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[0:00] Jennifer Ashley Tepper: Hi everybody, I'm Jennifer Ashley Tepper.

[0:02] Joe Iconis: And I'm Joe Iconis. Today we're going to be talking about a standalone masterpiece that Joe wrote called The Actress.

[0:12] Jennifer Ashley Tepper: I can call it a masterpiece because I didn't write it, Joe wrote it.

[0:16] Joe Iconis: This is very true, and The Actress is one of my many songs that's about the theater world and about singing and about disappointment and about struggles and mostly about Katrina Rose Diderikson. Belting her face off, get ready for this. Truly, warning, may contain high belting. The Actress, an epic song.

[0:36] Jennifer Ashley Tepper: We should really also have a playlist of the album where it goes in descending order of length of track. Because I feel like that'd be fun to go from like shortest to longest to longest to shortest. The Actress is an epic one. The Actress is very, very long.

[0:56] Joe Iconis: And I wrote The Actress specifically for Katrina Rose Diderikson. And the something that's interesting about this song is that this is the first song I ever performed at 54 Below.

[1:12] Jennifer Ashley Tepper: Wow. Literal first.

[1:25] Joe Iconis: Yes, because it was the night before I did my first Iconison Family Show at 54, which was July 16th, 2012. I did this night of new musical theater people. It was three people, but I remember Maury Yeston was part of it in some way.

[1:44] Jennifer Ashley Tepper: It was three writers, but it was someone early career, someone mid-career, someone late career.

[1:49] Joe Iconis: It wasn't like a new writers thing. It was like a cross section.

[1:51] Jennifer Ashley Tepper: Yeah.

[1:52] Joe Iconis: And so I wrote the song and Katrina sang it there at 54. We're celebrating our 10th anniversary this year at 54 Below, so it's so crazy to think of that was the first year. I wasn't the programming director yet. I attended and we did the Christmas show there. But that's so crazy. That was the first 54 Below Iconison Family Performance.

[2:12] Jennifer Ashley Tepper: And so the song, it's a story song and it's really a story song and I wanted to write something that felt like a real throwback. I guess it feels kind of like, there's moments of sort of like musical theater writers of the past and sort of different ones. It feels like something that could have been in like a Maupin Shire review. It feels, there's like some Kurt Viley stuff in there and it also feels like something that could have been in like a review at the Village Gate in 1950.

[2:58] Joe Iconis: It's very much this sort of story. And I wanted to write something that was about the theater world and things that I was observing at the time, which I think are still really hold true. And this thing of singers who just sing really high and loud and then everyone claps and sort of treating this, what is a talent but is also in some ways kind of like a parlor trick or something. This ability to scroll through whatever people call it as being worthy of accolades and jobs and blah, blah, blah.

[3:42] Jennifer Ashley Tepper: Yeah.

[3:43] Joe Iconis: And so I just wanted to write something that sort of talked about that in a way that felt way over the top.

[3:50] Jennifer Ashley Tepper: It also, and a couple of your songs certainly do this, but it's a song where you're like, oh wow, that's as far as this is going to go. Oh my God, it just went farther. Oh, now we've gone to another level of madness, including the final part of this song. I love so much because it's one of those where the audience maybe might think the song is over and then there's a little addendum at the end that I just, it's like, it's so good.

[4:13] Joe Iconis: Thanks. Yeah. It's sort of like a little, yeah, it's kind of a mean-spirited addendum, but I think it's honest. And there's a lot of sort of inherent contradictions in the song, which felt like that's how I, it felt like the appropriate way to talk about this, because it's this woman singing about how her weirdness and her personality and all that kind of stuff is not valued. It's really, it's just her voice.

[4:47] Joe Iconis: Once she learns how to just sort of use her voice as this mechanism to sing loud and high and aggressive and she loses all the other stuff that makes her unique, that's when she experiences success. And I think the song is clearly sort of critical of that. However, in order to perform the song, you have to sing loud and high and aggressively. And Katrina Rose Diderikson, who is a great actor and a great performer, she also happens to have that sort of voice that is, you know, part of the problem. It has a voice that is like the sort of voice that people will scream at when she hits a certain note. And I love that.

[5:33] Joe Iconis: I love that like this song that is sort of critical of that thing, it needs that thing in order to happen. The sort of joke of the song or the trick of the song is that if someone can just do that vocal thing and isn't a good actor and isn't a good storyteller, the song just doesn't work. It is torturous to sit through because it's so long and it actually is more about the acting than the singing, but you do kind of need all of those things.

[6:04] Joe Iconis: And you know, as I'm talking about it, I'm remembering like another thing that I sort of had in the back of my brain for a while was that, you know, people saying the phrase, oh, she can belt her face off as like this compliment. And I loved the idea of like someone literally belting their face off. So, you know, which meant their face is gone. It's like a natural, you know, a natural progression to me. And that sense of like someone who literally belts their face off and now what do you do?

[6:39] Joe Iconis: That was something that was like a real impetus. This is something I also feel like whenever you wrote this song, people weren't talking about it as much. And now there is a little bit of a backlash that's like, let actors act. And if there's a high note, and they should sing it because of the character, great. But like, there has been more of a movement going in this direction again, singing for the sake of high singing.

[6:57] Jennifer Ashley Tepper: I know, I know, I know. And what's so funny, too, is that also, there's this thing of like, you know, so in the song, it's sort of like, oh, you don't need to, you know, you don't need to be an actress, as you don't need a face, as long as you have this voice that does this thing, as long as you have the high notes, and you're fine. And then, you know, the end of that journey for the actress is that, you know, she was replaced by Jenna Elfman, because it's like, oh, you don't need the voice if you have the name, right? It's like, that's like higher than that.

[7:29] Joe Iconis: And so I feel like that's also been this sort of weird conversation lately, that I think we're not like quite ready to talk about.

[7:34] Jennifer Ashley Tepper: Totally. It's real. And that's just the truth. You know, it's like, and it's, you know, you don't Yeah, you don't need that if you have that. And you really don't need that if you have that. And sometimes people have it all. And a lot of times they don't. And it's just the kind of like, the hierarchy of commercial theater.

[7:54] Joe Iconis: I also have a lot of memories of the great Katrina Rose Diderikson performing this at the musical theater factory.

[7:59] Jennifer Ashley Tepper: Yeah, I feel like, you know, this was a venue for people who don't know that was created out of a pornography studio. There was like part of the time it was that and part of the time it was like a musical theater factory, you know, creatively led by Shakina Nayfack, our friend who also appears in the album.

[8:13] Joe Iconis: And I feel like this song was just performed there and a couple of special concerts that, yeah, Katrina killed it.

[8:19] Jennifer Ashley Tepper: Yeah, yeah. And something else about this song, you know, in that middle section, where she is, you know, just singing, where she's just doing the thing, she's just hitting the notes that make people clap. Underneath that is everyone yelling at her, sing bitch, fierce bitch, sing.

[8:39] Joe Iconis: And that was another sort of initial impetus of the song, in addition to like the, you know, built in your face off thing. This aggression towards women who sing a certain way, and the language surrounding it, and a lot of the languages, it's, you know, it's coming. It's like a cultural thing in some ways, but just this like, I just felt like I just kept going to concerts or going to shows or something.

[9:04] Joe Iconis: And women were, you know, just screaming. And then people in the audience were like calling the bitch, you know, like as a show of approval. And I just felt like, oh, everyone's trying to get this thing, and this literal thing, like what it is, it's just kind of, you know, it's in some ways complex. And in some ways, it's just like, no, you know. And so I wanted to put that in the song.

[9:43] Jennifer Ashley Tepper: I've also seen, you reminded me, like in concert, similar to some reactions to Broadway Here I Come, people be like, oh man, I love that song. And for all of the reasons that the song is like, you know, talking about, and not quite understand like what it's about, but be like, oh my god, Katrina sang her face off in it. Like, there's been some like, I love this song, but I'm like, I don't, maybe you should hear it one more time.

[10:03] Joe Iconis: Yeah, yeah, no, I know. But I, you know, I love that. I love that people can not get the, you know, not get the point. And it's like, it's not because it's hidden, you know, with a song like that, it's like, it couldn't be like blunter, you know, the song is like, very inelegant, and how it says what it wants to say. And it goes on for seven and a half minutes. And so, you know, it's not, it's not for lack of, you know, clarity.

[10:30] Jennifer Ashley Tepper: But yeah, some people just hear what they want to hear.

[10:34] Joe Iconis: Also, the title of the song, The Actress is the opposite of the songs where it's the character's name, because like, this song would never be called, insert any name, because like, we don't know that girl's name. She doesn't have a name. Okay, I don't think it's Gwendolyn, but everyone decide what you think her name is.

[10:47] Jennifer Ashley Tepper: Yeah, yeah, the actor. I mean, and also it's, you know, it's like, I, there's also a sense of it, where it's like, to me, at least, you know, calling it The Actress is kind of like, it's the putting it in a box, you know, it's like, the putting people in, in categories. It's like, she's The Actress. It's similar to what you were just talking about, about Destiny or Elle Morgan.

[11:15] Joe Iconis: It's like, the need in the current sphere, and not just current, but what we've been in for decades of like, yeah, there's going to be 100 casts of Les Mis, so who fits into the Eponine type, and what came along with that, as far as typing actors.

[11:29] Jennifer Ashley Tepper: Yeah, it's just like, however our generation has played against that is represented in both of these songs.

[11:34] Joe Iconis: Yeah.

[11:35] Jennifer Ashley Tepper: I also was, sidebar, I was really thinking about this last night, we were watching for Mother's Day, we watched Bye Bye Birdie, the Jason Alexander, Vanessa Williams one, and I was thinking so much about the great Mark Kudisch, who, you know, had just started out when he played Conrad Birdie, and how that's a role where it's like, yeah, like, everyone does Bye Bye Birdie, it's great. You get just like, the hottest guy in school to play that role, and it's, something is missing, and you get like, a hot actor who's a comedian, and you're like, oh wait, like, this role is so funny, and it's so much more than that, and I feel like that's something also that, I don't know, this song and Play the Princess address, the like, when we box in actors, no matter for what reason, like, we're missing things.

[12:12] Joe Iconis: Oh, always, always, and it's the, and it's a lot of times, it is the sort of replacement thing, right, and it's the like, yeah, there's gonna be 10 million productions of this show, and so we have to like, farm, we have to, you know, get them in the school to do whatever this first actor did, and it's something, I mean, this is, you know, touches on it, but it's something different.

[12:29] Joe Iconis: It's like, so many times, I feel like I'll see a revival of something, or, you know, whatever, or even like a community, like, I love Little Shop of Horrors, obviously, and it never ceases to amaze me how people cast Audrey in Little Shop, classically, and how it's always sort of like, it's like the, you know, it's that role very quickly turned into like, like, ditzy blonde, you know, it feels like that's like what the character description would say, based on how it is, how it is cast, just always, always, and that role is like, so not that, and Ellen Green, who created that role, is so not that, and it's so weird and specific, but it's just these things get distilled down to what someone puts on them, and all the edges get sanded off, and then it gets, yeah, it gets smoothed out to a type, and whether that type has any relation to the material or the original intention doesn't matter, because it's, you know, it's all out there, and it's all happening, but it's just so funny to see how all of that stuff, you know, kind of feeds itself.

[13:37] Jennifer Ashley Tepper: Related to all of this, I'm excited to see, like, I want to see The Actress perform, like, at Thespians, like, I am excited to see, like, you know, high schoolers or different people take on this song as well.

[13:45] Joe Iconis: I'm excited for more people to hear it.

[13:56] Jennifer Ashley Tepper: Yeah, me too, and perhaps they will. The Actress.

[14:01] Joe Iconis: Hey, thanks so much for listening or watching to my podcast. Do me a favor and go to wherever you just listen to or watch this thing, and subscribe, or like, or give us a great rating, or review, and then head to bpn.fm slash album to find out even more information about this podcast, more ways to watch, more ways to listen, and check out my album, Album.

[14:18] Joe Iconis: Thanks so much for hanging out. Album Podcast is executive produced by Liz Armstrong, produced by Dori Berenstein, Alan Seals, Kim Garris, and the rest of the team at the Broadway Podcast Network.

[14:28] Joe Iconis: Be sure to visit bpn.fm slash album for both audio and video versions of this podcast, and to listen to Album.