Life Is Like a Musical

by Tim Federle

  Much is made of the silly way singers coddle their voices, wrapping scarves around their necks at the first sign of winter, walking around with travel mugs of tea, and popping lozenges like they’re mints. Some theatrical roles are so vocally demanding—Evita comes to mind—that, historically, the actors playing them don’t even do a full eight performances a week. They take two daylight shows off, and not to party. Presumably, they’re drinking more tea than whiskey. Behind the mild drama of “vocal rest”—that is, the practice of not speaking all day, so you can save the good stuff for your performance—is an idea that more of us could build into our everyday lives.

  When you walk through the world with a million opinions, but temporarily refrain from voicing them, you hear things differently. You hear people in a new way, when you’re not busy talking. You realize how few of us actually take the time to reflect and then respond; how we’d rather wait for someone to stop yapping on so that we can yap again ourselves. But when you’re speaking, you’re not learning.

  The pauses between talking are just as important as the talking itself, if not more so. Sometimes nothing is more powerful than the person who keeps completely mum—until he comes up with a whopper of a revelation. It’s the most counterintuitive thing, to use silence as a form of quiet strength. And yet, I’ve watched many a director cede to an entire room of people, from casting directors to dance assistants, before offering her “take” on something vital, like a casting decision. Inevitably, she’ll get her way, as the last person weighing in.

  Use silence as a form of quiet strength.

  The practice of a non-actor’s “vocal rest” might include voicing your opinion only when you’ve really got something to add to the conversation. It was Abraham Lincoln (or possibly Mark Twain) who said, “Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt”—and Hamilton’s Aaron Burr who sang, “Talk less, smile more.”

  Once a week, even if it’s just for an hour, notice how differently you communicate if you don’t jump in to offer your take on every issue. It drains your batteries to always express your opinions. Dare yourself to remain neutral, and let it manifest as “sitting this one out.” A good actor makes something out of every signal he’s given. But life isn’t an act. It can actually be incredibly restful when you decide to not pick up every single cue the world throws at you.

  45 WRITE AN ASPIRATIONAL PLAYBILL BIO

  I hate to bring the room down here, but what is the thing you’d like to leave people with, when you make your final exit? Not stage right, but to the Heaviside Layer, or heaven, or wherever it is you think you’ll go after taking your last bow. What is it about your life that you’d want people to read about—both your accomplishments and your relationships, and also your quieter pursuits—your daydreams, your donations, the time you mowed your neighbor’s lawn just because. Now pursue that life story, backward. You might call it a future obit. I call it an aspirational Playbill bio.

  When I first arrived in New York, before I had any significant credits to speak of, I used to fantasize and even write out fake Playbill bios about my imagined future self. (Gag, right? But whatever keeps you motivated.) Playbill is that old-school magazine with the yellow banner, which they hand out at shows—real shows, the ones that proclaim, This is the big leagues. Every member of the company gets a bio, a place to declare: This is what I’ve done, world! Well, younger me would cook up these long-winded fictional bios (“Tim is thrilled to be joining the company of The Phantom of the Opera in the title role…”), picturing all the shows I’d someday appear in. These bios were epic, containing lessons, quotes from musicals, and self-important thank-yous to the various teachers who’d helped me get “here today”—as if I were anywhere at all but my studio apartment, with no working windows and a shower that always ran cold or colder.

  Imagine my mild horror when I actually got hired for my first Broadway show, and was politely informed by the press relations office that I had something like twenty or thirty words for my entire bio. Twenty! My own name took that tally down to eighteen! As I got older and more experienced, my bios grew to fifty or a hundred words—but the sentiment remained the same: How do you summarize and pay tribute to the credits and classes and coaches who helped you become who you are today?

  Write yourself an aspirational bio—a story about the type of person you want to both be and be known as. Think of it as the best-case bio of a character you’d be proud to know—yourself. The guy or girl who’s always cool to Lyft drivers and waiters, and holds doors open for slow people, and picks up litter, even when nobody’s looking. Don’t necessarily imagine what’s going to seem impressive to an audience sitting down to read about you. Imagine instead how it would feel to attend your own memorial service, during which a beloved relative steps up to the podium to read this bio aloud, beginning with: “So-and-so was best known for X accomplishment—but I want to tell you about all the things she cared for, tenderly, behind the scenes.” That’s your starting place.

  Is this all getting too heavy? If there’s one thing musicals have taught me about life and death, it’s that they’re intertwined; the saddest ballads often have the catchiest melodies. I encourage you not to live your life from one status update to another. Get more holistic. If a thousand strangers glanced at a quick list of all the gifts you had given the world, what would you want them to read? Now write it and live it.

  We don’t know how much time we’ve got. It’s all a guess. That’s the other thing musicals taught me: Your favorite characters can disappear at any moment. In the great Playbill bio of the sky, make your twenty words count.

  46 TRY TO NAME ALL OF LAST YEAR’S TONY WINNERS

  There’s a good chance that the award winners of yesterday have already been forgotten today. Seriously. Try to make a list of all of last year’s Tony winners, even just the “best actress” list. It’s tough, huh? And it isn’t just the Tonys. I can never remember who or which movie exactly won an Oscar by about the first Tuesday after the ceremony. It doesn’t make these nights unimportant, but it speaks to just how transient it all is. Yes, you should strive for your own accolades—but if your personal version of happiness hinges on rarified pleasures, you’re in for an awful lot of tough days.

  When I was a kid, the Tony Awards were the single most important night of my life, not counting Christmas and Stephen Sondheim’s birthday. After I’d taped the awards (while simultaneously watching them live), I’d pop open a black Magic Marker to scrawl on the outside of the VHS, in all caps: DO NOT RECORD OVER THIS OR YOU WILL DIE. (These words were, of course, empty, as my dear dad “accidentally” taped over the 1994 Tonys with the dang Super Bowl; I allowed him to live after much consideration.) Though these awards held an adorably sacred place in my teen heart, the truth is that not a whole lot of people our there in the Plains states were watching the Tonys with me. It’s a rare group, folks. Would I love to win my own Tony someday? You bet. Would 99 percent of the people I meet, on a day-to-day basis, care either way? Not much.

  In the Venn diagram of “successful artist” and “successful human,” there are many overlaps, including: Listen to whatever kind of drive you have, no matter the insane odds—but also, let go of the results. Or try to.

  Half my friends in New York study meditation. One of them even became a famous teacher. Emily flies all over the place, teaching people how to stay still. It all used to make me chortle a bit, till I tried it myself. Forcing oneself to focus and get centered is vital when you live in a town where nobody wants to be average. And yet, if every one of us got a gold star just for waking up, it wouldn’t mean anything. If you stick around long enough, however, your own above-average day will come. It just might not manifest the way you originally planned. Plans are funny, that way.

  You likely can’t name last year’s award winners—and, if you can, I’ll bet you couldn’t tell me who played in the Super Bowl. Even the mightiest honors get swept away in the next breathless news cycle—bu
t don’t let that dissuade you from pursuing your own glories, as long as you remember that trophies look great on a mantel, but are only one little part of a big life. Don’t live yours for just a single night each year.

  Find pleasure and meaning in the quiet days. The ones where the applause has to come from within, for doing the best you could.

  47 KNOW THAT YOU’RE BOTH IRREPLACEABLE AND REPLACEABLE

  Every one of us wants to feel special. We wanna be one-of-a-kind, irreplaceable stars. Unique in ways that aren’t threatening to others. And in our own ways, we are. But the truth is, for all the wonders you bring the world… you are also somewhat replaceable. We all are. Let this be a guide, not a downer.

  I’ll never forget the feeling of going back to the Lunt-Fontanne Theatre, right off Times Square, to revisit the company of The Little Mermaid months after I’d left the show to pursue an assistant directing opportunity. Right from the start, on the night of my return, something felt “off” about going back. It was weird to be entering the theater alongside the audience, and not backstage with my castmates. Well, my former castmates. I was antsy when the house lights went down, and by the time the overture began, my heart was all-out pounding. The “Under the Sea” steel drum percussion played like an old, muscle-memory cue—one that said I should be running around offstage-right, high-fiving my favorite crew guy and singing my “Oohs” and “Ahhs” along with the rest of the fish. When the curtain finally went up at the top of the show, I wanted to shout, “Stop!” Like the whole dang thing couldn’t go on unless I was a part of it. Ha. As if.

  The truly revelatory moment for me was watching as another actor swam his way onstage, wearing all of “my” costumes—including a blue Lycra bodysuit. Naturally, he performed brilliantly in the role I’d previously considered my own. Hell, he’d been doing it for months now, eight shows a week, with me nowhere in sight. Wow, I recall thinking to myself, it’s like I never even did the show.

  This is why we think of Julie Andrews (and not Mary Martin, who originated the role of Maria) in The Sound of Music. Or Audrey Hepburn (and not Julie Andrews) as Eliza Doolittle in My Fair Lady. And did you know that Broadway (and TV!) star Sutton Foster started as the understudy in Thoroughly Modern Millie, before donning the bob-cut hairdo herself and going on to win a sweet little Tony?

  News flash: There’s always somebody raring to put on your wig, folks.

  Is this a bit depressing? I hope not too much. The day you realize there’s another person ready, willing, and eager to take over your particular “role” is the day you recognize how good you’ve already got it. That doesn’t mean you’re some anonymous robot—you bring a certain something to every role you perform, whatever role means to you. But on a hugely populated planet, a whole lot of somebodies out there would happily look at the cards you’ve been dealt and think, If only I had it that good. They’d trade places with you in a moment.

  Tomorrow morning, try putting on a slightly different costume. This one will look just like you—same clothes, same hairspray, same smile—but you’re gonna wear it a little differently. This time, imagine all the people who’d kill to have your set of setbacks and challenges, and wear that feeling like a custom-made costume. It’s called gratefulness—and, unlike a handmade fish suit, it doesn’t cost a bundle. In fact, it’s free.

  48 SCREW UP ONSTAGE, BUT KEEP DANCING

  Make a list of all the embarrassing things that could happen to you if you were performing in front of a thousand people. I’ll wait. It doesn’t need to involve unplanned nudity, by the way—but it should turn your face red. The funny thing is, almost any one of those humiliating things would make for the all-time most memorable performance an audience member had ever seen. Crowds—especially crowds at any live experience—love nothing more than an underdog pulling through. In fact, they clap harder when the leading man’s fake mustache comes unglued and he just keeps singing. Your job is to screw up and keep singing. Not to apologize, but to soldier on.

  The master stagecrafter Tommy Tune so keenly understood the audience appeal of onstage mishaps that he actually built “mistakes” into his musicals. It’s rumored that in The Will Rogers Follies, Tune staged a dialogue sequence so that an actual “actor” dog, who had appeared in an earlier scene, would “accidentally” run across the stage—as if he’d somehow gotten loose backstage and made a mad dash for the footlights. And when did Tune reportedly plan for this nightly interruption to happen? During a quiet scene between two leading actors—who would, during every performance, react as if they hadn’t expected little Bowwow to be appearing with them. The female actress would begin laughing, the male actor would “struggle” to keep it together, and sooner or later the audiences would fall all over themselves, going crazy, thinking they were the first people in history to see such an amusing incident. The dog would exit, eventually, and the show would carry on—but the stories those audience members took away lingered far after.

  People love slips and blunders; think of all the YouTube videos that have gone viral, and not because they captured a perfect moment in time. A wedding video in which the bride doesn’t fall into a swimming pool does not get a billion clicks.

  Sometimes memorable human mess-ups occur on an even grander stage—and is there a bigger one than the Olympics? If you’re a kid who came of age in the nineties, you’ll never forget Kerri Strug landing on a broken ankle in order to clinch gold for the American gymnastics team. Would we still be talking about the ’96 games decades later if everything had gone hunky-dory? If Kerri hadn’t injured herself moments earlier—and in spite of it, soldiered through, and limped her way into glory and the hearts of the world? Tens of millions of people from opposing countries were suddenly rooting for the comeback kid. And not despite her having an uphill battle. Because of it.

  Theater, above all other arts, provides that coveted feeling of being an insider, because we are literally in the same room as the performers. Mistakes are gonna happen, onstage and in everyday life. More often than not, they’re more mortifying to you than to others, so try to find a way to chuckle it off the next time you’re not quite “on.” Like, you’re giving your best man’s speech and halfway through you discover your zipper is down? Good. You’ve just provided the talking points for the evening. Frankly, you’ve done the room a favor.

  Screw up but keep going, and you may be surprised how hard people root for anyone who’s rallying for a return to glory. Now zip up your pants and get thee to the open bar.

  49 FIND YOUR TRIBE

  I’m lucky to receive a lot of letters (and emails, and tweets) from young people who identify as LGBTQ+. They seek me out because I’ve written a bunch of young adult novels, a couple of which feature a young teen auditioning for a fictional Broadway version of E.T.: The Musical. Now, you can’t write about a kid who’s a diehard musical freak without also hinting that he might just grow up to be gay, so those kids who identify with him find me.

  There tends to be one overarching theme to all these letters—even when the ages and locations are all over the literal map—and the theme is: My parents aren’t cool with me being a certain way, whatever that way is, so what’s your advice? No matter how young that person is, my advice is always the same. Find your tribe.

  I wouldn’t dare offer something truly prescriptive in my emails back, like: Move to New York someday! Come play with the rest of us weirdos! But I do wish that everyone could discover their gang somewhere, the people who get them, who accept and validate and don’t even blink at their oddities. Whatever your oddities may be—from dressing up like comic book characters to being obsessed with motorcycle repair—there’s a place where your thing is everyone’s thing. Get to that place, any way you can.

  It’s a blessing to have the types of parents who brag about you in the family Christmas letter, sure. But if you don’t have that inborn support system, you need to build one up, create a scaffolding of help, and hope. One day, your island of misfit toys will begin feeling like the mai
nland. You deserve that.

  When I was in middle school, I spent so much energy zipping from cafeteria table to cafeteria table, trying to impress everybody and make the football players laugh, that I barely had time to eat my pizza bagel. I was desperate to see myself in others, to find other boys who knew every Eponine lyric from Les Miz. Eventually I learned that my tribe was way off-campus. We would gather at 2 p.m. every day at an after-school theater program across town that I’d attend three nights a week. If I could just survive from 9 a.m. to 1:30 p.m.—if I could muddle through math and fake my way through French—there was gold on the other side of that rainbow. Or, rather, a rainbow on the other side of the storm.

  The best tribes are also where the serious work gets made. Look to the Steppenwolf Theatre Company in Chicago, from which shows like August, Osage County burst forth. The team behind that Pulitzer-winning play had been working together for decades—a makeshift family who made stuff. This is to say nothing of all the longtime duos throughout theater history, from Rodgers & Hammerstein to Pasek & Paul. Finding your tribe means developing a shorthand set of customs so you can truly get down and be yourself. Enough with the small talk. Let’s think big with our peeps.

  There will be growing pains. The moment you realize that there are folks out there who are just like you is also the day you may have outgrown your old tribe. Friend breakups are often harder than romantic breakups. Dare yourself to have the strength of conviction to only make room for people who dovetail with your “I want” song. Life is a journey. Who do you want riding shotgun?

  Nah, wait. Life isn’t a journey, it’s a musical. Choose your costars wisely. Live it up, break into song in the middle of CVS, and find the people who spontaneously add on harmonies without apologizing.