Talking with the Tony-nominated actors, writers, directors, and designers about their challenges, their inspirations, and their first time on stage.
The day after the 70th Annual Tony Award nominations was announced, the nominees gathered at the Sofitel Hotel in New York City to celebrate and discuss their nominations, their reactions, and their work. The women nominated this year are particularly impressive, ranging from Pulitzer Prize-winning Indecent playwright Paula Vogel making her Broadway debut and garnering her first nomination after 40 years of playwrighting to Eva Noblezada, who was “plucked” from high school to the West End at seventeen years old to star as Kim in the revival of the musical Miss Saigon. The combined spirit and insight from this class of unique artists is a gift and an inspiration and to be celebrated. Below are words of advice, recollections from their first time on stage, and the challenges in their work from some of the nominees.
CONDOLA RASHAD (Best Performance by an Actress in a Featured Role in a Play for A Dolls House Part 2) “This is the kind of play not to say that you never quite find it, but there’s almost no such thing as a comfort zone in the play. So the minute that you really think ‘I got that nailed’ it’s like, ‘Hmm- that didn’t work today, something else, something else.’ It’s what I love about it. As an actor it keeps you on your toes, you can never sit back on it, and it’s been that way since day one of rehearsal.”
On her first time on stage: “My mother (actress Phylicia Rashad) was doing a Kenny Leon directed play in Atlanta and I had memorized the transitions. I’d just always watch and be backstage. There was one transition where the lights would come down and blackout for quite some time and there was music playing during the blackout, and then very slowly the lights would come back up. So I somehow managed – I was about 8 – I somehow managed to crawl onto the stage during the blackout and I remember that because I would crawl as far as I possibly could and I’d just look out into the audience. There was nothing more thrilling than knowing that they couldn’t see me but I was there (laughing), and I think that’s when I decided that this was what I was supposed to do.”
JAYNE HOUDYSHELL (Best Performance by an Actress in a Featured Role in a Play for A Doll’s House Part 2) “It’s slippery, this play, because it has to be on the language and you can’t falter for a second. It’s a really good exercise. Laurie (Metcalf) and I run the first fifteen minutes of the play fifteen minutes before we gone on just so it’s right in the front of our brain.”
LAURIE METCALF (Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role in a Play for A Doll’s House Part 2) “I would say one of the challenges in the workshops and continued through rehearsal was that it was a work in progress, continually changing through Sam (Gold, director) and Lucas (Hnath, playwright) and that everybody had a hand in also trying, I think, to help Lucas and Sam see the balance of all four characters, when they’re all right and when they’re all wrong.”
Paloma Young
PALOMA YOUNG (Best Costume Design of a Musical for Natasha, Pierre, & The Great Comet of 1812) “There are tons of places where I really need to listen to the audience. I will sit and see preview after preview to just try and gauge and also eavesdrop to make sure that the costumes aren’t overshadowing when they’re not supposed to… and I will sit very close and very far away and try and feel if people aren’t watching the action when there’s these two bright little sprites around. And I think that they do disappear. Sometimes I’ll ask an audience member afterward, ‘Who was in that scene?’ and they won’t remember them. So it’s about reading the audience and getting them used to see crazy things so then those crazy things go away when they don’t need to be there.”
Eva Noblezada
EVA NOBLEZADA (Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role in a Musical for Miss Saigon) “I was fresh from high school, 17, and I still didn’t know who I was so I was all over the place in any way you can imagine. I think getting over the self-esteem bumps, the big ones that come from high school and being plucked and dropped into a professional environment, suffering from not being professionally trained like all the other people were. There was so much press and my mental, my physical, and my emotional health was just not enough to carry me through the first year and it was really difficult. But I had a lot of amazing people by my side to help me get through on and off stage that would coach me and guide me and just love me. They made it easier but I definitely had to go through the crapper.”
“I want to tell everyone especially students who are aspiring to be actors and actresses because that is still me- I’m still very young, I’m still aspiring to be better, I’m trying to be a sponge and soak everything up, but I think one thing would be not to compare yourself to anyone else. It is, in my opinion, the quickest way for you to fail and you’ll never be able to find your own individual potential if you’re always looking at somebody else. Trust me, I know, I’ve fallen for it and it didn’t work. And just also speak lovingly to yourself and make sure you’re taking care of yourself. As much as I like giving my time to people that I love, I have to remember that self-care is so important. You can’t do a role like this, you can’t do theatre if you’re giving so much to a thousand people a night if you don’t give an hour to yourself a day.
Sally Field
SALLY FIELD (Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role in a Play for The Glass Menagerie) “You have to want it more than you thought you would ever have to want it. It has to be something you do because you can’t not do it, because to not do it is that you’ve lobbed off a limb or something. You’re not quite alive without it because it has to be a sort of constant driving need inside you like water. Otherwise, it’s too hard and then you quit.”
On what inspires her: “From buildings to music to acts of kindness, to courageous behavior anywhere on Earth, speaking out, being truthful, so many things inspire me. Throughout my life, there will be things, moments, times that affect you in some way and you log inside yourself.”
Denée Benton
DENÉE BENTON (Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role in a Musical for Natasha, Pierre, & The Great Comet of 1812) “It is the hardest thing I’ve ever done. It demands everything, emotionally, physically, spiritually, and I have my team of maintenance from my voice teacher Liz, she’s incredible, to the chiropractor, the physical therapist. All these things I never thought I needed. But it’s special, Dave (Malloy, creator) wrote one of those great roles, you think of the ‘Evita’s and the ‘Funny Girl’s but they’re roles that demand everything you have and it sort of brings a greatness out of you that you didn’t know was there. It’s very special, but I’m exhausted all the time.”
On perseverance: “Some days are really hard. My mom is the best, I call her all the time, like ‘I can’t do it! My bunions hurt!’ But, you know, I went to a really incredible acting program at Carnegie Melon University, I had this acting teacher Barbara and she really reminded you that it’s about the work and it’s about the story and what’s happening on stage, so if I’m feeling distracted by a lot of things I just try to zero in on what my acting partner is actually saying to me and trying to be as present as possible and that can kind of bring you back down into the moment.”
Rebecca Taichman
REBECCA TAICHMAN (Best Direction of a Play for Indecent) “It’s hard, and go go go go go go go! Don’t give up. It’s every so slowly changing and what’s important is to make ourselves really visible and present and so don’t allow yourself to get defeated.”
On collaborating with playwright Paula Vogel: “I would just echo the sentiment that it truly has been the collaboration and the gift of my lifetime. I don’t think this comes along very often and that you so share a sensibility and the profound, profound passion for the same story, so that’s just a tremendous honor.”
Paula Vogel
PAULA VOGEL (Best Play for Indecent) “I think per square inch on this stage, per square inch on the page, there is more love and passion for the theatre from Rebecca, from me, from every actor, every collaborator. So it is this explosive, valentine of love and I think that’s why this is the one that made it through. It’s thrilling.”
On collaborating with director Rebecca Taichman: “Rebecca came to me with this amazing gift saying she wanted to work with me and I knew her work, I mean everybody in our field knows that Rebecca Taichman is a sensational director, so that was something that excited me very much. And she said, ‘Do you know this play The God of Vengeance?’ Turns out she and I had both read the play in our twenties, twenty years apart. We both discovered the play, we both fell in love with the play, and Rebecca said, ‘I wanna do a play about the obscenity trial’ and I said, ‘I think that’s a larger play.’ Basically, god bless her, on the first phone call she said, ‘Take it anywhere you want, let’s go there.’ And then she turned over to me boxes of the research on the trial that she had done, that she’d collected. She had a storehouse of these manuscripts and trial transcripts because when she was 26, she had staged the obscenity trial for her MFA Directing thesis. Then after that, we kind of waited for each other, I did draft after draft, Rebecca would read the drafts- this woman is an extraordinary editor. Then she would say something like, ‘Okay, what if…’ and she came up with this whole concept of the dust. And I went, ‘That’s remarkable.’ So, when I say this is a close collaboration, I’ve never had this in my life, where I get a response three-dimensionally from the director. She started saying, ‘Hmm, I don’t think that’s there yet,’ I’d go running to my room, I stay up til three a.m. I know I have to bring pages in in a workshop at nine a.m. so we can print it and she’s got the work on its feet. Rebecca, it’s like a three-ring circus, coordinated these drafts and there’s something that any of the actors, any of the designers will tell you: when Rebecca goes, ‘Oh that’s good,’ you go running back to your room and you stay up all night to make it better. And it’s really almost, as I imagine when you hear of these mythic collaborations in the American theatre of usually men who work together on many, many plays over many, many years. It’s very hard to know where one voice begins and one voice ends, I think it’s almost impossible at this point, but I’m gonna say this has been the trip of my lifetime.”
The Tony Awards will be broadcast live Sunday, June 11 8/7c on CBS and hosted by Kevin Spacey.
