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[0:00] Martín Acuña: Hi, everyone. I am Martín Acuña and you are listening to Backstage Talk.

[0:19] Martín Acuña: Hello and welcome. Today, I am really excited about this interview.

[0:27] Martín Acuña: I met Julie through, well, I didn't meet her, actually. I just heard her and I listened to her comments on a group of Broadway geeks over at Clubhouse. Today, I have here with me Julie Garnyé. So, hey, Julie, how are you?

[0:45] Julie Garnyé: Hi, Martín. I'm fine. How are you?

[0:50] Martín Acuña: Everything is good. Everything is good.

[0:55] Julie Garnyé: Good. Good. Thanks for having me.

[0:58] Martín Acuña: No, thank you for being here. Like, it's amazing how, for me, it's amazing how social media can unite people across the world and across countries. So, it's so awesome to have you over.

[1:08] Julie Garnyé: I couldn't agree with you more. Thanks so much.

[1:11] Martín Acuña: So, Julie, I'll let you introduce yourself. Tell us a bit about you, about what you've done in the industry, about what you, yeah, your specialties in the entertainment industry.

[1:27] Julie Garnyé: Oh, gosh. Well, I think the key word in 2021 these days is a multi-hyphenate. Everyone's talking about being a multi-hyphenate and I've been a multi-hyphenate for a really long time. So, I am primarily a singer, an actor, a writer. I've written two pilots and I am currently about to publish a new book with a publishing company called Roman and Littlefield. We're publishing next year with my, I have a co-author for that book. So, that's my first book. I'm very excited about it. I'm a recording artist. I'm a producer. I'm also a technical producer. So, I produce events online virtually. I'm also a director. I've directed shows. I have written plays. What else can I tell you? I'm a chocolatier. I have my own chocolate company.

[2:28] Julie Garnyé: That's real, like for real. Yeah, that's for real.

[2:31] Martín Acuña: Oh, my God, that's awesome. I have a website that I sell my chocolate products on there. I make them myself. I have a team now. I have a team of employees that I've employed through the pandemic to help with them getting jobs because they didn't have jobs before. Actors that were out of work are now working for me for my chocolate company. So, I did that in the pandemic.

[2:55] Julie Garnyé: Oh, that's amazing.

[2:58] Julie Garnyé: Yeah. So, basically, I'm a performer first. Then, I have my production company for my virtual events. It's called Broken Wishbone Media. Then, I have my chocolate company, which is Pretty Pleased with Sugar. Then, I'm also a writer.

[3:15] Martín Acuña: Oh, my God. You have a lot of hats.

[3:19] Julie Garnyé: I'm really truly a multi-hyphenate. That's so awesome. I make a living in all of those things. Oh, I also am a teacher. I've been teaching voice for the last 16 years. So, I'm also a voice teacher. Actually, I started doing it virtually a number of years ago because I was on tour and I couldn't do it in my studio in Los Angeles anymore. So, I started teaching on Zoom a few years ago before Zoom became such a popular thing. I was using Zoom to teach voice. So, that's another thing that I do because I'm very passionate about the science of voice and the production of sound and the pedagogy of it. So, I've been studying voice for over 30 years and how humans make sound and how people sing and how the vocal cords come together to create those sounds.

[4:17] Martín Acuña: Wow. I'm starstruck. You do a lot of stuff. I love it.

[4:22] Julie Garnyé: Thanks. I really love it. So, you are a performer first, right?

[4:27] Julie Garnyé: I am, yes.

[4:29] Martín Acuña: How did you start in theater and in musical theater?

[4:34] Julie Garnyé: Wow. Well, my parents say that I was singing before I was speaking. I started singing at a very young age, three or four years old. I'm not quite sure. My earliest memory of music was my father putting me on the floor of our rug, our area rug in our family room and playing a reel-to-reel. I know you're probably too young to know what a reel-to-reel is, but a reel-to-reel recording of Richard Kiley singing Man of La Mancha, singing Impossible Dream. That's the first memory of music that I have is Richard Kiley singing Man of La Mancha. I've been singing ever since. I just thought it was the most brilliant recording and loved it so much. I began singing whenever a neighbor would come over to see my parents.

I would hop up on top of the table at four years old and start singing Donny and Marie songs or the Bee Gees. Anything I could think of that I could sing, I would sing for them. My first play was in the first grade. I went to Catholic school. We were doing the Passion Play. The role of Mary, the mother of Jesus, was the only role that had a solo song. A lot of the girls in my first grade class auditioned, and I got the part. I got to sing the big solo song in our play. I've been doing theater ever since then. I love it. Going back to the Man of La Mancha, full circle because you've done it. I love it.

[6:27] Julie Garnyé: Yeah, it was a dream role to get to play Aldonza. And I got to do it in Summerstock a few years ago at PCPA Theater Fest, which is a theater company here in California. They have an outdoor theater that seats, I think, about 2,000 people, maybe 1,500 people, but it's outdoors. So the beauty of that was that I got to do Man of La Mancha under the stars every night. It was magical. It was one of my career highlights, truly. I got to play opposite the man who played Don Quixote. His name was David Studwell, who actually just recently, right before the pandemic hit, was in the national tour of The Band's Visit. He's a very accomplished actor. He was my Don Quixote. Just to have him singing Impossible Dream to me every night under the stars, I'm getting a little bit teary-eyed just thinking about it because it was such a magical experience. I'm still very close friends with David. We talk all the time. I'll never forget getting to experience that under the stars.

[7:34] Julie Garnyé: It was magic. It was magic, yeah. To have that song, Impossible Dream, be the first song I remember hearing in my life, and then years later to get to do it at this beautiful theater company with this wonderful man under the stars was just, you know, heaven. Couldn't have asked for a better experience.

[8:01] Martín Acuña: I agree with you. That is one of the best memories you can have. And I mean, it's just like you just said, it's magical. It's taking out of a fairy tale.

[8:10] Julie Garnyé: Absolutely, absolutely. So before the pandemic hit, you were in the Come From Away tour, right? In the Broadway tour.

[8:16] Julie Garnyé: I was, yes. I was an original cast member of the first national tour.

[8:21] Martín Acuña: Talk to us a little bit about the touring experience.

[8:27] Julie Garnyé: Touring is amazing. Touring is wonderful. And especially touring with a show like Come From Away, which, you know, the whole premise of the show is about generosity and kindness and thinking of others and giving. So to, you know, our world was a little bit broken at that time, especially here in the United States. There was a lot of turmoil. There was a lot of animosity. It was hard. And so to be living in a state, in a country, in this state, and then to get to tour the country and say, no, wait, there's always kindness. You can always go back to good was so special. It was so special. Touring is interesting. You know, I'm a single person, so it wasn't as challenging for me as some other people who actually brought their whole families.

We had children on the tour with us. I brought my dog, you know, like our musical director, who was brilliant, Cynthia Westfall. She brought her whole family and her two sons were, you know, they turned teenagers. I believe they were became teenagers while on tour. They each turned 13, like thinks like one of them was 13 already. Anyway, they're around that age. And so they were homeschooling while on tour. So they were still doing school while we were, you know, doing shows. And it's just an amazing experience getting to, you know, fly around the country, seeing different communities, seeing different cities and experiencing the people in those cities and getting to, you know, provide this message of love and understanding and care throughout the country. It was in Canada, too. We toured through Canada as well. Again, another magical experience. It was a really, really beautiful time.

[10:26] Martín Acuña: I love it. And I've never toured, like, I mean, the longest run I've had with concerts, with music concerts has been like five days in a row. And each performance in a different city. But I mean, it must be so crazy and such a wild ride being on tour.

[10:51] Julie Garnyé: It really is. And depending on, you know, what city you were in would depend on how long you would stay. When we were in Los Angeles, we were here for six weeks. You know, the other cities, we were only there for a week. So it just depended on, you know, what the marketing team of the show thought that, you know, could sustain. But literally, I would say about ninety-nine point five percent of the cities that we went to, we sold out almost instantly. The show was so popular and got such great reviews that it was, you know, as soon as we would open in the city, we would be sold out. People would be, you have to see it. You have to see Come From Away. And so we were sold out pretty much across the board. And that was really special to be in a show that.

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[23:18] Julie Garnyé: To be involved, since this other actress could not be involved. But it was all the original players. It was Caitlin Hopkins, and Devin May, and Doug Storm, and Jim Price, and Trent Armand Kendall. It was all the original cast members. Carrie Butler was involved, how I met Carrie originally. All the original cast of Batboy, minus one person. And then they had a few other people come in. Me and Miguel Cervantes, who was most recently playing Hamilton on Broadway, and in Chicago. He did it in Chicago before the pandemic was doing it on Broadway. So it was really people starting out in their careers in New York, plus the people who originally did Batboy at the Union Square Theater. We did all the readings for the London production, just so that the London producers could hear the new material.

And the script that we developed as a cast in New York ended up going to London, and they did it in London. It was a huge hit in London. So we were all very proud to have been a small part of making that script work for the creators, so they could take it to London and have it be produced in London.

[24:35] Martín Acuña: That's wonderful. It's a wonderful story. In a quick nutshell, what is the best and the worst of being a musical theater performer for you?

[24:47] Julie Garnyé: The best for me is the people. I love the people I get to work with, and I'm not just talking about the celebrities. I'm talking about everybody. Everybody from the dressers and the people who run the turntable, the lighting people, everybody involved. I love working with the people. It's important to me, and I love building relationships with everybody that I get to work with. The worst part for me, honestly, is the downtime, the time where I don't get to be creative, the time where I'm not doing a show, the time where I'm not singing for a purpose. Especially during the pandemic, I know it's been very hard not just for me, but for other performers who don't have shows right now. It's been an interesting challenge to try to keep up that creativity in a time where there aren't auditions.

I even consider auditions to be fun now, because I get to be an actor on a Tuesday. Do you know what I mean? I get to sing songs that I normally wouldn't get to sing, and that might be my only chance to perform that week if I'm not in a show. So I embrace auditions. I embrace the chance to get to delve into material that I wouldn't normally get a chance to delve into. Even if I'm not booking the job, it doesn't matter. I get to play Madame Tenardier on a Thursday afternoon. Do you know what I'm saying? It's a gift to get to be an actor for an afternoon. So it's hard when I don't get to be, when I don't have something that I'm working on. That's the hardest part, I think. And I think a lot of people don't quite, a lot of what I call muggles, people who are not in the entertainment business, they don't quite understand what it's like to be constantly unemployed, to be constantly searching for a job, to be constantly auditioning, which means you're constantly going to job interviews.

I mean, I can't even imagine what people who don't do this business, how they wrap their heads around the fact that we're possibly doing a job interview two, three, four times a week. Where most people, they do a job interview, they get a job, they sit in that job 10, 20 years, some of them, some five years, and then they switch over to another job. For us, we're doing job interviews three, four times a week. And so that's the downtime of when you're not getting to be creative. That's the hardest part.

[27:25] Martín Acuña: And in that order of ideas, how have you stayed creative during the pandemic? Because it's been a year since COVID hit and we are starting to reactivate the industry, but we are far still.

[27:40] Julie Garnyé: Yeah, I do think we do have a ways to go. I don't know why I had the foresight when the pandemic hit. I instantly knew. My agent was still sending me auditions and so was my manager. And they said, theater will be back in April or June, just keep self-taping. And when things come back, I don't know why I immediately thought something's not right here. It's going to be a while. So I actually reached out to a friend of mine who works with YouTube. And I asked her if she could teach me everything that I could learn about creating my own content and producing events online and what pieces of software I needed to learn. And then I took some of my savings and also some of the stimulus check we were given by the government here in the United States.

And I invested in really high quality equipment. I bought a new computer. I bought a brand new microphone. I bought a vocal booth. I bought a lot of stuff and I spent a lot of money, but I believe that they were good investments because I immediately reached out to all of my composer friends, people that I had been doing readings with over the many years. And I said, listen, I'm available to do demos for you. If you have anything that you're writing that you want me to record, these are the things that I have. This is the computer that I use. This is the software that I'm using. This is my microphone setup. This is my vocal booth setup. And I immediately started getting work as a demo singer.

And then I immediately started getting work as a virtual online event producer. And so I've been, you know, through my media company, I have been doing a lot of talk shows on YouTube, on Facebook. And I've been producing concerts for the Actors Fund. I've been producing concerts for theater company, theater companies like the Musical Theater Guild here in Los Angeles. And I've been working consistently in a creative way since day one of the pandemic because I chose to learn how to pivot, how to adapt and how to do other things that are creative. I've also since gotten a record deal during the pandemic. So I've been recording my first album. We released a single in November. Again, because I have the professional setup at home, I can record at home.

And I know a lot of other musicians have done the same thing. So I would contact people like Eleanor Norton, who's my cellist, or Todd Reynolds, who's my violin player, or Matt Fields, who's my bass player, who lives in New Zealand now, who's, you know, staying in during the pandemic in New Zealand and contacting them and saying, hey, can you lay down a track for me? Here's some music that an arranger has written for us. Can you lay down this track? And then I would record the vocal to that track, send it off to my record label in Nashville, and they will mix and master it and create a song from that. So we recorded our first single and released it in November of last year. We have two more coming out that we're working on right now.

One specifically that I'm working with, this is kind of an exclusive, but I'm working on it with Stephen Schwartz. It's a brand new song with Stephen Schwartz. And we're very, very excited. He's extremely busy because he's working on the Wicked movie. He's working on a bunch of other projects. But the moment I brought this idea to him, he was like, 100%, we're doing this. He was so excited. And so it's really thrilling to us that, you know, later this year, I think, in the early summer months, hopefully, crossing our fingers that we can get everything done. But in the early summer months, we'll be releasing this new song. And we're very, very thrilled about it. So that's how I'm keeping creative.

You know, there's also, I get, like I said, this, I'm also I've become a chocolatier, and I've created this chocolate company. And I'm expressing myself through my food. And that was created also last November, right after the, right after the single was released, I wanted something different to do. I've been doing music, and I've been doing online producing and that kind of stuff. And I was like, I want to do something with my hands. I want to do something where I'm making stuff, right? I'm making stuff virtually, and I'm making music, but it's not something that someone can actually pick up or enjoy physically. And so I, you know, I, I wanted to start creating something that could be physically enjoyed by friends and family.

So I started to create my hot chocolate bombs, as we call them. And, and so I've been making hot cocoa bombs since November. And I think a lot of people have been making them, but mine are very, very different, the aesthetic of them, the look of them is different. And the quality of the ingredients that I use are extremely high. So that means that my cocoa bombs are a little bit pricier than other ones. But you're getting what you pay for, you're getting a very high quality guitar chocolate, you're getting Ghirardelli hot cocoa, you're getting sprinkles from Sprinkle Pop and from Sweet Tooth Fairy, you're not getting like, you know, kind of, you know, subpar ingredients or candy melts or anything that's just not gonna, you know, really bring quality to your cup of cocoa. So we're very proud of the product and people really, really love it. So, so we've been very busy with the chocolate as well. So that's why I'm keeping creative.

[33:25] Julie Garnyé: And then on top of all of that, right, is the book that I've been working on for the last three years. It's called The Stage Actor's Handbook. And it delves into protocols, etiquette, tradition, and superstitions of the theatre professional. And there's no book that's ever been written like this before. And my co-author, actor, Michael Kostroff, who you might know from his five seasons on The Wire, or most recently on HBO's The Plot Against America. He's a prolific actor. He's been seen regularly on Law & Order, SVU, and many other television shows. He's an incredible character actor, but he's also very dedicated to the traditions and the respect of the theatre professional and what we have as our legend and as our tradition.

And so he and I got together about three years ago and started writing this book. And a couple weeks ago, we signed a deal with a very, very highly respected publisher, Roman and Littlefield, and they're going to be publishing The Stage Actor's Handbook in April, I think April or May of 2022. And we're very excited about it. We have incredible contributors to the book, you know, theatre legends who are adding to what we've already written. And it's

[35:58] Julie Garnyé: Accomplish things during this time. And everyone for many, many years, people have been saying, you need to create your own stuff. And I have not had the time to do it because I've been on tour, or I've been doing shows, or I've been teaching, both at the university level or privately in my own vocal studio. And I've never really had the time. And when the pandemic hit, I thought, well, gosh, there's no excuse now, is there? Like, you've got to make this time worth it. You've got to take advantage of this downtime where I don't have to audition for anything. And I don't have to, you know, go to the gym every day because I can't go to the gym every day, right? Like, I can't. There are so many things that are time-consuming.

You know, when you're living in Los Angeles and you have to go to an audition, you do have to block out a specific amount of time because there's traffic. There's getting your face done and getting your hair did and, you know, picking the right outfit and learning your sides and coaching with a coach and learning the new songs or whatever it is you have to do. That all takes so much time. And then you've got to get in your car and it takes an hour to get to wherever you're going. And then you've got to wait and then you've got to audition and then another hour to get back home. You're investing in what could possibly be six to eight to ten hours of time just for a single audition. And when you have multiple auditions in a week, that's a lot of time.

And when you book a job, it takes time for you to learn your material, to rehearse the material, to be on set or be in a rehearsal for a musical theater process. That all takes time. And then it also is mentally taxing, right? So you've got to have your downtime. You've got to sleep. You've got to eat. You've got to shower. You've got to walk your dog. You've got life things that have to happen. And then when you're teaching on top of that, when do you find time to create your own content? You know what I'm saying? There's no time to create a web series. There's only 24 hours in a day and you've got to sleep. So you've got to maintain your own personal health on top of that. So when the pandemic hit, I knew I had no longer had excuses to make things happen.

And so I made a list of things that I really wanted to create of my own. You know, I'd had ideas for doing two different pilots. So I started writing scripts because I knew this was the time to write. This was the time to create stuff I'd only ever had. You can't have something happen when it's just in your head. You know, you've got to put it on paper. You've got to pitch it to people. You've got to learn how to use the software. You've got to buy the hardware to make it happen. And I knew the pandemic would be the time to do it. And so that's why the moment it happened, I thought this might be three months, like people are saying, or it might be three years. We don't know. But if I don't get to start the ball rolling, if I don't start the ball rolling now, it's never going to happen. I'm going to end up lying in bed all day long watching Netflix. And as appealing as that is, I didn't want to look back a year later and regret the time that I'd wasted.

[39:24] Martín Acuña: That's amazing. And I love that you've kept yourself busy. Wow. You just said a lot of stuff. It's amazing. I'm really excited about your book. I'm really excited about your album. Where can people find more about you, your website, or book a private class with you right now?

[39:48] Julie Garnyé: Absolutely. So if you want to study voice with me, I'm doing it virtually. So I've got students now all over the world, and I'm very happy to teach voice to you if that's something you're interested in. You can do that by going to my website, which is www.juliegarnier.com. Garnyé is not spelled the French way. It's spelled differently. It's G-A-R-N-Y-E. So that's how you spell Garnyé. So you can go to juliegarnier.com and just email me directly from the website. I get every email coming directly to me. If not, my assistant will send them to me. And I'm happy to book a private coaching session with you, whether it be technique, which is what my specialty is, or if you want to help with building your repertoire or coaching a song for acting with musical theater, I'm happy to do that too.

If you are interested in my cocoa bombs, you can go to that website, which is prettypleasedwithsugar.com. I do ship those cocoa bombs. I'm not shipping internationally just yet, unless you're willing to pay those postage prices. If you are, I'm happy to ship internationally, but it is kind of pricey to ship them because they're a little bit heavy, but they keep and we don't need ice packs or anything for those. So I'm happy to ship if you're willing to pay the cost of the shipping. As far as the book is concerned, we don't have a website up just yet because we haven't published the book, but if you'd like to get more updates on the book, we do have an Instagram account. That Instagram is the stage actors handbook.

That is the handle. So you can just go to Instagram and follow us at the stage actors handbook. And as we get things going with the book, we'll have updates on that Instagram handle, and we will also be publishing a website. So we'll announce when that website is published. And then on social media, I'm very active on social media, pretty much across the board, Instagram, Twitter, clubhouse, TikTok. My handle is just my first and last name pushed smushed together. It's Julie Garnyé. On Facebook, my handle is official Julie Garnyé. So you can find me on Facebook there. My other Facebook page is private for my family and friends. So I leave that one separate, just so I have some privacy on my socials, but my public Facebook official Julie Garnyé, and then everything else is just Julie Garnyé.

You can follow me everywhere. And my DMs are open. So I'm very accessible. If you want to talk to me about vocal lessons or the book or any producing that I do for Broken Wishbone Media, you can just DM me or email me through my website or yeah.

[45:52] Martín Acuña: Awesome. Julie, thank you so much for being here, for coming over, for sharing your incredible experience with us. I have one last surprise question for you.

[46:06] Julie Garnyé: Oh, okay. Top five favorite musical theater shows.

[46:13] Julie Garnyé: Oh, good question. Okay, here we go. Number one is a tie because one of them is just my favorite show. I could listen to this cast recording or do this show. I've done the show a number of times and I could do it over and over and over again and never get sick of it. But the other show I've never done, it's my dream to do the show, but it's a sentimental show to me. It just means so much to me. And my favorite song in musical theater is in this show. So my favorite shows are Les Misérables, which I've done multiple times, and it is absolutely one of the best shows I think ever written. And then my tie for number one is Sunday in the Park with George because the song "Move On" is probably my favorite song in musical theater ever.

I just think it's the most perfect song Sondheim has ever written. He might disagree, but I don't know what he feels about that song. I really don't, but I just think it's perfection. Number two, favorite show, probably Sweeney Todd. I think it's so beautifully written. It's probably his best written show structurally, I think. Number three, probably Ragtime. I think Flaherty and Ahrens are geniuses, but that show in particular, I just, that opening sequence, that 10-minute opening sequence, I just, and then "Back to Before," that song "Back to Before" is so beautiful. Number four, probably The Secret Garden. It's just something beautiful about that score and that story and the way it was performed.

I just, I love that show so much. Number five, last one. I don't know a number five. I mean, I have named five shows, so technically I've fulfilled my five. Number five, gosh, I don't know. Maybe a sentimental favorite might be Man of La Mancha maybe, maybe Man of La Mancha, that or The Music Man. I love The Music Man. So if we want to like pick a classic, like a traditional musical theater classic favorite, either La Mancha or Music Man would be in my top five. That's like seven. But I love it.

[46:56] Martín Acuña: I love it, Julie. Thank you so much. It's been a real pleasure. I wish you all the success on your upcoming projects. And let's do this again sometime soon.

[47:05] Julie Garnyé: Anytime you want, Martín, you're a wonderful interviewer and I'm just, you know, grateful that you asked me to do this. So yeah, this is really fun.