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[0:14] Robert Bannon: Welcome to the round table, everybody. Thank you for watching us on Broadway World or listening to us on the Broadway Podcast Network or on social media. I hope you're listening to us on YouTube or on the podcast. We're here every day where artists talk about art. I got to see this show in previews. I got to be there opening night and talk to our next guest for a moment. But you know, on a red carpet, you get a minute, you get to say, hey, you look beautiful. I love you swinging around the theater. You sound so good in the show. I saw you as Jasmine, and then they go off to be big Broadway superstars. But now, Isabelle McCalla is here, and we're gonna talk about her career growing up as a New Yorker, being on Broadway, all the things that are in you could get the cast album is streaming wherever it is. And why haven't you bought tickets if you haven't seen Water for Elephants? What are you doing? Isabel, welcome to the round table.

[1:07] Isabelle McCalla: Thank you for having me. What a fun introduction.

[1:11] Robert Bannon: Well, we gotta keep it spicy. You do up five million interviews probably every week, and I want us I'm grateful for your time. So we gotta make it something a little spicy and interesting out here.

[1:21] Isabelle McCalla: Well consider me spiced. I'm ready.

[1:24] Robert Bannon: All right, let's go. Well, we're here, of course. The show, you've been it's gonna be this summer, it's gonna be a year soon. In March, and it would be a year. Well, it was we started rehearsals in January. We opened officially in March. It's been a crazy season, of course. It's hard to keep track of. It's a crazy season, and you've been with the show. You've been with the show and done this show and gotten to experience the show. What I love about your show is besides your beautiful voice, besides the beautiful directing, besides the great choreography, there are things being done on Broadway that are not being done anywhere else at the show.

[2:01] Isabelle McCalla: Yeah, it's true. I think it's a really beautiful multimedium production where we're in one number. We have a silk act as well as puppeting, as well as acting and singing, and it's yeah. Oh, yep, there's me on the trapeze.

[2:18] Robert Bannon: Just on a trapeze, and you're really doing that, and that's really you.

[2:22] Isabelle McCalla: Yeah, it's really me.

[2:24] Robert Bannon: Was it scary? Do you feel like Pink when you're up there? Do you feel like you're doing like a what? How does it feel?

[2:32] Isabelle McCalla: Um, it feels fun. You know, I don't get scared anymore. I think there's sometimes I'll have a little, I'll have a moment of butterflies right before I walk out for the trapeze moment, but luckily I'm not really aware of the height when I'm doing it because I'm rotating and spinning and there are lights on me. And I think what helps is I have a background in dance. And so once I got my arm strength up and realized it's essentially just a Nadagio on rope, I was I'm able to look at it as an expressive dance moment. So I'm really most nights, I'm just enjoying the movement and really luxuriating it because I rarely get to dance anymore, so it just feels like a nice little expression for my body.

[3:16] Robert Bannon: Well, it's a beautiful show, and your character in particular, you know, the journey that you take as Marlena in this show is a complicated little journey. You have quite the arc.

[3:27] Isabelle McCalla: Yes, yes, I do. It's very, very rewarding to play out, but also it can take its toll for sure.

[3:35] Robert Bannon: It's tough. We all we've read the book, we've seen the movie, but you have not seen it and heard the music like you're gonna hear it, and hear her beautiful voice and this incredible cast. Your cast is bananas in the show.

[3:47] Isabelle McCalla: They are so talented. A lot of Broadway debuts, a lot of Broadway people who have been around for a moment all converging together.

[3:56] Robert Bannon: What's the vibe like now that you've done this show for six months and so that you get to be there eight shows a week?

[4:02] Isabelle McCalla: Oh my gosh, right now it's really fun. I think, you know, when you're initially opening a show, we had rehearsals and then went to tech and then went into previews and then went right into cast recording and then awards season and then and then and then and then it was just so full on for so long, in the most beautiful way, but it also got pretty exhausting. But I think something really nice happened after award season ended where this show settled. It felt like we got to reclaim the show as ours and really enjoy each other and telling the story. So right now the vibes are very good in the building. We play games, we're laughing with each other, we've got offstage bits, we've got you know, we do Dollar Friday on a Saturday here.

[4:57] Isabelle McCalla: Yeah, it's just we use Sante Saturdays, which is where like my friend Nico, he's one of our amazing acrobats, does a game with people at the stage door every Saturday night. Um yeah, so it's a really good building. Vibes are high. Everybody's tired, but grateful, tired.

[5:17] Robert Bannon: Yes, absolutely. Well, you have a new leading man that you get to share this.

[5:22] Isabelle McCalla: Yeah, I'll see. I love him in Mean Girls. I love his whole little career. What's it like to add him to this cast and now to play Grant is amazing and Sam. But how's it been now to have Kyle join the cast?

[5:37] Isabelle McCalla: It's been wonderful. I mean, if we had to lose Grant, which I love him so dearly, he's like my big brother, but to lose him and to gain Kyle felt like the perfect replacement because Kyle's such a team player and he genuinely loves the show. Like he was a fan of the show before he took over the role of Jacob Jankowski and has a respect for the material, the music, the writing, the show that Jessica Stone directed. And in many ways, he is very much like Jacob Jankowski. It kind of works because he's a new person coming into this already established circus world. So I feel like he's like a golden retriever. He just has so much fun on stage. And it's really nice to play with him. And you know, Kyle and I have known each other for five years. I went to college with his wife Erica, and you know, we've seen each other around, and so it was so exciting to hear that he was gonna be replacing Grant.

[6:34] Isabelle McCalla: Um, and it's our first time playing together, and we have a great time. He's lovely. You gotta get your tickets, everybody. Go to Water for Elephants the Musical.com. It's the legendary, this legendary. It's the theater is legendary, the space is legendary, there's not a bad seat in the house. Get your tickets.

[6:50] Robert Bannon: You also, I'm just I can't stop staring, no offense to you, at your hair. If I do drag, if I do drag, I'm gonna say, can you just get me a wig that's the Isabelle McCalla wig? Because it is—

[7:01] Isabelle McCalla: Oh my god, that is so kind. Thank you.

[7:04] Robert Bannon: So gorgeous.

[7:05] Isabelle McCalla: Thank you so much.

[7:06] Robert Bannon: I'm 40 and I'm losing it, and I'm just jealous.

[7:09] Isabelle McCalla: It doesn't look like it. That's just called good barbers, and we just fluff it up.

[7:13] Robert Bannon: We love. I just, oh my goodness.

[7:17] Isabelle McCalla: Oh, thank you. Thank you. The album, the cast album is out.

[7:20] Isabelle McCalla: Yes. Big ol' signing. The people were out. I actually have it right here. Look at it.

[7:25] Isabelle McCalla: Come on. There it is.

[7:27] Robert Bannon: So cool. What was it like?

[7:30] Isabelle McCalla: It's a CD. And now CD. And it's for me, it's like the liner notes. Like I grew up pouring over these. And then so like to see to open it and just what? That's insane.

[7:46] Isabelle McCalla: That's so cool. Like I'm my childhood self. I cried when I opened this for the first time. Cause I would like this is how I learned the lyrics to shows. I would literally like read them, sing along with my cast recordings, and now to have our show be memorialized in this way feels like a really beautiful full circle moment. And I'm oh so grateful.

[8:07] Robert Bannon: Well, you could stream it wherever music is heard, or you could buy a copy of the CD as well. And if you go if you buy your tickets, you could buy a CD in the theater. What was it like to record it? How do you did you like do it in like a day? Because I know you all do these crazy like you don't spend months like as a pop record. How'd you do it?

[8:25] Isabelle McCalla: Two days. We had two days in the studio. Um and we basically got like two takes on every song, maybe three if we were lucky. But it was such a fun experience. And what's really amazing, I would sit even when I wasn't recording, I would sit in the sound room.

[8:45] Isabelle McCalla: That's not what it's called. The audio room. What's it called? Oh god, I'm so sorry. I'm not a professional audio engineer. Where they do all the peep pee peep peep poop boop-poop.

[8:53] Robert Bannon: Yeah, the mixing room.

[8:55] Isabelle McCalla: The mixing room. There it is. I would sit in the mixing room and I would listen to you know, the orchestra orchestrations coming through, and then the vocalists coming through. And even raw, I was like, damn, our cast sounds freaking great. And what I love about this album is it doesn't sound too overproduced. I really get frustrated when a lot of cast recordings sound tinny and they sound auto-tuned. And because our show has a very much raw grassroots feel to it, it's really special that it feels that it's captured that way too. Um god, it was so much fun. It was such a beautiful and what's really fun about you know, when you're in a recording studio, you can do different things than you can do on stage.

On stage, we have to project more. And so, like, for example, the song Easy I sing, Jess Stone asked me to be, you know, super intimate with a mic, and she was like, you can like whisper the top of it, because I can't really whisper it for a house of 1400 people, but I can when I'm just singing to a mic, and so I would close my eyes and just like imagine I was there with this horse and just tame it the way that I would tame kind of my own heart, you know, just to like soothe myself, and I think that comes through, which is really special and exciting.

[10:06] Robert Bannon: Well, I think what you said is so important because I've listened to cast albums that sound like one person, they're mixed.

[10:19] Robert Bannon: And for you to be in the studio and play with the colors and textures, oh your voice is so beautiful. It must be, I got, we everyone listen, you gotta listen to it, get it streaming, get it, listen right now, which is super exciting. You said and was very moving, actually, and I remember this reading this in the playbill, that you said that this role is really an ode to your ancestors, your ancestors immigrated to Haiti with a certain, is there real history behind your family and circus and that time?

[10:48] Isabelle McCalla: Yeah. So, I don't know exactly what generation it was, but I have, I believe on my paternal grandmother's side, my father was born in Haiti, his mother was born in Haiti, his father was born in Jamaica, but on his mother's side, the Haitian side, up the line, boy, he had ancestors that immigrated to Haiti with the Danish circus. And they started their life in Haiti as circus artists. Um, I don't know exactly what roles they did. I would love to do some more digging, but I found this out recently with my uncle Johnny, who was digging into our genealogy. And um, I found that out after I got this role too, which was really fun. Um, and so it does, it feels like this. I'm fulfilling my ancestral line and my DNA's full potential, you know. Um, so that feels extra, extra special to me. And I feel very grateful.

[11:49] Robert Bannon: What a beautiful story, and it is the most beautiful performance. If you're looking and you're like, I've seen her before, I've seen Water for Elephants, you may have seen Aladdin, you may have seen The Prom, you may have seen Shucked. You may, and we're, I'm a Jersey boy, you may have seen Hercules Brad and seen you definitely saw that. So you have now had this career. Do you ever look back to the young person that was growing up in Queens and then moved to Suffern and started to do musical theater and did a lot of regional theater? Then now you are the leading lady in this big old Broadway show.

[12:30] Isabelle McCalla: Oh my god. When you put it like that, it's overwhelming. It's so, thank you for that reminder. Because I think it's really easy to forget where you've, where we start, where I started. I'm just, I'll speak for myself. It's, it can be easy to get bogged down in the day-to-day eight shows a week, you know, slog of performing. Like at some point it does become a job. And it's a beautiful job, and I wouldn't want any other job, but it can be tiring and exhausting. And to remember that, like wow, when I was five years old, this is all I wanted. And I didn't, um, I couldn't have imagined that I, by the time I was 31, have four Broadway shows under my belt, like as a lead. That's out of this world.

And then on, I, what I'm really so lucky is that like every part I played, they're wildly different from each other. So I, god, gratitude is what keeps coming up. But I just, I love this, I love this profession so much, and the fact that I get to be on Broadway eight times a week. Sorry, I'm getting caught up.

[13:42] Robert Bannon: Well, please think about it, but thank you for that reminder because um, it's easy to think about what you haven't accomplished yet and all of the things that you want to do. But then to remember that I'm actually living my dream right now is pretty, pretty darn cool.

[14:02] Isabelle McCalla: My goodness is the coolest thing ever. And uh, we are a, it, it, and you are a chameleon in terms of your acting. Cause when I saw Water for Elephants, I went with my friend Mike, we went and saw Shucked, and he was like, "She was in Shucked." And I said, "No, she was not. She's not, that's not her." Because you literally have played such various characters. I am standing right now in very close proximity to your alma mater. I am in Detroit, Michigan.

[14:29] Isabelle McCalla: Oh my gosh.

[14:31] Robert Bannon: I am because, and uh, because uh I moved out here. My partner is a Detroiter and went to the University of Michigan. Go blue. So what is it? One of the best musical theater schools in the world.

[14:46] Isabelle McCalla: Yep, yep, yeah.

[14:47] Robert Bannon: So many of you Broadway stars have entered there. What was the training like? And did the work you do in school, because a lot of students watch this. I teach at the New Jersey Performing Arts Center musical theater.

[14:55] Isabelle McCalla: Yeah.

[14:58] Robert Bannon: Who do is the foundation and the experience you got vital to be able to do what you do eight shows a week?

[15:05] Isabelle McCalla: Totally. Um, I truly wouldn't be where I am without Michigan. I mean, I, what's I love about the program is it's, you know, conservatory-based program, but on a very, a much larger campus. And so we had access to the wealth of academia uh in Ann Arbor. And so I got to be in English lit classes with physics majors and go to football games on Saturdays. And I think that uh environment alone was so helpful in terms of creating a full-blooded and uh well-rounded individual actor because like I, I do believe the more experience you have, the better, and the more you learn about the world you're in, then the better actor you're gonna be. And so, like I've never been the type of actor that's just wanted to be like, I only do this one thing, and that's I'm all I'm interested in. I'm like, I can think that's kind of bullshit. Sorry, can I curse on this?

[15:57] Robert Bannon: Yeah, sure.

[15:58] Isabelle McCalla: Great, bullshit. Um, so I think it's kind of bullshit. But um, so what was great about the program of Michigan is they encouraged us to find other passions, find other hobbies, and also get world-class training with fantastic professors who uh were very hands-on and attentive and it was great. I also got to study abroad in London and do a classical acting course for six months, which was so beneficial to me, I think. Um, and I got to, I, we luckily had a showcase and I got an agent from there, and I will always be grateful for the way they set me up. Having said that, I am of the philosophy or of the belief that like it doesn't really matter where you go. Michigan was perfect for me because that's, I needed a conservatory-based program with academics and in a place where like we weren't allowed to audition first semester, which was great because we got to know each other as friends as opposed to performers, which is so important, especially when you want to be rooting for each other and not in competition in a class.

Um, but like I, you know, there's so many successful people in this business who didn't go to college or you know, took lessons afterwards uh or were math majors and then transitioned or went to smaller uh other just other not lesser, well, lesser-known theater programs and still are succeeding. It has so much more to do with um willpower and work ethic and kindness than it does where you go to school. Because I think you can learn lessons anywhere. You just have to invest in the right mentors and have them be invested in you and then also invest in yourself and do the work.

[17:48] Robert Bannon: Can't say it better than that. Invest in yourself and do the work and do the work because the diploma is not gonna book the show. The work is gonna.

[17:54] Isabelle McCalla: No, no, no, not at all. That is great advice for sure. And then look, you can go to work, and then you can have four leading Broadway shows and tours and a cast album and all the things that you've got going on. So you have a, this a weekend, you have, I don't know, a whole bunch of shows to do this weekend.

[18:18] Isabelle McCalla: Yeah, we have four more, one tonight, two tomorrow, one Sunday.

[18:21] Robert Bannon: So, how do you take care of yourself?

[18:23] Isabelle McCalla: Oh gosh, I make sure I sleep. I'm, I'm recently making sure I'm eating three meals a day because I was skipping breakfast and I learned that's not good for me. Um, so that's it. I, you know, I work out when I can. I joined a gym, so I go to the sauna, I steam, I drink a lot of water, thinking of which I should drink more water now. Um, I take moments to be quiet, I meditate every morning. That's, I know that like I am not in my right space if I don't meditate. Um, I do that. I make sure I get friend time. It's really important for me to do things that are not involved in this, you know, 10 block radius.

[19:03] Robert Bannon: Yeah.

[19:04] Isabelle McCalla: Um, so yeah, that's, that's kind of what I do in a nutshell.

[19:08] Robert Bannon: You get to go to work, punch in, do your show, and then go have a life.

[19:11] Isabelle McCalla: Have a life in real life. I'm a fan. We're fans here. We love your work. We're excited. We want everyone to listen to the album. What a product that album is at. We love Rick Ellis. We love Pig Pen Theater Company. They're amazing. They wrote the most spectacular illustrious songs. Beautiful. And Jessica Stone is a genius.

[19:31] Isabelle McCalla: Genius. Genius.

[19:32] Robert Bannon: So we're gonna, we are going to listen to the album and anyone out here as we get into the fall and the winter. It's the perfect show to bring your family to it. You can get tickets Christmas and Thanksgiving time and all throughout the fall time. Waterfor Elephants The Musical.com and see our buddy.

[19:47] Isabelle McCalla: Thank you.

[19:48] Robert Bannon: And it follow Izzy. Follow.

[19:49] Isabelle McCalla: It's Izzy.

[19:50] Robert Bannon: Yes, Izzy.

[19:51] Isabelle McCalla: It's Izzy.

[19:52] Robert Bannon: At Izzy McCalla.

[19:54] Isabelle McCalla: They're perfect. Or it's Isabelle, not Isabelle, but that's okay.

[19:57] Robert Bannon: That's a mistake.

[19:59] Isabelle McCalla: That's okay. Supposed to be teaching the kids, but I was getting ready for me and you. So I told them to pack up, and then I was, we get to make mistakes. It's all fine.

[20:07] Robert Bannon: It's okay.

[20:08] Isabelle McCalla: Perfect. No problem.

[20:13] Robert Bannon: Congratulations. We're ready for this show, and we're ready for everything else that's coming your way. Nothing but the best. Thank you for being here.

[20:19] Isabelle McCalla: Thanks so much.