was always drawn to the types of potential hires who seemed like they wanted to actually, ya know, be there. And the surest sign that somebody wants to occupy the same space as you is this: He’s facing you (and not turned half-away) and focusing on you (and not looking at himself in the mirror). That’s it.

  That leads to my second hack at seeming interested: Any time you subtly want to get someone’s attention, just make eye contact. And don’t look away. As in, don’t look at your phone and certainly don’t look at all the interesting stuff happening behind her. Just look at her. Particularly if it’s someone in a position of leadership, attempting to deliver a message to you—or, hardest of all, to a whole bunch of folks at once. Nothing tells the superior that you respect what she’s saying like unbroken eye contact. The good news is, you don’t even have to like what she’s saying. You just have to keep looking at her while she’s saying it. That alone will set you apart.

  The Broadway director and choreographer Casey Nicholaw, with whom I worked on Tuck Everlasting and Spamalot, has noted how helpful it is to him when he’s giving notes, following a performance, and he catches a cast member nodding. Not nodding off. Just nodding. That’s all it takes to stand out among forty colleagues. It’s that silent recognition that you’ve incorporated the information you’ve just learned, and that you agree with (or accept) what he’s saying. Little is as exhausting as attempting to rally a group to get on your side, only to receive a bunch of blank stares in return. Be a nodder, not a yawner.

  Check yourself in everyday situations—even low-stakes interactions. Are you crossing your arms and breaking eye contact? You may be sending a signal you don’t even intend—and in the theater, we’re all about intentions. If you don’t know what your character is trying to say, how will you know the best way to convey it?

  10 TAKE COMFORT THAT EVERYONE IS ALWAYS STARTING OVER

  When I was eighteen years old, I graduated high school, barely, with a 2.2 GPA. I was a slacker, a daydreamer, and a smart-ass, the kind of kid who was on a first-name basis with the principal. Having not gotten into my top college picks (wonder why?), I informed my parents that I wanted to flee to New York City to audition for a national tour of Fiddler on the Roof, in lieu of going to the only college I’d gotten into. (This was mere days after missing my high school graduation in order to dance in a regional production of Oklahoma! Though I earned Ds and Cs in high school, I was a 4.0 student in the audition room.)

  To my parents’ credit, they gave me their blessing to chase my dumb dream—though perhaps they understood that sending me off to get an expensive liberal arts education would be akin to tossing money at a bonfire. Anyway, my mother knew theater lore well enough that, on the day I left for my Fiddler audition, she actually pulled me aside in the driveway and whispered, “Pull a Peggy Sawyer.” Meaning: Go be like that famous fictional chorus girl from 42nd Street, who beat the odds and got hired for the very first thing she auditioned for. And somehow I did. (Thanks, Ma!)

  Now, before you throw me a parade: This Fiddler on the Roof could barely afford the fiddler, and I’m not even sure we traveled with a roof. It was a nonunion tour, paying about a buck-fifty a week, with no benefits, no health insurance, and God knows no 401K. But I got hired for it. And I felt such accomplishment, I practically levitated when I received the call. Hell, I remember saying to my best friend: “I will never for a day or even a moment doubt myself again.”

  Ah, youth. Rather: Ha, youth.

  This sense of deep, lifetime achievement strikes me as hilarious now. Four months after I’d opened in Fiddler on the Roof, I was out of a job, back on the breadline, an eighteen-year-old who wasn’t enrolled in college and didn’t have a nickel in the bank. Welcome to the school of hard knocks, kid. So much for never doubting myself again.

  From surprise layoffs to surprise divorces, many of us feel as if we’re starting at square one more often than we’d like. It’s okay to take solace in this. Shows shutter. People leave. Life is about beginning again, for everyone. Just look around. It’s your cousin in Ohio whose manufacturing plant shuts its doors. It’s your mom, joining Tinder at age sixty-six. And it’s you, too—if you stop to think about the last time you had to prove yourself. It may have just occurred this morning, if you’re anything like me.

  One of the reasons I value living in Manhattan is that you get to ride the subway with the stars. There’s something incredibly equalizing about making a go of it on the East Coast, where everybody has to deal with equally crappy weather. You glance up and see that your favorite lead from last year’s crime procedural on TV is sitting three feet from you on the train, bundled up with a Starbucks and memorizing lines of dialogue on a loose page of script, on his way to yet another tryout. Starting over. A well-known Tony winner once told me that on the night he won the big award, he had no money at all in savings. As in, zero. As in, his awards-night tux was a rental. Sometimes the most solidly “successful” people are the ones with the least amount of practical security. Welcome to the big leagues—can you spare a dime?

  Consider this stark truth as you continue venturing through the world. Think about the grocery store cashier who seems to hate her job, and what she may be recovering from and dealing with at home. Reflect on the otherwise unlikable person you go on a first (and last) date with, who hauls along some major baggage—which might only be a slightly different shade than the baggage you carry around, yourself. Recognize that we’re all in this together, that nothing on Earth is permanent (except for The Lion King), and that, if you’re lucky, you get to occasionally hold tight to an illusion of a certain kind of sure thing.

  What I’ve grown surest of is that nothing is sure—and that building up resilience is a pretty good way to prepare for any tomorrow. It i
s after all, only a day away.

  11 REALIZE WE’RE EACH THE LEAD OF OUR OWN LIFE

  Surprise: You are the supporting player, and maybe even a background extra, in the life story of every person you come across. You may even, on occasion, be cast squarely as their villain. (Or love interest. Or comic relief!) Point is, we each think of ourselves as the star of our own show. Consider yourself enlightened and warned.

  When I appeared in the Broadway production of Gypsy, I played a very small part toward the end of the musical. My primary stage time was spent in Act One, as a farm boy dancer who also understudied the featured role of Tulsa. As with many classic musicals, there was an opportunity for additional one-line roles to be played by the chorus—and thus I found myself appearing nightly, in Act Two, as Bougeron-Cochon—a character whose name I could barely pronounce.

  Bougeron appears in the penultimate scene of the nearly three-hour-long classic show, right before Mama Rose (played by Bernadette Peters) storms the stage to belt out her lifelong regrets in a legendary number called “Rose’s Turn.” In the setup scene, Rose is having a blowout fight with her daughter, Gypsy Rose Lee—a real-life stripper from the Vaudeville era. Rose has spent Gypsy’s entire childhood forcing her into showbiz, and yet now that Gypsy is an international success, Rose fails to see that her own daughter is famous enough to no longer need her. Heavy stuff. Perfect for the stage. It’s a chewy scene for two fabulous actresses—and in order to illustrate just how famous Gypsy has become, a photographer (that’s Bougeron-Cochon!) flits in and out of her dressing room.

  In fact, here’s the totality of my responsibilities during this scene: I’d enter, kiss the white-gloved hand of the great actress Tammy Blanchard, and then I’d kneel, snap a fake photo, and exit. That’s it, baby.

  If you weren’t my mother or my boyfriend, you’d barely even know I was in this scene. A well-trained Labrador retriever could have played the role. And yet, one day early in the run, I was backstage changing into my photographer’s getup for this scene, when—gasp!—my zipper got caught. And when it seemed as if I was going to miss my entrance, I blurted out, “I can’t be late for the photographer’s scene!” And I wasn’t kidding.

  Only an actor would take a twelve-second role in the middle of a sequence starring two warring women and think of it as the “photographer’s scene.” Make that: only the actor playing the photographer, anyway.

  I caught myself. I howled with laughter, as did my dresser. And then he got my zipper unstuck, and I raced to make my entrance… and not a single soul noticed one way or the other, except for me. I may have felt like the lead of that scene, sure, but try telling the playwright or the actors. Or, heck, the audience.

  The next time you find yourself on the receiving end of a fellow driver honking at you in traffic, or a frustrated person tapping his foot behind you in the post office line, remember: These people are going around thinking of themselves as the lead. We all are. Not the sweetest truth in the world, but a real one; other people’s actions become far less mysterious when you realize how self-motivated the majority of the world is. Is everyone a little self-centered, at least some of the time? Sure. It’s called survival. We’re all just trying to get through our day from the only point of view we’ve got: our own.

  Accept this, and try not to take daily indignities quite so personally. Everyone is generally doing the best they can—even if it means they’re occasionally stealing your spotlight.

  12 FAKE IT

  If you’ve ever delivered a speech at a high-stakes, heavily attended event, you know how it feels to worry that everyone can see your hands shake. But, sometimes, the fastest way to become a commanding person is to act like a commanding person—and, yes, there’s a reason I chose the word “act.” What theater people know is that faking it till you make it works both offstage and on.

  When I was a teenager, I was constantly assessing other people who seemed like they had it more together than I did. I was measuring up my insides by the appearance of their outsides. In particular, I had this radiant dance teacher in Pittsburgh, named Mia. Mia had a smile that stretched from, like, Harrisburg to Cincinnati. She was blonde, she was bubbly, and I aspired to be Mia in more ways than one. Pittsburgh is a small theater community, with tons of performance opportunities for pros and amateurs alike, which means I once had the rare chance to audition for the same production of Seven Brides for Seven Brothers as my own dance teacher. (That’s the arts, for you; you go from student to peer in one audition.) As I stood there in the audition room, my knees like Jell-O and my throat like toast, I watched Mia coolly, calmly, confidently applaud for other dancers from the sidelines. Even though she was auditioning for the show herself, she was rooting for others, too. (She got the job; I didn’t.)

  Later, I realized that if I could channel her brand of energy—not just Mia’s positivity, but the way she stood up tall and proud and in support of the competition, even when it wasn’t her “turn” to audition—I might be able to graduate from kid to adult. So I started pretending I was Mia when I’d try out for stuff. That doesn’t mean I wore a leotard, or started singing girls’ songs, or went out and bought a pair of heels. (I already owned a pair.) It did mean that, during an awkward period of my life, when I was so unsure of myself for so many reasons, I felt better when I mimicked somebody I admired. It started in audition rooms—standing rather than sitting on the sidelines—and migrated to the rest of my body, and life. Soon, everywhere I went I put a little Mia into my step. And I started getting jobs, and being treated like a grown-up, too, on the cusp of eighteen. I faked it till I was it.

  Your turn. Picture the person in your own life who most epitomizes cool confidence. Start “doing” him. Start planting your feet, rather than swaying on them—just as your hero probably does. Have the audacity to belong in the room. And if you need more help than that, try some old-fashioned inspiration, by way of show tunes; I have a non-showbiz friend who, before any important meeting or event, belts along to the Wicked anthem “Defying Gravity” until her hair tingles. She can’t sing, not really. She’s never going to play Elphaba, the misunderstood witch with a thousand-octave range. But in the comfort of her soundproof basement, my friend tricks her own body into feeling like she’s flying high. And then she does.

  It’s not about being the most self-assured person who ever walked into a room. It’s about acting like one. So find a theme song, and pinpoint a confident character in your own life. Be like her. In theory, it’d be nice if all this self-assurance could come from within. But life is messy.

  Nobody can see your hands shaking. But they can always see if you’re smiling.

  13 FIND YOUR “I WANT” SONG

  Nearly every musical has an “I want” song—that iconic moment when the audience falls in love with the protagonist, and understands what she needs in order to feel complete and accomplished and whole. It happens about fifteen minutes into the show, generally after we’ve met all the merry singing villagers and perhaps a comic sidekick or two. The lights dim, the stage empties, and our leading lady is left alone to sit down on a stump outside her cottage and sing about what’s missing in her life.

  In The Little Mermaid, it’s “Part of Your World,” when Ariel longs to be somewhere that’s better than under the sea. In My Fair Lady it’s “Wouldn’t It Be Loverly,” in which Eliza Doolittle dreams of a place, a room, an anywhere that’s more desirable than her current lot in life. In Hamilton, it’s “My Shot,” wherein a young Alexander Hamilton is not going to give up his chance to make a mark—and make it he does. So what’s your “I want” song?

  Because, I hate to break it to y’all, but a whole lot of you are singing somebody else’s song.

  You’re singing your parents’ “I want” song—either the unfulfilled dream of their own youth or a vision for you that, oops, you’ve never had much say in. Or you’re singing your partner’s (or, hopefully, your ex’s) “I want” song for you—the one that casts you squarely as their backup act.
Maybe the saddest “I want” song of all is the one being endlessly reprised by you—the outdated clunker of a tune from a time in your life when you thought you wanted one thing, and forgot, along the way, that you’re allowed to revise the melody.

  Your “I want” song—put another way, your personal mission statement—is a chance to name and establish all the ways you’d like to change your life in order to live a more targeted, goal-oriented, fulfilling version of your own destiny.

  (Hold for applause.)

  Sound heavy? Remember, a lot of “I want” songs are pretty damn upbeat, like “Purpose,” from Avenue Q, in which a puppet finds a lucky penny that launches him on a jaunty journey. Your song doesn’t have to be stuffy or self-serious. It doesn’t even have to be a song. All your “want” needs to be is focused enough to help you steer your life. The catch is that your song is bound to change and mature. In fact, it almost certainly should.

  When I was nine years old, my parents took me to see a performance of the national tour of Cats. As ridiculous as the show is—Adults! Dressed as cats! Without irony!—when I learned that there was a job that paid you to wear makeup and fur, and sing at the top of your lungs, I had found my “I want” song—just like that. I hadn’t even hit double digits yet, but I recognized that my earlier years, spent twirling around in my backyard and earning side-eyed stares from the neighborhood kids, weren’t frivolous at all. They were practice.

  My “I want” song became: “I want to get to Broadway someday.” And get there I did—though not in Cats, which, as proof of God’s sense of humor, closed the week I moved to New York City. Meow.