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[0:08] Mo Brady: You're listening to The Ensemblist, the only podcast that shows you Broadway from the inside out. Welcome, I'm Mo Brady.

[0:18] Mo Brady: For 366 performances, the spooky souls of Broadway's Beetlejuice haunted the hallowed halls of the Winter Garden Theater. Until its untimely demise in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic, the show was playing to sold-out houses who reveled in its zany but loving spirit. As fans of the show, we are sad to see it go, but so grateful for the joy the company brought to the Broadway community. The Ensemblist loved sharing stories from its 22 ensemble members over its year on the Rialto. Luckily, many of its cast joined us in the studio over the year to record those stories, and we're happy to re-share a couple of them with you today. First up is a story from Ramon Owens, who wrote a blog for us about making the sojourn to Broadway's Winter Garden Theater to see the Beetlejuice marquee for the first time. Here, in his own words, is Ramon Owens.

[1:17] Ramon Owens: All day long, I had been seeing pictures on social media of fellow castmates and team members at the Winter Garden Theater. Every time I double-tapped, I'd get more and more excited. Eventually, I decided I had to go down and see the theater for myself. I live in Brooklyn, so I'm not in Midtown too often without proper reason. Luckily, that evening I was invited to Call Me Madam's final dress run at Encores! I planned to go to the show and pop over to the Winter Garden after. The show ended, I greeted my friends, and fled out of the door rushing to the Winter Garden. As I approached 53rd and 7th, I could see the marquee at the stage door. I began to walk faster, heart-pounding, like opening the largest gift under the Christmas tree.

I took out my phone to make a video, but all I could say was, "You guys! You guys! You guys!" to whom I have no idea. My heart was nearly out of my chest, and I felt myself about to explode. I arrived at the stage door marquee on 51st and 7th and just stood. The word Beetlejuice had never looked cooler or brighter. I could have screamed of pure excitement and joy. It was happening. I literally ran around the corner to the front of the theater as if a stranger took off in my Uber. When I turned the corner, I was immediately halted by how massive the marquee was. Pride began to fill my chest, tears welled in my eyes, and a strong sense of belonging came over me. I took out my phone and immediately started taking pictures.

Portrait mode, square, filtered, unfiltered, boomerangs, all of it. Then I'd stop and stare again, imagining in a few months what the day-to-day of walking into the theater would look like, picturing a regimen of when I'd work out and where I'd get my iced coffee from in the summertime, planning out my life with this new exciting workspace as my home away from home, for however long it lasts. I joined the cast of Beetlejuice in August 2018 for the DC Out of Town tryout as an ensemble member. It was only a couple of weeks into rehearsal that we were announced an official Broadway run at the Winter Garden. Everyone was thrilled about the move to Broadway, thrilled but well aware that there were no proper guarantees of transferring, considering DC was still technically a developmental production.

About a week after closing in DC, I got my call to join the company on Broadway. Beetlejuice will be my second Broadway show. The first closed rather quickly; it happens. After so many years in the business, on tour, and countless out-of-town regional productions, I am so grateful to be a part of an original Broadway show. For as long as I've lived in New York, I've never stayed in the city an entire year. Work has kept me away, hashtag grateful, but New York has never quite felt like home for that reason. I turned 30 years old on our first day of rehearsal. It was a gift that no one could plan or properly give me. It makes nine years in the business with Beetlejuice being my first original Broadway company.

With a new decade of life ahead, I can see how time and opportunity have aligned, and it makes sense. The hard work, the unemployment, the in-between gigs, the tears of frustration, the auditions that I completely nailed and didn't book, the pains and small victories, all of it has led to this moment. All of it has led to that moment. Staring at the marquee, a dream realized.

[4:49] Mo Brady: Thanks, Ramon. I was lucky enough to travel into the netherworld twice during Beetlejuice's run at the Winter Garden Theater. After my first time at the show, I wrote the following review, which ran on the Ensemblist's blog. Today, we share it again to celebrate the show's incredible ensemble. That ensemble features 14 actors portraying various demons and denizens of the netherworld. At various moments, they're appearing as deceased marching band members, oversized skeletons, and even various versions of Beetlejuice himself. They seem to literally bounce off the walls, bounding on and off the stage through hidden doors, or in the case of the gravity-defying Mateo Melendez, flying on and off the furniture.

What's most notable about this ensemble is how much frenetic energy is required of them. While the amount of time they appear on stage is not a ton, every song they perform is a fully staged production number, so it's no surprise that the company features veterans of Rock of Ages and Newsies as the high energy level required by choreographer Conor Gallagher starts high and climbs higher. Nestled within the ensemble are a couple of standout performances by featured actors. Dana Steingold makes a pitch-perfect Broadway debut as a cookie-hawking Girl Scout who unsuspectingly descends on the home of Lydia. And in the dual roles of Maxine Dean and Juno Weesaw-Natalie Charlie Ellis, she provided steady laughs thanks to a copious amount of scenery-chewing, and in her first performance in the show, so congratulations Natalie! Beetlejuice is like experiencing a carnival ride on stage. It's not subtle, it's not quiet, but it's a whole lot of fun.

[6:34] Mo Brady: Our final stories today are from an interview with Jill Abramovitz, who slayed Beetlejuice audiences in her dual roles of Maxine Dean and Juno. We asked this veteran of Broadway's Cinderella and Nine to Five into the studio to talk about how she developed some of those roles into the very funniest moments in what is already a very funny show. Here are a few of my favorite moments from our conversation. So when you got into rehearsals for the pre-Broadway tryout in DC, what did your roles look like?

[6:59] Jill Abramovitz: Well first at that point Juno was still named Eileen Shoggath. She was Mrs. Shoggath.

[7:09] Mo Brady: Okay.

[7:10] Jill Abramovitz: I think because at the time when they first started writing it, the film Juno was still in the ether, and I think they didn't want to use the name, so I don't know where they got Eileen Shoggath. Anthony King and Scott Brown geniuses coming up with a really fabulous name like that. But I think they realized enough time had passed that we could go back to using Juno. So my track basically looked like what it is now, but Juno was different. She had a different name. Maxine was far dirtier and grosser and more off-color. They made fun of Maxie Dean's first wife.

[7:46] Mo Brady: And these changes that were happening to the character, were those happening through the preview process?

[7:50] Jill Abramovitz: They were happening through the preview process. It was new pages all the time, every day. You'd go to sleep at night and wake up in the morning and go like, oh I hope I still get to keep that line, or you know, oh my gosh I got a great new line. That was a constantly shifting process.

[8:01] Mo Brady: Did you feel like you were in much conversation with the writers?

[8:07] Jill Abramovitz: Yes, they were fantastically receptive and I always knew I could go to Alex and the writers and pitch something or push for something or give them feedback. Like for example, in between DC and New York we had a reading and there was a great line for Juno where she's introducing the netherworld and she said something like, fun fact, it smells like coconut. Which I really loved, but I also really missed. Also no liquids, drink it or throw it out. And I pushed for that.

[8:34] Mo Brady: So tell us about Juno. Who is Juno?

[8:43] Jill Abramovitz: Oh my gosh, well she's the goddess demon of the netherworld. She's got a business to run and she's got rules to follow. I suppose she would seem heartless to some, but she is a stickler for the rules and keeping the world order, or underworld order as it were.

[9:03] Mo Brady: So Beetlejuice is a comedy.

[9:04] Jill Abramovitz: Yes.

[9:05] Mo Brady: And your two large standout roles are comedic roles. So the audience, getting the audience feedback must have been a big part of the development and the solidification of those roles?

[9:15] Jill Abramovitz: Oh a thousand percent. I mean just in terms of like, you get that instant response like, okay that's getting a laugh. That's consistently getting a laugh and that is consistently not getting a laugh. Are you coming backstage and like, oh my god I'm going to die. Like I'm not getting that laugh or I'm not waiting long enough to let that smoke exhale like I notice I'm getting. That's one of the great things about comedy is you can calibrate right in the moment. You can adjust right there in the show. You can adjust show by show and look at the broader trends. And not only that, I think you know when we were in the preview process, some things might have gotten laughs but they're the wrong kinds of laughs. They're mean-spirited laughs and so the writers would sense that and feel that and push it in another direction.

[10:00] Mo Brady: So imagine that we're in the future, 10 years, and someone listening to this podcast is playing Maxine and Juno in their high school production of Beetlejuice. What's one thing you want them to know? One piece of advice?

[10:14] Jill Abramovitz: The thing that Alex constantly has to stay on me about, which is try not to make it you know the Maxine show. I mean really connect. You know when you're telling Charles Dietz that you were kicked in the head by a dressage horse, really try to explain to him that's why you are the way you are. I mean really try to connect with people around you. It's very tempting to slip into the clownishness of her. I can sometimes do that and then Alex will come to the show and I'll get a little note like hey remember, remember, keep her grounded. Like try to talk and it's hard to keep someone like that grounded because she's essentially up in the clouds. But yes, try to really connect to the people around you.

Connect to your husband. It helps to have someone playing Maxie who you adore like I adore Danny so much. And we really try to stay connected. In fact we even do a little, we do a little thing before we make our first entrance. We have this ballet we do just as we're walking up to the steps to the house and we try to do it in real time as if we were really doing a little husband and wife dance before we ring the doorbell to their home. So just connect to the people around you if you can because it's very tempting to just lean into those lips.

[11:35] Mo Brady: Special thanks to Jill Abramovitz and Ramon Owens for allowing us to re-share their stories this week.

[11:56] Mo Brady: 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 is by becoming a Patreon member which you can do 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 of Broadway Podcast Network at bpn.fm. You can also follow us on Instagram where we share the stories of talented artists working in the theater community. Thanks for listening. Until next time.