Life Is Like a Musical

by Tim Federle

  And loyalty isn’t restricted to especially lucky or talented pairs. Open any Playbill, flip to the ensembles’ bios, and you’ll undoubtedly notice that many of them have danced for one particular choreographer—who has likely, over time, built a stable of reliable dancers he likes to rehire. There’s a reason for that.

  When the room is full of people who are willing to wade into murky, uncharted waters with a true spirit of trust, half the job is already done. Believe me, there is nothing quite so scary as teaching a group of dancers a new step, and hoping they don’t cross their arms and judge you. Same goes with handing over a script to a group of actors for a first read-through. No matter how “high up” you get, you wanna be liked. For the kids to think your jokes are funny.

  When the same actors turn up again and again, season after season, it generally means they are especially supportive of a collaborative, openhearted process that exposes the deepest desires of a creative team—who often only feel as valued as their last hit. When you go where the love is, you surround yourself with people who let you know, You’re okay. I appreciate you. We’re good. A very different motivation from: I want to collect as many admirers as possible, even if it means ignoring the people who have stuck by my side when I was a nobody.

  Try to identify a source of love in your own life that you’ve consistently turned away from, or not fully embraced. You only need one big break to forever say you’ve been on Broadway, or one sparkling first date to lead you on the road to a solid relationship. So stop chasing after the guy who never texts you back. Sometimes hard-to-get is just too hard to live with.

  24 RECOGNIZE THAT LIFE IS LIKE A MUSICAL

  Books, movies, TV shows: Each is an art form that captures a moment in as close to a “forever” way as possible, with their endless reprints and reboots and reruns. The opposite is true about the theater: You had to be there. The performances disappear the minute the curtain comes down. It becomes a memory. It’s magical and a little sad.

  My favorite brand of theater is summer stock, that great old tradition where you pack your bags and head to a barn (sometimes literally) of a theater, in order to put on six shows in six weeks. Now, nobody is the right “type” for every one of these musicals—the youthful gangs of West Side Story don’t have a lot of overlap with the aging chorines of Follies. And thus, you’re almost always miscast for about half the summer, playing roles written for people thirty years older than you.

  It’s the best.

  It’s exhausting and exhilarating. During daylight hours you’re learning 42nd Street (even though you’ve never tapped a day in your life) and at night you’re performing Man of La Mancha (with a mustache that’s painted on with eyeliner). Beyond the frenetic fun, what makes summer stock so lovely is simply that there’s no time to get sick of anybody. You can’t get bored with the job, because you’ve barely learned the job before the musical closes, and then it’s on to the next one. Another openin’, another show, and life goes on.

  Every summer for three years in my teens I went to Morgantown, West Virginia—as unlikely a place as anywhere for live theater to flourish—in order to perform in half a dozen musicals at the West Virginia Public Theater. It was a trip. I stayed in a dorm room that had no air-conditioning. Sometimes, our little troupe would perform to half-full houses, who’d cross their arms during risqué bits of shows like Cabaret. It was West Virginia, but it was heaven. It was the joy and rush of teaming up with a disparate group of strangers to accomplish something tangible. And then, like clockwork every year, five weeks would zip by and the tent would come down. And if it weren’t for the photos and the occasional group text messages, it’s like it didn’t even happen.

  Life is like a musical: here one moment, and gone the next.

  Partners come and go faster than you can swipe right; or your long-awaited Caribbean vacation gets rained out; or you’ve finally saved up to get a great new car when, bam, you pull out of the lot and have a fender bender. But what the theater teaches us again and again is that it’s all just a moment. You can fight it, but it isn’t going to change—at the time of this book’s printing, nobody has figured out how to live forever.

  And as for shows, unless you’re Phantom, your days are probably numbered, too. You’re smart to take a lot of selfies in costume, and hug your cast-mates tight, and then say good-bye, and start a text-chain with your cast, and move on to the next adventure.

  25 SAVE THE DRAMA

  Let go of the misinformed idea that great work can only be done if you’re some huge diva. In my experience, the bigger the star, the more gracious she comes—and vice versa.

  Name drop alert: Bernadette Peters gave every last member of the company a special gift on their birthday during the Broadway run of Gypsy. Talk about a star. She also frequently picked up the tab when the entire cast would go out for drinks, and she never missed providing a “bagel Sunday,” on which giant platters were delivered to the theater before our last matinee of the week, courtesy of guess who. But for as generous a leading lady as she was, it’s what Bernadette didn’t do that left the deepest impressions. She never threw a tantrum. She never talked down to the actors who weren’t celebrities (read: every other member of the company). And she never even blinked when Sam Mendes, our celebrated and slightly brash British director, gave Bernadette notes in front of the entire company—a rarity in the annals of backstage etiquette. Generally, a star receives her “feedback” in the privacy of her own decked-out dressing room, but not Bernadette. She’s the kind of diva who got there the old-fashioned way: through hustle and humility. If you’ve got a note that’ll make my performance better, give it to me. I don’t care who hears.

  I swear, I learned more watching Sam give Bernadette notes on how to play a particular scene than I would have had I received the notes myself. And I only had that opportunity because Bernadette was only a diva onstage, and a dyed-in-the-wool trouper the rest of the time.

  Audra McDonald, Brian d’Arcy James, Gwen Verdon, Marin Mazzie, Brian Stokes Mitchell—these might not be household names in Branson or Biloxi, but on Broadway they’re our A-listers. And every last one of them is known for his or her warmth and wit. Word gets around fast. Even the positive stuff.

  Maybe this notion that to command respect you’ve got to be some kind of demanding monster backstage is a leftover concept from the Golden Age of Hollywood, of all places—specifically those campy films that document an over-the-top take on showbiz. Look, we all giggle over All About Eve, with its scheming understudies and wildly histrionic actresses. Fictional stories featuring crazed lunatics are fun to enjoy with popcorn and a Coke. But movies aren’t real life. The truth is that the really gifted performers—the ones who are in it for the long haul—are nearly always all about the work. They save the drama for the stage.

  Do you see this over-the-top behavior in your own life? Do you work with some of these folks who suck up all the air in the room, constantly make outrageous demands of the boss (or the employees), and generally make life unpleasant for everybody around them because of their addiction to control? Yeah, don’t be that. Don’t be the diva. Be the hardworking, workaday costar who chugs along merrily—and ends up with an actual, long-lasting career. He’s the guy people want to have nearby on the eighth show of the week, when the whole team is exhausted. When you’ve gotta push through and give ’em one hell of a performance, you want to be buoyed by folks who know that work ethic trumps stupid demands. And if all that sounds like more of a leader than a follower, maybe it’s because you’re meant to lead, yourself. Consider this your invitation to step right up. The world is always ready for another trailblazing team player.

  When you start bringing your attitude-free A-game, the only demanding thing about you will be how badly people want you around.

  26 STOP SAYING YOU’RE TIRED

  Pop quiz: What’s the first thing you say when people ask how you are? Odds are it’s some version of “Exhausted!” And they probably say, “Same.” And neit
her of you is wrong, exactly.

  It’s hard work adulting, just as it’s hard work being a full-time performer. Half the gig is finding a gig, the other half is staying healthy enough to go to work every day—and, since theater people suck at math, the other other half is staying brave, amid the demoralizing odds of making a living in showbiz. I could use a nap just thinking about it.

  To create anything that matters in a world of oversaturated media is, in itself, a fearless act, and fearlessness takes its toll. Add to that headache a pile of bills to pay, a few cats to feed and/or give special medicine twice a day, children to pick up from school and cart to soccer (except on Wednesdays, when their dad has them), and gym memberships to, in theory, actually use. It’s no wonder we’re all perpetually tired.

  And yet, please stop saying how tired you are. Because nobody else but your partner and your therapist really cares. (And you’re paying one of them.)

  Legendary choreographer Martha Graham said, “There is no satisfaction whatever at any time. There is only a queer divine dissatisfaction, a blessed unrest that keeps us marching and makes us more alive than the others.”

  If you feel both restless and unrested, welcome to the club.

  I hear it nearly every day as a default “catch up” response. “I’m tired, is how I am!” It’s a sly conversation filler, because it suggests a certain street cred; exhaustion means you’re running around, and running around means you’re in the thick of it. Doesn’t that indicate success? To some degree, sure.

  But let’s all, myself included, think of more novel ways of describing what we’re up to. If you’re zonked because you’ve packed your schedule with ambitious activities, that’s fantastic—but no one is forcing you to hustle so hard. In fact, nobody is forcing any of us to be an artist at all. So get back to work, and when you come up for air, don’t complain about it.

  Is this fun advice? Nah. I don’t like hearing it, either. The first time I was told to shut up or get out was in a dance class, when I was thirteen and I’d dragged my butt into Saturday jazz. “I could still be in bed!” I remarked, not covertly, to the kid next to me, during the stretch portion of the morning. I thought I was hilarious. My fearsome teacher did not.

  “I could still be in bed, too, Tim,” she said, “so either leave my class or get your head in the game.” My face went hot, but I’m grateful for that teacher, now. We all need someone to slap some sense into us now and then. We could use the occasional reminder that there’s nothing all that captivating about the fact that you’re running weary.

  Am I still guilty of mindless complaints? All the time. My default reply to my boyfriend’s casual “How was your day?” is a version of “It wore me out. Can we open some wine?” Which isn’t exactly a turn-on, I’ve been told. But I’ve found that the most aggressively curious people I know take a certain amount of tiredness as a given. To have chosen to be a writer and a New Yorker and a tough self-critic is also to constantly be hunting for a story.

  There’s a certain delicious disappointment in never quite hitting the mark you aimed for. I look back at photos of myself from my dancing days and think, How did I ever have time for auditions when I was so busy taking tap class? I read my early writing and wonder how I ever got published. But I wouldn’t trade any of these years, or experiences. They wore me out as they built me up.

  Is it tough to get a good night’s sleep when you’ve got a killer drive? Yes. But if you can tap into the resource that keeps you up past your own curfew, and can harness the thing that haunts you and use it as a secret power, you’re onto something. You might be tuckered out, but you’ll also be tuned in, to your true purpose. It is tiring and maddening, but also motivating.

  So start asking yourself, “How am I doing?” And then don’t pause when you answer, “I have a lot going on. Which is great.” Because it is.

  27 CLAP LOUDEST FOR THE UNDERSTUDIES

  Get in the habit of making a super big deal when somebody from the shadows steps in to save the day. Take it from me: You don’t want to roll your eyes when the understudy goes on.

  Actually, don’t take it from me—take it from seventeen-year-old me. That’s how old I was when a new Broadway show opened called Side Show. It contained a rafter-rattling score by the writers of Dreamgirls, but Side Show was best known for its breakout star performances. Alice Ripley and Emily Skinner played blonde conjoined twins in the gothic and twisted tale, based on a true story, and I wore out their duets on the CD in my childhood bedroom. (And I wore out my brother, too, by blasting it.) I had to see this show, and I especially had to hear these ladies.

  Over Christmas break my junior year of high school, I sped nine hours through a snowstorm with a friend from Pittsburgh to get to the Richard Rodgers Theatre on 46th Street in New York in time for the matinee. (Worth it!) I’d spent the entire road trip belting out the songs until I had a glorious, sore throat! I was practically hoarse in my Emily Skinner impression! But when we walked into the performance, we learned that Emily Skinner was out sick that day—and thus her understudy was on. Tragedy.

  I was a teenage gay boy who knew Side Show so well I could have probably gone on and played the role myself that day, so I was perhaps understandably disappointed. But, crammed into the theater lobby in my Eddie Bauer winter coat and a matching Midwestern scowl, I thought nothing of declaring, and loudly: “You’ve got to be kidding me—Emily Skinner isn’t on?”

  “Her understudy is wonderful,” said a lady in front of us, and my travel companion said, “What are you, the understudy’s mother?” And the lady said, “Yes, I am.”

  (Cue: crickets.)

  And guess what? The understudy wasn’t just wonderful; she was sensational. A young Broadway star in her own right, named Lauren Kennedy. She landed the big punch lines, she made me weep, and, at the curtain call, Alice Ripley asked the audience to sit down so she could tell us how wonderful Lauren had been, stepping in, off and on throughout the entire two-and-a-half-month run of the show—a special point to make, as Side Show was technically a flop, and its closing night was the very next day. When you’re playing a conjoined twin, you need a really good partner in crime to step in, and Lauren had been that to Alice, each and every time she was required to save the day. It wasn’t a disappointment to see Emily’s understudy; it was an honor.

  I would grow up to become an understudy myself in every Broadway show I appeared in. There’s a hilarious and humbling phenomenon that occurs when you’re “on” for a part that’s not usually yours: You exit the stage door after the show, greet three disappointed “fans,” and then discover that the sidewalk outside the theater is littered with those tiny, loose understudy “insert” slips. You know, the ones that tell the audience: Sorry, you’re seeing the stringer. I once walked out of an understudy performance of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang and nearly stepped directly on top of my own stupid, smiling face, which had been marred by somebody’s boot mark. By that point, I’d grown up enough to grin at the cosmic joke of it all: Some other Midwestern gay boy had probably shown up to see our show that day and cried, “Who the hell is Tim Federle?” And hopefully I surprised him in the right way.

  In your own life, notice the little guys who work double duty, and are always ready at a moment’s notice to step up and work double time to cover for anyone who doesn’t come through—or who does show up and isn’t prepared, or fumbles and needs an unexpected extra hand. These team players are the MVPs of every organization.

  Clap loudest for the understudies. Not only will you see a lot of them over time, but you might just be the “understudy” yourself someday. I hope when the time comes for you to step into the spotlight, you also receive the longest ovation.

  28 GIVE COMPLIMENT SANDWICHES

  For many of us, the only thing more difficult than receiving criticism is giving it. There’s an art to providing a note, which is why the “compliment sandwich”—perfected backstage at many a Broadway show—works so well on anyone with a tendency to get prickly, any
time you try to float ways in which they could improve.

  So what is the compliment sandwich? You lead with something positive, then you give the note, and then you end on something good. Something nice. That’s it. No calories, no mess.

  I was still in my mid-twenties when I dance-captained the original company of White Christmas in San Francisco. That meant I had a leadership position that hovered somewhat above the chorus, many of whom were quite a bit more experienced (read: older) than I was, and all of whom I was expected to give performance notes and feedback to following our nightly shows. Before we’d even begun rehearsals, I was stressed to learn that the great and mighty Caitlin Carter had been cast in a featured role. Caitlin’s got legs from her toes to her nose; for a long time you couldn’t go anywhere in New York without seeing all twenty feet of her plastered on the side of a bus. She was one of the faces of the megahit Chicago revival—and its original dance captain. So when little old me had to tiptoe into her White Christmas dressing room to mention the tiniest of tweaks—like an onstage spacing issue, or to review a tap step that had gone slightly awry—I used to say to myself, like a mantra, “Lead with a compliment.” My legs trembled and I could barely speak above a tight whisper, but Caitlin could not have been a more gracious note-taker—having given out so many herself.

  I learned that I always felt most confident when I could stride up to Caitlin and (truthfully) start with something like: “I overheard a patron in the lobby last night talking about how gorgeous the lady in pink was in the opening number” (that was Caitlin), and then I’d dole out the smallest adjustment, like, “Check how high you’re kicking in ‘Blue Skies’; it should just be to your waist.” And then I’d leave by saying something like, “Okay, have a fabulous matinee—I can always count on you to give 100 percent!”