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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.

[0:11] Mo Brady: Scanning the pages of Broadway Ensemblist on social media, it's hard not to take stock of the number of performers who are leaving New York City. While some of these moves are temporary and others seem more permanent, what I'm particularly struck by is the fact that performing artists don't have a reason or means to stay in one of the most expensive cities in the country for the long term. One of these artists is Lindsay Northen, who is in the Broadway company of Wicked. She and her husband, Jared Bradshaw, also a performer, recently moved out of their New York City apartment to Savannah, Georgia. Here to tell us why and how, in her own words, is Lindsay Northen.

[1:22] Lindsay Northen: So when I came back to New York City to move out of our Hell's Kitchen apartment after four months of living in my mother's house in Savannah, Georgia, the first thing I noticed was that someone had stolen my bike. I love that bike. I used it to escape to the Hudson River when it was warm outside and sit on rocks by that little red lighthouse in Washington Heights. But one of my neighbors, or more likely one of their guests, was desperate enough to untangle it from its lock and carry it down the stairs. And you know what I felt first? Reassurance. I looked up on a very low and not recently renovated ceiling, and I thanked God for that sign that I asked for. The sign that I was making the right decision to let go of this place at this time.

My husband, Jared Bradshaw, and I are both actors who work on Broadway, in regional theater, and on TV. I've been in the ensemble and a Glenda understudy at Wicked for 13 years. I spent seven of them in this apartment on 10th Avenue and 48th Street. We have a six-year-old daughter named Georgia who has the world's best freckles. When she was born, she came home from the hospital in a taxi cab to that apartment. We measured her height on the door frame, and looking at that for the last time was a real gut punch. We paid $3,100 a month for a two-bedroom apartment. One of the bedrooms is totally an office, but we slept in there, with this incredible outdoor terrace space. I mean, the outdoor terrace space is larger than any of the space inside the apartment, but it was totally worth it.

The utilities were also like $12 trillion a month, but we could walk to Wicked, Jersey Boys, and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory for half-hour calls in 15 minutes, with time to grab a very expensive salad or sandwich and, you know, obviously some chips, and land at the sign-in sheet at 7:30 p.m. When we both worked on Broadway or had a commercial running or something, it was all very doable. Then Broadway shut down on March 12th.

[3:32] Lindsay Northen: I felt panicked about COVID-19 and totally escaped New York City the next day with my daughter. I bought that plane ticket, literally, standing on stage at the Gershwin while we were in rehearsal. I made everyone at the rehearsal pose for a picture, and I'm really glad that I did. My husband still had rehearsal for Sister Act at Paper Mill Playhouse, so he and our dog, Berkeley, arrived two days later. We thought we would be at my mother's house in Savannah, Georgia, for like two weeks, and then head back and resume life after we fixed the coronavirus, but two weeks is more time than I ever had off from Wicked, other than my maternity leave. But it soon became clear that this was a much bigger deal than we could have ever anticipated.

And it was as early as this two-week mark that our six-year-old told us that she was in love with all the time, with nature, family. Neither had been very big part of her life thus far, so she started to express, politely, that she would rather not go back. She learned to ride a bike, and we started riding bikes together every single day for miles and miles, like 13 miles at a time. It was this completely new life that we never thought we'd get to live longer than a one-week vacation. I mean, it was amazing. She memorized facts about birds. I relearned to cook, and my formerly picky eater began to eat new things happily. We ate dinner together that I made every day. We also got to put her to bed at night for more than a week for the first time since I went back to Wicked after she was born.

I mean, that was huge. Broadway people don't get to put their kids to bed at night, and it's just, you know, something that you realize is part of the deal, but it was nice to have that back. Our daughter wasn't the only one who was enjoying the change of venue. My foot injuries that I've been suffering from due to the heels on the raked stage at Wicked were actually healing. I mean, I had done everything, you know, like a year of physical therapy, acupuncture, I was using CBD oil and special shoes, and I did all the things, but nothing ever was gonna fix it. My doctors always just sort of said, you know, this is only gonna go away when you stop working on Broadway, which I thought would never happen. But I mean, I can go running for the first time in two years.

[5:45] Lindsay Northen: We were into it, but not in a permanent way. That is until we sat down and did some budget math. We sat on my mom's front porch and worked out how much we had in savings, how much we got on unemployment, and how much we would pay in rent. We realized we would blow through most of our savings by January or February, and without a guarantee that I would have employment at Wicked by then. I mean, we're all sort of guessing March, but who knows? Everything with the pandemic changes all the time. I thought it was unlikely to change in the other direction. But what if we took this opportunity to live outside the city for nine months or a year? This could be our only chance for a long time. I mean, what would it cost us?

What would we gain? So we sat down and tried to work out all that stuff and we figured out that in the end, all we really lose is an apartment. It's a place, not a person. And people are losing people in this pandemic, and so much more in their health and their livelihoods. And what we would lose by making this decision is an apartment. So if we let the apartment go, we could still have some savings to start again when Broadway comes back. And we will go back and forth on this like a thousand times. I woke up literally holding my breath in the middle of the night several times. Jared has had some night terrors that make him sleepwalk into a wall. I mean, that's sort of hilarious now, but at the time was very unsettling on a few levels.

And I do want to be real about the level of anxiety that we are feeling. I don't want it to look like we are doing so great and we think this is fine and we're excited to do whatever. I mean, we have a great attitude and we work hard on that. But like everybody else, we feel the anxiety and the depression and all those things. We discussed while riding bikes around Savannah, all sorts of options as to where to go next. Do we stay at my mom's house? Do we move to another city in the South where we might be able to still perform in some capacity and TV or commercials or Disney entertainment or teach all the different things we could do. We started doing a few Zoom workshops and coachings. I started coaching for commercials about a year ago.

So I had a little experience there with virtual coaching and we taught lots of workshops in New York City and in the South together. So we knew how to do that. We also were presented with this incredible opportunity to work for this big company to help train their employees and improving their agents on camera interaction with clients. And almost all of these opportunities were the result of thoughtful and generous friends and family. I mean, people have been amazing. People are amazing and people have been so helpful to us. And the more people we talk to, the more people sort of come out of the woodwork to say, Hey, I can help you in this way. I mean, people that you're sort of barely friends with on Facebook or that you haven't seen in 20 years are going to come out of the woodwork and say, Hey, maybe I can help you.

And that's been a heartwarming thing. So we're looking at Orlando or Atlanta or Savannah or anywhere where we can have an apartment that is much larger and nicer for about half the price. But things with this pandemic change constantly. So we're trying to stay flexible. We continue to wonder if our decisions are smart or brave or short sighted or adventurous and amazing. I mean, probably all those. But we do love an adventure and we love each other and we are blessed with several options. Most people don't have all those options. So we are feeling really lucky to have so many choices to weigh.

[9:09] Lindsay Northen: And another hundred people just got off of the train. When we can come back and work on Broadway again, there will be other apartments to live in. I'm sure that we can rent them. But I miss my friends and I miss running every single one of my decisions past 12 to 15 women in the women's ensemble dressing room at Wicked and then bouncing it off my dance partner in the Ozdust Ballroom. And then I might see what the people on the bridge with me at the top of Act Two think about it. I mean, I'm used to a lot of support and opinions and giving support and opinions. I felt like kind of a morale captain in that dressing room for 13 years. And I kind of miss that unofficial job. That's what I miss the most is the people and interacting with the people and the singing and the audience, but not the shoes.

I don't miss the shoes and I don't miss the rake. The rake will get you. We're going to be OK. And in fact, we might end up better than before. Until then, please contact us to train your stage fright employees on how to not freeze or have shifty eyes in Zoom meetings or to coach your music theater students or your commercial kids. We're willing to do all sorts of new things. And I think that's what this time is going to be about for a lot of artists is trying new things they never thought they could do. We've already been surprised by what we can pull off. So see you soon, Emerald City.

[10:34] Mo Brady: Special thanks to Lindsay Northen for sharing your 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 on Spotify, on Apple podcasts, or at bpn.fm, the home of Broadway Podcast Network. You can also follow us on Instagram. Thanks for listening.