Life Is Like a Musical

by Tim Federle

  And then I’d limp out to the hall and breathe into a paper bag. It ain’t easy giving notes to an idol.

  Yes, compliment sandwiches can be a bit time-intensive and cheesy to prepare and deliver. And true pros—including Caitlin—quickly see through the element of bullshit that surrounds it, and end up saying, “Just gimme the note.” But too many people out there never quite learned that critiques are rarely personal. For them, being told how they can improve at something is an opportunity to defend their side of the story. Try not to let them. Make the notes you’re giving, especially in a work environment, totally about the job at hand. Explain, calmly but unwaveringly, that explanations don’t really matter to you, that you’re not mad at him, that this doesn’t need to be a Big Learning Moment—and that you’ve got other people with even bigger issues you’ve got to get to.

  Then say something nice and get out of there.

  Oh and a special note on “giving notes” at home—especially to a significant other. Remember: If you’re in a leadership position at work, the giving of feedback is a big part of the territory. At home, not so much. You should mostly be striving for equality in your partnerships, and avoid amassing a list of your partner’s flaws. Put another way: Try not to be the boss of your love life so much as the co-producer of your relationship.

  Wherever you do try the compliment sandwich technique, remember it only works if you actually mean the authentic stuff. Be tough, but be real.

  29 FOLLOW YOUR WHIMS

  Follow your dreams, sure. But also—jeez, dreams are a lot of pressure, right? And the most daring dreams of all require the approximate care and upkeep of a newborn baby. Forever.

  You likely grew up with various well-meaning adults pinching your cheeks and asking, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” It’s worse than ever for today’s young generation. In the old days, a regular kid wanted to be a basketball player. Now he wants to be a famous basketball player. Everybody nowadays wants to be famous for something, even if they don’t know for what—but here’s a little insight into the following of dreams. You’ve got to also follow your whims. Those tiny insights that aren’t yet fully formed ideas.

  Every person with stars in her eyes also needs a little fairy dust in her pockets. A little something that’s in the “maybe” category—a hunch, a project to carve away at slowly over time until it reveals its own shape. Or doesn’t, in which case you toss it aside and move along, no tears shed.

  You see, the big goals—becoming a doctor, or moving to a faraway city after a long lifetime in the same town—take a huge amount of focus and mental ambition. My own dream career was rather generic, looking back on it now. It contained all the hallmarks of a youthful yearning, because “I wanna be on Broadway!” was both incredibly vague and also extraordinarily ambitious. Sure, it meant getting from Pittsburgh to New York, and I wanted it before I was old enough to rent a car. But the problem with a plan so gigantic but also limited in scope is that, once I got it, nobody was there to tap me on the shoulder and say, “So now what?” Unfortunately, guidance counselors don’t follow you into adulthood. That’s why it’s so important to work away at other things on the side—hobbies or secrets or something just for yourself. Your whims. The things that don’t feel they’ll add up to much, or seem like they could be unlikely hits.

  Theater history is full of folks who futzed around on side projects on their way to the big time. Lin-Manuel Miranda created Hamilton after reading an Alexander Hamilton biography on vacation from In the Heights. Talk about whimsical: a multicultural hip-hop retelling of a historical figure’s life story? It’d never work on paper—now you can’t get a ticket.

  Meredith Willson was just a bandleader who toiled away for ten thankless years on a venture that would become The Music Man. Mitch Leigh wrote throwaway jingles before tilting at windmills with his own breakthrough Man of La Mancha. Heck, Sherman Edwards of 1776 fame was a high school history teacher until his musical about the Declaration of Independence debuted to acclaim.

  The polite thing for these writers to have pursued—the version of life that would have disrupted nobody—would have essentially been doing what they’d always done, like grading papers at night instead of secretly hammering out songs. But they followed their hunches instead. They changed the world with their whims.

  I spent most of my twenties feeling pretty voiceless, as a performer who sometimes appeared wearing oversize animal costumes—like when I was a dancing polar bear at Radio City. It took me ages to realize that all my journal entries and long-winded emails spoke to something true about a more fully fledged me: that I could be a dancing polar bear and have a voice. That you don’t have to choose. That you can have as many hyphens as you’d like on your résumé.

  Throughout my life, the thing that came even more naturally to me than dancing around was joking around. When I at last became a “real writer,” I took the hobby that got me in trouble my whole life (being a goof-off) and turned it into my primary source of income—and satisfaction (having “a voice”!). But this new life started as a small action. A blog post. A tweet. A diary entry that became the first chapter of a secret book I was writing for nobody but myself. It was a whim before it was a reality. Frogs start as tadpoles. Or, more aptly, polar bears start as cubs.

  In the storage area in the back of your brain, where you keep those pie-in-the-sky fantasies, make sure to leave room for a couple of barely detectable shooting stars. The pottery class, or the French lessons, or the hours you spend collecting driftwood and making funky art that you’ve never shown anyone. Sometimes these whims will pay off—even if the only thing they make richer is your own self-image.

  30 RECOVER BETWEEN PERFORMANCES

  Every performer knows that you have to take time to take care of yourself. (There’s a reason I stopped dancing at age twenty-eight, and it involves the realization that painkillers had become a nightly snack.) Not enough of us build self-care into our daily lives, and that’s a mistake, because we give our best performances when we’ve recovered.

  Take a tour of any backstage theater dressing room and you could be mistaken for thinking it’s a gym. Yoga mats are strewn everywhere, along with therapy bands, plastic steaming masks, and handwritten signs with arrows pointing to physical therapy. Truly grueling, dance-heavy shows even have massage therapists on-site—but it ain’t a spa. Honestly, one of the biggest ongoing challenges of any long-running show is just bending over to change your damn costume-shoes ten times a night (seriously)—not to mention climbing up six flights of stairs for a five-minute breather in your dressing room. These are old buildings. They don’t have elevators. They have cockroaches and cranky doormen and clanking pipes, and to counterbalance those stresses, you have to take the time to decompress.

  I read that Cynthia Erivo, the powerhouse star of The Color Purple revival, drank shots of ginger in between performances. (Go YouTube Ms. Erivo wailing “I’m Here” through the roof, and you’ll see that the ginger paid off.) Hey, whatever works. There’s a degree of superstition when your body is your job. But, in a way, aren’t all of us in debt to our bodies?

  I personally never felt older than I did when I was twenty. Lemme explain. The Radio City stage is made of steel—unlike most stage decks, which are constructed of wood, a natural material that “gives” a bit when you land, hard, from a jump. But at twenty, I was clomping, stomping, and sometimes limping across Radio City’s brutal metal deck, built that way to support sophisticated stage hydraulics and lifts. The versatility of the Radio City stage made for a visually dynamic show, but try telling that to my knees.

  One of the older dancers back then gave me a valuable tip: If I wanted to survive the season, I was going to have to take nightly ice baths—which is exactly as awful as it sounds. You come home, dump a pound of ice into a bathtub (during the winter, on the East Coast), and then… well, there are different techniques. There’s the “jump in and temporarily hate your life” technique, or the “slowly ease in and
hate all of the choices that led to this moment” version. Either way, you submerge your throbbing bones into the ice water, and stay put as long as you can. Wine helps. So does Advil. (I’m no doctor, so technically I’m not prescribing wine and Advil at once.) Sometimes you’d cry—but you’d cry harder the next day if you hadn’t taken that bath to reduce inflammation.

  Isn’t showbiz glamorous?

  So, okay, your day-to-day life probably doesn’t involve jumping up and down for four thousand screaming children while wearing a polar bear costume—and by the way, congrats if it doesn’t. But you’ve still got stressors, both physical and mental. I know you do. And if you don’t counteract some of those aches, scrapes, and shouts, you’re adding a lot of mental plaque to your overall health score. So make a list of all the crap you put up with—the morning subway commute, the loudmouth coworker in the open-plan office, the way you no longer sleep soundly if you’ve had coffee after 3 p.m. And now think up some way you could counteract those things—kind of like offsetting your carbon footprint, but emotionally.

  Does it mean budgeting in a day at the gym just for yoga, so you aren’t always only pumping iron? You can’t give it your all if you don’t have a lot to give. Does this mean taking another five minutes in the morning to download your favorite podcast, so you’re starting the day in the frame of mind you need for peak performance, and aren’t walking out the door in reactive mode? My life changed the day I started waking up fifteen minutes earlier, despite feeling tired at first. Suddenly I had a moment to get ahead of the day, instead of chasing after it to keep up.

  Find ways to reset and recharge. A performance of a lifetime is made up of how you spend your time. Your audience deserves to feel taken care of, and so do you.

  31 RECRUIT A FRIEND TO ASSESS YOUR AUDITION OUTFIT

  First impressions matter, sure, but to make an impact, you don’t need to appear as if you’ve, like, leapt off the pages of Vogue. You just need to feel as if you have.

  One of my very first auditions in New York City was for a Super Bowl halftime show. (Halftime shows are like intermissions for straight people.) I was young. I was not savvy. I had no wardrobe budget. But I’d taken a ten-hour bus ride from Pittsburgh to show off my stuff, and I wore to this audition my “signature outfit” at the time—black, flair-legged tights, high-top sneakers, and a green polo shirt. As in: a collared cotton jersey knit, the type you’d wear to a picnic on a brutally hot day, except instead I wore it to every single dance audition. Nearly all the other guys, savvy New Yorkers, showed off their quadlike biceps in black tank tops (always black). But not me, and for good reason: My arms were toothpicks. I looked terrible in a tank top, like a malnourished philosophy major. And thus, I felt like my most comfortable self in that green polo shirt—and dammit, when you feel comfortable, you feel great. And when you feel great, you actually look great—or can trick the world into thinking you do.

  The reason I’d settled on a green polo shirt in the first place is that an older, more experienced dancer back home had advised me that I’d “stand out” (ha!) if I wore a shirt that highlighted my “all-American boyish youth.” And guess what? I ended up dancing behind Christina Aguilera at that damn Super Bowl, even though I showed up to the audition looking like I’d raided a Gap Kids in the dark.

  (Still have no idea which teams actually played in that particular game, so please don’t ask. The year was 2000. Phil Collins also appeared in the halftime show, as did Toni Braxton and, for reasons I’ll never understand, noted actor Edward James Olmos. When you find the YouTube video, do not share it online.)

  Back to fashion. Recruit a friend who has style to spare. You know the one. He (because it’s almost always a he) is the “fashion guy,” whose Instagram account could be acquired by the Museum of Modern Art. Invite him over. Have him assess your latest dating profile pic, and methodically explain why this particular selfie angle doesn’t work (or does!). Guide the conversation so he doesn’t wither you with his comments, but rather he empowers you.

  Ultimately, you want to blow people away with your persona, not your pantsuit. But in a world that overvalues looks, you might as well show up with the best-feeling package you’ve got. It’ll knock their socks off.

  32 ARRIVE A HALF HOUR BEFORE HALF HOUR

  If you want to get ahead, get to work first. Showing up ahead of schedule isn’t simply about your job, though. Whether it’s gearing up for a date or getting into the mind-set for a big interview, warming up physically and mentally is about putting on your best face, and getting flexible for whatever might happen.

  I was lucky enough to work on the West End of London some years ago. There’s a tradition of “warming up for the show” that’s actually built into the regular schedule. An hour before the show, the entire cast—from the chorus boys to the leading lady—gathers onstage for a group warm-up. It’s humbling, because everyone looks a bit crazed. The ladies stand around in wig-caps, their faces half made-up. The boys wear frumpy sweatpants and a lot of blush. Nobody is quite ready for an audience, and everyone’s on their phones, and there’s a lot of chitchat and catching up before the dance captain leads a group stretch. But gathering early, on automatic and with intention, is about more than socializing. First, it’s just plain smart, because warm-ups have been shown to reduce injury. A mandatory group warm-up also gives the show’s music conductor a chance to tell thirty people, at once, that their diction is getting a bit sloppy in the big Act Two dance number. Otherwise, he’s chasing people down or tacking notes to a corkboard. In London, where everyone congregates onstage before the show, you don’t have to worry about mixed messaging. You just say it right to the person, like as in the old days.

  Not so in the States. In American theater, for whatever reason, actors are simply required to appear a half hour before curtain. Whether they warm up or not is all on them. Since arriving home from the UK, I’ve come to find this a bit nuts; so many pulled hamstrings could be avoided! And so much miscommunication could be eliminated, too, if people were required to, ya know, communicate, face-to-face. Instead, the backstage creative staff on Broadway run around leaving little Post-it notes on performers’ dressing room tables, hoping actors correctly interpret a scribbled note about their performance.

  Getting to work early and gathering at the water cooler with your coworkers doesn’t just reduce the kind of agitation that nobody likes—it also feeds a culture of togetherness. Now, I’m not suggesting that you and thirty cubicle-mates get to the break room a half hour early to stand in a circle and hum a friggin’ folk song—but I am saying there is wisdom in intentional focus. In pushing for a group mind-set that says: Let’s attack this big ol’ thing as a team. In taking the time to take the time.

  It’s worth noting that warming up doesn’t have to be arduous. People hear warm-up and they think gym and when they think gym they think: I’d rather be on the sofa watching The Bachelor. (Me too, by the way.) Warming up can and should be something simple that gets your butt into the building. Like sitting at your desk while it’s still quiet, and rewarding yourself with a second cup of coffee. Whatever works for you.

  To prepare for her title role in The Little Mermaid every night, Sierra Boggess used to blast Barbra Streisand albums, and belt along with the high notes, all while the hair and makeup teams fluttered around her. Sometimes I’d poke my head in on the way to my own dressing room, several floors up, and not even say anything. I’d just smile at a pro getting ready to wow the masses, one warm-up at a time.

  33 IMAGINE YOUR HERO IN THE AUDIENCE

  Wherever you are, in whatever job you’re doing, you’re going to face sleepy “matinee” days when you’d rather be anywhere but your cubicle—and you’ve got to trick yourself into giving the gig your all. I’m not talking about washing the dishes or cleaning out your glove compartment. Feel free to phone those performances in. I’m talking about the realities of the big time. The flip side of a dream job is that it’s still a job. Welcome to the real world—now pre
pare to sweat.

  When I was a coach for Billy Elliot on Broadway, the child actors and I would occasionally talk about all the varied ways one can motivate oneself to give a full-out performance. Again and again, I returned to one trick with the boys: I’d ask them, “Who’s your favorite singer?” or “Who’s your all-time favorite dancer?” Maybe they’d say Taylor Swift, or Mikhail Baryshnikov—and now I had something to work with. We’d make a game out of imagining what would happen if they gave a performance as Billy, and immediately following the curtain call they walked out the stage door and bam! There was Taylor or Mikhail, holding out a Playbill for them to sign. “Would you be delighted,” I’d ask the boys, “because you’d left your heart and soul on the stage in a pool of sweat, and your all-time favorite hero was there to witness it?” Alternatively, “Would you feel mortified, like you wanted a do-over, because you’d assessed the audience as half-interested and thus gave them half a performance?”

  There are all sorts of compelling and tempting reasons not to give something your all: sleepiness, laziness, more fun to let your mind wander. Hard work is hard work. I’d ultimately issue the boys a challenge: “On performance day, it’s one or the other: you’ll either go for it, or you’ll leave your passion in the dressing room, along with your Power Bar and Gatorade.” And it worked. They’d put their favorite person in the back row of the theater, and they’d do the show for her. It gave the performance a specific drive, and a purpose: You’re not entertaining twelve hundred generic audience members. You’re trying to impress your hero.