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[0:01] Jackson Klein: You're listening to The Ensemblist, the only podcast that shows you Broadway from the inside out. Welcome, I'm Jackson Klein.

[0:20] Jackson Klein: She's defied gravity as an Elphaba standby, worked as Angelica Schuyler, and controlled minds as Allison on Netflix's The Umbrella Academy. But before taking on these roles, Emmy Raver-Lampman had the unique experience of performing in the ensemble of the 2010 tour of Hair, which ended up playing a Broadway theater the following summer. On this episode of My First Time, Emmy joined me in the virtual studio to chat all about making her Broadway debut and how her experiences as an ensemblist shaped her later work as a principal. Here's our conversation.

[1:05] Jackson Klein: Hey, listeners. If you're a fan of The Ensemblist, here's another podcast we think you might enjoy from Backstage, the number one resource for performers and talent seekers. In the envelope, the Actors Podcast features intimate, in-depth interviews with today's most award-worthy film, television, and theater stars, from Bryan Cranston to Natalie Portman to Laura Linney. Sometimes you'll have experiences that are great, and those are magical, and you have to enjoy every second of those. And then sometimes you're going to be in productions that just don't work, and they're painful, and it's awful, and it's embarrassing, but you learn a lot. Tune into these weekly conversations full of inspiration, know-how, and advice on navigating the biz by subscribing to Backstage in the envelope, wherever you listen to podcasts.

[1:54] Jackson Klein: Hi! Can you please introduce yourself and tell our listeners where you're calling from today?

[1:58] Emmy Raver-Lampman: My name is Emmy Raver-Lampman, and I am calling from Los Angeles, California.

[2:04] Jackson Klein: Fabulous! Thanks so much for joining me, Emmy.

[2:06] Emmy Raver-Lampman: Thank you for having me!

[2:08] Jackson Klein: Of course! We're so excited! Let's go ahead and jump into our time machines and head back to early 2010, shall we?

[2:14] Emmy Raver-Lampman: Oh my god, I was such a child then!

[2:17] Jackson Klein: What were you up to professionally and educationally when you first auditioned for the Hair National Tour?

[2:23] Emmy Raver-Lampman: The way that the Hair Tour came about for me was I was in my sophomore year of college. We had just done our main stage production, which was Bright Lights Big City, and the director of the show is now a really good friend of mine. His name is Tom Wachunek, and he was the artistic director for the Astoria Performing Arts Center. They were doing a production of Children of Eden that summer, and he asked me to audition for it. I auditioned and ended up playing Eve and Mama Noah in that production in a church basement in Queens. It was my first New York professional theater experience, and it was amazing. To this day, I still have some lifelong friends from that experience. But the choreographer of that production of Children of Eden was my friend Christina Grady, and she was the associate choreographer for Hair on Broadway for the tours when it went to London.

She knew that they were sending out a tour and they were casting for it, and so she asked me if I had any interest. I was a little hesitant at first because I was still in school, and it would have required me to leave. Both of my parents are educators, and so not graduating from college was not an option. And I was getting ready to go into my junior year. I was actually on track to graduate a semester early, so I only had a year and a half left of college. So I kind of auditioned without telling my parents. I kind of wanted the experience. I had zero expectations. I was so, so green. I had only done a couple professional auditions. I didn't have an agent. I didn't have a manager. And so I auditioned, and I had a callback, and I ended up getting cast.

I went to school at Marymount Manhattan College, which is on the Upper East Side. And the reason when I was looking at schools that I picked Marymount is because they were interested in students curating their own educational experience. And with guidance and with permission, they kind of encouraged you to go out and use New York City as part of your educational experience at the school. They didn't mind if we auditioned. Kind of got those real-life experiences under our belt because that's so important. But you're still kind of under the confines of the educational umbrella. My college advisor at the time, I just told him, hey, I auditioned for this thing. I got it. I don't really know how to make this work.

This feels like an opportunity of a lifetime. I didn't even have my equity card yet, so I would get my equity card. I'd get to go on a national tour. I'd never done that before. And he was like, yeah, well, like, let's figure out how we can make this work. I ended up taking the offer, going out on tour, but I was also still in school and ended up doing my entire junior year while I was on the road.

[4:49] Jackson Klein: Were you taking classes full time?

[4:51] Emmy Raver-Lampman: I was taking classes full time. So I was like in Washington, D.C. at night running around being a hippie and then during the day was like taking like really serious like biology classes on like HIV and AIDS.

[5:02] Jackson Klein: So how are you finding that balance of school and work? You're doing eight shows a week. You're understudying a principal role. You're traveling on your days off. How did you do it?

[5:11] Emmy Raver-Lampman: I honestly think because I didn't know any different. Honestly, I think because I was so young, I had this like built in stamina. It was OK that I was staying up late and then having to get up early and having to write these 15 page papers on religion or whatever, whatever the classes that I was taking. I think I just was so caught up in the fact like I'd actually pulled it off. Like I was like on tour, being able to experience professional theater in this way for the first time. And then also being able to still graduate college at the same time. I was just making it work at the best that I could. And so were my professors and everyone was like really understanding. And I enjoyed it. And it just mostly was like a lot of reading because I didn't have to go to class.

I just was carrying around these like giant textbooks in my trunk. It's like everybody else's trunks were like full of clothes and shoes and like fold up collapsible bicycles. And I just had like a full trunk full of textbooks. It was almost a decade ago. I still look back on that experience and there's like so much that I have forgotten about because I think I just was in this like survival mode of like great. So we travel on Monday and I have a paper due on Tuesday. We're in the airport for four hours. I can finish the reading there. And then the second we get to the hotel in the new city, I can't go out and have dinner with the cast. I have to go back to my room and I have to hunker down and write this four page paper.

It's so funny because like when I think back on my time on the road with Hair, I don't really remember that part. I actually remember being on stage and going on for Dion for the first time and being in Seattle and being in all these amazing cities. It's like the part that my brain doesn't remember the most for some reason. But then whenever anybody asked me to talk about it, I'm like, oh, right. I was fully still in school.

[6:50] Jackson Klein: So you are playing all these wonderful cities, D.C., Seattle, and then you do something completely unprecedented. You go to Broadway. When did you find out that that was happening?

[7:01] Emmy Raver-Lampman: We were in Los Angeles. We were actually here at the Pantages and we had like a company meeting where they like had us come to the theater before half hour. And they like sat us down and like Oscar Hustis was there. Diane Paulus was there like meeting with like air quotes. And everyone was like, we're closing. We're all losing our jobs. They're shoving down the tour early. Everyone instantly goes to the negative just to prepare themselves. They sat us all down and essentially were just like, hey, this is totally crazy. This opportunity kind of came up for us to potentially go back to Broadway. And everyone was kind of like, is this a joke? We didn't really know to take it seriously or not. That would have been a bunch of people's Broadway debuts, including mine.

And then there also was people that were also in the original cast on that tour with us that were like, oh my God, what do you mean we're going back to Broadway? We just left. It was kind of an amazing experience. There was an opening at the St. James for like 10 weeks because the show had done so well in the park. Ended up bringing it to Broadway and then had been to Broadway and then it ended up going to London and the tour. People just loved it. And I think the opportunity that presented itself to bring the show back to New York in the summer was just a good idea. And I also think there may have been a gap in our tour schedule. That was like a 10 week gap that they didn't really know what to do with.

Because, you know, the summer is like every theater across the country is booked during the summer because kids are out of school and everybody wants to take their kids to see shows. And so I think there just was a gap. And so they're like, well, the St. James is open. Like, why don't we just go back to Broadway as opposed to closing the tour and then waiting 10 weeks and then opening it again?

[8:32] Emmy Raver-Lampman: We were all grateful because I think we were kind of all expecting maybe we're not going to have a job for two and a half months. It just was kind of this very surreal... I was like, wait a minute, so are you telling me that for my first professional job, I get my equity card, my first national tour, and my Broadway debut? That's insane. That's incredible. So you make your Broadway debut, first preview at the St. James, July 5th, 2011. What do you remember about this milestone and the days leading up to it? It's so funny because we'd been doing the show at that point for almost a year, and so there weren't nerves in the sense of performance. The show was so rooted in all of us at that point.

Casey Sheik was on tour with us as Jeannie. She'd done it on Broadway and then went on tour with us, and so she'd been doing it for two and a half years at that point, and she also went to London. It just was like a mix of emotions, I think, across the board. There were people that it was their Broadway debut, and they were so excited, and then people that had been doing it for such a long time, and it just felt very deja vu to be back in New York doing the show again. There weren't any nerves, necessarily. I have to say, I never grew up with the dream of, I am going to be on Broadway. I feel sometimes like I just was doing theater because I enjoyed it. I did it when I was a kid, and then I did it in middle school, and then I went to a performing arts high school, and then when it was time to look at colleges, I just was like, well, yeah, I mean, I've been doing theater, and it's the thing that has stuck the most out of all the hobbies that I had as a kid.

A musical theater program sounds intriguing and something I want to do, but I made sure that I went to a liberal arts college. I didn't want to go to a conservatory program because I felt like I'd already had that experience. The Broadway debut moment still is a little surreal to me. It was mostly just excitement to be in a theater that feels so iconic, doing a show in New York that New York loved so much, and the community loved so much, so it felt really awesome to bring this thing home. The funny thing that I always remember is on the first day in the theater, we moved in, and we all went up to our dressing rooms, and Dew Jamson, they have the St. James, and on every single person's dressing room station, there was a giant bouquet of flowers.

That, for some reason, has stuck with me for 10 years, that small gesture from Jordan Roth and everyone that works at Dew Jamson. I just was like, wow, what an unprecedented and unnecessary little thing to do. It just was welcoming us home into our new space, and I also think it's really hard for your family to chase you around the country and see you do your job, so it was really nice to be somewhere for 10 weeks. They all got to experience me on Broadway, which was just a really cool family moment. The thing I remember the most was finally feeling like I was a part of this community, more than it really registered to me that I was getting my Broadway debut. I just think I was like, oh, look at this new community of humans that the world has now opened up to me that I didn't really know anything about before, and the ways that things are done, and going to Sardi's for your discounted lunch, you know, those in-between shows, you know, those kinds of things.

[11:30] Emmy Raver-Lampman: So, since closing Hair, you've performed on Broadway several more times in the ensembles of Jekyll and Hyde, A Night with Janis Joplin, as a swing, and then Hamilton. What's the biggest lesson you learned by working as an ensemblist? I think I have really grown a very strong tool belt as a performer, being a vacation swing, and being a swing, and being an onstage cover, and being a standby. I think I have learned a lot of really important tools that have helped me in one job, and then have, like, come back around and helped me grow in another job. And I think being a swing, and being an understudy, and covering somebody, you really have to learn to, like, split your brain into several different compartments.

When I was onstage and covering somebody that was also onstage, you're never just doing your track until you feel comfortable going on for that track and you don't have to think about it. I feel like you're always onstage with your periphery paying attention to the roles that you cover to absorb new information. And also, because the people that you understudy, their performances are always changing. As an understudy, as a standby, it is your job to fill in for them when they can't be there, but then to also not affect anybody else's show in a negative way. As their performances grow, and as two actors in a scene decide to change a little bit of the blocking, you always are adapting to tiny, tiny little changes that people are making so that you can do your job to the best of your ability.

You get this crazy eye for detail, or at least I did, and you're constantly always paying attention to four things happening at once. So the further I got in my career, the easier it became for me to learn new tracks. Learning to cover Dionne in Hair was really hard for me because I'd never done it before. Once I got comfortable with what I had to do every night, then now I have to switch my focus and start to learn her show from the inside out. Because it's very rare that they have a lot of time and can afford to swing you out so that you can watch the show from the audience. So you're watching it from the inside, and so you then learn how to switch things around in your brain. You just have to be really observant and sponge-like taking in new information and taking in the choices and blocking of the roles that you cover.

With every part that I understudied, kind of up until Wicked, I was like learning more and more and it would start to get easier and easier and easier. Then I would figure out what my process is. What do I need to do to learn these tracks the fastest? Once you're a standby, that's different because then you can actually sit in the audience and watch every night, but then you have to flip it in reverse the other way. So you're like, so what does that look like if I'm on the stage? So I don't know, you just kind of build this tool belt for yourself that was just so helpful as I went from show to show to show in my career. I think being in the ensemble and being an understudy and a swing and a standby, you learn how to be a leader so that when it is your turn in the spotlight, when you are no longer an understudy, when you finally get offered the part of a lead role, you know how to carry this company with you and beside you, not behind you.

And because you can't do your job without the ensemble. Broadway doesn't work without an ensemble. People aren't lifted without an ensemble and people don't have backup vocals without an ensemble. And there is so much of a show that is the spine and the backbone of a show that is the ensemble. And I feel like when you come up from the ensemble, you understand what that means and you see the bad side of it and you see the mistreatment and the disrespect, you feel it too. And I think I just, with all of those unfortunate moments that I had in my career, I'm not a grudge holder, but I took those as learning opportunities for when it is my turn, I will never do that to someone. Or when it is my turn, I will stand up when I see someone being treated that way.

I will also make sure that I try to voice for the entire company and not just for the benefit of myself. I think that is the biggest thing that I learned throughout my career in the ensemble. When it was my turn to lead a company and to be the principal, I was able to understand how important it is that it comes from the top. You're sharing the boards with these people every night. Everyone deserves the same amount of respect and everyone is just trying to do their job. Everyone is trying to tell the same story. It's just really important that even the people that do not get to be on the stage every night feel respected and feel supported because at the end of the day, the show could not work without them.

[16:09] Jackson Klein: Special thanks to Emmy Raver-Lampman for joining us. You can catch her in Hamilton, streaming on Disney Plus starting July 3rd, and on Netflix's The Umbrella Academy. The Ensemblist was produced today by Mo Brady, Evan Alexander-Smith, and me, Jackson Klein. There are two great ways you can help The Ensemblist right now. The first is by leaving us a rating and review on Apple Podcasts. 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 your podcasts, whether that be Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or on the Broadway Podcast Network at bpn.fm. You can also follow us on Instagram, where we share all of our latest episodes. Thanks for listening. Until next time!