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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.

[0:10] Mo Brady: Welcome, I'm Mo Brady. Hi everybody, it's Saturday, March 15th, and today I got the opportunity to speak to another actor who is dealing with the repercussions of the coronavirus. John Tupy is currently in Palm Desert, California, where he was supposed to be performing with the National Tour of Chicago. But when performances were canceled beginning on Thursday, he is now without work and without the prospect of work for he doesn't know how long. So he told us about how that happened and kind of what his prospects are moving forward. Here's our conversation.

[0:50] Mo Brady: Hi, would you introduce yourself and tell us where you are?

[0:54] John Tupy: Yeah, my name is John Tupy. I am a swing and dance captain on the Chicago National Tour right now. We are in Palm Desert currently, California.

[1:01] Mo Brady: When was the last performance you guys did as a company?

[1:07] John Tupy: Wednesday night.

[1:09] Mo Brady: When did you find out that you wouldn't be performing after Wednesday night?

[1:12] John Tupy: Thursday morning. We were on the bus traveling to our next city and we got, we actually saw on the venue's website that they canceled all performances through the weekend. And so then like five minutes later, our company manager stood up on the bus and was like, yes, this is true. We will not be performing this weekend.

[1:32] Mo Brady: Oh my gosh. Usually these conversations between actors and their management are happening like the management can have conversations elsewhere and then they bring the company together. But I guess if you're all on a bus, then we're all on one bus.

[1:46] John Tupy: Yeah, it's funny. And depending on where you're sitting, if you're closer to the front, you might hear bits and pieces of these conversations before they're announced. And it's just, it's wild.

[1:54] Mo Brady: Okay. So where, where did the show perform on Wednesday night?

[1:57] John Tupy: We were in Modesto, California, which is a few hours North.

[2:01] Mo Brady: And you're on the bus on Thursday morning to Palm Desert. Someone, I mean, obviously this is a thing that's going on. So people are like checking the theater website and you notice that the performances are canceled or suspended. What does the company manager say when they stand up?

[2:19] John Tupy: They pretty much tell us that they just confirm everything we've heard. We were already scheduled to have a layoff this upcoming week. So they pretty much just tell us we're going to just be in Palm Desert. They're going to still house us for the weekend in our hotel. We're not going to perform. It's going to be, I guess, sort of a vacation. And on Monday, we're still going to fly back to our point of origins.

[2:41] Mo Brady: Is that all you know at this point, if you had further company meetings?

[2:44] John Tupy: Yeah. So we, they told us that on our way to Palm Desert, it was a two day travel. So that was what we heard on the first day. On the next day, we traveled from Modesto to L.A. just to spend the night, to break up how far it was to Palm Desert. And so we didn't perform in L.A. We were just staying the night there. So we didn't have to travel so many hours. And then the next day on our way to Palm Desert, we started hearing rumors about our next couple cities after our layoff being canceled. We were all like, what's going on? We're hearing these rumors from social media, from interviews that people are doing.

[3:25] Mo Brady: Sorry, whose social media and whose interviews?

[3:25] John Tupy: Our Roxy Hart, Molly Downs, she was doing an interview with one of our theaters that we were performing with in Canada. And she calls in for this interview and they're pretty much like, you know, you're not still performing here in two weeks. And she was like, that's news. We're not super surprised to hear it, but that was the first we were hearing of it just because it's all happening so fast and the venues are the ones in control of all of this. It's not the producers aren't canceling the shows. The venues are saying we're not going to be able to do this. Then they have to tell the producers that's like the line of communication.

[4:04] Mo Brady: And here we are on Sunday afternoon. What do you know right now?

[4:09] John Tupy: We know right now that our performances in Canada, Seattle, and Costa Mesa, California have been canceled. So we are out of a job for seven weeks, six to seven weeks.

[4:23] Mo Brady: And they tomorrow will be flying you back to your point of origin, which is where for you?

[4:30] John Tupy: For me, it's New York. So the company had already scheduled these flights. They bought them a while ago. Most of us were flying back to New York, but when they told us that this was going to be a longer layoff than just one week, a lot of us started booking flights elsewhere because we don't have sublets set up for that long. We don't have places to stay. We don't have jobs. So I ended up booking a flight to go stay with my parents in Oklahoma for the next two months.

[4:57] Mo Brady: Right. Okay. So you're, do you have an apartment in New York that you've subletted?

[5:01] John Tupy: I have an apartment up there. I found somebody to sublet for the tour. My plan was just to sublet a different room for the week while I was going to be there. And that ended up falling through because my person I was going to sublet from was going to fly to Seattle for the week and that got canceled because of the virus as well. So I was just, my new plan was to couch surf for a week, make it work, get back on the road, figure things out. And then that has changed within the past 24 hours.

[5:29] Mo Brady: And did you buy a round trip ticket or is it a one way ticket?

[5:32] John Tupy: It's the one way for right now because we don't really know. We don't really know when the tour is actually going to pick back up. We don't know how bad this is going to get. It seems like every single day we're getting a new piece of information. And I think that's the scariest part of it is like, you never, there's this huge if. You don't know what's coming next. And so you can only make plans for so long.

[5:53] John Tupy: With a layoff, that is like a week that they tell you in advance that they're not going to pay you. Right?

[6:00] Mo Brady: Okay.

[6:01] John Tupy: Yep. And you can, you know, kind of prepare as best as you can. You don't get any salary. You don't get any per diem, but at least you're aware that it's happening. But for that one week layoff to turn into seven, six to seven, somewhere in there is terrifying. And the prospect of work is non-existent at this point.

[6:20] Mo Brady: It's not like you can book another job.

[6:21] John Tupy: Exactly. Because there are no, I mean, there are no auditions happening in New York. There's nobody's looking really for temp work for the next six to seven weeks because other jobs are just closing as well.

[6:33] Mo Brady: I guess it's kind of a good thing that you've sublet your apartment because at least you don't have to pay for it while you...

[6:36] John Tupy: At least I'm really lucky that my parents are like, yes, come home, come live with us. It's going to be fine. I've reached out to local arts organizations in Tulsa, where I'm from, just to be like, I'm in town. If you are going to have masterclasses, if you do need substitutes, like, let me know. I guess that's the best I can, the best I can do at this point.

[6:59] Mo Brady: Yeah. I mean, you can teach that all that jazz choreo anywhere someone will let you.

[7:04] John Tupy: I know that's, I mean, that's the plan, you know, to keep doing something that's still artistically fulfilling throughout all of this, but I don't know what the prospects of that actually look like. And we're also lucky in the sense that we were already expecting one of these weeks with our layoff. And then throughout the next seven weeks, we were expected to have two more layoffs. Our schedule is kind of a stop and start for this first little bit of the tour. So we were prepared for a few weeks of not receiving pay, but filling in everything in between is just...

[7:38] Mo Brady: Can you fill, can you file for unemployment?

[7:40] John Tupy: I believe we can. Our company manager reached out to us asking if people need help filing for unemployment, that we could contact her, she would help us with all that. So we're under the impression that yes, we can, but I've also heard other actors who have said that because the contract is still ongoing, we're technically not unemployed. So it's a tricky scenario.

[8:05] Mo Brady: Yeah. What's next?

[8:07] John Tupy: You know, getting on a plane at 6am tomorrow to go living with my parents.

[8:15] Mo Brady: Yeah. Which I'm trying to, as I think all of us are, focus on the positive things right now, which is that I wasn't expecting to see my family for the next six months and now I get a chance to go back. There's still this overwhelming cloud of questions that we all have about what's happening next career-wise, what's happening next with our show in general. We've been told that the show is for sure going to come back in seven weeks or whenever it does come back, but tours are cancelling and suspending indefinitely. So there's still always going to be that little bit of doubt that there's still a job. The big question for the industry is, every day brings some sort of new development, new information and we're all just kind of waiting. And I think that's the hardest part. We have these timelines right now, but so much has changed since Wednesday. We woke up Wednesday morning and we had a job. The next day, we didn't. That's how it worked.

[9:25] John Tupy: And I think the hard thing is that a lot of people don't necessarily understand the way performers make money. If we're not performing or rehearsing, we don't necessarily have a guaranteed paycheck. I've had several people who have been like, oh, this is great. You're going to go home. You're going to save money. It's going to be wonderful. And it's just creating an awareness of no, no, no, we don't have jobs. This is basically unemployed. This isn't just like sitting back and relaxing. This is waiting to make money again. This is a career and this is something that is really, really devastating to it.

[10:11] Mo Brady: Special thanks to John Tupy for sharing his stories with us today. The Ensemblist was produced today by me, Mo Brady. You can help others find out about The Ensemblist by following us on Apple Podcasts or Spotify or wherever you listen to podcasts. If you're interested in helping us out, you can do it two really easy ways. One is leaving us a rating and review on Apple Podcasts. And the second is become a Patreon member. You can do that at patreon.com slash The Ensemblist. And make sure you're following us on Instagram where we are sharing the stories of performers dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic and how it's been affecting their lives and work. Thanks for listening, guys. Until next time.