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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.

[0:12] Mo Brady: So many of us theatre artists are missing the experience of creating with others. Those who have had the opportunity to be in the room making theatre seem to have won a golden ticket for making it through this pandemic. Even those who have travelled halfway around the world to do so.

[0:36] Fredric Odgaard: Fredric Odgaard is an original cast member and assistant dance captain of Broadway's newest juggernaut, Moulin Rouge! The Musical. Fred spent eight weeks this winter travelling to Australia to run auditions for the Australian production of the show, along with two of his Broadway colleagues, associate choreographer Katie Spelman and dance captain Carly DiNardo.

[0:58] Mo Brady: Upon his return to the States, Fred chatted with me about his long-standing relationship with the show's choreographer, Sonya Tayeh, and what it felt like to create across the globe when theatre at home is at a standstill.

[1:23] Mo Brady: Would you introduce yourself and tell us where you're calling from today?

[1:27] Fredric Odgaard: Hi, my name is Fredric Odgaard. I am calling from Bushkill, Pennsylvania, in my lovely home that I moved out to during the pandemic.

[1:36] Mo Brady: So what is your position on Moulin Rouge! and maybe talk about it in terms of the length of time you've been with the project.

[1:44] Fredric Odgaard: What I am with Moulin Rouge! is I'm the assistant dance captain, and I'm also on stage. I have my own track in the show, so I'm on stage every day. I have been with the production since early 2017. Getting a phone call from Sonya saying, you know, I've been asked to audition for this. I think you're going to know what it is once we get in the room and start working. I mean, we're just going to get in the studio and play around. And we got there and she was like, we're going to be dancing to Lady Marmalade today, so we're going to kind of explore some things. And both Mia and I looked at each other and we were like, oh, we're auditioning for Moulin Rouge!, aren't we? And I have been subsequently with Sonya and just as like a person in the room with her.

[2:26] Mo Brady: You've been around for the very beginnings of the creation of the movement language of Moulin Rouge!

[2:35] Fredric Odgaard: Yes, especially like, yeah, that first day, like working on like Lady Marmalade and some of that movement that happened that very first day that I have like videos of ended up in the show.

[2:47] Mo Brady: So after the Broadway show has opened, you're involved as the assistant dance captain in what kind of capacities beyond your performing role?

[2:55] Fredric Odgaard: I help mainly with the male side of choreography in the Moulin Rouge! All of like the lifting, the lifting of all of it, I like helped create so I kind of know like the nitty gritty like ins and outs of it. Carly runs lift call. I help her kind of just assist her in rehearsals so that it's easy to like, she'll take the women and the principals, I'll take the men. And just because like, it's just the vocabulary of the show is so vast. And the more that me and Carly have been together, the more we've realized like how much material there really is. So it's better when there's two of us.

[3:37] Mo Brady: Right. And that collaboration in a Broadway show is something we see often, right? We see the offstage dance captain and the onstage assistant dance captain, and each is able to sort of bring solutions to the table that only they are able to see because of either their inside or their outside experience.

[3:54] Fredric Odgaard: Again, there is no one else really in the world, they're slowly becoming people, other people in the world that like know this information. But for the longest time, there was not a lot of people, there was a very small little circle that knew kind of like all of the information inside of the show.

[4:11] Mo Brady: Since the shutdown, were you involved in Moulin Rouge! in any capacity? Were you like part of any sort of leadership conversations? Or were you just like the rest of the cast and coming on occasional Zooms, but otherwise kind of just hanging out?

[4:29] Fredric Odgaard: A big portion of what we were doing, or what the show was doing, was just kind of getting our head wrapped around what I think was going on with the global rollout, because it was happening so quickly. London was in talks, like Australia was like, couldn't be further from people's minds, because it was like, supposedly the fourth production, the national, we were just casting the national tour, like it had just kind of wrapped up. There was all of these ideas. And then when the shutdown sort of happened, it kind of was like radio silence. I wasn't even expecting to go to Australia. But again, because this like grey line that I like live inside of, and because I feel like I'm part of Sonya's like inner circle of people, that I have this like bucket of energy, a bucket of information that like a lot of people don't have.

When the idea of Australia happening came to pass, like when they were like, we're going to just kind of like go ahead with that, was part of the conversation, unbeknownst to myself, early on. And then it wasn't until November that asked, it was like right after my birthday in November, that they were like, would this be something you would be interested in doing? And I was like, oh, yeah, for sure.

[5:53] Mo Brady: Okay, so you find out, you get asked in November, and when did you leave?

[6:00] Fredric Odgaard: They said they gave me a month. So it was like November 27. And they were like, you're leaving on December 27.

[6:06] Mo Brady: Kind of perfect to be flying to Australia in the middle of a pandemic at the beginning of their summer. Like, we've heard a lot about the quarantine process. So I kind of want to skip forward and actually talk about being in the room. What was the audition process like? And how was it different? Either because they just do things differently? Or because there is a global pandemic going on?

[6:29] Fredric Odgaard: Moulin Rouge! is so specific. And we have found out through like years of auditioning this show, that it is so specific, the way we have to do things and the lane we kind of have to stay in. I don't know how they would do it. Because it was really much it was pretty much when we got there, they were like, how do you audition this like beast of a show? The creatives and everybody were like, this is how you audition it. This is how we set it up. This is what we do. It kind of followed the same kind of guidelines as like how we did it in New York, it was a little bit more streamlined, because this was now like the third big wraparound that we have had with the show. So it was kind of we, I always said, like, when we were there, I was like, wow, we really like hit our stride this time.

It was like, streamlined, we knew what we were doing, we knew what we were saying, we knew like how we knew the best way to audition it. For the most part, it was very similar. However, the masks were worn in the room the whole time. Unless you were we had two spaces, one that was really large, and one that was kind of like a normal dance studio size. The one that was really large at a certain point in time, because they were like flip flopping a lot, like of like their rules and their protocol, like

[7:41] Fredric Odgaard: We're doing in Australia. So it was like, you don't have to wear masks, you do have to wear a mask, you have to wear a mask. It's like only this many people, okay, we can have this many people. We're normally like on an ECC day, you're talking about like, 30 to 35 people in a room every 30 to 45 minutes. Like no mask, sweatiness, sweat on the floor, like you can see upwards of 350 people if not more in a day. There, it takes several days to like get through even 150 people. Which is, takes more time, takes more money, takes more planning. Yes, and we're dealing with like creatives that are across the world. So you're, there's like a con that we have like a constant live stream, like and videotaping and like, sending videos to creatives and like, it was just so it was so intense.

We had a video running at all times just to like, rehearsals, like kind of capture like how they were learning, capture, like, all these things. So you can have all of this information, because normally, that's information that you take for granted when you're like in an audition room in North, like when everybody can be there.

[9:03] Mo Brady: Was that stressful for you? I mean, to sort of take the reins in a more leadership way? Or did it just feel comfortable? Because like you said, you've had so much experience with this project.

[9:14] Fredric Odgaard: It felt it felt really normal. Like it just like felt normal. Like, it's not it doesn't feel like an uncommon place for me to be I feel like I know what she I feel like I know what she likes. I know how to get the people to like, move to a certain place that then she can like add like what she needs to see on top of that, like, same thing with like Carly now and like this environment, like and how to like teach Sonia's work and like what it takes to kind of do that. It just like felt really when they were like, you're gonna go I was like, of course, I was like, Okay, great. I was like, this set feels like this feels like it should.

[9:41] Mo Brady: I'm interested in how it felt.

[9:43] Fredric Odgaard: It was very overwhelming. It was really overwhelming. Because I said so many times I was in such a bag of mixed emotions the whole time because I kept feeling this innate sense of jealousy went and saw shows while I was there too. Like, I just couldn't get past this, like, real large, like, lump in my throat of like, jealousy. I'm going to a different country. I'm flying halfway around the world. I'm leaving my family. I'm leaving my house. I'm like, of course, I'm going here to make money, which is like so important inside like, what a pandemic and what we're doing, like, everybody's income is has been hit so difficult, hit so hard. Ultimately, at the end of the day, I'm like, I'm going to Australia to do the thing that I'm supposed to be doing at home.

And in a normal in a normal world, I wouldn't be I wouldn't have gone to Australia. I would be at home, I would be at my job, I would be doing the things but it was like, I'm getting to do the thing that like, I so desperately want to do at home. And I have to go halfway around the world to a country that supports one another enough to make these really difficult decisions that have benefited them in the theatrical world. So much better than the country that I'm currently that I the country that I like reside a great one because I'm going to go especially like I'm going to go like, send this information off like across like the the the world, you know what I'm saying and to like work for a show that I love so much and feel like I have so much ties to.

But yeah, just like being like, God, I really wish I was home and doing this. Like, how were they making it work? Kind of from a production standpoint beyond the there were protocols people over there as much as they may gripe and scoff at like, Oh, God, well, we have to go into this like lockdown. There is a overall sense of care for one another that we do not have here are if you get a symptom, or if you get sick, or if you test positive, the government contacts you. And it's like we are going to do a contact trace of all the places that you were in from the time that you got. And they can do it. They can go back in time based on your phone number and where you checked in everywhere. They can see your pathway through the country.

[12:15] Mo Brady: Did that affect your eight weeks there? Were there ever times where you guys had to shut down rehearsal?

[12:20] Fredric Odgaard: Yeah, there? Yes. Yes. Which is crazy. There was a whole outbreak in Melbourne. And it just so happened to be on the exact same day that we went in and out of that airport. Because we went back to Melbourne in the middle for like two days, because they we needed to catch a group of people up in Melbourne, and then they were going to fly them all to Sydney. So we me Katie Carly flew to Melbourne, did a bunch of stuff, and then flew back home the next day. And it just happened to be that we were inside that five days, Victoria locked their whole state down, so we couldn't end up getting those people to Sydney to audition, we all had to go home and we were going to be in a five day lock mandatory lockdown.

Like we were in the middle of auditioning in the middle of rehearsal. And then all of a sudden it was like, Katie comes into the room was like, we have to go home for and you have to be in your hotel room for five days unless you test out of this. And because of like the goodwill and the nature of everybody. And I mean, of course, it's different. The difference with theatre there versus the difference of theatre in New York is that theatre in New York thrives on tourism, local tourism, international tourism, there's not enough people locally in Manhattan, only to keep theatre alive. In Australia, there's like one or two shows, maybe two in the same city, one in Melbourne, like one that's maybe on tour, and they go until they exhaust their population.

And so that's what's hugely different. Nobody's flying to Sydney to be like, God, I can't wait to go see like the production of Hamilton in like Sydney, Australia, you know what I'm saying? No one's doing that. It's like the people that live there are doing that. They're going to see those shows. That's what's different about us, is that we purely cannot survive on locals. That's why sporting events are able to happen, because it's a local event. And like it happens very sporadically. It's not happening eight nights a week. It's the consistency of it is not the same.

[14:31] Mo Brady: Special thanks to Frederick Odegaard for sharing his stories with us today. The Ensemblist was produced today by Jackson Kline and me, Mo Brady. Please rate and review The Ensemblist wherever you get your podcasts, whether that be on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or at bpn.fm, the home of Broadway Podcast Network. Our Patreon members have on-demand access to our archive, including full conversations with our guests and early access to the podcast. If you'd like to learn more, including full conversations with our guests and early access to episodes. You can join Linda Lee, Phoebe Stewart, and Cheryl Hodges-Seldon for between $5 and $20 a month at patreon.com slash The Ensemblist. Thanks for listening. Until next time.