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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. Welcome, I'm Mo Brady.

[0:10] Mo Brady: Artists around the country are still reeling in the aftermath of their shows closing preemptively. One of those performers is Adam Roberts, who was on the national tour of Miss Saigon until it unexpectedly closed in Florida. He joined me by phone to tell me how he learned about that news and what he's been doing in the two weeks since the tour had shuttered. Here's our conversation.

[0:38] Mo Brady: Hi, would you introduce yourself and tell us where you're calling from today?

[0:42] Adam Roberts: Hi Mo, my name is Adam Roberts and I am calling from Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, which is where I'm originally from. And I'm kind of cooped up with my parents as we endure this pandemic together.

[0:55] Mo Brady: Right. And where were you working until recently?

[0:59] Adam Roberts: So I've been on the national Broadway production of Miss Saigon for about a year and a half. And we were in Florida when the news sort of broke.

[1:08] Mo Brady: Take us back to a few Thursdays ago when Broadway shut down.

[1:12] Adam Roberts: Sure. We finished the five-show weekend out, so Sunday night was our last performance. And as we left, we were supposed to go to Atlanta the next week to play at the Fox, which is like a 4,000 seat venue. So we up until like two days before we were supposed to go to Atlanta, you know, we had the green light. They were like, as far as we know, the Fox is still having us come to perform because the Barbara B. Mann Theater in Fort Myers where we left off, they just had us do all the shows. And, you know, some of the audience members have thinned out. Some people want refunds and everything like that. But a lot of them still showed up. But then we finally got the news. We're like, OK, the Fox is canceled.

And then our next city in Tampa had closed us down. But as far as we knew, they put us on a two-week hiatus. So we were like, OK, two weeks off. We'll reconvene in Orlando. And then during our first week off, we did a group company call. And they were like, you know, we didn't make this decision hastily, but we're going to have to cancel the remainder of the tour, which was going to wrap up in June, the end of June anyway. So three months prematurely, we closed down.

[2:11] Mo Brady: So what were those performances like in Fort Myers over that weekend after Broadway shut down, after many of the tours had shut down, but you guys were still running?

[2:20] Adam Roberts: It was honestly the strangest, most eerie feeling, just having the knowledge, knowing that everything else was shutting down. And like day by day, we were getting doses of news being, you know, like this network's tour closed down, this tour closed down. So we were like we were literally the last man standing. As far as the audiences were so appreciative because they kind of knew what was going on worldwide. And so they were just, you know, small but mighty. But we were kind of like, this seems a little irresponsible, a little negligence. Like we were thankful on a selfish note to still have a job and still be getting having the privilege to perform when so many people were out of work that we felt like it was like a ticking time bomb, like it was only a matter of time before the numbers kept dwindling as far as what the government was mandating was too large of a quantity of numbers.

They were, you know, groups of 500 or less, and it was 100 or less, and then it became so small that we were like, this is crazy. But it really felt like a dream. We were like in limbo. We were doing this show. We were like, well, the world seems to be falling apart, but we're going to go on stage and perform in Saigon. It's the last night of the world. 100% appropriately so.

[3:25] Mo Brady: Okay. And what were the discussions you were getting from company management or general management over the weekend as you guys are the last man standing?

[3:34] Adam Roberts: We were kind of at the mercy of these venues because, you know, I guess the CDC was suggesting certain things, but as far as we were concerned, we were still going to, you know, networks couldn't can the show unless the venue, unless they were the ones that sort of pulled the plug. And like I said, up until the very end, a lot of them had, you know, kind of held on for dear life, and we're going to try to eke out these shows, I guess, because they didn't want to lose the money and everything like that. But I think as the pandemic grew and everything kind of got more grim and serious and the numbers kind of came in of the rapid growth rate and everything of it, but, you know, we were getting we were just getting like moment by moment updates that we would go to them be like, Hey, we read on their website, you know, the Fox that they're going to still proceed as planned.

And then it was like, there'd be an update. And they're like, guys, we can read we're getting the updates too. So they were just going to come to us like on an hour by hour basis. So we were like, by our phones by our computers waiting for the email to come in being like, you know, we're gonna scrap the tour. And throughout the weekend, we just kept showing up and doing it. And it felt really, it felt really strange.

[4:34] Mo Brady: Were you changing the show at all? Like was social distancing affecting the performance itself?

[4:41] Adam Roberts: People were taking precautions as much as we could, like our, you know, our stagehands and our the people that were in charge of props and everything, we're wiping everything down profusely. But as far as like the show itself, like, you know, it's very hands on, it's very tactile, we're, you know, we're lifting each other, we're touching each other, there's a lot of snogging in the show, lots of kissing. I mean, the show itself was as is, but this was sort of like right on the cusp right before things became very dire. You know what I mean? I feel like this was this was right before social distancing was being urged, it was being suggested, but this is this is sort of right before, you know, things hit the ceiling. And they were like this, everyone has to quarantine, everyone has to stay inside, you know, social distancing.

[5:21] Adam Roberts: Yeah, this is like hands washing challenge weekend. After Fort Myers, you're supposed to be in Atlanta, and then they say that you're going to have an unexpected two week hiatus. Have you had layoff weeks like that in the past or has your schedule been pretty stacked?

[5:37] Adam Roberts: We've been running for such a long time now we have we had some layoffs sort of like intermittently throughout. And actually, after our Florida route, we were supposed to go into a two week layoff. So as we left Fort Myers, we were like, okay, there's an unexpected two week hiatus we're on now. We're going to reconvene in Orlando, then do Miami and then have another two week layoff. But you know, I think all of us knew we kind of forecasted and predicted as we were watching the news. We're like, there's no way. There's no way this is going to happen. There's no way and if Disneyland is closed in Orlando, there's no way we're going to go do Miss Saigon in a packed house. And then there was talk of, you know, potential makeup dates in the future, which I think some tours are doing, but you know, our company managers and our producers and everything on the phone call.

They were like, guys, you know, we can only kick the can down the down the road for so long before having to make this, this big decision. You know, the problem with this is no one knows the timeline. You know, it's not like, okay, after a month, things will resume or we can shift things around. It could be a month. It could be half a year.

[6:40] Adam Roberts: You left like you would any other city like you like packed your trunk and you just left your stuff there.

[6:46] Adam Roberts: Yeah. We left Fort Myers. You know, we, we all kind of huddled up after the show because we think we knew we knew something was up. We knew there were a lot of question marks, things were on the fence. So we kind of had like a group huddle. There were a few tears shed just because it was, things were so volatile, you know, we just didn't know what was going to happen. So we didn't get like an official goodbye. We didn't get like an official farewell with each other or like one last, you know, a hug or anything like that. So we, we packed our trunks, we packed our makeup cases and we said goodbye for two weeks. And I think most of us thought that, you know, even if it wasn't going to be longer than two weeks, we were going to be able to come back eventually to finish off the three months.

Or, you know, we thought maybe we would miss the Florida circuit and we would reconvene in Syracuse and go to Toronto for three weeks. I think we thought we would, we would actually get to do the tail end of the tour at least to kind of finish it out. You know?

[7:36] Adam Roberts: Gosh, I guess we're like two and a half weeks out from that weekend. Calm about it all. How long did it take you to sort of mourn and move on?

[7:44] Adam Roberts: I guess. I feel like it's like the five stages of grief, you know, where you're kind of like shocked and appalled and then you're like in denial and then you're sort of angry about it because you're like, this isn't how my life was supposed to go. This isn't, you know, especially because I'm on tour, you know, that's your time to save some money. And we had like this final three month push. I was like, oh, you know, the budgeting is really going to go into effect. The finances are really going to get in order. And now I'm like, whoop. Okay. So there's that, you know, and then there's like the whole, there's like the acceptance at the end where it's like, okay, this is a real, these are the real facts of life.

This is, this is what's actually going down. So it's sort of taken that and just, I guess trying to make the most of it, you know, it's and again, it's like the whole world's going through this. So it's not just show business, you know, it's, it's not just a, I'm trying not to look at it so selfishly. It's like people are dying. This is like a real thing.

[8:30] Adam Roberts: So take us through the journey that you have been on since you left Florida.

[8:35] Adam Roberts: Well, I'm trying to, I'm trying to find the, the balance, the marriage of, you know, allowing some time to rest and sort of recoup and kind of look inward and figure, figure some things out, kind of reflect, but also staying productive, staying active, both, both physically and, you know, in creation. I feel like this is such a, an amazing opportunity and platform to sort of make some art. And I've been working on original music for a while.

[9:00] Mo Brady: And sorry, where's, where is that Myrtle Beach, South Carolina?

[9:03] Adam Roberts: Yeah.

[9:04] Mo Brady: How long are you going to be in South Carolina?

[9:07] Adam Roberts: I have no idea. I wish I knew. I wish I knew. I'm just trying to take it one day at a time and plan it by year.

[9:21] Mo Brady: Special thanks to Adam Roberts for sharing his stories with us today. The Ensemblist was produced today by me, Mo Brady. There are two great ways you can be helping The Ensemblist right now. One is by leaving us a rating and review on Apple podcasts. And the other one is by becoming a Patreon member. You can do that at patreon.com slash The Ensemblist. Please follow us wherever you listen to podcasts, whether that be on Spotify, on Apple podcasts, or at our home on Broadway Podcast Network. You can find us and all of our BPN cohorts there at bpn.fm. And follow us on Instagram, where we are sharing the stories of talented artists working in theater ensembles and dealing with the coronavirus epidemic. Thanks for listening. Until next time.