Unknown Speaker 0:00

Here we go, Sheri. Let Sheri Baby rock your soul.

Speaker 1 0:06

She's gonna help you break the mold.

Speaker 1 0:19

Spirituality, COVID, sexuality, quality time on the air quality, time on the air quality, time on the air with Sheri. Cause any fact,

Speaker 2 0:31

hi, it's Sheri. I haven't been here for like, four years. It's really, really weird. I live in New Haven right now, and there's a great theater company called fuse theater of Connecticut, and we're doing a production of assassins. And so I'm really excited, because I'm playing Sarah Jane Moore. I brought my cast mates, and as I'm coming back into the fold with all of this new information for you, I really wanted to make sure that I had voices that were young people that went to school for musical theater and can share the world of what the hell happened and what do we do now, I want to go a little bit back in time to, well, I can even go as far back as when I was a musical theater auditioner, which was, we didn't even have the internet, so ridiculous. But anyway, I would go to Astor Place. I would get a backstage a paper copy. I would circle auditions, call my coach, I would work on the audition material, and then I would show up, and it had all this anticipation in it, which was really exciting. So over the years that I was performing and auditioning, we got over populated with musical theater programs, right? So then it also became digital, right? So they could find out what was happening now and jump in with whatever you got. I have been focusing on pop music the whole time, making sure everybody understands all the styles of pop music, and that's how I was making my mark as a teacher. Then I kind of went, Well, what's next? What's after that? And immediately I went, Oh, wait a minute, we're gonna need to self tape for musical theater. I started noticing the movie musicals were happening again. I just noticed it, and they were doing it in all cool ways. Like, did you see Greece live? Yes. Well, sometimes they work and sometimes they don't, right. But anyway, I actually found the original document of the invitation of something that I went to in 2016 it was called performing in live broadcast musicals. This was a panel with Rob Ashford, Christian Noel Shanice Williams, who was Dorothy in The Wiz The Wiz live. This woman named Judean Somerville, who was in hairspray live. Rob Ashford, Sound of Music. Anyway, they were all talking about their experiences being on set, all of that stuff. I raised my hand in 2016 and I said, Okay, here's the deal. How did you get these jobs? Meaning, did you have a certain acting technique that you had that you were able to relay on camera that got you this part? Because how would they know? And I, because I'm interested, as a teacher in sort of evolving the art form and figuring out, is there a way that we can do this so that we can go, Look, I'm great on camera, right? And they looked at each other, right? Rob Ashford looked at Christian, and they looked at each other and, and I don't even remember who it was, but they said, You know what, you just have to get in the room. Yeah, that was the answer. You just have to get in the room. And when you're in the room, and they could see how talented you are, that's how you get the part. And I was like, Well, if you can't get in the room, and that was the thing for me is that I have a certain amount of fame, which means fucking nothing to me, but I still have enough to be able to get in the fucking room, and I can't get in the fucking room myself. So if I can't get in this room, what about all my friends who are all over the place who can't get in the room? And so I went, Oh, I got it, I'll do it. I'll figure it out. I'll figure out what the on camera technique is. So I chose to do that before the pandemic, because I knew it was coming. I knew it cram. This is Lou de Jesus, and they're my they're my peers in the show with me right now, and they both studied musical theater in college right before the pandemic, who first would like to share with me how you were trained in musical theater, and by the way, I'm sitting here with queer, non binary, right? People of color. I'm autistic. You know, we're all kind of coming from a lot of places already, right? So this doesn't even mean like, who we are in the world yet. Em, tell me everything. Hi,

Speaker 3 4:41

this is m. I studied ballet in high school, and then I went to Florida State University and received a Bachelor of Music degree in music theater because I wanted to be well rounded before pursuing a career as a dancer, singer, musical theater person.

Unknown Speaker 4:59

And yeah,

Speaker 2 5:00

and I love that you say that, because for all the years that we've been in the industry, we always had a sort of mark. We were a dancer who sang and acted, where we were a singer who could move like it was always and then it was like, either singing, acting or dancing, do were you raised like that? I feel like, can't we not organize them in that way? But oh, yeah,

Unknown Speaker 5:19

totally. I

Speaker 3 5:20

mean, I agree. I think that, like letting kids find themselves in an undergraduate program is really important, and not putting labels on them, like whatever type of labels, is really important, and giving them a variety of experiences to try so that they can kind of label themselves if they want to or not, I

Unknown Speaker 5:38

agree that. I

Speaker 3 5:39

think leaving that open ended is important. Think I spent a good while thinking I was one person that college told me I was, and then, yeah, he slowly kind of unraveled that interesting

Speaker 2 5:51

like, that's the whole point here. You were told you were something in college that would give you a way to sort of organize your audition life and keep track of yourself and figure out what track you were on. And then it's having to leave college and unravel all of those things and, like, figure out who you really are, what your artistry means, and how you're going to use it. That happens after school for a lot of

Speaker 3 6:13

people, yeah, and I kind of wish that I had, that had happened in school, and I had, like, the space to experiment and not have to experiment, like in the audition room when you're trying to get a job, you know,

Speaker 2 6:26

like, and when you do that, you're not even experimenting. You just want to be like, liked, yeah

Unknown Speaker 6:30

or right, yeah.

Speaker 2 6:31

We met at your school. Did you like being in a musical theater program? I loved

Unknown Speaker 6:36

being in a musical theater program. Absolutely, I'm someone who

Speaker 4 6:42

I couldn't see a place where I wasn't in a musical,

Unknown Speaker 6:47

like it was all around you.

Speaker 4 6:51

And I was that girl too, where it was like, if everybody got into one, like, I'm going to get an acting coach and take voice lessons on the side, and yes, work six jobs, and like, until one, and because that was the big thing too, is I thought I had to go to

Speaker 2 7:06

one right, that you had to right, that you wouldn't get anywhere without this training that you could only get from a school, which is so wild because I, I've worked with all of the schools, and I'm like, it's actually, it's much different than this. There are certain things you get, like, I think you learn how to be how to be with other people, like you learn about yourself. I think that's

Speaker 4 7:26

probably what I'm the most grateful. Yeah, I always, you know, tell my partner, it's, it's like a reality show without the camera. It's like real you're being judged. You're, you know, you're all eyes on you, sleeping, using the bathroom, together, partying together. On the weekends, there's classes typically are together, because classes stay small, right? And that's your family. And I'll say, like, I wouldn't trade that for the world. There's i My phone is buzzing now with people, yeah, to school with that. I love it for anything. And to me, I

Unknown Speaker 8:00

think that's what kept me there for Yeah, community.

Speaker 4 8:03

What kept me there as long as I was there, you know, was the Yeah, I loved the craft and doing what I was doing. But it was those relationships. It was those people absolutely,

Speaker 2 8:12

did you really feel frustrated when the things that you learned at school that set you up for the theater industry completely got demolished during the pandemic. Do you feel like, wait a minute, I didn't get trained to be on camera. I got trained to be in person, right? And

Unknown Speaker 8:31

that's something that I I always say, I am

Speaker 4 8:34

I'm not a camera talent. I am a live talent. I am the I'm like, like theater personality. Hire.

Speaker 2 8:39

You are. Well, you're an entertainment personality. You're live like, I

Speaker 4 8:43

just feel as though, like, when I'm by myself with a camera in a room and I'm in my head and it's just me, it's like,

Unknown Speaker 8:50

I almost lose my mojo. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 8:53

It's trouble, that energy, oh yeah, you need to get something back in the room. Oh yeah, oh yeah. And, and I'm so excited to speak on that because, like, that's going to be a thrill ride. I have a an answer for that that solves that issue, but it's true. That's how we were trained to be a vibe person with other people, um, and it's awful, because it went from us auditioning for people who are sitting at a table watching us right, to have people sitting in their pajamas on their couches watching us, right? We lost the in person energy connection. We lost it, and that traumatized all my teacher friends and all my friends, all by everybody. Because How will people, how could people know what I'm like on camera, particularly because none of the training give you any information about that and that that's because they didn't. We didn't know that we were gonna need it. I knew because part of being autistic is I'm psychic, right? And I was like, did anybody talk about self taping? Probably not at all, because it was way soon. Was talked about, was it talked about with sides only, maybe for commercial copy, that kind of thing, because you'll be doing movies, television, potentially, right, but you didn't like sing on camera.

Speaker 4 10:10

Well, my school in particular, I will say Western Connecticut, was good about they really wanted us to work. They really, yeah, they absolutely, really, really wanted us to work. And they did want us to check really, really well. And westcon often would have schools come in and would audition for summer stocks. A lot of times those callbacks would be done virtually. Oh, so you were

Speaker 2 10:35

already using zoom and already using some now we weren't zooming, yeah, yeah, that's a whole other thing. Yeah, um, but no, you were. Maybe there was Skype, or there was something that we were using that was digital. I was able to book

Speaker 4 10:50

jobs on my vertical forward camera, facing iPhone, like, in my dorm room, like, with my hand on my hip and, like, a cute little backwards hat, and being like, summer stock, big, B, that's

Unknown Speaker 11:01

really fun. And what year was that? That

Speaker 4 11:03

was, what? 2017,

Speaker 2 11:07

18. Okay, great. So this is exactly the sweet spot I'm talking about, like, right before it all shifted. So there were some conversations about it, but we didn't really know that it was the new sandbox that we'd been working in. We knew they actually had you putting your material on tape. Yeah, that's fabulous. They didn't like tell us how to oh no, no, no, no. But you were being put on camera and you were being submitted on camera. So this already, like, makes me very happy. That meant that at that point, both of your schools were conscious enough to know that part of the audition process was putting you on camera and submitting dance videos, singing, just being there's being a documented thing to send, and that was where we left. That was almost like where we left it. I've been in the business for 30 years. I've been auditioning for 30 years, so I think it's really, really fun. And I took the self taping thing as a really great opportunity for me to play. I started to see and it really started during the pandemic, people struggling with self taping, and then that showing up on social media, and our need to make self tapes and our need to put ourselves on social media in order to feel relevant and not still knowing how to make self tapes. And so by the time the pandemic happened, you either came in and you had it or you didn't, and we stopped taking time to nurture it out of people or build stars, or make stars or find stars. That stopped that was from my generation. I was one of those people like, Thank God our

Speaker 4 12:43

generation is very much like, well, no one's special. And especially, like, going into a BFA program, where a lot of times you were, I always use the analogy of like, you were the shark in the pond before in high school, and then you get into this BFA program, and you're a little Guppy

Unknown Speaker 12:59

again. You know,

Speaker 2 13:01

I've watched a lot of my peers struggle on social media, making really, really awful videos and then really saying kind of crappy things along with those awful videos, because they don't even know what to say about them, because they know they're not really great, but they know that they have to make content. And so somebody might say, you know, oh, I hope to play this role someday. Tags, Hell's Kitchen, whatever it gets. I'm like Beetlejuice, please. No, truly, because we're desperate, right? So look, and it's true. But what if there's a world where we don't have to say that, and our video is so fucking great that somebody from Beetlejuice gets sent your video? This is my thought. I went back in time and I thought, all right, well, where did the whole self taping thing start, even in the first place, like, when were we first on camera for auditioning? Right away, it was the MGM Studios and the screen tests, because the movie original sound of music, the original movie musicals, that's what they did. They put people on the set and had them perform and to see what they look like on camera. It was what they did. Can I replicate that on camera and have that be my audition rather than singing it in a musical theater way to the left of the camera? So that's retest. Now I want to keep going in the self taping department. Okay, now we're going to where we were really doing self taping. We were going in person to do commercials and and film and television. Okay, this is when we were actually going to audition studios and being put on tape. And that was, I wouldn't call that self taping, but I would call that taping. We were still on set. We weren't sending in tapes when we were started to send in tapes where they would be in the 80s, they would be like Bernadette. Bernadette Peters, we, you're in LA and we need, we're auditioning you in London for your nose. Tell me on a Sunday or whatever, you know, she was doing, um, you know, and she had to sing unexpected song, and had to put it on tape. She would put it on the V. HS tape, or whatever it's called, right? And mail it to Sir Lord Andrew Lloyd Webber and and those were very exclusive circumstances, right?

Speaker 4 15:11

Yeah, exclusive circumstances. Who has that tape?

Speaker 2 15:14

I want to know. Oh, my God, Michael, I don't know. I don't know the video tape. I don't know, but you can see where I'm going, right? It's just that and but other than that, we were going in person for only four commercials and film and television, there wasn't submissions, right? That did start to change with film and television before the pandemic, and we were working on sides as musical theater performers. We were doing sides in our classes, in auditions, because we had to read sides. We were going to be put on camera because it was happening. We just weren't singing musical theater material on camera enough for people to create, create or codify, a way to teach people how to do it. I think that people just didn't think it was ever gonna happen, because the preciousness of singing in person, right? There's just something, you know what? I mean, it just it. We didn't think it was gonna go there because we didn't know the pandemic was coming, right? We just didn't know. But so it made sense that we were working on tape. There were people who were doing scene work and all that stuff was very necessary. We were doing it in school. It was fine. Anyway. Ding dong, here comes the pandemic, and now we're all of a sudden, everybody's on Zoom. Now, I'd already been on Zoom Since 2015 and when we made that turn everybody and I mean, everybody was on camera, all of a sudden, right? We were talking to people on camera. We were on Tiktok, trying to connect to each other. That was on camera. But if we were at school, all of our classes were being adapted to being on cameras. We're dancing on camera. Everybody adapted. And we realized, okay, we could do it. But what ended up happening was the industry realized, oh, shit, if we ask people to submit videos, we could save 1000s of dollars in renting rooms and flying people out. That's where the state of it is is. Everybody has to do it. Everybody does some select lucky people don't. But on the most part, it's just what it is is that you do the first is self tape and then the second is the callback in person. That's just the new rule. Now I love it because it gives me complete command over my first experience, because I get nervous, and especially now that I am an unmasked autistic person. You know, I'm like, outwardly nervous I was able to get jobs just from the submission. And I'm like, oh shit, okay, now I really understand how I gotta show up in this acting jobs purely from digital submissions or from somebody coming to my social media and seeing video of me now they're saying, everybody self tapes. Everybody sends in a tape. What have you noticed from when you look at auditions that people are asking for, when they make a suggestion for a self tape, I've seen a bunch of different things. When they're saying, like, please send it the standard for sending in a self tape. Yo, what's the what's the standard you've seen? I

Speaker 4 18:19

typically see, you know, they want the blank background. Blank background. They want it in the horizontal mode, yep. Um, a lot of times they, and this is the kiss of death for me, a full body slate in a horizontal yep mode. Um,

Speaker 2 18:36

the only thing that has, it has a really narrowed down to, for me is people will either say short or under a minute, horizontal, the clean background, which I have an adaptation of, and make sure that the lighting and the sound is good. Those are the only rules that I've seen. And I'm a really, really big fan of following the rules and also finding out where are the loopholes. You know what I mean, that I can play, and that's where my personality comes out. For example, in the 50s and 60s, if I am on the Courtney Colin show or I'm on The Ed Sullivan Show, a horizontal camera is exactly what I would want to be looking at. If I'm looking into the camera and singing to the kids at home, yeah. Yeah, horizontal is perfect. So to me, it's making the equation between the simple things that they ask for and all the room you have. And what that brings me to is I want to mention a good friend of mine, a wonderful producer at Paper Mill Playhouse in the dirty jurors. Her name is Jen Bender, and she teaches with me at Steinhardt, and she has me come in and teach her business class at the beginning of the semester and teach everybody how to play on camera. And, you know, I opened up the conversation with her, and I said, you know, can you tell me a little bit about, you know, your part of the casting process? And she goes, Oh, I watch all the videos. And I said, Great. Eight. So what happens to you? She says, I see everybody in front of a blue screen singing to the left of the camera and having no sense of play. She said, every time anybody does, it always makes us stop and watch the whole video, and we know within the first handful of seconds whether they're gonna play or not. We know if they're playing by the old rules. We know if they're if they're going, there are no rules, and I'm gonna play and show you what my point of view on the world. Is the guy who makes the audition cuts with me on music notes. He's a music director. He watches all the videos when he auditions people, and he goes, I cannot tell you that when you know somebody knows what world they're in on camera immediately, this is how you are able to differentiate yourself. Giving more examples the 80s and MTV. We were selling records on MTV, the 80s are all over the top and melodramatic anyway, right? I mean, you think about the musicals of the 80s, right? The Wedding Singer, Rock of Ages. They're already saying, Give me an MTV Video, right? They're already saying that. So as long as you got a camera to seduce, seduce it, they want it. The idea is, can we not think of the camera as like, as somebody who doesn't understand this, but rather, the camera is somebody who's going no, sell me a record. Tell me all about you. I'm here with you. Take me out on the disco dance floor. Take me for a spin, whatever it is, the camera is a witness to you, and the moment you're in and you get to say, I am with this camera and this music. Now, I'm not in an audition room. I'm actually on television and so this is my stage to screen adaptation Tiktok videos. You know, it's so interesting that we've been on camera making Tiktok videos and making, you know, an entire space for everybody to express themselves in all of the ways that Tiktok does. And I remember that was teaching a student, and she just couldn't pop like she was not showing up in her material. And I said, Oh, cool. Okay, can you do it like you're making a Tiktok video? And she was like, what? And she popped in and made the most incredible video incredible. So because she was raised on Tiktok as how I put myself in the world. So to me, they're not separate. They can't be separate anymore. We just have to turn it from vertical to horizontal and figure out what the horizontal interpretation of that is. Does that make sense? The freedom that we have to just do what we want now we can know, oh, my god, well, now I have a captive audience there. So what I love is that these videos can become almost like parts of you. Did both of you make websites? Yes. Yes. So I find websites to be obsolete. I think that Instagram, Instagram is a new website. Okay, Instagram is a new website. It's just what it is. I will negotiate with teachers sometimes and go, all right, if you need them to have a website, just have them have a page that clicks to Instagram, but just like, hello, here's me, and a little bit about me, and find me on Instagram. But anyway, I'm just want to just bring you to Instagram, okay? And I'm gonna go ahead and say that I just don't love social media. I love tick tock because I love learning about people. Oh, my God, have I learned everything? One of the things that I had always taught everybody is that you think of yourself as a house. Welcome to my house. I have a Motown room, and you open it up, and everybody's dancing, and there's people slow dancing and making out, right? And it feels like a record shop, right? And and then you open up the Sondheim room, right? There's plants and all of it, right? That people are high at listening to music, you know, and that's sometimes room, right? But that we each room is like a different part of us, right, that we could share with people, and it's been decorated with things that make us feel like we understand what that means to us, right? Different rooms. So I've always thought that the living room is, you know, hip hop and R and B, right? It just feels correct to that. So, and we make our own house, we invite people into our house. And so what Instagram is in a sort of, in a similar way, we're saying, hey, I want to show you a video of this part of my house. And that video could be an audition cut size lived fully, you know how, before the pandemic, but the eight bar cut thing came along, which is like, and then people would just scream for eight bars. What it really means is 15 to 20 seconds, right? But you have to find a you have to give them a little tiny story, a. Little 22nd story. So what if we took eight bar cuts and put them in country and put them in a moment, and put ourselves in these little habitats, in these moments, and lived these rather than putting ourselves in front of the blue thing and then putting it online and going and apologizing the whole time. I call them disclaimers. I gotta give you a disclaimer. I I'm just getting over a throat infection, all the songs that I wish I could sing, all the roles I wish I could play, part one, like no no stop the car. I don't want to know any of that. I don't that's, that's the career. What I want to see is little bites of your artistry, little bitty bits and bites of all the wonderful things that you could do. So we can go, oh my god, that was delicious. What else do they have here on the menu? Oh my god, they also do that. You know what I mean. We've always been on camera. We've always been on camera in the disco era. We were on Soul Train. We knew we had a camera on us, and we worked with it, we played with it, we engaged with it. And so now we have all of these ways and all these relationships to have with the camera, because the camera is a captive audience. We get to look at every single song and go, Well, what would you like to do together? I'll look out the window and miss you, because if the camera captures that, that's the same thing as a camera capturing you in a room, but so much more intimate, and it's simple. It's with a plain background. You're sitting by the window in a chair that's perfectly plain, what we've always been doing, and then just put the cousins together that never met. What

Unknown Speaker 26:39

do you think of what I'm saying? I love it, yeah, does it mean?

Unknown Speaker 26:44

It makes so much sense? I

Speaker 2 26:45

It grounds us in a point of view. Yeah, that's what I think it does. That's exactly what based on history, based on reality, what time period is in you get to put a little outfit on that is your in your closet. Yeah? That, I

Speaker 4 27:00

think also it puts you, like you said, it's the world you would want to create, the world. It puts you in the world. And I think that that's what auditioning is, is, can you sell us the world? Because, you know, then you get a type. And for me, I think that, sure, type is a thing, but ultimately what matters is, can you sell us the world? Yes, exactly. Can

Unknown Speaker 27:20

you live in the world? Sell me you in the world?

Speaker 2 27:23

Exactly, can you transport us into the world with a hint of this and a hint of that on camera? And the reason why it's so liberating to me is that in the room, we were limited. We were in the room actually, I felt like we were limited to the world we could create. I could pretend to pick up my address and act as if I had things to do. You know, we could but now we can actually use a martini glass. We could actually use real we could sit outside under a tree and sing a folk song. And that feels right, right? It feels better than being in front of the blue thing and looking to the left of the camera, or just looking into the camera, not knowing that the camera is actually like a friend listening, or maybe, if God is exists, are they hearing you right now, it could be a fly on the wall. It could be any relate, and you get to tell us what relationship it is based upon how you relate. And there's this whole world, and no one has been able to tell you, because how could they have told you something? First of all, that was a clearly mind to figure out, but it was just the chaos of the world. There was no way that they could tell you, but it is what they love you, popping with reality, yeah, popping with the with the truth, and just catching it in a moment. And I, I don't want it to be busy. I don't want you to be clever. I want you to go deep to what feels real and

Speaker 4 29:00

then catch the moment other side of it too, as actors, when we self tape and, you know, we don't have the martini glass, so we don't have the right, you know, worlds created around us physically, and then you get on yourself of like, Oh, I'm a shit performer, and I'm bad at what I do, because I can't invent this for myself right here, right now. So, and

Speaker 2 29:19

I'm really glad you said that, because that because that was literally the greatest segue into the like, the most profound thing that I've learned in this new way of studying that I'm finding is that I have us rehearse our material, whether we're making a self tape or we're showing up in person, rehearse it on camera and do the on camera version first, so it becomes completely and fully realized in you. So you rehearse it on camera, right? You set up the scene, get in your outfit, rehearse try something. Have an impulse on camera. Watch it. Don't go, Oh my god. The bags under my eyes are my. Always go, okay, that entrance is great. I'm gonna actually come in from the left of the camera, and I'm gonna be like, Oh, is that you? You know what I mean? I'm gonna create a scene and use the the dynamics in the frame, and I'm gonna create a scenario. I'm gonna practice the scenario, I'm gonna nail the scenario, and I'm just gonna start recording, and I have narrowed it down to doing things in one take and then with a safety, one rehearsal, one take, one safety. That's three takes. 123, God bless. No, it happens with everybody when this gets figured out. Because when you don't know who the camera is, how are you gonna know how to come alive? And that's why you feel like, oh my god, I'm literally like, in a brick wall. It's like, oh my god, you don't know you're selling yourself to an audience at home, yet that's all right, then, oh, boy, are you selling a record because we did it. You just have a new audience where you thought you had no audience. So what I'm saying is, is that they're all connected. I'm just sitting here enthralled to help connect the dots with you. The reason why your teachers didn't teach you is just because it wasn't what was happening yet, and now we're here, and it's what's expected, and everybody's trying to figure it out, and I'm just codifying it because it's just common sense to me, because it's just the truth, and really, the truth will always set you free.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai