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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.

[0:16] Mo Brady: This month, we're collaborating with Broadway performer Shaye B. Hopkins in her new creation, Podcast Portraits. In this new podcast, Hopkins invites guests to share some of life's hairy and hilarious moments and thoughtfully reflect on how those experiences shaped who they are today. Over the next four weeks, the Ensemblist will share some of our favorite moments from her interviews, as well as speaking to Shaye herself about the creation of Podcast Portraits. On today's episode, Shaye chats with Austen Danielle Bohmer, her colleague on the upcoming Broadway mounting of Diana: A True Musical Story. Austen shares her education, both formal and informal, from going to college and university to teaching yoga and dance in India. Here's their conversation.

[1:03] Shaye B. Hopkins: Congratulations, you ended up landing. You're in the Ensemble and you understudied Diana.

[1:13] Austen Danielle Bohmer: Yes, it's true.

[1:14] Shaye B. Hopkins: She is huge.

[1:15] Austen Danielle Bohmer: Crazy.

[1:16] Shaye B. Hopkins: Huge. And this is your Broadway debut.

[1:17] Austen Danielle Bohmer: It is!

[1:18] Shaye B. Hopkins: Yay! I know, we get to share that, which has been really very special.

[1:23] Austen Danielle Bohmer: It has been lovely.

[1:24] Shaye B. Hopkins: Yeah. Did you start going to university in America and then you went to London?

[1:29] Austen Danielle Bohmer: Yeah, so I only spent a summer studying in London at RADA, and I did their Shakespeare program, which the way that RADA structures it is that it is supposed to be their entire classical year of training crammed into ten weeks.

[1:49] Shaye B. Hopkins: Whoa.

[1:51] Austen Danielle Bohmer: So it's like 24-7 classes, like 9 a.m. to 9 p.m.

[1:55] Shaye B. Hopkins: 9 a.m. to 9 p.m.?

[1:57] Austen Danielle Bohmer: Yes. Shakespeare. All Shakespeare.

[2:00] Shaye B. Hopkins: How did your brain not turn into scrambled eggs by the end of that?

[2:03] Austen Danielle Bohmer: It totally, absolutely was. That's how I felt all the time. It was so overwhelming. And actually, still, I have journals and journals and journals. I just tried to soak up whatever I could. I was also 18, you know? So when I look back on that, I was like, man, that girl was so... I'm just so grateful that I wrote everything down because I can look back on things, and there are things that didn't make sense to me then that when I go back to my journals now and reread things, I'm like, oh my gosh.

[2:31] Austen Danielle Bohmer: That's what that meant. I see. That makes so much sense in a way that at 18, I literally could never have understood what was trying to be imparted on us. So yeah, but I went to university in St. Louis, Missouri.

[2:46] Shaye B. Hopkins: Did you love that?

[2:48] Austen Danielle Bohmer: I did. I did love my experience. It was so vastly different. I was very intentional about choosing a university that was not in New York City or around New York City because I had grown up in this beautiful liberal bubble. I grew up in a town where we have rainbow sidewalks and the trans flag is flying from our town hall. I wanted to know what America was like in other areas.

[3:17] Shaye B. Hopkins: Tell me more about... you went to India. When was that?

[3:22] Austen Danielle Bohmer: Yeah. So I've actually been three different times.

[3:25] Shaye B. Hopkins: Wow. Because you're a yogi. You took us for a few yoga classes during the bubble. You also teach here in New York City.

[3:33] Austen Danielle Bohmer: Yeah. I actually, I'm not certified. I'm not a certified yoga teacher, but I am somebody who believes in the power of yoga and I practice myself daily, but I have training in other things and sort of like yoga adjacent training and certifications, but I haven't actually done the full yoga thing. I think because I'm like, if I'm going to do it, I got to really like...

[3:55] Shaye B. Hopkins: You got to go somewhere and you got to sit and study for six months and you want to learn from the right people.

[3:59] Austen Danielle Bohmer: Right. And I did study yoga just for my personal practice in India. But the main reason why I have gone to India is to teach three different times.

[4:10] Shaye B. Hopkins: Was that with the same group?

[4:12] Austen Danielle Bohmer: That is with Artists Striving to End Poverty, which is also ASTEP. And I started working with him when I was 16 and went to India for the first time when I was 16.

[4:24] Shaye B. Hopkins: Wow. By yourself?

[4:25] Austen Danielle Bohmer: I was with one other person, but by myself. Yeah. She was the same age as I was.

[4:31] Shaye B. Hopkins: How long were you there for?

[4:33] Austen Danielle Bohmer: About a month. I've been there for about a month each time. And I go back every few-ish years. I would like to go back for a longer stretch of time. But yeah, so I've taught with ASTEP there all kinds of things. I've directed the choir and I've taught dance and movement and public speaking. And then occasionally I've taught academic classes as well, like social studies for fourth and fifth graders and English tutoring. I did some English tutoring through the framework of dyslexia, which I really have no training in, but I have dyslexia myself.

[5:13] Shaye B. Hopkins: No, really?

[5:14] Austen Danielle Bohmer: Yeah. So I worked with some students who were experiencing that and essentially shared the tools that I've gathered in my life. And yeah, so it's a school called Shanti Bhavan. And I will plug it.

[5:30] Shaye B. Hopkins: Plug away.

[5:32] Austen Danielle Bohmer: You can watch a documentary if you want to learn about Shanti Bhavan, which is a school located in Southern India that takes children from India's lowest caste, the villages, mostly in Southern India, but all around India, and brings them to this school where they live on site and are given incredible education and arts education, which I think is so awesome that that's a priority. And I support them through college to basically break the cycle of poverty through education. So I have gone now three different times and I'm losing my train of thought. I don't know what else I was going to say.

[6:14] Shaye B. Hopkins: Where do they get funding for that? Is it-

[6:17] Austen Danielle Bohmer: Donors.

[6:18] Shaye B. Hopkins: From the States, from all over the world?

[6:21] Austen Danielle Bohmer: From all over the world.

[6:22] Shaye B. Hopkins: From India primarily?

[6:23] Austen Danielle Bohmer: From all over the world.

[6:24] Shaye B. Hopkins: Wow. Okay.

[6:25] Austen Danielle Bohmer: Yeah. Oh, I was plugging the...

[6:26] Shaye B. Hopkins: Yes.

[6:27] Austen Danielle Bohmer: Plugging the Netflix documentary. So if you want to know more about Shanti Bhavan, there's a documentary called Daughters of Destiny, which is on Netflix and there are, I don't know, like six series episodes.

[6:41] Shaye B. Hopkins: Okay.

[6:42] Austen Danielle Bohmer: And it is incredibly moving and does give you a really clear picture of the work that's happening at Shanti Bhavan. And, you know, maybe people who listen to this will want to get involved when COVID is no longer a factor.

[6:57] Shaye B. Hopkins: Right. There is that little chestnut. And have you, going back, have you seen children that you've taught the first time you went and seen them grown?

[7:07] Austen Danielle Bohmer: Yes.

[7:08] Shaye B. Hopkins: Is that amazing?

[7:09] Austen Danielle Bohmer: Like the coolest thing in the world, truly. I mean, I think that's the greatest thing about teaching in general. Like if you, I have lots of students, the way that I put myself through dance classes is that I was on scholarship to be able to teach classes after school for younger students. And then I would take my own classes after that. So it was like a work study program. And so I've been teaching for a lot of my life. And with any teaching, that's the coolest thing to see is when you have a student who comes back five, ten years later, and you get to see them as an adult human and witness all of the growth that they've been through. But in India specifically, I think.

[7:59] Austen Danielle Bohmer: I think the thing that was different is that they've gone from living in a small village with their family to adjusting to living on campus and being away from their families and being educated from preschool all the way through graduating high school. And then I've actually seen students who have come back from college and are now living on their own in a large city in Bangalore, you know, and to get to see how their outlooks on just day-to-day life have shifted. They have lived so many different versions of reality and to get to see where they are now, knowing that I, you know, was literally a drop in the ocean. No, that I was there for a blip in their time, you know, so not even to be like, oh yes, I was there for that. No, it's not that. But just to get to see how what an amazing human being they've turned into, how cool that I got to be there for even a second of their journey. Yeah, really, really cool.

[9:12] Shaye B. Hopkins: That's awesome.

[9:14] Austen Danielle Bohmer: Yeah.

[9:14] Shaye B. Hopkins: And were you planning to go back? Well, Vichy couldn't, obviously, because you were meant to be employed.

[9:19] Austen Danielle Bohmer: I was, yeah.

[9:24] Shaye B. Hopkins: Do you keep in touch with them? Is there a pen pal type situation at all? Or is it very much so we protect these children and we keep...

[9:30] Austen Danielle Bohmer: More so that. I do keep in touch with some students who have graduated and who are now on their own. Even via social media, like once they're in college and once they're working as adults, I have lots of students who I worked with years and years ago who are now like working at large banks and just, oh my gosh, it's just amazing. And yeah, they have like Instagram accounts. And so we'll like DM on Instagram and I get to hear about their lives. And but yeah, I would love to go back. I always would love to go back as often as they would have me and as it would be like genuinely helpful to have the skills that I can provide. I think something that's so important to constantly reevaluate when it comes to like teaching abroad is do you actually have skills to offer or are you going to try to have an experience yourself?

It's super, super important to align yourself with an organization that has values that you really feel comfortable and confident partnering with. When I went to India, this most recent time, which was last summer, I went, I like traveled by myself for a while after I taught and I was like, I need to go to Delhi because I need to see the Taj Mahal. I haven't, I've been to India three times and I've never seen the Taj Mahal and I feel like I should see it. So I made plans to go see the Taj Mahal. And then I had other days where I was in Delhi and I was staying at like a homestay and the woman, Maya, was like, why are you going to see the Lotus temple? Like nobody cares about the Lotus temple.

There's nothing to see there. And I was like, well, I don't know why Maya, but, but I feel like I got to go. I feel like I got to go see the Lotus temple is very important to me for some reason that I don't understand. So I'm going to go. And she was like rolling her eyes, telling me that it was a terrible idea that I would be disappointed. So I go, right. I take a tuk-tuk, like a little tiny motorized. I love me too. Um, tiny motorized, uh, car with like a hood. It's not really a car, is it? It's like a little, it's like a combination between a bike taxi and a golf cart. Yeah, exactly. So I get to the Lotus temple and I'm like walking up to it. And if you don't know what the Lotus temple is, you can Google it.

And it's beautiful. You know, it's like white, this beautiful white marble structure that literally looks like a Lotus and it's beautiful. Sure. Great. So I'm walking up to it and I'm like interacting with all of the families who are around me and you have to take your shoes off before you go into the Lotus temple. As I'm walking around, there are all of these, uh, descriptions of what, what goes on in the Lotus temple, what the Lotus temple is all about outside. And I'm reading and, um, I start to realize that the entire purpose of the Lotus temple is to bring people together to study all religious texts and all religions, because everyone is trying to get to the same answers. And why would we not take every resource that we possibly have?

If all of this work from so many different points of view has gone into trying to answer these questions, like, why would we not allow for all of them to coexist? So I'm like reading about this, you know, and my journey with religion and spirituality has been very much that I try to just take from anything that feels like it resonates and put it all together because I feel the same way, you know? So I like get into the Lotus temple, you take your shoes off and you're supposed to be completely silent. And inside it looks like a church or any temple, a place of worship. It looks like any place of worship. I personally grew up in a church and it reminded me quite of the church that I grew up in.

It was simple, you know, but it's completely silent. And all of these people are praying around you. And I just started bawling. I had no idea why, but I was so overwhelmed. And I just was like, Oh my gosh, I feel like the presence of God. And I have never felt like that in my life, going to church as a kid or any of these things. But it just felt to me like it was like every, every possible path is all intertwining and converging at this point, you know, it was so cool. So I sat there for a long time and I was just crying and then I left, you know, and then I wrote about it in my journal and I didn't think about it a lot. And, um, it definitely has, um, encouraged me to read a lot more of the texts that are available to us from all of these different, incredible religions around the world.

And so, yes, I have actually thought about getting a Lotus tattooed on my body with like a compass or something. And I don't, I would want it to be a very like particular design, but, um, just because that moment to me was like, just so memorable. It felt like I was like tapping into something for a moment that I was like, Ooh, okay. I know that it's there. Like I can really believe that, that we're all actually trying to get to that thing.

[14:49] Shaye B. Hopkins: I think that's a beautiful way to end this.

[14:51] Austen Danielle Bohmer: I think that's great. Enlightened.

[14:59] Mo Brady: Special thanks to Shaye B. Hopkins and Austen Danielle Bohmer for sharing their stories with us today. Episodes of Podcast Portraits can be found on Apple Podcasts and at sheahopkins.com. The Ensemblist was produced today by Anna Altide, Jackson Klein, and me, Mo Brady. Please rate and review The Ensemblist wherever you listen to podcasts on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or at bpn.fm, the home of Broadway Podcast Network. Our Patreon members have on-demand access to our full archive, including conversations with our guests and early access to episodes. You can support us there for just between $5 and $20 a month at patreon.com slash The Ensemblist. Thanks for listening. Until next time.