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[0:10] Mo Brady: You're listening to The Ensemblist, the only podcast that shows you Broadway from the inside out. I'm Mo Brady.

[0:23] Mo Brady: This month, we are resharing our favorite episodes from our 2017 season on Ensemblist Essentials. Think of them as the Essential Essentials. That spring, our co-creator Nikka Graff Lanzarone and I spoke to some of Broadway's most venerable performers about the most monumental moments in the creation of a Broadway musical. In this episode, we spoke to three Broadway performers about pre-production, the process that choreographers use to develop their musical staging for a show. Throughout this episode, you'll hear from Paige Faure, Dionne Figgins, and Adam Perry. Enjoy.

[2:56] Adam Perry: Hi, my name is Adam Perry, and I live in Astoria, Queens, New York. The textbook definition of pre-pro is basically the choreographer would like to get a couple people in the room to start testing choreography and formations on a few people, so that when the actual rehearsal starts and the entire ensemble is in the room, they have a map of how to set numbers and stage different parts of the show.

[3:28] Paige Faure: My name is Paige Faure, and I live in South Harlem. It is a group of people that a choreographer brings together that he or she trusts to bring a piece to life in a way that's non-political. It's not about, can they understudy this, can they hit a high C? It's just about the creation of movement.

[4:00] Dionne Figgins: My name is Dionne Figgins, and I live in Inwood in Manhattan. Pre-pro is different from rehearsal because you like your choreographer to show up prepared, and so it gives them the opportunity to put movements on bodies before the entire cast is there. Usually it'll be a room of dancers or actors that a choreographer either knows in advance or has auditioned and really likes, and he or she will have the opportunity to get those bodies moving so that when they show up for that first day of rehearsal, they kind of have an idea and a sketch of what they would like to do. You know, we don't have as many weeks as we used to for rehearsal. It used to be that you would have maybe months to prepare, but now it's usually a four-week rehearsal process, so it's not really enough time to be building material on the bodies in the studio.

In some ways, it feels like a less strict rehearsal process, but it can also just be an errant two hours on one day and then another two hours on another day and just feel like working with friends and getting to work your creative juices. So, I mean, to say that there's no payoff for each person personally, you can't really say that because any work is worthy, but we also have to quantify our worthiness as artists, and that means getting money sometimes or having a future with something and getting to do it on the grander scale that we all hope for. The rehearsal room is different in pre-pro because there's less pressure, and we're also sorting it out and figuring it out, so there's not that down-to-the-wire kind of feeling where you're trying to get it out as fast as possible because you have a limited rehearsal process.

In pre-pro, you're just exploring and finding what works for you, what works on your body, what will work on the entire ensemble. It's actually a lot of fun to be a part of that creative energy and part of the process.

[5:56] Dionne Figgins: Let's talk a little bit more about the logistics that go into pre-pro. I've had several pre-pro experiences that have all differed in length, formality, and hours, and that's what you'll find. When you ask three different people about pre-pro, you'll get three different answers. Pre-pro usually takes place in a studio. It could be any studio around the city. Sometimes it's the studio where you'll actually be rehearsing the show. Pre-pro is usually the typical rehearsal schedule, like 10 to 6. The schedule for pre-pro really depends on how much the choreographer needs to prepare in advance. My experience has been a 10 to 6 situation, Monday through Friday typically, but again, it really all depends on what the choreographer's needs are and also the bodies that he has in the studio.

If you have worked with a choreographer before, you might be able to knock it out a little bit quicker because you already understand the choreographer's vocabulary and the way they work, but if it's newbies, it could be a two-week process. You just never know, and it depends on how much money the production has to actually pay for the pre-production also. All the times that I've done pre-pro, it's always been different. There's been times when I've gotten paid because they had money, because the show was going to be so extravagant that they needed a lot of pre-pro time, so we actually did get paid for pre-pro, and then there have been times when the choreographer just kind of paid us in lunches and chocolate, which was awesome too, and then there's been times when we didn't get any compensation.

We basically formed a relationship with the choreographer that other people wouldn't have been able to do, which is totally worth it as well. Sometimes it's in hugs, and sometimes it's a little stipend here or there. I've worked with people that were just like, if you can for a couple of hours, come. If it's too much, don't worry about it. Then sometimes it's something structured like the dance workshop or a lab, and there is compensation, and it's not a ton, but it's more than unemployment, so that's always helpful. It's always up to you.

[8:43] Dionne Figgins: Because I work on both sides of the table, I have assisted with pre-production multiple times. So I've done pre-production on three different Broadway shows. The first one being *Hot Feet*, which was in 2006 with Maurice Hines. I auditioned for the piece as a dancer. And so when I did the pre-production, it was maybe four other dancers in the room with us. We worked for about a week, ten to six. We almost worked on every number in the show. He wanted to build a lot of the show because it was a lot of dancing in that show. All of the people in the pre-production were also in the show. The next show that I worked on pre-production was *Leap of Faith*. In *Leap of Faith*, I was not actually in the cast of *Leap of Faith*.

I was brought on as an assistant choreographer to Sergio Trujillo, who I've worked with a lot. Basically, it was me, Sergio, and Edgar. We were his team. That was Sergio's first time actually working on the production as well, so it was a brand new concept. We did a lot of pre-production for that one. I think we might have done two or three weeks. Again, we built the entire show. But it made it amazing when the cast showed up because we weren't working with dancers; most of the cast were singers. Because we had done so much pre-production on the front end, it was really easy to just set the movement on the bodies once they got there. The third show I worked on pre-production was *Flashdance*, which ended up being a tour that Sergio also choreographed.

That was probably the most intense pre-production process because that was a year long, as we were building the show in every single aspect of the show. Sergio was also the director on that show, so he had a lot of input into how the show needed to be built. Working with both Maurice Hines and Sergio Trujillo, they are very exuberant choreographers. I remember during *Flashdance*, Sergio had this idea of doing this bucket drumming number where we were going to make the buckets like a basketball and dribble the buckets. During the rehearsals, we only had trash cans at first. We started dribbling these trash cans in the studio, and they were just flying everywhere. We were like, this is not going to work out; we're not going to be able to get these buckets into this actual show.

Well, that wasn't actually true. The next day, there were paint buckets from Home Depot and drumsticks, and it actually ended up in the show. But now we had to teach all these other people who, one, don't bucket drum, two, don't play basketball, and three, don't play basketball with a bucket. It worked.

[11:17] Paige Faure: I had a long and winding relationship with *Cinderella*, one that ended with me starring in the show's national tour, but beginning with pre-production. *Cinderella* was very structured from the get-go, and I mean, obviously, it had a major payoff for me. I know that I'm very, very, very lucky that this was my journey with it. How it started was initially when they were looking for choreographers for *Cinderella* Broadway, they interviewed several choreographers and picked three that they wanted to audition. Josh Rhodes was one of those three, and he asked me to play Cinderella for his audition. It was over the process of about three weeks, but we threw together about three pieces, and Josh won.

That was great, and of course, I was delighted for my friend, but also it gave me a little bit of hope of, like, maybe I can be in *Cinderella* Broadway, you know, because I've been a part of this. The next step for them was the dance workshop. There were a few people from that dance workshop that ended up doing the show on Broadway, and there were a lot of people that didn't. It is hard and heartbreaking when you put in that work and your path with it is cut short. Then actually, I got pregnant with my son right before the workshop, so I finished out the workshop and kind of knew my journey with it was going to be done because my due date was literally their first preview night. Luckily for me, I was then asked to be in the ensemble of the Broadway company for a few weeks to replace somebody.

Then it came back around to where when they needed a Cinderella for the summer of 2014, they asked me, and because I had sung basically the entire show for them in these pre-production workshop situations, they knew what I was capable of, and they knew that I understood the world.

[13:00] Adam Perry: If the goal of pre-production is to create, is there a moment where you get to show off what you created, or does everybody just walk out the door at 6 p.m. on a Friday and never speak again? Well, it's typically not the latter, but it's not always the former either. In my own pre-pro experiences, I've shown single pieces to the director as well as huge sketches of not-quite-fleshed-out numbers to just a video camera in the corner of the room. Everything depends, and Dion and Paige explain it further. When you're doing pre-pro, there's usually not a final presentation. They just take record of all the movement you've done. Sometimes they record it so they can have it on hand when they start rehearsals.

There have been other things that I've been a part of where the choreographer was pre-proing some choreography for a new show, and then at the end, we would showcase it for the producers and everybody so they could see what was going to be happening staging-wise and choreography-wise. You don't always get the opportunity to do a presentation at the end of pre-production. Usually, you go directly into rehearsal unless it's a workshop, but in this particular situation, because we were still looking for investors, we were able to do a presentation so that we could then build it out a little bit more the next time when we did a full workshop in one of the theater spaces at the Baryshnikov.

[14:10] Mo Brady: I think if an actor has the time and the financial stability, they should always do pre-pro because, if anything, you're going to build a relationship with the creative, and there's really nothing better than that. That's kind of what the business is built on, is contacts, and one person gets to know you, and then they hire you for something else. I think it's kind of the best way to get to know choreographers, and also for them to get to know you and what works on you and what you're right for.

[14:40] Mo Brady: Special thanks to Paige Faure, Dionne Figgins, and Adam Perry for allowing us to reshare their stories today. The Ensemblist was produced today by Jackson Klein, Evan Alexander-Smith, and 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 our home of Broadway Podcast Network at bpm.fm. You can also follow us on Instagram. Thanks for listening. Until next time.