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[0:00] Jackson Klein: You're listening to The Ensemblist, the only podcast that shows you Broadway from the inside out. Welcome, I'm Jackson Klein. Welcome back to our re-release of season four of The Ensemblist, Broadway at Every Stage. In this series, co-creators Mo Brady and Nneka Graf Lanzarone sat down with six seasoned Broadway actors to dive into their decades-long careers.

[0:29] Jackson Klein: They discussed getting started in theater, the ups and downs of show business, and the longevity of their careers. This week, we're sharing highlights from our conversation with Alma Cuervo. With an impressive 16 Broadway shows to her name, Alma is a true veteran of the New York theater. Some of her many credits include Once in a Lifetime, Cabaret, Beauty and the Beast, Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown, and most recently, On Your Feet. In our interview, we chat all about her life on the stage, from Broadway to Off-Broadway, regional and touring theater. Here's our conversation.

[1:14] Alma Cuervo: My name's Alma Cuervo, and I live in Murray Hill. I started in 1973. We had just sort of finished Vietnam. The theater was very political at the time, especially at Yale. They had Bruce Dean, who headed the theater department at the time, had written a book called No More Masterpieces, that he didn't just want to take plays that were classics and do them in a classical way. He wanted to either radically interpret it or do something new. There were two students that were third year when I started. That would have been Chris Durang and Albert Enorato, and they wrote really crazy stuff. They wrote one thing together called The Brothers Karamazov, and then it was called The Idiots Karamazov. And half the time, you just had to figure out if things were supposed to mean something or not.

That was the big thing in rehearsal was, are we goofing or is this supposed to go someplace? And it was generally not supposed to go someplace. You never auditioned for anything. Just a sheet went up, although you didn't necessarily like what you were cast as. And I was like the tallest but the youngest in my class, so I was always the oldest.

[2:10] Alma Cuervo: I came to New York, and that summer was cast in Uncommon Women and Others. And we did it that fall, and I guess I got the O.B. Nick the following spring. It was really kind of great, because that year they happened to be on television. And I know I got a job, but I can't remember what one it was from my acceptance speech. Go figure. I was doing a little cabaret at the American Place that was three people. It was really fun. But we did things like there was a three-person tango, and we were really connected to each other, the three of us. And then I got offered the first production of Tin Types in Washington at the Arena. It was a snowy night in Mel Marvin's apartment, and they played me the music.

And I was dying to do it, but it meant leaving this other production just right as they were about to open. And so I said no. Later, I got to replace, which was lucky. That's one of the hardest things I think about show business is that you don't know what's coming next. You so seldom go to rehearsal with the cast that you thought was going to be in the show. Somebody hasn't gotten some other job and gone to do, and sometimes it's you.

[3:06] Alma Cuervo: Early 80s, the shows weren't particularly dancey, as I recall, at that point. They were more sung. I was still doing mostly straight shows, because the only musicals I did at that time were artsy-fartsy off-Broadway things that I loved, but that was the extent of their life usually. And I didn't dance, so that was that. Back then, right around that time, I remember Jane Alexander was doing a play called Goodbye Fidel, and it was a play set in Cuba with no Latins in it. And I remember that there was a big protest out front, and that then Equity started making demands that if you were going to do a show with an ethnic cast, you had at least to see them, even if you didn't cast them. So that's why we've come from that to a show that I just finished that was like 98% Latin.

You know, that stuff didn't happen. Or I remember doing M. Butterfly on the Road years ago, and the cast was spending their money a lot. They were young, and I'd say, how can you do this? There's this, and there's King and I. And when you get back, there's not a lot of work. This is going to be hard. But now that's a different feeling.

[4:14] Alma Cuervo: The plays, there were more. Like today, they didn't run years and years like the musicals do, but there were more new plays. And there was a theater where we did Uncommon Women, which was called the Phoenix Theater, which had a lot of young new playwrights doing things, and that people wanted to work at. And there was just more activity. There was a show on television called Rock Follies. And this producer was an English producer, wanted to bring this crazy play to England. And I don't remember that much about the story. I know that it was political, and that Carrie and I played characters who had alter egos. And hers was Ethel Merman, and mine was Marilyn Monroe. And it played the Princess Theater.

And we played even at 11:30 at night on Saturday. It was out there. But it was really crazy. And actually, I was up for it. And then I went and did another play instead. And Glenn Close was supposed to do it. And she got Barnum. So I was asked to replace her. But it's funny, there were some voiceovers that they never re-recorded. So it was always Glenn, and I think Glenn Cariou. It was bizarre. And it was great fun. And we had wonderful parties. The one that was the riskiest and also didn't run was Quilters, that had started in Denver, and was about the pioneer women. And we had a wonderful time. Some of us are still good friends. And it was a big hit at the Kennedy Center. And then we came here.

Gone quickly. Is There Life After High School? We had no body mics. We used six-floor mics. And one girl had a lavalier and was embarrassed. But she had to, because there was pre-recorded cheering. And it made her feel like, you know, I can't sing. What is this? I mean, it was really old time.

[5:44] Alma Cuervo: I once did a short-lived but very noble sitcom for Norman Lear in LA that was called A.K.A. Pablo, based on the comedian Paul Rodriguez's family. And after that, I got all these offers to stay in LA and do all these Latin parts. And I didn't want to do that. I've played very few Latins until just now. I can sort of look English. I can sort of look Irish. I can sort of look Jewish, Spanish, Italian. I can kind of cross that way. And people that know I sing sometimes let me. But I think it's largely luck. And it's also mixing it up yourself on purpose. But I figure now I've earned it. I've only had like three agents. Some would have said, you have to go where the money is. Like, you have to do the Latin parts, or you have to build one style that you're known for.

But nobody did that to me. So I was able to spin around and do different things. And doing regional theater, I think, also opens you up to the things that you wanted to do that you wouldn't be offered on Broadway, but that you know you could do. So you get to stretch. I would never have gotten, probably, to do things like Most Happy Fellow or Damn Yankees, things that here they wouldn't have thought of me for, I got to do there.

[6:49] Alma Cuervo: Titanic I was with from the beginning of the Broadway run. And that was really being constructed as we went. And there were so many people to put on stage at any given time, because they were often trying to show the three classes. So that was the whole cast. The director really loved staging big scenes like that. You know, the manipulation of bodies and making an architectural shape out of them. And we were choreographed even offstage, because there were so many of us. Anytime somebody came off, we were like rats in a mill. You had to keep going fast. And in these huge costumes with high heels and stuff, and run and go upstairs and down and back. And you had to take absolutely the same route.

This was, if you moved, you'd get run over. So it was very much an ensemble piece. Cabaret, I joined the tour about six months in, and then I did the next two years. But I was allowed to find it completely, that one. I think I got a little too big, ostentatious big, in Cabaret, because I remember at one point Sam Eddies came back and she was...

[7:39] Alma Cuervo: And he saw it one night and thought it was way over the top, so I had to pull back. But he had a thing too where he wanted you to only play for the first ten rows in the audience. Literally, you turned sideways and he said the others will get sucked in and will listen. So the only person who really played the house was the emcee, which of course Schneider doesn't do numbers. She sings about how she's feeling or asking the audience, which is the "what would you do" kind of thing. And it's against instinct, especially when you're on the road and the houses are even bigger, and you feel like you're cheating so much of the audience. That was a really wonderful experience the whole time through. The audiences are so different in different parts.

We were doing Cabaret in Fort Worth. We had guards there at the stage door, and one night they were allowed to see the show with their family. And the next day one of them came up to me and said, "I really like the show, but can you tell me what it meant when the guy who's sort of the emcee was wearing those striped pajamas at the end? What was that all about?" And I thought, okay, that's why we do Wicked, dear. That's why. And that's why that show will be done for a long time, I hope. I joined Wicked after it was done because I did only the tour, and I did it for a year, and then I was off of it, and then I did another year, and then I subbed a bit. I love Wicked a lot. I did have a full rehearsal period because we were only the second group coming in, so I went in with Julia Murney and PJ Benjamin and a few other people.

We went in together, so we got to have a full rehearsal time. We really actually were able to make different choices, which isn't always the case. We weren't pushed into what had been done before. When you're replacing, it's tricky because this was replacing in a principal part because I think the ensemble really has to do the track because also they have to learn it so damn quick, sometimes in three or four days. So there was a lot of story that they never got told, but we talked a lot, and we would go for drinks and talk about who the characters were and if they were heightened or borderline camp, they still had passions and reasons for being. So there was the whole aspect of her wishing she was as talented as Elphaba.

So there's a relationship there that you could build on and a joy and a wanting to be her being like your daughter, your special child. So when she tosses you away, it turns to hate fast. Later on, I think I got a little carried away, and people would come back and want you to be more like the Bible. By that point, when they've done four or five companies all over the world, your role becomes a track, and they want you to be more like everybody. That gets a little dodgy, and I didn't always handle that well. The first times I did it, I would get into fights sometimes with the assistant director, who was terrific, because I'd be getting notes on doing something that we had decided to do, and then it was suddenly, "What are you doing?"

And it's like, excuse me, you want to see the script where you said do this? It's like we made these choices, but others had made others, and cuts had been made. I chose to do Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown in Ensemble Track, which was my first Ensemble Track. I did it because I love Almodóvar and this movie I adored. I did it because it was Lincoln Center producing, and I did it because I had done Bart Shears' first play in New York years ago at New York Theater Workshop, and I wanted to work with him again. I have a tremendous respect for what ensemble actors can do. They are usually having to play a bazillion characters. They've been to more doctors by the time they're 22 than I've been to in my entire life or ever will, and they get hurt.

They come back in no time because they have to or they want to. I mean, remember in Women on the Verge, the guys had to go on as girls sometimes because we had very few dancers, and three of them got hurt wearing incredibly high heels on this moving ramp that went the wrong way from where you wanted to go, and they got hurt, and so the guys went on in drag even to complete the company. I never knew because I did plays first that there were two kinds of contracts. That was new to me the first time I did it. Of course, you can leave; you have a contract that lets you leave, whereas the others aren't on a term of usually six months to a year, but I think that you're treated slightly differently by management and sometimes the director.

That depends. You're lower on the totem pole. You all dress together or you dress in a hallway, which rarely happens if you're a principal. The singing I'm finding is a little less strenuous for the dancers now. They do pre-record more than they used to. I remember when it used to be a little bit horrifying to think that they were doing a track of some sort or the offstage singing, which you can only do if you're in an ensemble. If you're a principal, the minute you step off the stage, you have to shut up. I mean, this happened in Titanic because those of us that were principals, literally you had to shut up, and there would be people watching you to be sure you didn't keep singing. The audition experience is different.

If you're a principal, you're usually being submitted by an agent to the company. It's more dignified in a way. You're fewer of you. You usually have your own dresser or you're sharing with one person if you're a principal. It is different because of just your basic housing in that you're all in one dressing room, so you're talking more together if you're in the ensemble. You're more isolated as a principal. I love the family feeling that you get backstage. I always sort of picture if it's a hit that I'd like to go two years if I can. I love me a long run. It's a steady gig. It's a steady paycheck. People you love on Broadway. I mean, that's what I always wanted to do. It's a blessing when it happens.

I mean, you never know. I mean, I've done a lot of ones that just never had a chance to run that long. I think one of the things that is sad, but I think it's happened for a long time, is that the plays don't run. I mean, look at the ones that even won this year, and they're gone. I don't think they even got to six months. The whole area, of course, is different. The dignification of the area. Because remember when 42nd Street was a little scary to walk down, and there weren't all these theaters? There are more now, although they've knocked down so many. Also, I think back then, shows didn't run that long. I mean, a show that ran three years was a monster hit. And then we've started with all the big long-running Andrew Lloyd Webber type shows.

We were so isolated in different parts of the country when we loved theater. I mean, you'd go to the library to read all the books you could that were plays. I mean, and there would only be like 13 maybe. And you'd try to buy Variety at the newsstand once a month, an old copy. There wasn't this constant exposure now that you can get on the internet to know what's going on. I think a lot of kids really think they get pretty much a really good picture of what the landscape is when they're still in school. Whereas we were having normal lives. I look at the little kids in On Your Feet, for example, we have these little two boy dancers that don't know what their lives will be, but backstage all the time doing their homework in the dressing room.

That's a whole other thing, too. It's very magical still. There's people, this is what we want to do. We didn't want to do movies. You know, you could do a day on a TV show and pay the rent. That's fine. But that's not what we wanted to do. The fact that it's ephemeral, that it exists only in that moment in time is part of it. You meet people at a stage door that saw something 30 years ago, and that they recall a moment with a specificity that you don't even until they recall it for you. And you think, yeah, okay, it's important. You are building memories.

[14:20] Jackson Klein: Special thanks to Alma Cuervo for allowing us to reshare her stories this week. The Ensemblist was produced today by Mo Brady, Anna Altide, and me, Jackson Klein. 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. The second is by becoming a Patreon member at patreon.com slash The Ensemblist. Please follow The Ensemblist wherever you listen to podcasts, whether that be on Spotify, on Apple Podcasts, or on Broadway Podcast Network at bpn.fm. You can also follow us on Instagram. Thanks for listening. Until next time.