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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. I'm Mo Brady.

[0:19] Mo Brady: When a Broadway show closes, we often think about the cast members on stage being out of work. But really, a Broadway show is an entire ecosystem. Usually more than a hundred people are involved, from company management, stage management, front of house, and each one of those people has a story about their show closing and them being out of work. One of those people is Bronwyn Tarboton, who was a vacation swing on the show and had been working on it on Broadway since October. We spoke over the phone this weekend about her experience making her Broadway debut in the show and how she's feeling about the show closing abruptly. Here's our conversation.

[0:55] Mo Brady: Would you introduce yourself and tell us where you're calling from?

[0:57] Bronwyn Tarboton: Okay. Hi, I'm Bronwyn Tarboton, and I'm calling from my apartment in New York, Upper West Side.

[1:03] Mo Brady: What was your most recent job, I guess?

[1:05] Bronwyn Tarboton: My most recent job was vacation swing in Frozen on Broadway. So that was my debut. I started in October. I was there every week except for one until the shutdown.

[1:19] Mo Brady: Got it. So you were a vacation swing, meaning you were sort of on these short contracts, just because of how vacations or personal time or leaves were lining up. You basically were in the building from October until March.

[1:32] Bronwyn Tarboton: Exactly. Yeah, in the building and actually in almost every show.

[1:36] Mo Brady: I kind of want to ask you about first the moment before Frozen. You had been pounding the pavement. You did Smokey Joes off Broadway. You've been Maggie in every production of a chorus line around the world. What you were hoping to get out of a Broadway debut and maybe what you felt in that in the moments when you got the job.

[1:58] Bronwyn Tarboton: Yeah, I mean, you hit it right on. I'd have been pounding the pavement. I was like, so close. I could just feel that I was almost there. I knew I was doing successful shows and working with like top level people, but you can't write home to your family in Utah and say, no, no, you don't get it. I'm working with great people. They're like, are you on Broadway? Yeah, I just wanted to get that final checkmark. You know, I made it to Broadway. Yeah, I'd been auditioning for Frozen for almost a year and I'd been auditioning for the tour off and on. I'd made it down to the final two. I finally got a call to come be on Broadway. So I definitely that whole year could taste like how close I was getting and I could feel it coming.

But, you know, you just don't know. You're like, maybe I'll just be close and it will never come. Yeah. So when it finally came, I mean, it was everything you hope it to be, you know, calling everyone. And when I started, it was also everything I hoped it to be. Like, I actually didn't expect the company to be how they were because they're veterans and they've been doing the show for at least a year and a half, maybe two years when I joined. But I remember the stage manager walking me through the dressing rooms like on the first day introducing me. And, you know, he's walking me into like Patti and Casey's dressing rooms and they're like hugging me like Broadway debut. And I was like, are you kidding me? Like, you guys are not supposed to be this excited. You're about to just go on stage and do the show you do a hundred times. But everyone really like made a special.

[3:31] Mo Brady: Talk about some of those moments you got to check off in Frozen.

[3:37] Bronwyn Tarboton: Oh, my gosh, so many things. I mean, first, just being able to walk in the stage door of a Broadway theater. You know, I would walk past the doors all the time and just look and be like, I'm going to get in there one day. The thing when everyone asks you, oh, you know, what are you working on? And you're like, oh, I'm actually I'm doing Frozen on Broadway. And Frozen is great because all of your relatives, like all my relatives are in the West. They know what Frozen is, because a lot of times, you know, you're working on a really cool project and like people have no idea what it is. Six months isn't like a terribly long time in terms of civilian jobs. But in terms of a theater job, that's a pretty long time to be somewhere, right?

[4:15] Bronwyn Tarboton: It's a long time, especially to be there every week, just because in our business, it's so often a two week job here, a three week job there, a two week break. It was amazing to be in one place, you know, consistently every week, knowing that was gonna happen. Same people. I guess the idea about Frozen is like, I don't think it was gonna go anywhere. You know, like, I know. That's what's weird. I mean, every show is gonna close. And we knew Frozen right now wasn't making as much money as Lion King and Aladdin. Yeah, it's still Frozen. You know, it's not closing this month. And we'd actually just done a huge reboot, brand new principles. They all had, you know, brand new sets of costumes. And we actually re-teched for about a month.

And we put in a ton, you know, brand new choreography, brand new cast members. I mean, it was a huge process. A little over a month, I think. And, you know, we knew how much money they spent on that. Of course, we thought there was no plan to close at least within the year because the new principles had a year contract and they spent all this money. And yeah, there's certainly a sense of there are shows that we think of as government jobs, right? If I book Wicked, if I book Lion King, if I book Frozen, it's not going anywhere. I'm going to be the one who has the power to say I'm ready for the next thing. And even as a vacation swing, I knew technically that I might not be there full time that I could have breaks. But I knew they would call. You know that phone's gonna ring one day and they're gonna take you back. So you have that sense of security.

[5:51] Mo Brady: Let's talk about this week. Did you have any inkling at all that?

[5:57] Bronwyn Tarboton: I had no inkling. I don't think they did either. You know, we've all just been doing our weird quarantine lives. The cast actually stays in touch a ton, you know, whether that's like a group text message or, you know, various groups get together and like I'm on a girls group text, a swing group text. So we keep in touch a lot.

[6:19] Mo Brady: Okay, so you when did you find out that there was going to be a meeting?

[6:24] Bronwyn Tarboton: So we got an email like around eight something that there was going to be a meeting with the producers. I still did not think anything of it because I'd heard it was maybe going to be till January that you know, Broadway was reopening. I was like, Oh, shoot, they're gonna tell us like, definitely don't plan on anything till January and sort of explain the process of how it was going to be. I was actually excited. And I was also like glad to be on the email because I don't know, I always assume like, that I'm a vacation swing and they're like, not keeping in touch. They always keep me in touch. Like they treat me like a full time cast member. So I don't know why I'm always being weird. But well, one of our dressers text us and was like, Hey, guys, let's not freak out.

Like Hamilton had a meeting, you know, the day before just to talk about next steps. So let's not jump to anything. And you know, people are like, okay. And then some of the girls started getting worried. But I was still like, there's no way guys like don't be crazy. Yeah. And that was how we started the meeting.

[7:24] Bronwyn Tarboton: And so this meeting happens. Like so many meetings happen. It was on zoom. Yeah, it had to be able to handle a huge capacity of people. It's something like 150. Because it's everyone that works at Frozen, like front of house, any position at all. They were on the call. Yeah, so like about five minutes before the meeting started, then I think me and everyone else starts getting nervous. Like on our texts, we're getting like pictures of like the waiting screen and like a drink. And everyone's like, is this it? But we were just kidding. Like we didn't really think so. This was just now it's funny looking back, but it's not funny because it's so horrible. We were sit like we logged in. And everyone's sitting there that the group text is blowing up that I was on.

And then there's this wait screen that just says wait, and the meeting was supposed to be at four o'clock. And you know, they were a couple minutes late, which normally is totally fine. But we're all sitting there freaking out. There was this hold music that just kept playing over and over and over on my computer. Is this some sort of like weird form of torture? And that's when I don't know about the other people. But I started to get nervous then because you're like, Oh, gosh, what if? Like this really is a possibility. You know, we started we didn't really even start late that just those couple minutes like made it feel crazy. My boyfriend was sort of watching over my shoulder. And at first it sounded okay, because they I don't remember exactly what they said.

But they basically said, you know, we want to talk to you guys about, you know, what's going to happen going forward. And my boyfriend even was like, Oh, you're good and left the room. He just wanted to peek in and see if we were closing. And I was like, Yeah, we're good. I mean, there's no good way to tell people that they just said, you know, they just explained, like, there's no good way to do this. Obviously, they wish they didn't have to do it over this weird video format. They can't gather 150 people in person to tell them. They just told us. And it was so weird. I was definitely in denial. And I'm still in denial. They told us, you know, they kept it really brief. And they just explained that they didn't think realistically three shows with Disney could successfully run in the climate with audiences being skeptical and everything after this ends.

And then they had set up like a zoom call that everyone could click on if they wanted to. Then I clicked on the zoom call for after and that was, I mean, it was horrible, but it was really nice to because then everyone that wanted to could just be on the zoom call. Everyone that works in the building have a building for Frozen like all departments. We were all just sort of sitting there like on zoom. And you know, some people were crying. Some people weren't, you know, no one knew what to do. The kids were on it. That was really sad. It was just weird. We you know, some people would say something about like the company or just their experience at Frozen. And yeah, then one by one, you know, people got off when they wanted to.

That was it. I'm still definitely in denial because day to day I'm not doing anything different. I'm still doing weird quarantine life. So it definitely doesn't feel like anything's changed. But then there keep being these weird little reminders of, yeah, I'll see something from the show and be like, Oh, I'm not going back, which is just it just definitely hasn't set in. I didn't realize how much I was enjoying this off time, knowing, oh, this is just an intermediate period. And then I'll go back. Now that that's gone, but you know, you can't audition for anything. You can't. I don't even know what shows will be there to audition for when ends. You just don't know what to do. Like I have a friend who is like super successful in the business has done Broadway shows like we've worked together.

But in between stuff he sells like he works at the bar at Frozen. So his gig has gone to like all the company managers, the house staff, like everyone, it's not just you think of the cast on stage, but it's like a huge corporation of people that they're all, you know, it's just done as well. So that's really weird to think about. And it's hard to explain for some reason, the people outside of the business, it's hard to explain. Like you're like, you know, Frozen's closing and they're like, Oh, like, that's that's too bad. And like, you don't know how to explain like, this is a really big deal. We didn't think this would happen. And then there's the other end of the cast. Like there's the people that have been there for two and a half years.

And then there's the people like we had a bunch of new people start and they'd been there like performing, I think for three weeks. Like that's crazy to especially I think to Broadway debuts. I mean, that's crazy. Like to have that ripped out, you know, you've just learned everything you just put your costumes on and and then it's like, Oh, I'm supposed to have this year contract. And now it's not coming back. Like that's crazy.

[12:44] Mo Brady: Special thanks to Bronwyn Tarboton for sharing her 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 second is by becoming a Patreon member, which you can do at patreon.com slash the Ensemblist. Please follow the Ensemblist wherever you listen to podcasts, whether that be on Spotify, on Apple podcasts, or at Broadway podcast network, bpn.fm. And make sure you're following us on Instagram. Thanks for listening. Until next time.