This transcript was automatically generated and might contain errors.

[0:00] Dan Tracy: Well, I guess welcome to Guys Who Like Musicals.

[0:02] Joe Carroll: Welcome to Guys Who Like Musicals.

[0:04] Dan Tracy: Here we are. Welcome back to Guys Who Like Musicals, Mike Ruckles.

[0:08] Mike Ruckles: Oh my gosh.

[0:08] Dan Tracy: I think our first repeat offender?

[0:12] Joe Carroll: Rip repeating.

[0:14] Dan Tracy: Will Burton came on and talked to us. He's been back.

[0:17] Joe Carroll: Our second repeat of the floor.

[0:19] Dan Tracy: I was gonna say I can't be the only one. The first time we gave you gave away all of your secrets and helped Dan and I immensely. And now you're back to give away more of your secrets for free.

[0:32] Mike Ruckles: Um, which I don't totally understand, but I guess it isn't paid.

[0:38] Dan Tracy: No, no, it's not.

[0:40] Joe Carroll: It's most certainly not, and it's not even we haven't been paid.

[0:44] Dan Tracy: So an actor is saying his lines, and then out of nowhere, he just starts singing "Don't Cry for Me."

[1:11] Joe Carroll: Joe has a fancy job now. So, um, you know, that Marvel movie he was talking about on the Ben Sands episode. Turns out he booked it.

[1:19] Dan Tracy: Turns out so, uh, Joe's gonna be the next um Spider-Man villain.

[1:23] Joe Carroll: Love it.

[1:24] Dan Tracy: So very exciting stuff happening here in the nice hot next world. Uh, the next uh slightly chubby uh bearded uh Spider-Man villain.

[1:33] Dan Tracy: Um, I want to take a second. Sorry, Mike. Excuse me for one moment. Please. I have to I spend a lot of time talking shit about my friend Joe and how he's not talented or attractive.

[1:45] Joe Carroll: Both of those things are true.

[1:47] Dan Tracy: However, he has duped them yet again. We've doomed them. And he has checked a box, which was very much on his list of dreams, and he has made it come true, and I'm very excited and proud of him.

[2:00] Dan Tracy: So stay tuned for that. Hopefully he gets a fancy deadline announcement. But if he doesn't, I will be that for him. And you will all know when I'm allowed to tell you what it is. But we're very excited for him. He's on location right now, so it's very exciting stuff. Stay tuned.

[2:17] Joe Carroll: I'm in a I'm I'm quarantining in a hotel room in Toronto, which is vaccinated. Even though vaccinated. The poor Canadians, man, we don't have to get into it too much, but it does feel like it feels like the fall of last year in the States up here.

[2:30] Joe Carroll: Like they are the cases are still super high.

[2:35] Dan Tracy: Yeah, it's really like the testing is insane.

[2:38] Joe Carroll: The quarantining is really strict. So man, we just people are still it's still tough everywhere. But I'm I'm in a hotel room for 14 days and going a little going a little nuts. But uh I'm really excited to talk to Mike Ruckles.

[2:54] Dan Tracy: So that's what that's how this is the most exciting thing I'm gonna do all day, and then I'm just gonna lay in bed and watch reruns of reruns of the PGA championship.

[3:02] Mike Ruckles: So um oh god, well if and the big change since last I was on is that you guys are so fancy now on the Broadway Podcast Network.

[3:12] Dan Tracy: Yes, I mean sweet yes. Uh we've we've grown up we've grown up a little bit.

[3:17] Joe Carroll: Yes, we run ads now, we run ads now.

[3:20] Dan Tracy: Even more exciting than Joe's news, I would say.

[3:23] Mike Ruckles: Yeah, yeah.

[3:24] Dan Tracy: I would say too the BPN, come on.

[3:27] Joe Carroll: Yeah, can I just say something about this for a second? Because my mom is probably our number one fan, you know.

[3:33] Dan Tracy: Dan's mom is the number one fan.

[3:34] Joe Carroll: We no, my mom doesn't listen anymore, so she's she's over it. Um there there's something that happens, Dan. You know this, but but my mom was like, Well, this is crazy. So she got an ad from a couple weeks ago on our show from something from West Michigan.

[3:51] Joe Carroll: It was like it was like a very targeted, like, you know, uh this it was this company in West Michigan that like everybody know you know knows about or whatever. She's like, how did how did this company advertise on your show? That's so cool. And I was like, Well, no, mom, the ads are targeted based on like where you are and your likes and what you listen to and blah blah blah blah blah.

[4:11] Dan Tracy: So if you're getting ads on our show that are specific to your region of the country, we are not this it's all auto-generated, I guess. Is that how that works, Dan?

[4:21] Dan Tracy: Yeah, it's it's um rotational auto-targeting. So it instead of us reading some kind of like general ad for everyone, which we did have for a little while. Yeah, um, they're just kind of sending it out to the ether and companies like Google and Facebook and those businesses have made most of their money off of that kind of technology.

[4:42] Joe Carroll: Right, right. It's cool to see it incorporated into radio instead of you know, digital radio and stuff.

[4:48] Mike Ruckles: Well still when I when I listen back to our show, it's mostly it's mostly uh different types of booze.

[4:54] Joe Carroll: Yeah, exactly.

[4:55] Mike Ruckles: Mine was like a Bud Light ad, like Bud Light Platinum. That's like great.

[5:00] Joe Carroll: Oh no.

[5:01] Mike Ruckles: Oh no. Well, here, uh the last time you're on here, Mike, I I talked about my affinity for mac and cheese caffeine and liquor.

[5:08] Joe Carroll: So um I still it's still um I still love all those things very much.

[5:12] Mike Ruckles: Good. I'm glad you do. We uh uh definitely trying to do less of it. Uh, we're trying now. We you came to us, we're gonna get to it. Uh, about wanted to come on and talk about Broadway reopening. And what the what we can do as singers to get back in shape, to, you know, put ourselves put our the best version of ourselves forward.

[5:35] Dan Tracy: And I'm fascinated with this. I want to know like what what's the secret? What do you what are you teaching? What's going on right now to get people back and and ready for the big grand reopening?

[5:46] Mike Ruckles: Well, you know, I would say that my my thesis statement for your listeners today would be that um whether you are returning to your Broadway gig, whether you are going to a regional theater, whether you are simply anticipating jumping back into that crazy audition grind, you are a vocal athlete. And for the past year and a half, you what I would love for you to think about it as you've been in the off-season, a long protracted off-season. And now we're entering into maybe we've even begun what I would consider your preseason.

[6:22] Mike Ruckles: So if you are I'm running into a lot of actors who are thinking, hey, yeah, I'll use the rehearsal process to wake up my body, wake up my voice, get back in shape, would be a little bit like a football player going, first day of practice, um, I'll wake things up, right? My body will remember. And of course, that's setting yourself up for some real injury and if n, you know, the very least, incredible fatigue. So what I'm encouraging people to do right now is to really think like the vocal athlete that they are, and you know, kind of plan out ahead, maybe eight to ten weeks as an athlete would during preseason and go, okay, so how can I gradually increase my work from next to nothing back to fully performing my show again?

[7:09] Mike Ruckles: And in the athletic world, we talk about the rule of 10% generally being a good one across the board. So building that whether we want to say dose and load, uh maybe week by week, adding 10% on. So maybe the first week, you begin with just some um, you guys know the term semi-occluded vocal tract, but for your for your uh your listeners, these are humming, lip trills, tongue trills, ng, buzzing a straw, all those sounds that are exercising. You love the straw, we love the straw. Uh building up back pressure, right? These sounds that are not fully open. Maybe that's all you do the first week. You just do some easy sirens, you're waking up the instrument, you're stretching it out, you're looking for full range of motion.

Uh, and then the following week, maybe you add an easy song from your book or one of the easier songs you sing in your show, right? At the end of that 10-15-minute warm-up, right? And then the next week you add something. So you just continue to add on. Maybe you have uh a lesson or a coaching scheduled once a week. Um, you begin to add on gradually bit by bit, so that by the time you arrive back at um that rehearsal process that's beginning for you, or auditions are are hot and heavy and underway, that you have built gradually up to that, and that it is not a shock to your system, right?

[8:38] Dan Tracy: Totally. That would be that's what I'm here to preach.

[8:41] Joe Carroll: So so me sitting in my car on the way to showings screlting "Soul of a Man" is not what I should be doing. So I should stop that.

[8:48] Mike Ruckles: Yeah, yeah.

[8:51] Joe Carroll: Gotcha.

[8:52] Mike Ruckles: I guess it depends, it depends on how you set that up.

[8:56] Joe Carroll: Sure, sure, sure.

[8:57] Mike Ruckles: Yeah, screaming, screaming rocks in while driving down the highway after not singing for a year might be not the way to do it.

[9:05] Dan Tracy: Exactly right.

[9:06] Mike Ruckles: Exactly right. So the big thing that we all kind of need to know right now is that our body has undergone in our larynx and in our and our vocal instrument as a whole, uh, has undergone uh a real deconditioning over the past year and a half, right? And that's okay. Um of the things that that I and my associate teachers talked about, um, three wonderful associate teachers, I I need to shout them out. Um, in one of our workshops that we did, you know, this this pandemic was about trying to keep information flowing to students even though their finances were slowed to nothing, right? Trying to make the training and the information still accessible. And one of the things we talked about is that the research shows us that, you know, after about five to seven days of not singing, if you were to simply, you know, not sing, not in the shower, not anywhere, we begin to see that at that point there's some slowing, there's some deconditioning that goes underway, both on a muscular level, but also on a neural pathway level.

[10:11] Mike Ruckles: So we start to unlearn in some ways. So being quiet is great. We love vocal rest, but some people would assume that the more vocal rest the better. Not necessarily true, right? At a certain point, we need to be waking that up, we need to be stretching things out, we need to be um reconditioning. And just five to seven days, that's crazy.

[10:36] Joe Carroll: Yeah, that is wild.

[10:38] Mike Ruckles: Yeah. One of my old one of my old voice teachers said it it's like two weeks to almost completely unlearn something. So and there are periods here where I've lost I mean two months.

[10:49] Joe Carroll: Yeah.

[10:50] Mike Ruckles: Yeah.

[10:50] Joe Carroll: I would guess that that's right, because um one thing we know is that it takes about two weeks for the body to readjust to something new, be it a medication, a diet, something like that. And so it would make sense then that that it would be about the same time to unlearn something as well.

[11:09] Joe Carroll: Yeah.

[11:10] Mike Ruckles: Well, it's interesting though, because I think my my experience, at least coming back to singing a little bit, and and honestly, not as much as I probably should, and I think Joe and I have commiserated over this too. It's like, imagine when we have to actually sing auditions again.

[11:26] Joe Carroll: Oh god.

[11:27] Mike Ruckles: And I had to do one last week too, and I was like, oh boy.

[11:29] Joe Carroll: I know.

[11:30] Mike Ruckles: Why am I singing a B in this audition? This was a big mistake.

[11:32] Joe Carroll: Don't we I I I love I think this is gonna be the the turbo booster on the Hot Wheels track that like gets me back into We gotta do it.

[11:43] Mike Ruckles: We gotta love that for you, Joe.

[11:45] Joe Carroll: You know, I got well, I got nothing to do right now. I'm still I got two weeks. I'm gonna I'm gonna make some people in this hotel really angry.

[11:51] Mike Ruckles: Well Joe, just you wait. There's gonna be this 11 o'clock number for that for that villain.

[11:57] Joe Carroll: Yes, there's gonna be an amazing number that they write, and you're gonna have to be ready for it.

[12:02] Mike Ruckles: Yeah, they're bringing musical theater into the new Spider-Man film that's gonna be.

[12:05] Joe Carroll: Oh my gosh, then I would see it.

[12:17] Dan Tracy: A lot of the bad habits that I used to have, Mike, feel like they're not associated anymore.

[12:25] Mike Ruckles: Wonderful.

[12:27] Dan Tracy: Now, obviously, like that's probably not entirely true. Um, and I'd be curious to see what you have to say about that and about what I think about my experience. But a lot of the places where I used to hold tension and some of the patterns I used to fall into, I feel like I don't remember those. I don't remember the good habits or the bad ones. You know, I'm just kind of like recreating from the beginning.

[12:51] Mike Ruckles: Well, there's an interesting thing that tends to happen with bad habits, and I observe this all the time. A singer will come in and they'll say, "So I have horrible tongue tension," or "I have a real habit of gripping in the throat." When they sing, I see none of that. But then I realize that they decided at a certain point that that habit was their vocal identity. They decided probably they undid it long ago, but they have kept hold of that mentally that, oh, this is where I hold tension. Probably if there's been some deconditioning over this period, Dan, you probably have picked up some brand new things that we'll take a look at. But probably, yeah, at this point, you are too clued into those places. For example, if the occiput, if the back of the neck was always a big place for you, as it is for many men, you're too wise to it now. You've become too aware of what that tension feels like in your body; you wouldn't allow it in.

[13:53] Dan Tracy: Right. For me, it was the jaw. We were working on letting the jaw go, and I feel like I've come completely let that go now. It doesn't seem like it's as much of a problem.

[14:03] Mike Ruckles: Yeah. But there's probably other things. That's interesting. The other thing right now that I am preaching as much as possible is that it's a perfect time for all of us to get in for a baseline laryngeal exam with your laryngologist, right? Or your ENT. Their offices have probably never been as empty as they are right now. And you know, people have bigger medical fish to fry right now, right? Um, and your folds have probably never been as rested as they are right now. So we really love if you, you know, maybe we've talked about this. I can't remember if we talked about this on the last episode that I was on, but um very important for you and very powerful for you to have a baseline picture of what your chords look like when all is well.

You know, God forbid you're out in the middle of Idaho somewhere on tour, and you go to, you know, whatever ENT you can manage to find in whatever city you're in, and as they often do, they will scare the crap out of you, you know. They look down your throat and they go, "Oh, nodes, nodules." And you panic, you panic, you know, and you would assume that somebody like that knows exactly what they're talking about, but they may be using really outdated equipment if they don't work with singers regularly. They may be using something that was very similar to something that would have been used in the 19th century, funny enough. Oftentimes they're looking at something that only they can see, right?

And um, these are all signs that you're probably not visiting a laryngologist; you're visiting kind of a general ENT who specializes nowhere, they're kind of like ENT, ear, nose and throat all at once. But they scare you, right? And then you're panicking when in fact you might have been able to pull out that picture, that baseline picture, from that Dr. Sulika or Dr. Desloge or you know, Dr. Quak here in town took for you. You could pull that out and say, "Oh no, my chords always have that. Even when I'm rested, that looks like that."

[16:01] Dan Tracy: Yeah, yeah, yeah. We all tend to assume that our chords look like everybody else's cords, and in many ways they do, but in many ways they are very unique.

[16:09] Mike Ruckles: Totally. So it's a great thing to have that baseline picture.

[16:11] Dan Tracy: That's a great idea.

[16:13] Mike Ruckles: That's a great idea. Have you done that, Joe?

[16:15] Joe Carroll: What, uh, done had a scope when I'm rested?

[16:19] Mike Ruckles: Like when you're healthy.

[16:20] Joe Carroll: No, no, absolutely not. No, I go I go to Dr. Soleika when when all hell has broken loose.

[16:26] Mike Ruckles: Right.

[16:27] Joe Carroll: And I'm like on an eight show, eight show a week like holiday schedule.

[16:31] Mike Ruckles: Yes.

[16:31] Joe Carroll: And and and I'm freaking out. You know, this is that's a great that's a great idea.

[16:35] Mike Ruckles: Well, and even then, if you have even if he was just simply seeing swelling, redness, maybe a little sign of reflux from your mac and cheese, Joe. Uh even if that's all he was seeing, if that's all he was seeing, then that may be a decent baseline. You know, because you should be able to say, "Okay, it's a little red, but this is the shape of my chords." You know, yeah. We weren't seeing any, you know, structural anomalies.

[16:59] Joe Carroll: Yeah, which, you know, knock on wood. I uh I never never had any of the anything like that, but it definitely was like, you know, I'd go in there and be like, "Oh, you know, it's everything's terrible, something's happening," you know.

[17:10] Mike Ruckles: Right.

[17:11] Joe Carroll: He's like, "No, man, you're just you're swollen because you're doing eight shows a week," and uh so anyway, that this is good. So we gotta get okay. So so we gotta get our ten eight to ten week plan. We should go get scoped. Um what what else? What else is uh you know, on the you know, from the doctor, you know, doctor, Dr. Voice, Dr. Ruckles.

[17:33] Mike Ruckles: I just want to say that I do not have a doctorate. Uh yet. Uh Mike Ruckles is not a medical professional in it.

[17:41] Mike Ruckles: So the other big thing that I've been seeing with a lot of my clients is that they need to take a close look at the postural and body habits that they've been living in for the past year and a half, right? As Joe and Dan sit up straight.

[17:55] Dan Tracy: Oh, yeah, yeah.

[17:56] Mike Ruckles: So let me uncross my legs. Now, funny enough that Joe says sit up straight, because you know, we got to talk about that. What does straight mean, right? Is straight a good idea for the human body? If we look at the spine and it has these beautiful curves to it, straight can be a bad bit of imagery, right?

[18:13] Dan Tracy: Right.

[18:14] Mike Ruckles: Um, but I've been talking to a lot of students, I think this may describe one or both of you too, uh, who have been doing a lot of gaming, a lot of you know, either on their phones or doing a lot of gaming, or just simply, you know, vegged out in front of the TV trying to forget the world that's going on outside, that you know, post-apocalyptic nightmare.

[18:35] Joe Carroll: Yeah.

[18:36] Mike Ruckles: So um, if you here's an interesting bit of uh information. If you maintain a static position with your body for only 20 minutes, 20 minutes, cellular activity begins to already hardwire that particular posture you're holding. So your body literally, after 20 minutes, has begun to knit itself together as though you will remain in that position forever. That's scary, right?

[19:04] Dan Tracy: That's a little scary.

[19:09] Mike Ruckles: Yikes. Now, in some ways, that's a great thing, right? Because you can undo it. You can you could you you can relearn pretty much.

[19:17] Dan Tracy: So it's like, please, please, please say you can undo it.

[19:19] Mike Ruckles: I know. Uh listen, I got I got some habits, man.

[19:23] Dan Tracy: Oh, we all do.

[19:24] Mike Ruckles: We all do.

[19:25] Joe Carroll: We all we all do, yeah.

[19:26] Mike Ruckles: This cellular process continues for approximately two hours, is what the research is showing us. Um, however, if you're going to that same posture or position for multiple hours continuously over time, as you do in a show, right? As you do when you're at work, or for many of my students, they've just been, you know, gaming or watching TV. They've been returning to those postures and those positions over and over. So maybe shoulders are rounded forward, head is coming off the spine. Um, all of those things, they become more these body modifications become more difficult to address the longer we've held them, right? They're always undoable, but they become more difficult and more resistant to undoing. And this is related to the idea of fascial creep. Um, you know, you know what fascia is in the body, is that yeah.

[20:21] Dan Tracy: Yeah.

[20:21] Mike Ruckles: So it's this glossy white connective tissue over all of your muscles and organs, right? In the 19th century, we just sliced it away like it didn't mean anything. We were we were interested in bones and and joints and muscles, right? Um, but now fascia, it's kind of it's really cool. I've been nerding out big time over the pandemic on fascia because we're beginning to realize that it's sort of the superhero of the body. It has amazing, amazing influence on the body. And this is really what we're talking about here. So if you're kind of sitting in this slumped over position for long periods of time, um, or on the alternate, maybe you're playing Elder Price, and for many hours every day, you have your shoulders back, your head high.

You are pulling your spine up, perhaps. I hope you're not, but you might be if you're playing Elder Price. You're in this sort of military position, right? We're beginning to realize that it's the fascia that's really locking into a position and um can be limiting the muscles because it sort of creeps into these positions and then holds them, right? And it does that for good reasons. It's trying to make your work easier for you, right?

[21:31] Dan Tracy: Yeah.

[21:32] Mike Ruckles: So anyway, just being aware of that. So if you're finding that, if you're somebody who needs to return to the O'Neill playing Elder Price, and you've been rounded shoulders, head off of your spine, curved uh thoracic vertebrae, it's gonna be a major readjustment week by week by week to get you back to a place where Elder Price is going to be doable for you and not injurious, right?

[21:59] Dan Tracy: Yeah.

[22:00] Mike Ruckles: So how would you start to correct that?

[22:02] Dan Tracy: It's a good question.

[22:03] Mike Ruckles: Um, I would I mean, obviously, it'd be great if you could start to wean yourself off of the gaming, or maybe better yet, you find a different way of doing it. Maybe you start to play while standing, or you are just more aware of being on your sit bones, feeling the spine beneath you, feeling the weight of the skull, which is 10 to 15 pounds, it's a lot of weight. Being distributed evenly through your spine into your sit bones, ear over shoulder, right? As you're playing. If you want to come forward to the screen, the whole torso comes forward. If you want to come away from the screen, the whole torso is coming backward, right? So you start to work on that level week by week by week, right?

[22:46] Joe Carroll: Yeah.

[22:46] Mike Ruckles: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Also, I think very important to look at the physical life of your show. Um, maybe you're in a very demanding dance track that you have to head back to, and there are some uh lifts that you do. Maybe they're always right side lifts, right? Um, and when you're doing the show, that's that's the kind of thing where you have to be for many of my students, they do these, you know, if they're lifting on the right side, they immediately come off stage and they do an approximate lift on the left side. Yeah to balance themselves, right? So we have symmetry. Um, but perhaps it's just a role that takes a lot out of you physically. Um, for example, I was working over the break with um Lindsay Heath Heather Pierce, who's headed back as the current Alphabet. And it was interesting because when she began the role, she had just begun when everything shut down.

[23:36] Dan Tracy: Oh wow.

[23:36] Mike Ruckles: So that was actually in some ways great for her because it gave her a glimpse of this is what I've got to do. This is the gig. And now I've got a little time, and turned out to be a lot of time, to really figure out how to make this a lot easier than it was for me. And you know, interestingly, our work centered more often around the physical life of the show and the way that affects her instrument than around the vocal life of the show, right? Things like the horrendous raked stage at the Gershwin, right?

[24:06] Dan Tracy: Right.

[24:06] Mike Ruckles: I think somebody told me that the Gershwin is the last that the wicked set is the last set that was allowed to have that high a rake.

[24:13] Joe Carroll: Yep.

[24:14] Mike Ruckles: Right. Yeah, they changed it. They they changed the something in equity or something like that that they that they changed, and that is the the steepest rake. Right. That you know, it was kind of grandfathered into the new rules or whatever.

[24:26] Joe Carroll: Exactly right, exactly right. Uh, my student um Mary Ann Torres, I don't think she'd mind me sharing that she found it so much easier to play alphabet on tour because you don't have the right stage.

[24:37] Mike Ruckles: She would come to the Gershwin when they'd call her in to cover or whatever, and it was like a whole new show to do, basically.

[24:43] Joe Carroll: Right?

[24:44] Mike Ruckles: Uh, and then for the Alphabas, like the mad rush crossing under the stage before no good deed.

[24:50] Joe Carroll: Right.

[24:50] Mike Ruckles: You've maybe people know this, maybe you don't, that you're not only making a costume change, but you're running down flights of stairs at the Gershwin. You're running under the stage, you're coming up and over just in time to pop out on stage and sing one of the hardest songs in the show. So it's the physical conditioning uh that that can really manifest. And um, you know, looking at for a lot of people, I hate to say it, but I think a lot of people nightly are have been on Broadway in a kind of simmering state of fight or flight.

[25:22] Joe Carroll: Yeah, you know?

[25:27] Mike Ruckles: Every audition, every time on a stage.

[25:30] Joe Carroll: Right oh, every time out every time I get off at the 42nd Street subway stop.

[25:34] Mike Ruckles: Oh no. You know, you know, there may be some truth to that, absolutely. Um whenever I walk into Ripley Greer, I feel it.

[25:41] Joe Carroll: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[25:42] Mike Ruckles: You just yeah, uh for me it's Pearl Studios because that place just feels like a waiting room at a doctor's office where where they're about to like, you know, euthanize you.

[25:50] Joe Carroll: I see the I see the I see the palm trees at Ripley Greer, and I start to curl up into a fetal position.

[25:56] Mike Ruckles: Yes, you know. Oh my gosh. Fight or flight is a very real thing, and a lot of actors I think in roles like Alphaba, Seely in color purple, um Evan Hansen, they go, Oh well, I play an epic role, so these are all uh it just this comes with the territory. What's constantly happening though is that your adrenal system is taking a hit night after night after night, and it may be some of the biofeedback. This may be a longer conversation that we shouldn't really get into, but uh a lot of the work can be really looking at biofeedback loops in your body. Are there ways in which you are actually perpetuating on stage and in the audition room? Are there ways in which you are perpetuating fight or flight mode when you don't intend to?

[26:41] Mike Ruckles: For example, if I have you kind of lock your core like a dancer and just pump the ribs for a minute or two, right? Just do all of your inhalations through the ribs. You are going to begin to send a biofeedback loop to your body that says, We're about to run from a tiger. Because why else would the breath be high? Right? This is what we do when we're running from danger. We pull the breath up, yeah, and we hold the core.

[27:11] Joe Carroll: Right.

[27:11] Mike Ruckles: But what if you were standing in front of Craig Burns, and um the casting director for Wicked.

[27:19] Joe Carroll: There you go.

[27:20] Mike Ruckles: I didn't even realize, yes, of course, of course. Um, you're standing in front of Craig Burns, and at the same time, you began to consciously maintain your width in your rib cage, but allow the abs to ebb and flow beneath. You may be nervous as hell, as well you might be, right? Uh, but at the same time, you're sending a very powerful biofeedback loop to your body that says we must be okay, right? There must not be a clear and present danger because we're breathing low, right? And in so many ways, we start to release serotonin, we start to release dopamine, we start to send, we can really hack the nervous system in so many wonderful ways.

[28:03] Joe Carroll: Right?

[28:04] Mike Ruckles: Yeah, that is so awesome. I uh not to bring this back to the fact that we are talking about golf at the beginning of this interview, but it remains to be seen that the biggest difference. Phil Mickelson yesterday won the PGA championship. He's the oldest person ever to win the championship, and you could watch the way he controlled his breath. He's walking up the 18th hole, and for some reason they let these fans have never seen anything like this. They let the fans basically mob the players.

[28:32] Joe Carroll: Yeah.

[28:33] Mike Ruckles: Normally they're held back in a line. He gets grabbed by some guy and has to fight his way out of the guy's hands to kind of jog forward a little bit. Meanwhile, he has to go make a putt to win the championship. So he knows that. If he doesn't make that putt, it's game over for him. He's not going to win this tournament. And so what does he do? He separates himself from the crowd, he stops, and he takes like eight super deep low breaths in his stomach. Completely resets his mind. You see the energy on his face go from I'm so pissed, I can't believe they just let that happen, to like, I have a job to do.

[29:09] Joe Carroll: Yes.

[29:10] Mike Ruckles: Yeah. And he walks ahead and does what he has to do. Yeah. And that is just something that like I know that you talk a lot about, Mike. It's a lot about mindset. It's a lot about um the way that you approach change, the way that you approach even a vocal note is a lot about mindset as opposed to anything kind of physical or um, you know, some kind of sound recreation. It's way more about kind of the internal process, and I think that that's super fascinating to talk about. I mean, uh, just as a microcosm of that, I run into so many people who say, I'm having trouble hitting that note. Well, the problem is your verb, you're hitting a note. Right?

[29:50] Mike Ruckles: Yeah. You're manifesting s the wrong thing. You just turned yourself into a percussion instrument, my friend.

[29:58] Joe Carroll: Right.

[29:59] Mike Ruckles: Right? So you know, uh, adrenals, big, big thing. So um, you know, if you're playing Kim and Miss Saigon every night, that takes a real toll on your adrenal system. And we can experience some degree of adrenal fatigue, we call it, if you're playing a role like that every night. And you're going on that journey. I mean, because even though you your logical mind knows, I'm Joe Carroll, I'm playing Kim and Miss Saigon, it's just a role I'm playing, right?

[30:27] Joe Carroll: Um I'd be great at that.

[30:29] Mike Ruckles: I know. Well, I that's my dream casting, right? So uh, but even though you know that your adrenals are taking this amazing um hit, and the adrenal glands for for people who who don't know, they produce hormones that help regulate your metabolism, your immune system, your blood pressure, your response to stress. So let's talk about 2020 about stress, right? We've all been under tremendous stress. I mean, every conceivable kind of stress, political, racial, financial, health crises, loss of loved ones, stalled careers. I mean that list just keeps going on and on and on. And a lot of these things were overshadowing one another. It wasn't just one stress at a time, right? It was like three, four stressors all happening at once.

So we really have to take to heart the fact that most of us are dealing with very real adrenal fatigue. The excitement of theaters opening, does our body know the difference between excitement and anxiety? Maybe, maybe not. We have to really understand that right now is a time to buoy our flagging adrenals.

[31:37] Mike Ruckles: So just just like we're gonna prep ourselves 10% each week, we're gonna continue to increase in dose and load towards um fully performing or fully auditioning. Rest is so important right now, and particularly foods that boost your adrenal system, you know, foods that are high in vitamin C, B vitamins, especially uh B5 and B6 and magnesium is huge. So you really want to be sort of actively seeking out these foods.

[32:07] Joe Carroll: What would those foods be?

[32:08] Mike Ruckles: Oh my gosh, so many. Um if you Google, you're gonna find the um adrenal fatigue diet, which would be a great thing to explore right now for most of us, but uh but leafy greens, kale, we love uh oysters are huge for if I can't eat them because I'm allergic to to shellfish, but but I know I used to be able to, I don't know what happened. Um but uh yeah, uh these are great foods, but there's so many. And you know, and of course it's the enriched flour, it's the sugar, these are the things that that take a toll. All the things that are yummy are the things that take a toll, right?

[32:45] Joe Carroll: Totally.

[32:46] Mike Ruckles: But what are some ways that you can because I think the I think the one of the things that I've struggled with in my practice, I've always and this is more true five or six years ago when I was a little bit younger and a little bit more nervous, a little bit more precious about the experience of trying to make my dreams come true.

[33:02] Joe Carroll: Yeah.

[33:02] Mike Ruckles: But I was always struggling to find ways to recreate audition nerves or to recreate the experience of this adrenal uh stress that you get.

[33:16] Joe Carroll: Exactly.

[33:16] Mike Ruckles: Is there is there a way that you could that you've found that might work to kind of recreate the situational performance anxiety so that you can learn how to better work through it?

[33:29] Mike Ruckles: Well, you know, it's it's funny, it's a complex topic that you bring up. I was just watching, uh, I'm gonna I'm gonna out myself.

[33:35] Joe Carroll: Such a good question, Dave.

[33:36] Mike Ruckles: It's such a really great question.

[33:38] Joe Carroll: That's a really, really good question.

[33:39] Mike Ruckles: Sorry, Mike.

[33:40] Joe Carroll: Thanks.

[33:40] Mike Ruckles: Oh no, not already. I appreciate it. Don't do that. Don't do that.

[33:46] Mike Ruckles: Um I was just watching I'm gonna out my out myself by saying that I was watching Tea with Dames on Hulu. Have you watched Tea with Dames?

[33:55] Joe Carroll: No.

[33:55] Mike Ruckles: Oh my gosh. It's it's um Dame Judy Dench, um from Harry Potter, what's her name?

[34:02] Joe Carroll: Oh my gosh.

[34:02] Mike Ruckles: Oh, Maggie Smith.

[34:03] Joe Carroll: Maggie Smith.

[34:04] Mike Ruckles: All of these. There's about four of them, just amazing dames in England, top of their craft, one foot in the grave, you know, and they're sitting around and just basically talking about the industry and their lives and their experiences. And one of the things that that Judy Dench, um, who has some wisdom to her, it turns out, um, she even though she was in the cats film, she's that was so mean.

[34:31] Joe Carroll: Shade, shade, shade, dude.

[34:33] Mike Ruckles: That was so much shade. Um Judy Dench said it really comes down to fear. There is nothing more powerful on stage, nothing more motivating than fear. And I had never really thought about fear as a positive experience, as something that that could be a motivator. But I think it really depends on what kind of fear we're talking about, right? If we're talking about fear that throws us into fight or flight, for a singer, particularly, I'm I think you could be living in fight or flight in a straight play and get your job done every night, right? I think there are people who do that and they win.

[35:11] Joe Carroll: Uh and uh I I think that for a singer that would be really problematic, and it is really problematic uh to do that to yourself. I don't think you would be able to come out of that without real issues and injury, uh, potentially. Uh but to answer Dan's question more directly, you really it's not that you need to replicate those nerves to deal with them. I think it's more that you need to strategize when next I'm in this situation. What are my neural hacks? What are what are my biofeedback loops that I can be active with? Because as we talked about, the body doesn't really know the difference between anxiety and excitement. So you could be standing outside the room. This is something I encourage my students to do.

You could be standing outside the room at Binder, you could be standing outside the room at Terra Rubin, and you are so excited to go in and share that 90-second story that you've crafted, right? That should be the thing that's on your mind, right? I'm so excited. It's how you are mentally spinning that moment, right?

[36:27] Joe Carroll: Right.

[36:28] Mike Ruckles: It's the inner game of golf or tennis, right? It's it's about whether you're standing out there going, I hope I don't crack on that note. I, you know, it's how are you framing it in your mind? Is it in a negative frame? Because that will probably be a self-fulfilling prophecy. You will probably create that event, right?

[36:45] Joe Carroll: Yeah.

[36:45] Mike Ruckles: Or are you engaging in positive imagery?

[36:48] Mike Ruckles: Right? But for me, even more powerfully, um, you know, are you engaging in things like uh alternate nostril breathing? We can talk about that and what that does. I don't know if you're familiar with that.

[36:59] Joe Carroll: No.

[36:59] Mike Ruckles: I bet you see some of that on the golf course. Um especially with these PGA tournaments. Um if you want to read more about that, check out um breath, this amazing book called Breath, um the lost art of or the science of a lost art, I think is the title, the full title, by Nestor N-E-S-T-O-R. Amazing deep dive into how does the way you breathe affect everything about you. Well incredible book incredible book.

[37:30] Joe Carroll: Yeah, sorry, yeah, go ahead.

[37:31] Mike Ruckles: No, no, no, go ahead. I didn't know.

[37:33] Joe Carroll: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[37:34] Mike Ruckles: I'm more interested in in the of course the way we frame it is huge. It's everything, but also I'm I'm interested in what are the biofeedback loops that you can send to your body that will help you in that moment to resolve some of those, you know, the the pounding heartbeat, which can have a lot to do with, as you might read in the breath book, has a lot to do with the balance of um oxygen versus carbon dioxide. And you standing outside the room at Terror Rubin, you can actually affect that positively or negatively.

[38:08] Joe Carroll: That's that makes a ton of sense, even just to like what you're thinking about, the one or two things that you're thinking about and doing actively in a stressful situation.

[38:17] Mike Ruckles: Mm-hmm. That like you can take control of, you know, and I think that we're all out of practice with that. Whether we knew how to do it in the first place or not, we're definitely all out of practice with that. I had a I had a Zoom audition the other day. So I'm staying sitting there in front of my camera on my my computer. Zoom turns on, the casting director was rude, and just like all of a sudden just jumps right in, and I'm and I I'm like for I'm kind of freaking out. All of a sudden, my breath gets up in here, my neck gets tight. I don't remember anything that I had planned on doing. Totally lost lost control.

[38:54] Mike Ruckles: Because you were in fight or flight right in that moment.

[39:06] Mike Ruckles: Yes. And I was like, oh my god, what just happened? And I was telling Alex about it that I was like, I know that in auditions, usually, if that starts to happen, I got I got the a couple things that I I know that I can do. Right. You know, you take a couple deep breaths, you do some like you know, circular breathing or something, or you just like take a second and say to the casting director, like, hey, can I just like can we go back on that? Can I just take a second or whatever? And all of it was gone. All of that, all of that good work that I've done in my career for the last decade, just threw out the you know, just blew out the window. So I think we all have to get back to that. But I love what you're saying, Mike. Finding those those things that you're thinking about that you can actually do, you know, to get your biofeedback loops right.

[39:53] Mike Ruckles: Yeah. Bio biofeedback loops. This is I need this is a new thing for me, the biofeedback loops. Get your loops in group.

[39:56] Joe Carroll: Exactly. Right. Your brain. The whole audition took 45 seconds, it was like a minute. And then and then you know, goodbye, and the zoom camera shuts off.

[40:00] Joe Carroll: Yeah, absolutely. Um, yeah, and you know, we we talk about you've heard this probably, that when we step on stage or we walk into the audition room, we want to have fire in the belly and a cool head, right? But what I was saying earlier with roles like Alphaba or a sudden 45-second audition that just feels like being shot out of a cannon, um, we we end up having fire in the head and fire in the belly, right? It's everything's on fire, right?

[40:24] Mike Ruckles: Everything's on fire. And that's what you experienced was your amygdala, your animal brain, firing up and going, boom, we are in fight or flight mode, right? And people do, they report that feeling of what just happened. Um, I don't remember, right?

[40:39] Joe Carroll: Right.

[40:40] Mike Ruckles: This is why women don't often remember childbirth, right? Right? Right. Right. So part one of them, one of the reasons. But um, but yeah, yeah. So uh so that's huge. So it's it's about figuring out, even if I'm running under the stage, uh, to go sing uh a song that that is intimidating. How can I, as I run across the stage, and that makes me under the stage and that makes me want to pull up my breath, right? It makes my ribs want to pump. How can I keep my width in the ribs? How can I keep myself from devolving into a kind of breath that reinforces fight or flight mode, right?

[41:22] Joe Carroll: Right.

[41:23] Mike Ruckles: So that I arrive at the side of the stage still calm, even though I was booking. It's the mental part. I think a lot of times I'm sitting outside of the audition room and I'm thinking about if I book this, I'm gonna get to go on vacation. I'm going to have health care, I'm going to be able to buy a house. I'm going to, and then I see Jason Gaute walks in and I'm like, well, I'm not gonna book this because he's so good. And look at him.

[41:54] Joe Carroll: You are you are pressurizing the situation for yourself in that moment.

[41:57] Mike Ruckles: One of the things that I actively encourage my students to do, if they have put that audition on a pedestal, if they have gone, this this is gonna be the one that changes my life, this is gonna be the one, right? We've all been there. Yep, is to actively knock it off the pedestal. When you're standing outside that room doing whatever biofeedback loop uh you can encourage, uh maybe you're making a list in your mind, you know. If I booked this, the following things would suck. Right? Um, I really hate doing this. Only does that really that's really funny. And yeah, and I love that that's very that's very uh uh uh productive. Um it can be, yeah.

[42:43] Joe Carroll: Yeah, I remember doing that with Frozen. I remember I remember standing outside of the room at Frozen and not putting it on a pedestal.

[42:49] Mike Ruckles: Good. You know, like but then every frickin' time the Book of Mormon came around when I was 25. It was like you know, right, right. I totally am with you.

[43:00] Joe Carroll: Yeah, and I'm sure you've experienced, I remember one of the best auditions I ever had was when I literally did not, I was I I I felt obligated to go. I didn't want to be there, and I left the room going, oh man, I've never felt so free, right? So there's something about that, that ability to, and when you know, when I I would play auditions and I would see the A-listers come in, what I envied so much was this kind of laissez faire, not de-energized, not they're they're not people who are sort of like I don't want to be here or throwing attitude, but a sort of laissez-faire energy of hey, this is who I am, and um it could be that I'm not at all what you're looking for today, so that's cool too, you know. Um, but this is what I do, and that's just such an amazing, and and you know, it's easier said than done. I know it. It takes time to get there.

[43:56] Mike Ruckles: Well, and it it's also so based on where you're at. I think there's nothing more there's nothing that will get you to that place faster than booking your Broadway show and having that job or being financially secure.

[44:12] Joe Carroll: Exactly.

[44:12] Mike Ruckles: Being an A-lister would be, you know, being in this place where you're like, well, I don't have to work for six months or a year or whatever it might be, where you're in a different kind of position where you just don't have to worry, and you can start to accept that because it is true, you know, there's so many things that most of the things that get you jobs you can't do anything about. They're completely just part of who you are. You can't change anything about you in order to get the job. You just are a right fit or not. And it's really hard to kind of give over to that idea. But I think that w something that might really help, and that I've tried to implement more is thinking about focusing on like what is the story you're about to tell.

[44:51] Joe Carroll: That you I kind of just wanted to highlight that again, because you said that earlier. Instead of thinking about this high note that you have to sing, like what is the 90 second story you're gonna tell, that's the task at hand, not whether or not you get the job or any of those things.

[45:06] Mike Ruckles: Right. Even if you find that difficult to do, is there a moment, particularly like in a comedic song or or monologue, is there a moment you can't wait for? Like, or or maybe it's maybe you're singing something that is incredibly dramatic. Maybe it's um, you know what? I play this line in a way they've never seen. I can't wait to drop that bomb in the room. Right, right? Maybe it's something like that. If there's something you are looking forward to, it will eclipse almost everything else. So look forward to a moment and then knock the show off the pedestal.

[45:40] Joe Carroll: Yeah. It's kinda uh like I uh all right, this is good.

[45:44] Mike Ruckles: Yeah, we like it. We like that. And I've I've also another one that I think changed my life was when the casting director comes out and says, Are you ready? Uh-huh. Like you show up. I showed up for an audition right on time. Uh, or they were early. So I showed up, you know, 10 minutes early, and they were like, Okay, we're ready for you, you want to come in. Normally I would say, Give me a second, I'm gonna run to the bathroom, I'm gonna do this, give me some time. Can I have a minute? Do you mind? No, I don't mind. We'll let the next person go. And that's when the bad stuff happens. And in this particular instance, I said, Yeah, sure, let's do it. Yeah, put my stuff down, grabbed my binder, walked into the room, didn't have any of that extra mind numbness baggage.

[46:30] Joe Carroll: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[46:31] Mike Ruckles: It was my audition for waitress.

[46:33] Joe Carroll: Oh wow.

[46:34] Mike Ruckles: Wow. It was my audition for waitress. I just walked right in. I didn't have any of that nonsense in my head. There, the nerves started as I walked through the door, but instead of the nerves building for 10 minutes, the nerves started as I walked through the door, then all of a sudden I'm reading Dr. Pometer, and Pat Goodwin laughs at my first joke, and all of the pressure went away. And I didn't have that 15-minute buildup of like, oh God, oh god, oh god, oh god, you know?

[46:58] Joe Carroll: Yeah.

[46:59] Mike Ruckles: Get right in there and do that. But it's so interesting you say that. I love that. Because sometimes I'm actually encouraging people to do the opposite, which is uh I see this all too often. People, you know, just got up in the elevator after waiting in line for 15 minutes just to get on the elevator, they're freaking out they're gonna be late. They arrive at the you know, they arrive at the at the door and um they are in full fight or flight mode. The person says, All right, we're ready for you, come on in. And they go, I have to. Right. I have to I have to go in right now. Now, if you're in a cool state of mind and you're like, I'm you know, as Dan was in that moment, great, don't wait, go for it.

But if you look at yourself in that moment and you go, My breath is high, I'm flushed, I am uh I need a moment to center my center myself. Absolutely, you've got to take that moment. There is no there nothing good will come out of you rushing into that room before you're ready, even if you just rushed up those stairs to make it on time. Ask for that time.

[48:00] Joe Carroll: Totally absolutely if you need it.

[48:04] Mike Ruckles: Yeah, there was a uh an actor of note. His name is Logan Marshall Green, and he was speaking at a uh class when I was studying one summer, and he said that when he goes to what he does for his audition nerves is that he breathes super deep and he walks really slow. So I've taken that on, you know, when I'm when I'm going to the subway, getting off the subway, walking to the audition. I walk slow, not fast, no matter how late I am, and I breathe really deep. And so I'm usually in a pretty good place when I get up the elevator. It's the standing outside the room waiting to go in where the problem starts for me.

[48:39] Joe Carroll: Yeah, yeah.

[48:40] Mike Ruckles: So that I think that's kind of why the reverse has been true in in my case.

[48:43] Joe Carroll: Yeah. I would add to that to your repertoire there, I would add uh your regimen to breathe slowly. Deep is great, slowly is is equally important, I think.

[48:56] Mike Ruckles: Yeah, I I think I usually breathing slowly, yeah, that's great. If you're breathing slowly, um, you might engage what is it?

[49:03] Mike Ruckles: It's called like four to one breathing, which I'm gonna do. I do, it's actually I can't remember that. There's different versions of it. The Navy SEALs do 4444. That's the one I like. That's right. Yeah, I uh which is a little bit harder, but same idea.

[49:15] Joe Carroll: Yeah.

[49:16] Mike Ruckles: Yeah.

[49:16] Joe Carroll: What are your favorite Mike?

[49:18] Mike Ruckles: I had two questions. Do you have any other favorite, like favorite um sort of biofeedback idea?

[49:24] Mike Ruckles: Well, you know, breathing slowly, um, you know, knocking shows off pedestals. You know, uh anything else that you have in your like arsenal that you really like?

[49:34] Mike Ruckles: Yes. Being mindfully attentive to anything. And this is something that we give to people who suffer anxiety disorder. Uh if you are spiraling towards an anxiety attack or a panic attack, they will advise people to just simply look around the room, find something blue, find something red, pick a color, find something, right? Play I spy with my little eye. And all you're doing there is you are taking your attention away from the amygdala, which is going wild. It's your animal brain, right? It's going wild and it's running out of control. And you're putting the ball back in the court of your uh frontal cortex.

[50:12] Joe Carroll: Nice.

[50:12] Mike Ruckles: And so, you know, if you if you can look around the room and so sometimes I'll have somebody like my classical singers who are sitting in front of a huge orchestra and they have one solo in the full three-hour performance, right? They have to sit there for maybe two hours while everybody else is singing or performing, and then they have to get up. They don't get to be off stage, they have to be out in full view, right? They have to stand up and suddenly sing, right? Uh that's about as nerve-wracking as I can imagine, right? If I can be off stage, I can be continually kind of keeping myself warm. I can be singing a little bit, right?

[50:46] Mike Ruckles: I will tell them to pick a spot on their body. Maybe it's the um the index finger that's resting on their knee, and just gently press inward and just focus on that. Uh on a scale of one to ten, how firmly is that index finger pressing into your thigh? If it's a five, could you make it an eight? If it's an eight, could you make it a two? Play around with that. Um, can you feel your Achilles heel? It could be random. Can you pick some random place on your body, right? Can I feel um my left earlobe right now? Right. These things, just simply attending to one tiny minute detail will keep the amygdala from having full range.

[51:39] Joe Carroll: Nice, right?

[51:40] Mike Ruckles: I love that.

[51:42] Joe Carroll: Yeah.

[51:43] Mike Ruckles: I love that.

[51:44] Joe Carroll: And then my other question was about actually um from a fitness perspective. Is there a workout or a type of exercise that you have found the most or more beneficial than others for singers?

[51:57] Joe Carroll: Because I've always I've I had a teacher in college who was very anti-weight training because she was like, you know, it's gonna tension in your neck and tension, tension, tension, whatever.

[52:07] Joe Carroll: And that always to me, I was like, oh, that's just breath. That's just when you're holding or you're grunting or you're, you know, so trying to keep the breath deep. But is there something that you steer your students towards physically, as we all try to get back in the gym or get back in the yoga class or whatever?

[52:23] Mike Ruckles: Well, first, uh, it's so funny you mentioned this because literally not a few weeks ago, I uh was a guest on another Broadway podcast network, uh, pod which is Built for the Stage. And Joe Roscoe, the lovely Joe Roscoe, and I talked about this very topic, and we went really in-depth.

[52:44] Mike Ruckles: So go listen to that episode because it was literally the whole episode was to answer this question. Should singers be afraid of weight training? The answer is no. It's all about how you do it and how you approach it.

[52:58] Mike Ruckles: In our industry, you know, especially men, but ladies as well, we have to be. We have to be doing it. You know, uh, there are so many times when you're going to hear from your agent or from a casting director. You know, if you can bulk up a little bit or if you can define yourself a little bit, we're gonna be able to see you more cleanly as that leading man or whatever.

[53:17] Mike Ruckles: And so, of course, that that then is incumbent upon you to take that note and and go make that happen. But it's about how you do it. And the problem is we have singers going into the gym going, uh, I gotta make the most of my time, go big or go home.

[53:33] Mike Ruckles: Yeah, right? No pain, no gain. And uh I won't even go down that rabbit trail because it will end up me just sort of regurgitating everything we talked about on that podcast. But go go go listen to that.

[53:47] Mike Ruckles: Yeah, um, but but in general modalities, we love Pilates, we love yoga, we love gyrotonics. If you can get into that, that that takes some some uh equipment. Gyrotonics is fantastic. Capoeira, I know when I taught at NYU, uh they had a capoeira class from music theater majors, which was amazing. You know, um, but yeah, all of these are great. It's all about how you do them, though, right? Even in yoga, there are breath modalities in yoga that are not good for singers.

[54:17] Joe Carroll: Gotcha.

[54:20] Mike Ruckles: Gotcha. Well, that's great. Another BPN uh podcast.

[54:25] Joe Carroll: Podcast podcasts were such a Yeah, such a great conversation, for sure.

[54:30] Mike Ruckles: And I'm also loving right now, just kind of returning to the mindset of people returning to their Broadway shows or their regional gigs. I'm loving that so many companies, because I want to I want to support this and I want to get this out there so more producers are doing this. So many companies are building in a stipend for their actors to retrain.

[54:51] Joe Carroll: That's great.

[54:53] Mike Ruckles: Awesome. Which is so great. Which is so great.

[54:56] Mike Ruckles: Um because that's something they don't have to do.

[54:59] Joe Carroll: Right.

[54:59] Mike Ruckles: Right.

[55:00] Joe Carroll: Yeah.

[55:01] Mike Ruckles: And I'm sure it isn't much.

[55:02] Joe Carroll: Yeah.

[55:02] Mike Ruckles: I'm sure it isn't.

[55:08] Mike Ruckles: I think that a lot, you know, you hear about that that, you know, even Hamilton and there was a there was a stipend that that they had to spend on. And I just want that should be regular, you know, because we're all spending buku bucks just to just to stay on top of it when you when you're in a show.

[55:27] Joe Carroll: So that's that's fantastic.

[55:29] Mike Ruckles: Professional athletes don't have to pay their own gym bills.

[55:32] Joe Carroll: Right.

[55:33] Mike Ruckles: Right.

[55:33] Joe Carroll: Right.

[55:34] Mike Ruckles: There's a team of physical therapists. There's not just like one physical therapist who's strung out and overworked, and they're like, fix everything's broken, fix me.

[55:43] Joe Carroll: Try to tell me that a Broadway dancer isn't a professional athlete.

[55:46] Mike Ruckles: Like I think you're wrong. So you know, like I don't know. It's just a yeah.

[55:50] Joe Carroll: We know where we stay.

[55:53] Mike Ruckles: Yeah, no, you guys in fact are are multi-athletes, right? You are athletes physically from a dance perspective. From an adrenal perspective, we could call you athletes.

[56:02] Mike Ruckles: Uh, in what you do there, but from a vocal standpoint, you know, it's it's sort of a multidisciplinary athlete.

[56:09] Joe Carroll: I love it.

[56:10] Mike Ruckles: Yeah.

[56:10] Joe Carroll: Mike, this has been amazing.

[56:12] Mike Ruckles: Um, my pleasure.

[56:14] Joe Carroll: You're the best.

[56:15] Mike Ruckles: You're the best, and I think this is gonna be super valuable for a lot of people. And there might have been some people who we lost because they're not specifically in the field or trying to explore this, but what was that?

[56:28] Mike Ruckles: That's me doing a lip trail. I'm getting back at it, man. Let's go.

[56:36] Mike Ruckles: Well, you know, if I can say one last thing before we, you know, sign off, because this has kind of been on my heart during the month of May. The other thing as we approach reopening, I don't know if you guys have been feeling this, but I've really been feeling the strange energy right now. There's so much optimism and anticipation in the air regarding reopening of our theaters, and I feel for me and for what I'm hearing from a lot of people is that it's really tempered very strongly by a sense of anxiety and frustration that we'd all like to see more systemic change in our industry.

[57:07] Joe Carroll: Amen.

[57:08] Mike Ruckles: And there's right now a big push. We're all pushing hard. Uh you know what? I'd love to say we were all pushing hard, but most of us are pushing hard, right? We're all pushing hard. There's been some amazing work accomplished during this pandemic towards inclusivity and diversity on Broadway, but we have a long way to go.

[57:26] Mike Ruckles: And I just want to say, as a voice teacher, my artists of color, my my minority artists, they are hurting right now. And they are um they are struggling to maintain their optimism about an industry reopening that that has some real real issues at its heart.

[57:43] Mike Ruckles: So I just I just want to encourage all of us, because this has kind of been part of my process in May. I've been really re-examining my uh status as an ally, really putting it under a microscope and saying, you know, am I doing is that is that something I'm living out every day? Right. And I just want to encourage each and every one of us to be asking that question, how can I help? What can I be doing?

[58:06] Joe Carroll: Absolutely.

[58:07] Mike Ruckles: I love that.

[58:08] Joe Carroll: We couldn't agree more.

[58:09] Mike Ruckles: I know you do.

[58:10] Joe Carroll: Well, my friend.

[58:12] Mike Ruckles: All right.

[58:12] Mike Ruckles: I gotta go. I I'm gonna do I'm gonna go do some vocal exercises and I'm gonna do my my breathing.

[58:18] Joe Carroll: And you're gonna get started on your 10% for this week.

[58:20] Mike Ruckles: I am.

[58:21] Joe Carroll: I love that.

[58:21] Mike Ruckles: And then next week it's gonna be 20%.

[58:23] Joe Carroll: A little bit every day.

[58:25] Mike Ruckles: Yeah.

[58:25] Joe Carroll: And we're going back to just kind of easing into it as opposed to screaming soul of a man uh while trying to sell houses in Westchester.

[58:33] Mike Ruckles: Listen, I was putting up some pretty serious paparati notes in the car. I was had some Mike would have been pretty proud of my legit C's that I was popping out of there for a while.

[58:43] Joe Carroll: All right.

[58:44] Mike Ruckles: You know, maybe the voice was a little bit hoarse afterwards.

[58:47] Joe Carroll: So we probably were not yeah, not great.

[58:47] Mike Ruckles: Not great.

[58:51] Mike Ruckles: But uh, you know.

[58:52] Joe Carroll: Well, and see that's a great example then.

[58:55] Mike Ruckles: That's a great example of somebody who overshot their 10%, right? So you you kind of went to the nth degree. You did what a lot of people are gonna do. They're gonna go, um, I gotta get back in shape vocally. Um, let me let me sing along with the kinky boots cast recording, right?

[59:11] Joe Carroll: Yeah, classic.

[59:12] Mike Ruckles: Um they're just gonna go there and then they're fatigued, then they're hoarse, then they're swollen, and they're going, why did that happen? Um, you know, it I must my technique may be bad. Maybe it is, or maybe you just are going too big too quickly, right? You need to gradually ease back into these things.

[59:28] Joe Carroll: Absolutely.

[59:30] Mike Ruckles: Inspiring.

[59:31] Joe Carroll: Well, listen, uh, Mike, uh y it's turning into uh a yearly uh a yearly conversation.

[59:37] Mike Ruckles: So yeah.

[59:38] Joe Carroll: So so we'll we'll get you back uh, you know, uh next uh next summer and we'll we'll touch on the phone.

[59:42] Mike Ruckles: The next pandemic.

[59:43] Joe Carroll: Who knows what we'll be dealing with then yeah exactly when Dan when Dan's leading a show and we'll just we'll we'll have awesome we'll have you back on here to have voice voice therapy.

[59:53] Mike Ruckles: You know that's like it's like it's like therapy for when it when you come on here, it's like it's like we just get to ask you these questions and be like, you know, are we gonna be okay? What can we do? You know, am I doing the right things?

[1:00:05] Mike Ruckles: Listen, you guys, it is such an honor to be back and to be asked back. And I um I've been catching up on your podcast through this whole pandemic. Um you guys are just creating such an amazing space for people to come and from all these different backgrounds and just comment and uh talk about what their experience has been.

[1:00:25] Mike Ruckles: So it's it's a joy.

[1:00:27] Joe Carroll: Um it really is.

[1:00:28] Joe Carroll: Thank you, Mike.

[1:00:29] Mike Ruckles: Thank you, Mike.

[1:00:34] Joe Carroll: Thank you for listening to Guys Who Like Musicals.

[1:00:36] Joe Carroll: We are now part of the Broadway podcast network.

[1:00:40] Joe Carroll: Woo!

[1:00:41] Joe Carroll: We are hosted by Dan Tracy.

[1:00:42] Dan Tracy: That's you, and Joe Carroll.

[1:00:44] Joe Carroll: That's me.

[1:00:44] Joe Carroll: We're produced by Ryan Kincaid, and Matthew Mucha is the social content manager.

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[1:01:06] Joe Carroll: As always, thanks for listening to the