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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. Welcome, I'm Mo Brady.

[0:17] Mo Brady: Welcome back, podcast listeners. This month we are resharing our favorite episodes from our 2017 season on Ensemblist Essentials. Think of these three episodes as the Essential Essentials, as it were. 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 heard from an incredible six performers about what makes an opening night on Broadway so garsh darn special. Throughout the episode, you'll hear from Jenifer Foote, Tyler Hanes, Bre Jackson, Anastacia McCleskey, Linda Mugleston, and Eric Ulloa. Enjoy!

[1:17] Mo Brady: Aside from the Tonys, Broadway opening nights are probably the most publicized events in the New York theater community. From red carpet photos to all the reviews, an official opening night is when a Broadway show opens its doors to the world and says, come see me. Please, please, please, please, please, please come see me. So there's lots out there for the public to read, see, and watch about openings. But since we're cracking open the secrets of the Broadway community this season, we wanted to know about how the actors in these shows celebrate.

[1:47] Bre Jackson: My name is Bre Jackson and I live in the Heights. I think the excitement for opening night is we have the party, you have tons of gifts coming in, all of the cards.

[1:58] Jenifer Foote: I'm Jenifer Foote and I live on the Upper West Side. I think opening on Broadway does feel very different than in my experience of shows I had done other places because you have a preview period for several weeks. So opening night in my experience as a regional theater, that's really the first night you're doing the show. You probably have a dress rehearsal but that's it, that's the night.

[2:18] Linda Mugleston: My name is Linda Mugleston and I live in Inwood. You have arrived at your frozen product. That's when it's the excitement of finally coming to the end of that process because you're still rehearsing during the day and doing previews at night.

[2:47] Mo Brady: Hands down, our favorite opening night tradition is the Gypsy Robe. Now we've already shared with you a great episode about the robe back in 2013 so go and listen to that. We'll wait. Welcome back. Bre gave us the rundown for those new to this tradition.

[3:02] Bre Jackson: Everyone gathers, you're called earlier to the theater and you get to find out who has done the most Broadway shows in your company.

[3:10] Mo Brady: The Gypsy Robe is given during a brief but action-packed ceremony. Here's Nika with a dramatic reading from the Equity website.

[3:17] Nika Graff Lanzarone: All members of the production take place forming a circle on the stage. In the center of the circle stand two people with a robe, a representative of Actors' Equity and a performer from the previous musical that opened on Broadway. The recipient of the robe is a member of the cast who has had the most Broadway chorus credits. Everyone can guess at who the honoree will be but no one knows until a name is announced. Linda, another Gypsy Robe recipient, described it to us.

[3:41] Linda Mugleston: Whoever has received the Gypsy Robe throughout the season that you're in, different sections of the robe are designed for the show. And so you'll have a big, I'm going to say muslin robe looking thing and some of the sections are already filled out, some are not, and by the end of the season it's usually filled out. And so it's kind of in various stages of finality.

[4:11] Linda Mugleston: The person from the previous show that just opened who received the Gypsy Robe that night, they come to the theater and everyone gets in a circle and the Gypsy Robe recipient from the previous show comes forward, tells the lore of it, and then bestows it. They take it off that person and put it on the next person.

[4:38] Mo Brady: The Gypsy Robe ceremony is brief, but for an ensemblist, it can be the most magical part of opening a new show, as we heard from this episode's fourth guest.

[4:47] Anastacia McCleskey: My name's Anastacia McCleskey and I live in Top of Harlem, Bottom of Washington Heights. Everyone's on stage with you. It's people who've previously won the Gypsy Robe from shows way back when. It's your crew, your front of house, your producers, the creative team, your cast. It's everyone. You run in a circle three times and everyone touches it. It's a beautiful, beautiful, beautiful experience, I think, for all.

[5:11] Anastacia McCleskey: After the robe is bestowed on the winner, there's a ritual that the winner must do before the opening night performance can begin. To bless the show, you go around the circle counterclockwise three times and everyone touches a robe or you, and then you go to all of the different dressing rooms and you bless the show for a good run and good things.

[5:32] Tyler Hanes: Hi, I'm Tyler Hanes and I live in Long Island City, New York. Tyler told us that the Gypsy Robe ceremony is one of the only moments on a Broadway opening night where the community really comes together to celebrate each other.

[5:51] Tyler Hanes: My favorite memory of the Gypsy Robe ceremony actually was the one for the Broadway revival of Cats. Being a part of a revival is exciting because you're a part of a legacy, and something like Cats or A Chorus Line, that legacy has lived on for a long time, and it wasn't until the Gypsy Robe ceremony for our opening night of Cats that I really realized this family that I was now a part of.

[6:13] Tyler Hanes: So many previous cast members from different productions of Cats were there. One of Broadway's biggest gypsies, Harvey Evans, was there, and it was just a really, really special night because we really got to see this legacy that we were a part of, and there were just so many people there. I'd never seen a Gypsy Robe ceremony that big, and it was just a really special night.

[6:33] Jenifer Foote: Bring me something all that's new, I hope that I'll...

[6:40] Jenifer Foote: The first time I received it, I was aware of it then, so you're sort of checking who has the credits and whatever, but I didn't know the exact rules of how it worked, and I was so certain it was going to be this guy in the cast. So we had the ceremony, we come down, and then they said my name, and it was genuine shock. It would have been exciting if I had known, but I wasn't expecting that. For some reason, it was a different calculation, and that show was so special, and having Bernadette Peters there and having these people there was incredible, and it was just such an honor, and it was incredible.

[7:16] Jenifer Foote: The Gypsy Robe, I think, is such an incredible tradition that I'm so happy exists on Broadway, and my first opening night was Dracula, and so I didn't know what this was, and to see this robe and have the story told and passed on to the ensemble actor, it was just so cool to me, because I am an ensemble actor, and so to feel like there is something that is celebrating me and what we do and what I really believe in and think is so wonderful, it was just such a cool thing. And to see that the whole company and the whole building was excited about it and really honors that, it didn't feel like this separate thing for the ensemble. It felt like this is a tradition that every principal really loved and the director loved and the crew loved. It was just such a cool thing to celebrate that.

[7:57] Jenifer Foote: When I got the Gypsy Robe, I honestly felt like I was getting a Tony. That sounds really crazy, but you work so hard in your career, and sometimes you may not get that pat on the back. I cried. I remember they said my name, and first of all, I was shocked, and then I cried. You would have thought I won a Tony. It felt magical.

[8:20] Eric Ulloa: When you leave the Gypsy Robe ceremony and get back to your dressing room, ensemblists may be shocked at the number of presents on the dressing room table, as our sixth and final guest for this episode told us.

[8:30] Eric Ulloa: I am Eric Ulloa, and I live in Murray Hill. You walk into your dressing room, and the entire world of people that you don't even know are part of this team have showered you with gifts and love and everything. It's so overwhelming, but in the best way. I'm not at all complaining.

[8:43] Anastacia McCleskey: Anastasia and Jen agreed that this heartfelt display of thanks is one of the most beautiful parts of opening a show on Broadway.

[8:49] Anastacia McCleskey: Opening nights, there are tons of gifts. Producers give you things. Your castmates give you things. Your dresser. And you give things as well. I love that part of it, because people make things that have to go along with the show. It's really cute. I love being in a show with a Broadway debut person in the cast, because it's so different on Broadway to have an opening night like that in your dressing room than it is in my experience of regional theater. And to watch them walk into the room and see the amount of things is so exciting, because that caught me off guard on my first Broadway opening night.

[9:21] Bre Jackson: What kind of gifts do Broadway Ensemblists receive on opening night?

[9:29] Bre Jackson: Well, I still have a pair of maracas from the opening night of *Women on the Verge* that I will definitely learn to play one of these days. Stacey and Eric also told us about their personal favorites. One of the best gifts I've ever received doing a Broadway show was the gift that the producers and the writers gave us during *Violet*. It was a purple lunchbox and they gave us the book that the show was based on. They gave us a bottle of booze, I got a bottle of moonshine, and they gave us sunglasses that they picked out for each person in the cast and I thought that was really cool because they actually, you know, they got to know us, it was a small cast, and they clearly looked at our faces a lot to say, mm, these circles, these squares, that big fly-looking glass, you know, they really knew our faces and that was really dope, I really loved that.

I got circular glasses and it really fit my face, it was amazing. The one gift that stood out to me because it was actually pretty amazing and useful was the Estefans got us these travel bags for like overnight trips and engraved onto it was *On Your Feet* and then they engraved Love Always, Emilio and Gloria, so it has this little personalized touch on there. And then when you went inside, they made everybody their own beautiful robes with the insignia and the message from them. I've used it many times since, it's my favorite robe.

[10:39] Jenifer Foote: Jen told us about the gifts she's received on Broadway openings that make her feel like she's a part of Broadway history. So on the first day of *Mystery of Edwin Drood*, we're in a circle and Scott Ellis, the director, is saying when he was an actor, he was in the ensemble of *The Rink* with Chita Rivera. And now Chita is in the show that he's directing. And how special that show was to him and how nice Chita was to him. And on opening night of *The Rink*, Chita gave everyone in the cast this little crystal mouse. So he said, because it was Chita Rivera, he had kept this his career. And so he opens up his palm and he has this crystal mouse that was given to him 30 years ago or whatever. And in *Mystery of Edwin Drood*, a lot of that show is you talk to the audience, you develop your own character's backstories, whatever.

So we did a lot of that work in the room and we would have to go around one at a time and tell our character backstory. So when we did these things, we would pass around the mouse, it was like your time to speak. So that sort of was a special thing. So on opening night, we get this box from Scott, open it up, and it's that mouse and he had found it and got them for the company. So it was the same exact mouse that we had been using in rehearsal. So to think that that is sort of his connection to Chita from 30 years prior, now we have this mouse. It's incredible. Things like that are special.

[11:51] Tyler Hanes: One of the best gifts that the Broadway community gives to each other on opening nights is the tradition of the opening night fax.

[11:57] Bre Jackson: Fax.

[11:58] Tyler Hanes: What is a fax? Mo, you're older than me. Stop pretending you're a millennial.

[12:01] Mo Brady: It's true. Here are Tyler and Bri with the details on this super inside baseball Broadway tradition.

[12:08] Tyler Hanes: So on opening night, one of the cool things that you get to see, not only with the theater being filled with flowers and gifts and whatever, there are a lot of well wishes plastered all over the wall, faxes from different celebrities, a lot of Broadway shows, they'll all sign a good luck piece of paper with the cast members wishing everyone good luck or individual messages. And you get to see the support from the community that night, you know, just because the wall is plastered with their well wishes. Every time a new show was opening, one way or another, there was a paper for us to sign, whether it was on deck so that everyone as you were leaving the stage made sure you signed it or a sign on the call board to come into the stage manager's office to sign and wish them a happy opening or sometimes stage management, if they had to give notes or anything, would come around to each of the dressing rooms with it.

It is also a good reminder if you're like, oh, I totally forgot that was going to be opening this week. I should totally get tickets. Or, oh yeah, I saw that while I was in previews three weeks ago, you should totally check it out. It's amazing. I wonder what they changed. It's just really sweet. Some people that you didn't even know were in other shows would be like, hey, Brie, have a great opening. So proud of you and can't wait to see the show. And then the one from *Book of Mormon*, it's like a ton of people that I just finished working with. They're like, break legs, you guys. And it's just really supportive to know that all the rest of Broadway is cheering for you. It's not a, you know, well, I hope you close so that more people come see my show. It's more like, yeah, you guys are opening. Have a great time.

[13:39] Eric Ulloa: Stacey, Eric, and Brie each chimed in on how special the Opening Night audience truly is. Opening Night is on Broadway, some of everybody's in the audience. You have your A to your H-list celebrities. You have moms and dads, casting directors and whatnot. So you really try to show off sometime. Press. Oh my gosh, press. I remember the first time I got to open a show on Broadway and the press during bows, they run down to the stage. And I was like, what's happening? No one told me that that happened. So that really startled me, but it was really cool. But some of everybody's in the audience. And it's really cool because they're there to see the work that you've done. It's all love and support.

So that's really cool. A Broadway Opening Night's really fascinating because I know for myself, it was my Broadway debut. So as much as I didn't want to know it, of course, the curtain rips open. And the first time I walk out there, I see my parents in the fourth row on the aisle. I hadn't asked where they were. I didn't want to know where they were. But of course, during the show, which has many moments which are concert-like, and so we're told to kind of break that wall and engage them. I'm seeing my parents in front of me who are two Cuban immigrants who worked their butt off to have everything they have. And here I am, their eldest son on Broadway, telling the story of our godmother, Gloria.

And you try to deactivate all emotions from that so you don't fall apart on stage. But it's hard to even put in words that feeling to know you made it here and did this. You had your Broadway debut. Your parents are out there. Oh my god, Barbara Walters is behind your mother and Bette Midler's, you know, I told them their whole scene chapter. I go, I saw Barbara and I saw Bette and I saw, you know, like I knew where they were because the greatest thing about opening night audiences is that they're on your side no matter what. We knew what we had and when we were opening on Broadway, and you never know what the critics are going to say, but we knew we had a good show and that people were really loving it.

But those audiences, man, they're great. No matter what you're doing, you could be doing a stinker and they will just live for you and love for you. And so you have that one amazing night with the energy. For me, it wasn't even something someone gave me. It was having my parents there. It was the first time that my parents got to see me on Broadway. And after years of working, having moved to New York City and college and all of that, it was just a really great gift to me to be able to take a bow and look at my parents and be like, we did it. That was the greatest gift I think I got.

[15:51] Anastacia McCleskey: There's a certain magic about a Broadway opening night that you hear about forever. I had been to many as a guest before. It's a whole different world. As a guest, I think you never get any of the nerves or any of that or the ridiculous energy that's on stage that night. The energy of that night is everything is such high adrenaline. I remember after doing the number *Tradicion*, which is a big dance number right in the beginning in Miami, I literally was gasping for it. God knows I'm gasping for air every time I do it. But that night specifically, when I saw the dancers purple, I was like, oh, I'm going to actually, I'm going to die. They're going to make it through. I'm actually going to die before I bow on Broadway on my opening night. Put the sun away, I don't need it for today.

[16:29] Eric Ulloa: Of course, you can't talk about a Broadway opening without talking about the post-show parties. While there are most likely like a thousand producers, press, and production team members at the party, it's also a chance for ensemblists to gather together and celebrate their success with each other. Yeah, opening night performances happen earlier. I want to say six is the time that a lot of them happen. And because they want to be able to party longer, or that's what I would imagine that they want to be able to do. Opening night party, it's always just a mad dash. You get done with the show and you're just like crazy, and there's usually a little champagne in the dressing room, and you're getting ready, and the music's going, and you're getting all your things on, and you know, we have to do our hair, we got to do a little change the beat.

But it's very exciting, and there's a ton of people there. But then it's also a great time for the cast to celebrate and say, we did this. We opened a show on Broadway, and whatever happens, you know, tomorrow morning when we read those reviews, we did accomplish this tonight. So yeah, food, laughs, dancing, fashion. Just a big celebration. Everybody's going to have an opinion of your show, but that night, you are celebrating all the work that went into getting to that place. And it's just a wonderful release that everybody involved in the show gets to have, and everybody just celebrates the work.

[17:53] Mo Brady: Special thanks to Jennifer Foote, Tyler Haynes, Brie Jackson, Anastasia McCleskey, Linda Muggleston, and Erica Yoa for allowing us to re-share their stories. 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 other one 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 our home of Broadway Podcast Network at bpn.fm. And follow us on Instagram! Thanks for listening, guys. Until next time!