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[0:00] Alan Seales: Welcome to another episode of the Theatre Podcast. Intimate, personal conversations with theatre's biggest names. I'm Alan Seales, and today's guest is Krystal Joy Brown, who, when Broadway returns, will resume her role as Eliza Hamilton in Hamilton on Broadway. She has just been an incredible guest to talk to. Just finished up the interview with her, and I'm still sort of riding the euphoria, I want to say, of talking with her. Just a super nice person who just keeps it so honest and so real and honest with herself about herself. There are so many conversations that I have with people in real life that you can just tell there's something not quite right, they're hiding things or whatnot. And in just watching her talk and experiencing the conversation, she is one of those people that doesn't have time for people that aren't authentic.

And she's done a lot of self-improvement work and talks a lot about her own therapeutic journey in this episode, and has just been an incredible person to talk to. So I really, really hope you enjoy this as much as I did. Make sure to check out VoteRiders.org, which is one of the organizations that she works with. They work towards helping getting people registered to vote in general. They're bipartisan, a very, very good organization currently working on Georgia so that people can vote in the runoff that's happening very, very soon. And now, as always, before we get into the episode, pause it, follow me on Instagram and Twitter at Theatre Underscore Podcast. Leave a rating and a review wherever you are listening.

I love reading the ratings. Find me on Facebook at Official Theatre Podcast. Find me online at thetheatrepodcast.com. Send your feedback to feedback at thetheatrepodcast.com. And now, everybody, please enjoy this episode with Krystal Joy Brown. Here you go. One, two, three.

[2:06] Alan Seales: Our guest today made her Broadway debut in 2009 in Hair before moving on to roles in Leap of Faith, Motown the Musical, and Big Fish. Then before the Broadway shutdown, she was Eliza in Hamilton, a role she will resume once the Broadway industry returns. She's also an activist focusing on helping the world become a better place and more educated every single day, having recently hosted several virtual letter-writing parties with VoteWriters.org, an organization that focuses on providing voter ID assistance, which is now trying very hard to assist Georgia voters for these upcoming runoff elections. Krystal Joy Brown, welcome to the Theatre Podcast.

[2:44] Krystal Joy Brown: Thank you so much for having me. I'm so happy to be here. You know, like, just to have a conversation that's not fully about the work that we've been doing behind the scenes at VoteWriters. So, yeah, it's good to see you and be here.

[2:56] Alan Seales: Yeah, we've known each other for a couple of years. I met you back when you were in Motown.

[3:01] Krystal Joy Brown: So, yeah, 2014.

[3:02] Alan Seales: Right. Oh, gosh, it's been a long time.

[3:06] Krystal Joy Brown: Yeah, it's been a couple of years.

[3:08] Alan Seales: This whole year, though, has just been like, so, I don't even, it's December. We're recording this in the middle of December, right? And I don't even remember most of the year. It's all just this big blur of, like, so much happened this year that I don't know what happened when anymore.

[3:31] Krystal Joy Brown: Yeah.

[3:32] Alan Seales: Does that make sense?

[3:33] Krystal Joy Brown: No, it's definitely a life vortex, 2020. You're just kind of like, I actually, I was looking for a link in my, I went into my cookies or whatever it's called, in your web browser, your search engine. And I was like, oh, I can just go back and look. And I was like, oh my God, there was an election this year. I learned how to bake a pie. I was kind of remembering, even though this wasn't that long ago, but I was just like, it feels like eons ago, but it also feels very present and heavy. So yeah, I understand. I sympathize.

[4:07] Krystal Joy Brown: I have no idea what time it is. And I have a lot of friends that have their birthdays around right now, and I have my birthday December 22nd. So I am telling everyone that this year doesn't count. You've all done your work. You've done a lot of hard work to survive. You don't have to age this year. So yes, I'm just staying 25.

[4:29] Alan Seales: You're turning 25 for the first time.

[4:34] Krystal Joy Brown: I am turning 25 again. It's my 75th time turning 25.

[4:41] Alan Seales: Well, for me, speaking personally for myself, as a white male, this has been, I've heard a lot of my similarly presenting friends being like, oh, all of a sudden we have to deal with these problems. And I'm like, no, no, no, no, no, sir or madam. These are issues that have been around forever that we have just been privileged enough to not have to deal with for the most part. And I've done a lot of work introspectively. I've done a lot of introspective work and really tried hard to recognize what I've got, what I don't have, what other people have, what they don't have. And especially, I guess what I'm trying to get at is that sometimes, depending on who you're talking to, you can hear, oh, this is the year where racial equity became a thing.

Or after George Floyd's murder, all of a sudden we're talking about race. And we're like, no, no, this has been around literally for hundreds of years. And it's interesting. I want to get into your part in all this because you're very much an activist. And I see on your social media that Black Lives Matter is very important to you. The movement is very important to you. And it's not, but it's not, I guess, I don't know what I'm trying to say. It's not a recent movement, but it's all of a sudden come to the forefront of everyone's minds. And save me here. I'll jump in and I'll say, yes, something happened when we saw the life drained out of Floyd. Something changed collectively. Personally, I'm from D.C. My family's worked for the government.

Most of my family works for the government. My mom works for FEMA. My grandparents both work for the Pentagon. And we've always been involved. And we've always known that voting was important. We've always known that being civilly and civically engaged was important. That was just something that was always taught to me. And to have emotions and opinions about what's happening in our society is important. So, I mean, after the 2016 election, I was just devastated because of, you know, regardless of the racial implications that having that man as president felt to me, it was also just the things where the way that he talked about women and about children that are differently abled and things of that nature that made me really scared and disgusted. So I was just like, what's happening?

[7:21] Krystal Joy Brown: So in that time, and before that, when I was in Motown, we were protesting Trayvon Martin's murder and just in the streets and doing what we could. But I started a podcast called How We Do This where it was a female feminist political podcast about taking the reins back and having conversations predominantly with other women who talked about mental health and what they've had to go through to get to where they are. We talked to producers, we talked to creators, nonprofit organizers, and all kinds of different people to just kind of gain some strength when you feel like you've become very powerless. But these issues, you know, like I remember I actually revisited one of the podcasts and I was talking about Jeff Sessions beginning the children in cages and threatening to pull families apart in 2017.

None of this stuff, this inhumane treatment of humans is new. It's just now that we've had to be able to sit here and we can't go, oh, well, I have to go do something. I can't really watch that. We ingested murder after murder after murder. And I think it was the trifecta. It was like, it was Ahmaud Arbery, it was George Floyd, it was Breonna Taylor. And it was just like, okay, and there's power, I guess, in threes. And then there's several before and after that. But those were the three that were hitting like in one week of us even having the understanding, even though Breonna Taylor's murder happened well before May or June. But you know, I think that people had the moment where they're like, I don't, I think it was a lot of things.

A lot of people were now dependent on the government and not happy about it. Their way of life had been completely turned around and changed in ways that they never thought was possible. And then they had to, and so they were facing that reality. And then on top of it, facing a reality that other people have been living in for a very long time that they never wanted to really look at has been something else that has like progressed people to go out of their homes during quarantine and take to the streets of all ilks. And we know that a lot of those people happen to have been white being in those protests. So I think that it was a time where, yes, it was undeniable. At this point, I think that we've been screaming like this injustice of murdering and the conversations we have to have to our black children is very different.

But we couldn't, it wasn't something that people could easily ignore this time. And so people were like, oh shit, what's my part in this? How have I been complacent? And I think complacency also falls into the realm of just like, how have you benefited or have you ever been anti-racist? Have you ever told someone to not be, to say something about Jewish people or Muslims, or have you ever stopped racism and hatred in your midst? And this is just like building of the society. So I think it all came crumbling down and people were just like really dissatisfied with the system at large, like the balance of like, are we going to get these checks? Are we going to survive? And then also like, wow, our brothers and sisters, our siblings are in the middle of a pandemic and still worried about being murdered by the police, which is wild.

You're like, gee, I can't win. I cannot go out of my house and just be like, as soon as we had this president, I was like, I'm so afraid that someone is going to grab me by the vagina and call me the N word. And that would just be fine in new America. And I felt like that for the last four years. And then coming up and being like, look, I pay my taxes. I do my civic duty. My father was a police officer, so that complicates my relationship to the police even more. But I can't call the police if a family member is having a mental breakdown because they'll be murdered or I can't rely on my civil servants to take care of me. It's just become too much and everyone has to start looking at the society that we've been complicit in.

Because sometimes it's like, well, it's just easier to let things be how they are because people will be like, it's not really that bad or it's not that bad for me, so I'm just going to leave it like that. Know that it's wrong and I'll know that slavery is wrong and I'll know that these things are wrong, but I don't know how to engage in that because then that means that I'm going to have to take on some level of complicity or I was a part of it. And I think that's the hard thing with what you were trying to talk about before is coming to terms. How do I engage with this where I might even feel some shame that I'm like, I shouldn't feel ashamed. Why do I feel ashamed? I didn't actively do this.

I'm not actively telling people that they can't get school, go to schools or have this protection. I'm actually actively saying the opposite, but it's so deep and so complicated. And the conversations I'm having with a lot of my white friends is just about this and how to engage in a way that actually makes more sense and actually feels like you're listening and understanding that it's okay that you don't get it and haven't got it before. I think that's the other thing. We can't shame people into silence or into being like, well, see, I acknowledged it and now I'm being crucified. That's not going to help either.

[12:56] Krystal Joy Brown: Yeah, I think shame is a good way of putting it. And then the guilt behind that. And I actually went to see Slave Play with a friend of mine. Oh, it's amazing. Absolutely amazing. And just walking in and the set, you're staring at yourself. The audience stares at themselves the whole time. And you're like, oh, I see the symbolism here. I see what's going on. And I walked out of there. I saw it with a friend of mine who's Brazilian and walked out of there and had a drink with her afterwards and had this whole conversation between, you know, she's Hispanic in the US, but she's white in Brazil. And, you know, this and what her elements of racism has she's experienced. And we just had this deep conversation in that.

And I mean, again, side note, this is why I love the arts because it makes you feel things without actually, you know, going through major trauma, you can just see it represented. But like that, that came at a perfect time. It was the beginning of this year before everything really blew up and kind of set it set a huge tone for the whole theater industry. Then COVID hit and then all the murders happened. You know, like you said, the trifecta. And you're right. It's I've said I felt so overwhelmed. And so like, if I really start to focus on it, and the fact that it's so complicated and so entrenched in our system, I get so much anxiety that I become complacent again, and then I feel bad about that.

[14:26] Krystal Joy Brown: Yeah, I mean, it's too much of a load to carry, you know, and it truly is. And we have to do a lot of ancestral healing on both sides. And we have to go and we have to be like, okay, so this has happened in the past. How do I recognize these things? And how do I make space for people to exist and feel like they're being heard? And this is the other thing I think a lot of people, I don't know if anyone has recently listened to AOC. She did a cooking show segment where she talked about why the stimulus hasn't gone through. It's really amazing. It's like 61 minutes of pure perfection. But she just talked about like, you know, being radical, and like, like how she's been radicalized. Like, it's radical that I want to have healthcare for everyone.

It's radical that I want to take care of the elderly. It's radical. And I'm like, that is very interesting that these are radical concepts. I'm like, I feel like the government trying to like are 117 or 27 AGs coming and trying to completely ruin our democracy is radical. But I'm like, if we put so much emphasis on these incremental changes, it just doesn't work that way. You know, you have to swing far for us to go balance back in the middle. And I think that that's what people are scared of. So yes, you're throwing these big ideas out there. You say something like defund the police and everyone's like, but, but, but, and it's like, no, no, no. That's the big statement that gets us having these conversations, right?

Like, if you hadn't seen that play, you may not have had the conversations and you wouldn't have had the knowledge of her circumstance in Brazil and what that's like. And shadism and colorism and class systems and cast that are everywhere, right? So it's time for us to be having these conversations on these broader things and then figuring out how we implement them into our everyday lives and our actual society. So it feels sometimes radical, right? It feels like a really big swing to the left or swing to the right or whatever, but it takes big swings to correct those issues. And then we balance in the middle. And so, yeah, I just think that like, we can't also put everything on, on everybody.

Like it's too much weight for you to carry. If you're like, well, my ancestors may have done this. And then I have to recognize that, deal with that shame and guilt. Then I have to turn around and try to like, operate as a human being and like, say hi to my black friends. And like, I could see how that dance is really awkward, you know, but at the same time, it's like, it's been awkward for us black people for a very long time to be like, so your ancestors probably enslaved my people, but hey, can I get a job? You know, or, hey, can I, you know, can we, should we date? Like, what is this? You know what I mean? So everyone needs to be uncomfortable right now. And that's fine. I think that people, I think that we have a problem with processing information and emotions in this country.

And I think that's why we're in the situation that we're in right now with this pandemic and people losing their minds because we don't process stuff. We don't take care of ourselves emotionally. We're taught to suppress it or pray over it, let it go. We're not taught to actually go, there's shame and guilt and fear and all this nasty stuff that comes up, but that's not going to be your stasis. It's going to overcome you for a little while. And then you're going to figure out how to reshape, retool and become probably a better person on the other end. But first we have to process some stuff and it has to all be out on the table and it has to all be clear.

[18:02] Alan Seales: Well, how much of this do you think is sort of a product of, I guess, being forced at home and global pandemic and we're dealing with it and we can't go outside and et cetera, versus maybe everything like the internet as a tool for good, like one of the sub problems, subtext of the internet is just like now nothing can be forgotten. So before the winners write the history, who lives, who dies, who tells your story, right? So the winners write the history and they paint the losers as the bad guys. And now you have the ability through the internet to remember everything and you can find everything and there's still the propaganda and sometimes leadership who's just like, I don't like that election result, I'm not going to believe it.

And you have a couple of people that follow that person. But overall, if you try hard enough, you can find pretty much anything now. So one little tweet from somebody becomes the Me Too movement. And all of a sudden one person's cell phone video becomes a big internet human rights case, right? So how much of what we're seeing now do you think is influenced by that? Have you ever, I guess, have you ever talked to your parents about our generation versus theirs in sort of how activism takes place?

[19:17] Krystal Joy Brown: Oh yeah. I mean, I talked to my grandparents. That's the most fascinating. I feel like people in their 50s and 60s are kind of like, uh, so my mom's in that place of like, just try to survive. But I think that people in their 80s, 70s and 80s, especially my family had to probably were probably more of the Martin Luther King kind of folks, right? They were maybe not, I hate the word assimilate, but yes, do good. Show that you're an upstanding black citizen and then you'll be fine. If you're the perfect Negro, you'll be fine and you can live in that neighborhood and you can do those things. And so even now, when I would have conversations with my grandmother and we started these weekly zooms and she's like, you know, I'm protesting.

I organized my own protests, all this stuff. And she's like, oh, well, you know, this writing and looting, you know, I understand the protesting, but the writing and the looting. And I was just like, whoa, whoa, whoa, pause, pause, pause, you know? And there was a moment that even my grandmother said, and she's a very smart person, but she was like, all lives matter. And I was like, Nana, all lives do matter, but no lives can matter if black lives don't matter at all. And so just trying to break these things down to her.

[20:41] Krystal Joy Brown: So it's like a process of, or a product of assimilation of just decades of assimilation. Yeah, it truly is. And also then her coming to terms and having, like, I've been watching my family evolve and grow as well in this. Because as a black person in this country, you don't want to feel like you have to wear a suit of armor every day when you go into the office and you're the only black person. When you go everywhere, you can't wear it. Just like white people don't want to wear shame and guilt and whatever from the past. Black people don't want to wear this awkward, am I here for the right reasons? What is this? Am I a token? Am I whatever? No one wants to deal with that stuff. So they put it to the far, far recesses of their brain so that they can function.

And once again, if you've been functioning okay, if you've been able to stay slightly above the poverty line or have a few things and you're like, well, I have my house and my kids can go to college. You're like, that's progress. My grandparents couldn't even go, we're working on a farm, slaves. So if my grandkids can decide to be musical theater people, we're good. That's enough. So for them, this is major. Obama becomes president, work is done, I can die happy. But then the baton gets passed on and I gingerly tried to tell my family, I'm not some radical. I'm a person who is avid about life. I am actually extraordinarily pro-life, pro-taking care of life, not abortion stuff. I'm saying those people who think that abortion and capital punishment shouldn't be a part of the same conversation, I don't get you.

But we have to take care of all lives. We have to take care of and how precious this experience is. So it has been interesting seeing the generational divides of like, if we don't ruffle a lot of feathers, we have to just have conversations, we have to do some things. And I'm like, well, I was like, first of all, Nana, look at who's actually doing the rioting and looting and who's actually just protesting and saying like, Black Lives Matter and we're not gonna take any more and we want laws to change. This is the first step for laws to change. And so there is a divide. And then I feel like the people in their 50s and 60s are still figuring out themselves. I feel like they're the generation that's allowed to start navel-gazing.

You know what I mean? They're like, oh, therapy was always in their world, but not really. But now they're starting to like... Because I feel like my mom's in a really big place where she's focusing on herself right now.

[23:27] Krystal Joy Brown: You could go to therapy, but you weren't allowed to talk about it. Yeah, exactly. And being in your 20s and 30s, you're kind of like, yeah, I'm going to therapy. These are my medications. Oversharing and also self-care is a thing that matters. The thing that people are actually doing and being a part of and posting about. And that's just not really something that's really... My grandmother, who's 79, is not talking about hashtag self-care. She's like, I'm gonna get through the day. You know what I mean?

[24:01] Krystal Joy Brown: Hashtag forgot my pills. Yeah. But I just think that we're in an interesting time. Like I said, I think we all have to take the... We're in isolation, right? And we're going to be for a long time. This is not leaving any time. We got a vaccine. Wonderful. This is not going to be over anytime soon. Borders are closed. Things are still shut down. Theater's not going to open for a minute. And it's going to look and feel very, very different. And that's not an inside scoop at all, by the way. I just don't think it's going to look and feel like... Rory O'Malley and I were talking today and we were just like, yeah, it's going to look real bleak. And it's going to be a struggle to get people in seats and stuff. I hope not. I hope... Please, please, please make me wrong. Flood to the theaters as long as you're vaccinated and pour in money and love and support. But...

[25:02] Alan Seales: And we need restaurants and we need hotels.

[25:04] Krystal Joy Brown: Yes.

[25:05] Krystal Joy Brown: And we need travel.

[25:05] Krystal Joy Brown: And come stay in New York City, please.

[25:08] Krystal Joy Brown: All of it needs to come back.

[25:10] Krystal Joy Brown: Yeah. The whole activism movement, I think activism as a general term sort of has a bad connotation because like your grandma, your Nana said, it's like the riot and the looting. So if you're going to stand up for something, that means you have to destroy. I don't agree with that. And I think you sort of embody that as well, because I think being able to call yourself an activist, you're activating something, you are standing up for something that you believe in. And there's ways to do that. There's many, many more people who are peaceful activists. It's just the violent activists that give the whole thing sort of a bad connotation.

[25:42] Krystal Joy Brown: I always think that these people in the streets are my most patriotic siblings. I'm like, you believe in this country, you believe that there can be better.

[25:51] Krystal Joy Brown: You believe that we can do better and you are out here showing that. I'm standing in a sea of patriots who are like, we have this ability to go somewhere really amazing. We can create a new American dream that really encompasses all of us, but it takes accountability and it takes acknowledgement and we can create something better. And those are the type, I consider myself a patriot. I could easily leave. I have friends all over the world that are like, if you need to come here, girl, we got you. But I'm like, I want to stick it out so that I can help be a part of a nation that I believe in. I've traveled to many, many places in the world. And the United States is very interesting for the fact that we have a little bit of everything here.

We have a lot of everything here. And most places you go are very still homogenized. And the fact that we can go and we can have this at all, and this is why it's hard. This is why it's tense because there is so much difference, but it should be allowed. And it should be a conversation where we're like, how do I respect you? How do I take better care of you? How do I, how do we live in a place that in a mindset that isn't lack mentality, where if you get rights, I lose rights. And instead we're in an expansive place. And I'm like, the more rights that are given fortify your white man rights. You know what I mean? Like they actually just fortify your rights. So it's about consciousness. This has very little to do with policy and politics.

It's about actual human consciousness. We are in actually a brain shift of consciousness, in my opinion, that is going to translate to a system. But first it all starts internally. It all starts in your brain chemistry going, Oh my God, I'm 25. And I never thought about racism in this way. Now I hate myself. And then it's like, okay, okay. I don't have to hate myself. I just have to figure out what this is. And we're going to be living under these systems forever. There's always going to be this stuff in the ethers, right? But I can deal with people who have an acknowledgement of what's gone on and can understand it to the best of their ability, but people who kind of deny it or go, well, the thing is, is that I don't know why these people feel like they don't have the ability to have an education or the ability to have their vote count or whatever.

If they can't understand systemic disenfranchisement and things like that, I have a bigger problem with. But people who are like, if I can just open my mind and start to understand this better and allow myself to expand and evolve and understand that I didn't really know shit before, and now I'm just growing. And I think we need to cut everyone some slack. I think we have to allow people to come to the table and grow. I think it's unfair to make people... I saw a lot of Black people like, I'm not going to tell white people about slavery. And I was like, ask me about slavery. No, I don't know everything, but I will send you what I do know, what helped me to have a better understanding, because I wasn't born understanding the system.

I was born pure and loving and all those things, just like the rest of us. And then society told me what I was a descendant of and what my people had endured to this point. And so we have to be taught and then taught to unlearn these things and how to deal with them. So I just feel like this is where we're supposed to be. It sucks to be in a pandemic. I love my job. I love playing Eliza in Hamilton. It's awesome. However, this needed to happen. And I'm glad it happened. And maybe that's sick of me to say, but I'm glad that it's happened for us to sit and go, what kind of system do we actually want to be participating in? One that takes care of people in the middle of a pandemic or one that doesn't? Who are we voting for?

Who are these leaders? Everyone is showing themselves. And I know whoever is out there listening, I know that you have personally probably seen that. Your friends that have been there for you, your family that's been there for you, or the people that haven't. It's gone, or your company members that have, or companies that have been like, we got your back if you are a BIPOC person, or who doesn't, or the radio silence, or companies that are investing in people's healthcare and who's not. And like you said before, this is on record forever. History has its eyes on you, and it has its eyes on everyone. And I think that is much... People are going to mess up. People are going to fuck up. You're going to have tweeted something in 2004 that you thought was hilarious, and it's just not.

But I also think that we have to, as a progressive person, it's about progress. It's about progressing forward. It's about growth. It's about expansion. That means that things as they are now are going to change. And so I have to allow people to be where they are, and then I have to hope that they are willing to expand and change. Yes, full stop.

[31:04] Alan Seales: You know, our generation, right, we listen to our parents, we listen to their parents. And for the most part, your parents, until a certain point of your life, your parents are your heroes. Your parents are your ultimate role models. And so I think that's what we're going to are your ultimate role models. And they may say things or they may believe things out of complete ignorance or simply because they didn't experience things. To prepare for today, I was watching an interview with you where you said you went out, when you picked up your dog, you went to Amish country and that person didn't know, had never heard of Manhattan. Right? Yeah. So things that we take for granted, New York City, everybody knows where New York City is.

This person didn't. And so who knows what their parents are teaching them? And they learn from their parents. And so if they don't have any friends of color, if they don't have any interaction, I mean, getting back to just the way that our country got divided in this, in, you know, back on November 3rd, it was, I mean, everyone's like, yay, democratic president again, et cetera, et cetera. But the margin was so small. That victory was so small. That means it was brutal. Almost half the country still. I mean, I'm not going to say that 8 million is a lot of a great margin. That's great. But was I disappointed that it wasn't some like ass kicking landslide? Yeah. Because that does mean that either people are just greedy or willfully ignorant or openly racist.

And I grew up where I grew up around a lot of Black Republicans. You know, I grew up around a lot of diverse people being all kinds of different affiliations. And whatever the party is right now is not what it was in the 90s or the early 2000s. You know, we've lost a bit of humanity in our politicking. And that's what's scary. And that's what the activism I think is doing right now is like infusing like faces, bodies to these initiatives and to like, hey, you're hurting us. This hurts us. We are your, we actually employ you. You work for us. So it's hard for people. It's hard for us to reach the hearts and minds of people who are indoctrinated in maybe ignorance and hate. And we have to then rely on creating a system, a school system that is cohesive of how we tell American history and tell American stories and perpetuates the kind of society that we want to live.

I mean, that's just how it is. If you're in a cult, what do you do? You have to be deprogrammed. So a lot of us, lucky for you, if you got to grow up in a household that was really, really great with two parents who were loving and were like, look, this is like the party system and this is how it works. And they're different type of people and people have different, all these things. Like, no, you probably didn't grow up with that. You know, like people weren't having these conversations. We didn't talk about it. We didn't talk about politics or finance.

[34:22] Krystal Joy Brown: No.

[34:22] Alan Seales: Yeah.

[34:23] Krystal Joy Brown: Yeah. Oh, that was like, yeah, at the dinner table there, my grandmother was like, no sex and no religion and no politics. And I was like, this is going to be a real quiet dinner. She's in that one year and we all burst out laughing because there was this dead silence. But that's what the arts are for, though. Like you said, that we get to ingest these potential circumstances without going through the trauma. But it is like you have to figure out ways to be culturally engaged and us actors and performers and presenters need to figure out ways to engage more people all the time. But also going back to the school component, we have to make sure that we're teaching our history properly across the board.

And that will help people have a more well-rounded conversation with their teachers or instructors or their systems when they're like, well, my mom and dad says that we are the superior race. So what are you talking about when you say that everyone's created equal? And maybe it's an awkward conversation for that third grade teacher, but it's conversations that need to start being had and the deprogramming has to happen. I have to deprogram myself of things every single day. I have to basically, I call it brain surgery of how to reprogram myself out of basic things that I think society puts on us. And you're doing that all day long. There's so, I mean, Sigmund Freud and all of the things that we've been studying, we've been figured out.

Okay. Like every single bit of information that I get off of my phone has been perfectly curated for me. And so in like all of the algorithms and pathways. And so I have to constantly retool my brain when it comes to information that I don't know, or that is new, or I want to learn how to be a better ally to trans people. How do I support that better? How do I support differently abled people better? How do I do this? And it's by me going in and questioning where I have never asked questions. Why haven't I asked those questions about myself? Or why don't I have these types of friends? Or why don't I have this? How can I reach out? Everything's online. Every child is growing up online now. And it's our job to connect people.

And also 12.5% of the population of the United States is Black. We actually are a very small amount of people, but we have a big presence in our culture, which makes us feel like we're 45%. Whenever I say that number to people, they're like, oh shit, it's only barely 13%. And with our health crisis, that number is dwindling. But we mean so much to the American culture. And to tell the right story, the truer story of our history, to deprogram ourselves for whatever has come out, my mom always is like, people are inherently good. And I'm like, I want to believe that so much. So if I do listen to my mother and go, people are inherently good, that means that when they are exposed to different people's circumstances and experiences, through theater, through art, through just storytelling or whatever, they might have something of their empathy and compassion open up so they can start processing some of this emotion that is heavy and makes them question themselves. Like you're saying, when you started, you're like, oh God, where have I been complicit? And how do I not get paralyzed with shame and fear and stop doing anything? Because that's easy too.

[38:00] Alan Seales: Well, kind of circling this back to theater and Hamilton, were you, I guess, as self-aware and on this path towards self-education and reprogramming as much before stepping in as Eliza Hamilton? And being in Eliza, the show, or being in Hamilton, the show that obviously is just known for its educational outreach and for representation and all this stuff, has that helped you or accelerated your track at all?

[38:30] Krystal Joy Brown: Yeah, I mean, I really think that I started doing a deep reprogramming like five years ago, and that included, I was one of those rare Black people at 23 years old, my friend was like, you should go to a therapist. And I was like, that's not what Black people do. Thank you for all the fun.

[38:48] Krystal Joy Brown: And she was like, well, I'm just going to slip you this number and email address and you just on your leisure, you know, so I did. I went to therapy and the first four sessions I sat there and I was like, this woman is not going to tell me anything I don't know about myself. And then like, that's when like the beginning of the transformation began, like the ability to sit and think of and look at where I'm patterned, look at my biological inclinations through my family or ancestry or those things that I have, the proclivities that are just genetically in me, to look at them a little bit kinder because I was always like, why? Why am I like this? Why am I sad? Why am I not? You know, why, why, why?

And then I could kind of understand it a bit more. And then, you know, I decided almost four and a half years ago to be sober. And that was another part of like that reprogramming of myself because in sobriety and what people don't really know is that it is a lot of writing and journaling and like homework and you're sitting there and you're going like, what are my character defects? Where have I lied? Where have I hidden things? Where have I harmed others? And you're really taking an inventory of who you are. It is a deep dive into your psyche, your entire life. I honestly recommend it to everyone, okay? You do not have to have a dependency on exiting this reality to do this introspective work.

I truly, truly think every single person should. But that allowed me to start going like, who am I? Who do I want to be? But it really, it really, it was during that period before we started recording, you wanted to ask like, why did you take this time off Broadway? But it was really in that period where I was like, who am I? Because especially we're taught in this Broadway community to be a chameleon, to be whatever you want me to be. You want me to sing country? I can sing country. You want me to sing jazz? I'll sing jazz. What do you want me to do? I will do it. I will be that thing that you want me to be. But it makes an identity crisis. Like, who am I? And so I started going like, who am I? What do I want to be?

What is this reality for me? And that was where it all kind of started. And then it became more fine-tuned. The projects I started working on, the people that I started having conversations with, it started to become more in alignment. So it was like, Hamilton was kind of a no-brainer. I was like, I already knew all the guys for a long time. I knew so many people in the show. I'd worked with most of them at some point in my career. And I was like, at some point, if that's supposed to happen, it will. And it will be in perfect alignment. I did not think I was going to be Eliza. I was sure that they would call me Frangelica. And I was like, Eliza. And I was like, I don't know. God, what a thankless job.

I mean, look, because she kind of is. People are like, oh, the woman who gets cheated on. We have these stigmas, right? We're like, oh, the big, brassy dame is so powerful. But the true power and the thing that I learned in these last few years, in the last five years, look, that's a musical theater reference. There you go. Is that vulnerability is everything. And Eliza is vulnerable. And she allows herself to be vulnerable. She's not wrapped up in pretense. She's not even wrapped up in logic. She's not even wrapped up in legacy. She's not wrapped up in, who do I need to be? She's like, who do I need to be for my children, for my husband, for the people I love? And that type of vulnerability is not something I think I could have reached if I hadn't started doing personal work a long time ago and going like that my vulnerability and my flaws and my all these things are okay.

Because I think we polish ourselves and we sanitize ourselves by being in musical theater in a lot of ways. And because we want people to like us and we want us to be what we want to be, chameleons and whatever people want us to be. And we want to be malleable. But we're human. And that's where people, I think, burn out and start to lose themselves. So getting to come and do the show felt like in perfect alignment. And then all of the outreach and stuff. And then now we've just been pushing them to do even more. That's been our goal since this social justice reckoning has happened at Hamilton. Yes, the Edgy Ham program was something that was happening, but we brought them to task. We were like, hey, hip-hop is Black culture, American culture.

It started here. And you've profited beautifully off of it. And you've also reminded us of how amazing hip-hop culture is. However, it's time to really acknowledge and step up for that community. And so now we have the Hamilton Racial Justice Task Force and we meet every week and we find ways to engage. And Vote Riders is one of the organizations that we've been working with. But we worked with Until Freedom and MoveOn.org and Act Blue and all kinds of different things. I just did the Georgia Democrats event last night. So it's just a ton of stuff that is for progress and for showing up for the community that they profit off of and the cast members they have.

[44:26] Krystal Joy Brown: It's beautiful that you've been able to take this thing that gives you this Hamilton money and you're obviously enjoying that. Not anymore, by the way. I don't have Hamilton money anymore. Well, pre- and post-pandemic. Yeah, sure, sure, sure. So it's like the day job or the night job, right, in your case. And able to work in, I guess, all of this. Make your hobby sort of part of your passion, sort of part of your day job. So now you are fortunate enough to be able to be in a show that's great, that's not going anywhere, right, which is obviously a big thing for actors. And also have it be a subject matter that is personally artistically fulfilling and also something that allows you then to bring in your personal passions. And you are passionate about democracy and patriotism.

[45:19] Alan Seales: I'm passionate to a halt. Like, oh, the people that love me. But it's wonderful. But when you're involved in something, your energy, like, you can tell when people are engaged. And this is, I guess, it speaks to the greatness of Broadway actors, right? I said it so many times in the podcast, the Olympians of theater. You have to be good at your job. You're very welcome. To be good at your job, you have to be vulnerable. And so that's on stage. And then if you can carry that off stage, I've met a lot of people in this business. And you said before we started recording, you're like, a lot of my friends are not in the theater industry by design, on purpose. I've met a lot of people in the industry who are very vulnerable on stage because that's where they're safe and able to do so. But they still haven't done the inner work off the stage. So they're not confident in themselves off stage. It's hard for them to open up. You can just tell they're not being genuine and authentic.

[46:21] Krystal Joy Brown: I think I'm the opposite. I think it depends on why you came into this industry. I came into this industry because I was like, for me, this was a release to happiness and joy. Me singing and dancing around the house brought my family joy and excitement. And I loved that part of it. The vulnerable side didn't kick in for me for a long time because I was like, I didn't feel safe truly being vulnerable in front of people. And I know a lot of my actor friends were like, yeah, this is where I can really let that stuff out. And I'm like, in front of all these people? I was like, no, I don't get it. Or I could poke at it. I think people could see that I felt strongly about it. But I think that when you don't... This is what I tell all of my students, too.

You have to take care of your mental health first because you actually might have some really great things that are accessible to use for your method acting or whatever. But you can't use that stuff until you've processed it and dealt with it. It's unsafe to use it. And we want to actually work with people we want to work with. I don't want to bring tyrants into the workforce. So I'm like, deal with your stuff and find safe things to use. And so I've always been like, oh, those people that are just like, I come here so I can cry and let out my emotions. I'm like, yeah, no, no, no. That doesn't make me feel good. But now I'm like, oh, it's a cathartic release for all of us. If I'm crying on stage, it's like... Especially because Eliza has so much grief and betrayal and all that stuff that when it's after the show, people come up to me and tell me about the loved ones they've lost.

When they feel safe enough because my vulnerability came from a real place, I really think about my aunt that I lost. And I think about my family members I've lost and how grieving looks so many different ways. And also how heartbreak... I've experienced extreme heartbreak. So I'm always like, before burn, I'm like, this is for everyone out there who has had their heart broken. And that fuels my fire. And people are like, I feel that. And weird things have happened when I've done burn. And I've gotten applause before the end of the song, which is just shocking. And people know the music. So it's like, they know that there's one more, I hope that you burn. And I was so happy when Tommy Kail was in the house for that and that he came after, he was like, you just got an applause in the middle of the song.

And I'm like, I know. It happens sometimes. But yeah, I think we do have to take care of our mental health though, because I couldn't access that stuff. I'd feel too vulnerable to really access it. I'd play at it. It wouldn't really truly be true in the level of honesty that I think I could actually get to. If I can deal with it and be like, my heart broke, that sucked. I'm beyond it now. But I can now use it and I can activate and access those emotions.

[49:31] Krystal Joy Brown: Yeah, I've just never been able to. I'm like, that doesn't feel good. I like to be perfect. I want everyone to think I'm perfect. And then that I don't even have emotions. And then yeah, I don't know. I'm still working on that.

[49:47] Alan Seales: Well, there's a whole sub conversation of figuring out why you have the need to feel perfect all the time. But I was going to say though, when you're authentically going to someplace that emotional and eight times a week, and you look at Elizabeth Stanley or Catherine Gallagher in Jagged Little Pill and these people who go through heartbreak and through addiction and through sexual assault and these things eight times a week and the emotional trauma that comes along with it, you've got to be able to process it enough and understand where it's coming from to then go off stage and be yourself again. Because you can't bring Eliza home with you. It's a snowball effect, right? You're just going to become more and more, I guess, falling down a rabbit hole for a lack of a better term.

[50:32] Krystal Joy Brown: Yeah. TV film actors have a different, especially film actors, have a different experience. You're wearing that role potentially for maybe three months of doing something. But wearing something for a year or potentially longer, that feels daunting. And so that's why I think musical theater people can seem like weirdos because they're like, yeah, hi, just did that. And now I'm out here doing this other thing where I'm in a totally different mood. And it's kind of cool for movie actors to be like, they're brooding in their character. But yeah, I think that people just need to understand that it is heavy wearing all that crap. And I think that those people that ascend to those places, I'm a huge fan of Elizabeth Stanley.

I fangirl in her DMs on the regular. I just emailed her this morning just because. So I'm just like, it is amazing that they're accessible and vulnerable. And they're willing to be that for us to have that cathartic experience. And that's why people burn.

[51:43] Krystal Joy Brown: That's why people leave and move to Wisconsin and like, do what they need to do. Because it is hard to wear that all the time.

[51:51] Alan Seales: Yeah, yeah. It's funny that you said you leave and move to Wisconsin immediately, I thought of Karen Oliva, who lives now in Wisconsin. Something that she said to me, sort of along the lines of what we've been talking about, is that as she descends from the fly, every show from Moulin Rouge, she feels this anxiety and this pressure to be the best woman of color that she's ever been before. Because everyone's expecting Nicole Kidman. That's what they know of Moulin Rouge. And then all of a sudden they see this black woman and they're like, oh, and she has to she feels this this sort of this need to prove herself. Like you said, starting. Yeah, I guess you said something earlier that it's like you're not all starting from equal places. People are not all starting from the same starting line. So anyway, that just that popped in my head.

[52:37] Krystal Joy Brown: No, it's hard, especially, I mean, playing Eliza and being this icon of this role and her voice is ingrained in my head from listening to it so much. So I'm sure it's ingrained in people who started listening to it at four years old. And there's just going to be those differences. And what I do appreciate about this creative team and what I do hope that more creative teams do and allow is for artists to be artists like I'm going to do that. I'm going to sing it differently. And that means also the artists trusting themselves, like we have to have really serious trust in ourselves and who we are and our gifts, our talents, our voices. Because we're constantly going to be poked and prodded and told you're not that or you're not this or be that be this, and it's always going to feel demoralizing or like you're not enough.

[53:33] So we go back to the root of it. Self-care, self-love, mental health. How do you recharge? Who are your people that are around you that can remind you like you're not this gig, you're not this show, you're not this Broadway star or movie star or whatever. You are a living, loving entity that deserves love and a life full of the things that you want. You know, this is all extra. You know, this is cherries on the cake. Like I get to live and exist in a time where people are having honest, true conversations with each other. I get to love deep and be bold and honest about myself. I get to travel and do all these things. And I am grateful. And yeah, people are going to always pit me against other people.

And I'm always going to pit myself against other people. And it's always going to be competitive because the American dream is competitive. And we do have a lack mentality. But what I've been trying to do within my own life and when it comes to my own life and then the macro version of society is I've been trying to make sure that I have an expansive mindset and to know that what I feel today is not how I'm going to feel tomorrow, even five minutes from now.

[54:48] Like I even got on this thing with you, Alan. I was like, I am in a bad mood. I woke up on the wrong side of the bed today. This is going to be just me curmudgeon. Like I literally said that the Grinch, you know, 100 percent. And now I'm just like, I'm so inspired to exist right now. You know, that's. This is all cake, you know, like Broadway cake, it's a luxury, wonderful item. Therapy is also a luxury item, which is why, like I tell black people, there's no shame in not doing therapy sooner in your life. You know, that's not really been something when you're in survival mode, you're not thinking, well, maybe I'll spend one hundred fifty dollars a week on therapy. Like, no, it's been about survival.

But the more that we are, that these types of things get available to us, that we can take better care of ourselves. And that's what we should be doing, you know, and and all of this other stuff, if we get to be artists and express human experiences so that people can grow their compassion and empathy. Amazing. But beyond that, like when it comes to just me being crystal with my puppy and my family and my loved ones, like all that matters is that love and connection.

[56:04] Alan Seales: That's true. What do you do to decompress on the outside of outside of the current times? Eight shows a week and you're dealing with Edgy Ham, you're dealing with your normal, normal activism, right? Not 2020 activism, which which is on a whole different level. And eight shows a week and you're going to this emotional place. What do you do? What do you do to to to become yourself again?

[56:28] Krystal Joy Brown: Well, I'm going to be one hundred percent honest, like I don't think I have been myself or whatever, whoever that is, like since the pandemic hit. Right. Like I think I've been operating on this very high frequency of like, yeah, get it done, get it out, do what you can to fix a society that you want to have children in, that you want to love and that you want to survive. And like I've been like just trying to hold up the walls of the building. Right. Like I haven't been in this like I need to just like be restorative and like calming. Like I need to take some baths like I that's what I like to do. I like to take baths. I like to go to the spa. I like to to go get massages, all the things you cannot do in a pandemic.

But right now for me and what I've been trying to get back into recently after this election, and I think I'll be able to breathe better once Ossoff and Warnock win. And I'll be like, OK, I can really, really breathe now. I, I, I bought myself a new guitar for my birthday. And I'm being like a complete like, OK, I've never played guitar before. I have played guitar most of my life, but I just I'll like play guitar solidly for a year and then won't play for like five years, you know. So I was like, OK, I need to just go to YouTube and watch these like this is how to make an E. And I'm like, I know how to make an E. OK, I know how to do it. I'm just going to start at the beginning and I'm going to just go like incrementally and build and like just five minutes a day, 10 minutes a day.

It's like my noodling meditation, meditation. So getting back into like writing also like scripts. I'm a writer. I love telling stories. I love playing games as well as like my computer is propped up on a Scrabble board. I was like, oh, yeah, Scrabble. I love games. So, you know, I have my weekly game night with my family and we play Uno and we play like get to know your questions. And so, yeah, I'm a big bowler. But getting back into my spiritual practice is what will help me survive anything that that means like meditation. That means going to Agape, which is the spiritual center that I believe in, which is dogma free. We don't think anyone's really got it together. We just believe that we're all connected and that we're all loving beings who should take care of each other.

It's super, super hippie and led by a black man. It's Agape. Check it out. And so just those things. Like I think leaning on my spiritual practice, I'm a doer. So I like to be doing something. So it's like my safe space is like writing a script or noodling on my piano or noodling on my guitar. It's not really like I'm bad at checking out. But I will say that the new Real Housewives of Salt Lake City are giving me everything I need. They are a fact. That is a messy situation that I can dip, dive and lay in once a week and have zero, zero, zero guilt about. I will watch that show. I'm watching. Thank you, Andy Cohen for that trash. I'm into it. I've been getting into Big Mouth for the first time.

[59:40] Alan Seales: For the first time?

[59:41] Krystal Joy Brown: Yeah, I had never watched it before the last couple of weeks. I was like, this is genius. Nick Kroll and John Mulaney still can do no wrong. OK, speaking of cartoons that are like out there, Midnight Gospel on Netflix. I don't know a few people like nobody's watching it. Nobody. Nobody watched it. Me and a couple of my friends. I think that's it. And anyone I was like, do you want to sit down and watch episodes of this with me? Midnight Gospel is brilliant. It's a cartoon, but it's a podcast and it's having conversation with artists. I can't explain this. It's wild. Someone out there is probably like, oh man, I know, I know. No one talks about it. But check it out. Please, like you and your wife, have a glass of wine or three and try to watch episode one. Because it's weird. It's like an acid trip. Midnight Gospel.

[1:00:28] Alan Seales: OK, cool, cool, cool. All right. So let's wrap this up with the three standard closing questions that I ask everyone. The first one is, what motivates you?

[1:00:34] Krystal Joy Brown: What motivates me? Oh, love. Love, like love motivates me. My next tattoo is probably going to be like what I did for love. And love is so many things. It's not. It's about how we care for each other, how we love for each other. It's partnership. It's family. It's connected in everything that we do. You love doing theater. You love performing. You love telling stories like it's just ingrained in everything.

[1:01:07] Alan Seales: So what advice would you give your younger self and younger people listening now starting out down a similar path?

[1:01:14] Krystal Joy Brown: Oh, my gosh. Advice for my younger self. I mean, I've been asked this question so many times, but it changes second to second. And today, what I would say to my younger self is, oh, my God, like you are enough. You are so enough. And you really have to believe and trust that. You really have to believe and trust that you are enough and wherever you are is OK. And you're growing and you're this living, breathing, spongy thing that's absorbing a lot at once. And you're OK. You are OK. And it's OK that you're going to fail a thousand, thousand times and you're going to get back up and you're going to be resilient because that's what you're made of. That's your legacy and your ancestry.

[1:02:03] Alan Seales: I love that. OK, now, if you could only see one show for the rest of your life, but you can see it as many times as you want, what would you see?

[1:02:08] Krystal Joy Brown: Ah, the Golden Girls.

[1:02:18] Alan Seales: Have they ever made Golden Girls into a musical?

[1:02:20] Krystal Joy Brown: Yes.

[1:02:21] Alan Seales: Have they?

[1:02:22] Krystal Joy Brown: Yeah, I walk past this every single day. It was some small theater did it, like a Golden Girls. I have no idea. I just see the sign that's still on there, like, performing March 20th through whatever. So, yes, it's not I don't know if it's been like some big success. Obviously not because we've never heard of it. But I think that I also think that women of a certain age deserve more roles. And I would love to see more of that. I love seeing Frankie and Johnny and women of my grandmother's age living their best lives and creating dildo stores. And I love that there's a big billboard of Jane Fonda in Times Square right now that's her selling CBD, you know, and her lifestyle. That stuff is cool to me because I'm like, I hope to get to be an old lady who's like cool and still like slightly removed from reality.

But yeah, what I do with Golden Girls is like, I'll binge it for like a while and then I'll leave it alone for like six months, seven months. I'll be like, what was the pilot like? And I'll just start all over.

[1:03:35] Alan Seales: Wow, wow. So Golden Girls.

[1:03:36] Krystal Joy Brown: All right. I like that. So where can we find you on the social medias?

[1:03:40] Krystal Joy Brown: Okay, at Twitter and at Instagram. I am at Crystal Joy Brown. My website is the KJB. Yep, that's the KJB. Not to be confused with the KGB, but kind of there was a play on that. KJB.com.

[1:03:54] Alan Seales: Yes. You can get more of me at the theater podcast.com. I'm on Instagram and Twitter at theater underscore podcast. Please leave a rating, leave a review. This has been edited by Matthew Hendershot. And thank you to Jukebox the Ghost for the intro and the outdoor music that you hear right now.

[1:04:09] Krystal Joy Brown: And KGB.

[1:04:11] Alan Seales: No, sorry. KJB.

[1:04:18] Krystal Joy Brown: Thank you so much. I've had such a fun time talking with you.

[1:04:21] Alan Seales: Yes. Thank you so much. And I hope to see you guys on the other side of this.

[1:04:25] Krystal Joy Brown: Oh, we will. We'll see each other soon in person.

[1:04:35] Alan Seales: Make the world a little colorful.