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[0:00] Mo Brady: You're listening to The Ensemblist, the only podcast that shows you Broadway from the inside out.

[0:12] Mo Brady: I'm Mo Brady.

[0:13] Mo Brady: From spectacular sets to jaw-dropping performances, the theater is full of magical moments. One of the reasons so many of us love Broadway is that the players display incredible feats of skill in front of a live audience. But in a world of remarkable artists, no one takes on as Herculean a task as an understudy. Understudies are required to replicate another actor's performance, knowing exactly where they move and how they move there. They must have the bravado to lead a show, but also the humility to know they are merely standing in for another artist. Understudies are asked to jump onto the moving train that is a Broadway musical and make sure it doesn't come to a screeching halt. But if they can do all of this successfully, they arrive at the end to receive the adoration and admiration of both audiences and colleagues.

If someone knows a thing or two about understudying, it's Becca Petersen. Her national tour debut was as the female swing on Newsies, followed by making her Broadway debut covering Laura Osnes in the new musical Bandstand. She spent the last two years as an original company member of Mean Girls, where she covers multiple roles, including the leading role of Katie Heron. She joined us in the studio to share her favorite stories from each of these shows, as well as how she keeps her wits about her in what is undoubtedly one of Broadway's most challenging jobs. Here's our conversation.

[1:51] Becca Petersen: Hi!

[2:14] Mo Brady: Hello! Will you introduce yourself and tell us what neighborhood of New York City you live in?

[2:19] Becca Petersen: Yes! My name is Becca Petersen, and I live on the Upper West Side.

[2:23] Mo Brady: Correct. And what's your job?

[2:26] Becca Petersen: I currently work at Mean Girls on Broadway. I am in the ensemble every night and also understudy Katie, Regina, and Karen, and am the dance captain.

[2:36] Mo Brady: Jeez, that's a lot. And this is not your first time understudying?

[2:40] Becca Petersen: No, it's not. I have been very lucky to get to understudy quite a bit. I was on the Newsies First National Tour. I was a swing and understudied Katherine and Metta, believe it or not.

[2:55] Mo Brady: There you go! So that was kind of my first professional understudy experience. And then I did the out-of-town tryout of The Prom and understudied Emma. From there I did Bandstand, that was my Broadway debut, and I understudied Julia Trojan. And then Mean Girls. In some shows they have first and second covers, and third, fourth, however many covers they have. In other shows there are no first and second, it's just whoever they want to put on. Or they go back and forth, try to make it equal. It all just depends on the production and what the stage management, company management, and the producers prefer.

[3:34] Mo Brady: So for all of these, when you're auditioning for the show, how much of the time you're spending auditioning is for your ensemble track, your swing position, versus your understudy track?

[3:46] Becca Petersen: You know, each show that I've done has been slightly different. Like for The Prom, I had been cast in The Lab, I'd done The Lab previously, and so once we went out of town, they kind of found the covers within the cast that was already there. So with that one I just kind of sang through some of the material and they gave me the coverage, which was pretty cool. Whereas for Bandstand, they were creating the original Broadway cast. I had an appointment for a dancer track and an appointment for the understudy track, which was like the first time I had two appointments for the same show, which seemed kind of cool. I don't know if that's cool, I thought it was cool. So it can kind of go different ways. Sometimes you'll dance first and they'll be like, oh you're great for the ensemble, maybe can you cover two? Or it could go the other way where they see you as a cover first and then they bring you in to dance and see if you can dance as well.

[4:35] Mo Brady: How soon into a show are you starting to learn your understudy tracks?

[4:41] Becca Petersen: So that has been different within each show as well. For Newsies, I was a replacement in the tour and there are four women in the show, none of them are really on stage at the same time. So I rehearsed here in New York for the tour and then they sent me out to St. Louis to begin my tour adventure. I was being put into the show with two other gentlemen who danced in the ensemble. And so it was kind of tricky because there were so many different elements to this rehearsal process, all being in the same room learning very different tracks. So the associates were there, Ricky Hines and Lou Castro, and they taught us the show. And for that, they taught me the whole show as if all characters that I was portraying were in one show.

So instead of learning like the Sniper track first and then learning the Catherine track, it was like we started from the beginning of the show and learned all of the parts to the end of the show, which was crazy and also really exciting. Once I was put into the show, it made it seem so much easier because I had learned it as this one massive show of playing four different women and then getting to kind of break it down from there, which was pretty cool.

[5:50] Becca Petersen: Bandstand, I was contractually the second cover. The way that they did it there was they had all the first covers learn the show first. So while I was there, I didn't have any understudy rehearsal. I was there rehearsing my swing tracks when they would be doing the understudy stuff. Going forward after the show opened, Laura Osnes is kind of known for never calling out of the show. And so she is like cords of steel. So she never really called out, but she had a couple of concerts happening that summer. It was, you know, contracted that the other understudy would go on for those days, which made total sense. And she was rehearsed and had all the costumes and everything like that. She went on for one of the days and for multiple different reasons, the stage manager came to me that next week and he pulled me into my dressing room and he was like, Becca, we've decided to put you on for Julia Trojan.

So she was going to be gone that Saturday. And this was on the Tuesday and like hadn't even had rehearsal for this understudy track. I just looked at him and I was like, I trust you and I trust myself that I can do this. I've not had rehearsal. I have no costumes. I have no shoes. I have nothing, but let's go for it. I got to do two shows, which was really cool. And what was so kind of crazy and miraculous about the whole thing is that I had been scheduled to go on in the ensemble for those shows. And so that was the first day that was far enough advanced for all my family to come see me in the show, to see me perform on Broadway for the first time. Because my debut, it was so last minute, they weren't able to travel in for it.

So my entire family, aunts, uncles, grandparents, it was a crazy, incredible journey to be thrown into the show and just have so many people there to support me and have the team really be supportive of me as well, knowing that in a lot of ways was underprepared for what was about to happen. But I'm so glad that I did my homework and was prepared on my own that I felt comfortable enough to go up there and perform opposite Corey Cott and Beth Leavel for the first time. It was really crazy and really special.

[9:01] Mo Brady: In Mean Girls, you cover two separate principles. Did you learn one first, then the other? How was the learning process of those?

[9:16] Becca Petersen: They don't technically have first and second or third covers, but they did do it in separate rounds. So at the time when I covered Katie and Regina, we had a Katie standby. So she did Katie first. So the first round I learned Regina. And since we had just opened the show, all of the understudies were learning all the tracks at the same time. So it was like a full understudy run, essentially. So we had everyone learn the full show in your first track, because there are quite a few people in our company that cover multiple principles. So once we finished that round, then we started back at the top of the show, and then I started doing Katie, and everyone else switched around what tracks they were learning at that time.

[9:49] Mo Brady: So you're talking about a lot of rehearsals. Where do these rehearsals take place, and who leads these rehearsals?

[9:54] Becca Petersen: We have rehearsals at the theater, and we also do them at Ripley Greer, which is a rehearsal studio here in the city. In a Broadway production, it'll be the stage manager, the dance captain, and usually one of the associates, associate director. Every once in a while, we'll have our associate choreographer come in. We've been really lucky to have Casey Hushin, our associate director, at the show quite often, and she teaches all of the blocking and the intention and everything behind all of the principal parts. And then the dance captain, who's me, I'll go in and teach the choreographed moments and kind of go over some of the blocking specifics for each character. And our stage manager, who's amazing, Holly Kuhl.

[9:51] Becca Petersen: She will be there to kind of fill in all of the blanks, all the technical elements, and make sure that everything's kind of covered. How much time do you get to rehearse in an ideal world before an understudy track before you go on for that understudy track? Oh, that's a good question. What they do make sure that we all have are put in rehearsals. So what that is, is we will all, everyone will come and have a rehearsal on stage as if we're doing the full show, and the person who's going into the show will be in costume with makeup, and everyone else will be there just in their street clothes, just trying to create the world as if they were doing the show at night. So that is always at the top of the list for someone to check off before they can be put on into a full show with an audience.

Your job as an understudy is to replicate somebody else's performance, and yet you are an artist who has their own point of view and way of looking at the world. What is the responsibility of an understudy to marry what somebody else does with what you bring to the table? It's such an interesting job in that sense because we are our own artists and have different ideas for what these characters might be, but it is also our job to do what is done every night so people get the same show. I've been really lucky to be part of productions where they're fairly lenient on us kind of making the role our own, which has been really special because it feels like we have, you know, part of ourselves in each character.

Whereas I know some shows they're very specific on like you must have all of these beats. Of course, there are different blocking moments and specific intention moments where they want to be the same every night, and no matter who's on, there are a lot of parts of the role as a whole that can kind of, I don't know, morph to who you are, whoever is on for that character, which is pretty exciting. But it's also neat having been part of two original Broadway casts, especially as a swing, because I was there observing the entire rehearsal process. So although I wasn't personally being directed by the directors or the choreographers, I got to observe everything that they were saying to the people who originated the part, so I'm really lucky to have been able to kind of grab that insight and put that onto my performance.

[12:25] Becca Petersen: I'm intrigued by you understanding Metta in "Newsies." So Metta, a mature African-American woman. Yes. Right, you are not a mature African-American woman, Becca, so how do you get the chutzpah to go on for a role that is on paper very... Right, as an understudy, I've had a lot of opportunities to really stretch myself and be able to see myself in roles that I never thought were possible, Metta being one of them. So what was cool about that track is that they weren't trying to hide the fact that we weren't quite right for it, so instead of us trying to take on something that was so not who we were, they sort of morphed the role into something that made sense for our age and everything like that. So my take on Metta was I did it with a dialect, an English dialect, instead of what Metta did every night, and so we kind of changed the idea of who Metta was for our performance to make it more like how Metta is portrayed in the movie.

[13:34] Becca Petersen: I mean, Cady Heron is the lead; you are the driving force for two and a half hours for an audience. What do you have to tell yourself to get in the mind frame to sort of lead the train? Right, yeah, Cady Heron is such an intense role, and I feel like sometimes the Cady role doesn't get as much credit because there are such big characters like Regina George and Damien that seem like, I don't know, personalities per se, but the Cady Heron role is very intense, and her dresser timed it out, and she, the only time she's off stage is for 11 minutes of the entire show, and all of those are quick changes. The role is extremely demanding, and she is singing or speaking the entire time, so it definitely feels like quite a task to take on, but also so exciting to lead the show, lead the company.

But being such a large role, before I go on, I have to go through every song, every scene, every song to make sure I know all of the words, all of the lyrics, just because you don't have time in that track to think ahead. You just have to like be in the moment, which is really exciting, but a lot of the other characters that I understudy, I have plenty of time to like before I go on kind of run through the song or run through the lyrics. You just have to trust yourself, trust that you know what you're doing, that you know the track, and listen to your scene partners. Also, trust that everyone has your back, and if you get off a little bit, they'll just steer you right back on, and that's really exciting, especially being in a role where at the end you're kind of bringing everyone together and feeling uplifted from the entire cast just like from the story alone and then from your peers. It feels really special.

[15:26] Becca Petersen: That must be crazy to do the bow as Cady Heron at the end of this like marathon. It truly is a marathon, and it feels so, I don't know, at that final bow, it feels so successful, and I feel very proud every time that I get to bow there. You've talked of great stories of success, but I think we both know that sometimes as an understudy you go into the white room and you just don't. Do you have any spectacular stories of failure you can share with us? Oh, you know, I don't know if there's anything like extremely specific other than like we were just chatting about with Cady. It is such a large role, and there have been times where I have lost lyrics or lost lines, and in the moment, it is terrifying because you're like, oh my gosh, how do I come back from this?

And especially being a role that is so large, you have no time to spiral. I feel like in those moments it can be really scary, and you're like, oh my gosh, what am I doing? But you have to just be like, okay, that happened. I have to move forward to continue with the show and to let the show keep going. So there were like two shows, like one is Cady and one is Karen, where I just did not feel super confident in my performance. Of course, I was just like so embarrassed, like messed up lines or like cracked a little bit, and that doesn't feel good when you don't get to do it that often. Whereas sometimes the people who perform every night, they'll have little flubs here and there, but that's like one show out of 500, whereas if you have a mess up as an understudy, that's like one show maybe out of 10 or 20.

But I've had to just kind of take those moments and realize that if I'm prepared and that those moments are just flukes, and if I dwell on those, that's just going to take down all of my future performances. So in those two specific moments where I was like, ah, that was not my best, I just kind of looked at those and then like, okay, if I messed up those lines next time I go on, I'm going to make sure I go for that song or those scenes multiple times so I feel extra confident. And I was really grateful in both of those experiences to go on for that role again pretty quickly, so I had a chance to like redeem myself and didn't just like sit into feeling like, oh, I really messed up.

[18:05] Becca Petersen: One last question: a piece of advice for someone who's understudying for the first time? Just knowing that you're cast as an understudy for a reason and that your skill set is necessary for the part. Sometimes it's hard to not compare yourself to someone who's doing it every night or compare yourself to the other understudies that also understudy that specific track, but just kind of trusting in yourself and your abilities and that whether you go on once a week or every six months, that if you do your homework and are prepared, that you're going to do a great job.

[18:50] Mo Brady: Special thanks to Becca Petersen for sharing her stories with us this week. The Ensemblist was produced today by me, Mo Brady. The Ensemblist is proud to be part of Broadway Podcast Network. If you can't get enough of theater conversations directed into your earbuds from us, there are more than 40 other great theater podcasts to listen to on the network. Check all of us out at bpn.fm. And we've joined the world of Patreon! You can support the work we do here at The Ensemblist for as little as five dollars a month. Check us out at patreon.com/theenssemblist. And if you don't have the cash to donate five dollars a month, you can help others find out about The Ensemblist by leaving us a rating and review on Apple Podcasts. Also, follow The Ensemblist on Instagram, where we share the stories of talented artists working in Broadway ensembles. Thanks for listening, guys. Until next time!