This transcript was automatically generated and might contain errors.

[0:00] Helen J. Shen: Hi, I'm Helen J. Shen. You're listening to The Theatre Podcast with Alan Seales.

[0:11] Alan Seales: Welcome to an all-new episode of The Theatre Podcast with Alan Seales. That's me. I'm Alan, your host for this ride. Helen J. Shen, our guest for the episode, is making her Broadway debut freshly out of school and as such is at just the beginning of what I can only hope is a long career on the stage. As a child, she was very focused on classical piano, and I personally think that gave her an advantage now when she has to audition for musicals and has taken a really interesting approach as well to finding her character in her new show, Maybe Happy Ending. She plays a robot alongside Darren Criss, who is also a robot, and this show just speaks to my nerd heart and love for robotics. So it's different, it's unique, and I can't wait to see it multiple times. But find me on the socials. Please comment, leave a rating, leave a review for this podcast wherever you are listening now. Please enjoy this episode with Helen J. Shen.

[1:09] Alan Seales: If I had a personal rising stars 30 under 30 list, our guest today would be at the top. An actor, musician, and writer who recently starred in the MCC Theatre's musical The Lonely Few after captivating audiences in Anna K. Jacobs and Michael R. Jackson's musical Teeth over at Playwright Horizons. Her regional credits also include starring in Man of God at Williamstown Theatre Festival and in Sunset Boulevard at ACT of Connecticut, and she is just about to make her Broadway debut starring in the musical Maybe Happy Ending opposite Darren Criss, directed by Michael Arden. So, wow, Helen J. Shen, welcome to The Theatre Podcast.

[1:46] Helen J. Shen: Thank you so much for having me.

[1:48] Alan Seales: Dude, and you are in the midst of rehearsals for Maybe Happy Ending right now, yeah?

[1:55] Helen J. Shen: Yes, yes. We've just started week four.

[2:04] Alan Seales: Week four. So, okay, okay, okay. I am so excited to see this show because I love tech and engineering and animatronics and robots, and I cannot wait to dive into what makes you a good home bot. But before we get there, I want to go back to start at the beginning. Little Helen, when did you first start getting into theater? Where did you grow up? Tell me that story.

[2:27] Helen J. Shen: I grew up in New Jersey. My first role in theater was technically Gretel in a community theater production of Sound of Music, but I would say, I would like to add into it, starting from preschool, there was a moment that we were acting out Rainbow Fish. I played the titular Rainbow Fish, and after that moment, it was over. I knew that there was something about, I remember, I don't remember much of it, but I do remember that it was important to me that I made a fish face the whole time, which is just, you know.

[3:02] Alan Seales: Like sucking in your cheeks fish face.

[3:11] Helen J. Shen: Exactly. Yeah, exactly that. It was like, the creative process, already so intoxicating in preschool. Dude, that's a lot of face hurt. I can only do that for about 10 seconds before my cheeks get tired.

[3:23] Helen J. Shen: Dedication was real. I'll tell you that one. Like making people laugh during puppet shows, it was always something, but officially it was Gretel in Sound of Music, and Paper Mill was big for me growing up. Seeing Paper Mill shows and then being part of their educational program was huge for me. I found a lot of just confidence building from Paper Mill and community building, and it was the best. But mostly my upbringing had a lot of classical piano in it, so I kind of had to find time to do theater in my fair-ish time, where it was regular school, public school, and then classical piano, and then it was theater, and then have fun and do whatever you want. But then in high school, I was like, I have to do this for my life. So I applied to the University of Michigan, and I got in.

[4:16] Alan Seales: The classical piano track, was that out of necessity from your parents? Was it you that wanted to do it? You're nodding.

[4:30] Helen J. Shen: I'm nodding. I'm nodding. Well, I was really excited to start it, but I think the intensity of competition classical music was definitely, if you're going to do something, go fully to it and do it as best as you can and to the highest ability. And so classical piano and competitions and stuff, that took me to Lincoln Center, that took me to Carnegie Hall, took me to Italy. It was intense already from age five until 17. International competitions for classical piano.

[5:03] Alan Seales: Wait, tell me about the classical piano circuit for a second, because I didn't realize this was like a whole competition thing.

[5:08] Helen J. Shen: Oh, it's huge. It's gigantic. There are national competitions, there's regional competitions. Well, it was sort of a festival that I did with my piano teacher, and she kind of ran this festival. But then there were people from Kazakhstan who came to compete, Italian students who came to compete. It was international for sure, because I was an American going to compete in Italy. But I don't know, when I was doing it, it didn't feel like, oh, this international competition with all of this weight behind it. It was kind of a two-week festival that just made us practice our concertos a little bit harder. That's all it was.

[5:55] Alan Seales: So you started playing piano then at five.

[6:00] Helen J. Shen: Yes.

[6:01] Alan Seales: But the whole time is something like pulling at the back of your head. You're like, I'd rather be on stage. Are you still trying to decide between classical piano and musical theater at this point? Because at some point, singing has to appear as well.

[6:17] Helen J. Shen: I always loved the music part of the piano, and I loved performing. I loved being on stage, and I loved to sing as well, just like in Chinese school and regular school and choir and stuff. I adored it, and I just had such a great time. I was just singing around the house. There was something about singing that was really important to me. But what was difficult was practicing so intensely. I had two lessons a week. I had competitions and would practice one song or one piece for a year before I was able to even show it to anybody and do any kind of competition. That intensity, I lost a lot of love for just the spontaneity of music and the aliveness. There's a right and wrong. Fundamentally, as an artist now, I'm like, there is absolutely no right and wrong in art. Doing it for the sake of doing it, that's enough.

[7:22] Alan Seales: Do you still play? Do you still play a lot?

[7:25] Helen J. Shen: I do. I do play a lot more. It's funny that you say that because a lot of my family growing up were all like, it was such a shame that you wasted all of these lessons and these years and stuff. At 17, when I was like, I'm going to do musical theater, it did feel like a choice. It felt like a turn. But I play every day in my life, just to accompany myself or to just sing in my own home. I play every day and it helps me learn music faster, helps me sight read. All of the skills that I had that I was building foundationally, I use every day. It's not necessary for sure, but I like knowing that little classical music theory lesson that I had 10 years ago, it's still kicking. One day I'll be able to whip it out and really impress a room with that knowledge.

[8:27] Alan Seales: It's got to be able to help you with sight reading if you're in an audition or something. You hear stories all the time of people going in for role one and then someone's like, oh, hey, take these signs or go out here for role two, three and four and learn them in 30 minutes or 30 seconds sometimes to come back in. You've got to be able to just knock this out faster than your competition.

[9:06] Helen J. Shen: Totally. I end up being that person when I'm reading music and learning a new song and a new piece. I am just sight reading. You can throw really a new piece at me quickly and that feels like doing readings and doing new work specifically because things are changing all the time.

[9:19] Alan Seales: That's such a helpful skill. What type of musical theater style do you, subgenre, do you like? Because there is the classical, I'll say your Webers and then Sondheim's its own thing, but then there's Jonathan Larson. You've got your rock style. You've got Hamilton, the R&B style now. Where do you gravitate?

[9:42] Helen J. Shen: I love it all. I love it all, but there's a soft spot in my heart for the mega musical. The Angela Weber's, the Claude Schoenberg. Is that what their name is? Schoenberg. Yeah. Just a mega musical. It's such a guilty pleasure to me, but I feel like in my career, I've been asked to do more so more so pop rock stylings, which is interesting because Maybe Happy Ending is so not a pop rock score. In fact, it actually leans a lot more like jazz influenced and just kind of, yeah, it's ethereal, the music and sweeping and we have a tempest orchestra. It's very different from what I came to expect from the sides that would come in, the auditions that would come in. I would always have a pop cut. That was kind of like what I planned on doing post grad. So it's so fun to be able to do a score like this.

[12:12] Helen J. Shen: Even in high school, there are art schools that I go visit, and you go through these practice rooms, and it was just hallways of people playing all by themselves. There's something to be said about being able to find a community of people. I say this all the time on this podcast. It's a merry band of misfits, musical theatre, especially musical theatre. If you don't fit anywhere else, you just fit together in musical theatre. And it's really cool, I think, how it's all drawn together and people from all different walks of life. I was talking with somebody who was a lyricist who can't read music, and I'm like, that's awesome. That's totally awesome because you can write lyrics, you can be a great poet, and then have a good teammate, trust somebody, the rest of your people to bring you up and build you up, and you build them up by making their music have lyrics that matter.

So I think you've got a long road ahead of you in that you can take what you're given and add so much flair and color to it, given the amount of mechanics you understand about music. I'm not being facetious about this. There's a lot of mechanics and math behind all of this. Totally. I don't know, in my adulthood, I feel like the written music and the reading of music is interesting because I took composition in college. So I took a songwriting class, and we would notate music. So I have also an appreciation for actually putting notes into a computer, which is its own fascinating skill. And a bunch of people who are hired as copyists are so much better at it than I am, and it sends shivers down my spine every time I have to do it. But that was just such a wonderful exploration into the making of music that I got to do in college.

[14:12] Alan Seales: Well, so how is that translating to now Maybe Happy Ending? Because you're originating this character, and music and script comes to a rehearsal for an original show, somewhat permanent, but it's always up in the air until final opening, more or less. So how are you coloring what you're bringing to the stage now during the rehearsal process?

[14:37] Helen J. Shen: Yeah, I think Will and Hugh and Michael have been so open to our exploration of these new characters because they've done this production before in Korea, Asia, and have had multiple different iterations of it. So it doesn't feel like we're being prescribed what has been done before. More so they're like, put your own voice onto it, make your own choices, and think about how the story affects how you're singing these things. So as I approach the music, I'm able to make choices, which is so fun doing an original musical and bringing it to Broadway for the first time. They've been very welcoming about us bringing our individuality to the characters.

[15:30] Alan Seales: That's super, super cool, I guess. So also deciding on working with Darren Criss, did you grow up watching Glee?

[15:36] Helen J. Shen: Of course I did. Of course.

[15:38] Alan Seales: Yeah. So when you realized that A, you got the role, awesome, making your debut, but then B, you're going to star alongside Darren Criss. Do you remember where you were when you received the news?

[15:50] Helen J. Shen: Oh, that story. I get chills thinking about that story because I was doing Teeth at night and understudying while I was at Teeth and then rehearsing The Lonely Few at MCC during the day. So this was during the time that I was just, all of my days were filled with theater, and it was the best thing ever. So I got the news that I was going on for the role that I understudied that morning, and I left rehearsal to go do two shows as the role that I understudied. It was the first time, and I was really pumped up on adrenaline. After you go on for that first time, you feel like you can take over the world. You feel like you have superpowers. There's something about that first time, and you're like, I can do anything.

So I finished the second show in the evening, and my agent and manager told me that I got the role. This was after my chemistry read, which was the day before. So even meeting Darren was insane. I was like, okay, I got to put my rep book down and do this audition in front of him and sing with him in my audition. So already I was like, if I don't get it, I won. This is insane. What an opportunity. A callback, and then you get to sing a duet with Darren. I was already amazing. And so I got the news that next night, and I was full of good news. I will remember that day for the rest of my life. Every minute felt like a movie minute. And since then, he's been so fun and welcoming and chill and cool, which is so great to work with someone who has such a standing in the industry and also for them to be nice. That's the best.

[17:50] Alan Seales: Don't go anywhere. We'll be right back after this break.

[17:59] Alan Seales: Welcome back to the episode. So inside a one-room apartment in the outskirts of Seoul, Korea, for those who don't know, Oliver lives a happy, quiet life, listening to jazz records and caring for his favorite plant. But what else is there to do when you're a helper bot three, a robot that has been retired and considered obsolete? All right. So there's more to this log line, but you guys are robots. I love hearing the lore spoken in this way because we've been building these facts and talking so casually about lessons of three. So this is how you would act. And it's all lore that we're making. This world is so lush and thought out already. So I just love hearing it spoken. Are you a helper bot for the next generation?

[18:38] Helen J. Shen: I'm a five.

[18:40] Alan Seales: Oh, wow. So this helper bot's been around for a while. So I'm picturing like Sonny. Have you seen that on Apple TV? Has anyone brought that up?

[18:51] Helen J. Shen: Yes. Yes. Right. So obviously you are not in a giant white suit on wheels, but how are you approaching the roboticness, is that a word, of your characters?

[19:07] Helen J. Shen: It's more of like a journey right now and how we're seeing it. Like in our movements, I would say Darren is thinking more on the stiffer side because Claire is a five. I can kind of explore how would a robot almost identically imitate what a human does. So it's all very like human plus or like intentionally human, which is such an interesting acting exercise because I honestly, like there's some moments of sarcasm, and I'm like, oh, interesting. Like this sense of nuance Claire picked up on, but Oliver really can't pick up on. And so every day we just talk very extensively about like why these characters would do the things that they do. But with these characters, they have a shelf life. And I'm like, I've been seeing that what else would make someone human other than their mortality, I guess.

So like you have these robots having a sense of mortality and a sense of purpose. And they're really not at all different from humans, but we can kind of we can process what they're experiencing in a way that feels maybe a little bit, we can actually open our hearts a little bit more because it feels a little bit apart from us, if that makes sense.

[20:40] Alan Seales: It really does. And I'd love that you are two hardware generations apart because I think in the world of AI especially, but in actual hardware and tech, that's a big leap. Those are two big leaps. And so I guess taking that into this, there's only so much that you can upgrade the software when your hardware is limiting. So I am so curious to see this show now because I want to see how both of you are embodying being non-humans who are programmed to act like human, playing humanoid figures. So like, did you get into this with the director and everybody? When you were first starting, you were like, okay, let's peel back the layers and you're this, pretending to be this, but you're not this.

[21:24] Helen J. Shen: We definitely talk about it as it comes up. We've had movement sessions with our movement consultants and they're very like, here's some exercises of isolating your body and there's moments like that and then there are moments of like, where does this thought actually come from? Is it from Oliver's owner? Both of our owners heavily influence our experiences and what we've learned from people and what we've learned and downloaded and can synthesize. It's basically life, right? We're impacted by these people who are our parental units, essentially. It feels like what nurture versus nature would be to a human, but we're doing it in this extended metaphor. We talk all about Claire's owner influenced her to have this feeling about people or how her socioeconomic status impacted how she talks to other characters.

It's all so fun for nerds to be talking about it in the room and then the book just lets it all be and doesn't force like... The details are all things that we talk about so that the story can just be on stage. I love this concept. I absolutely love this concept because AI has to be programmed with a set of boundaries and guidelines and learn and experiment and it can learn at such a faster rate than any human ever will be able to, a knock on wood, right? The moment we can get a USB upgrade in your neck or something, like Matrix style, I'm there. I'm going to learn all the languages of the world. I'll be first in line.

[23:20] Alan Seales: Yeah, I'll be there. You're right. Having socioeconomic differences, having gender differences, having the hardware differences in terms of capabilities and the software differences on the hardware differences to be able to interpret the exact same situation in two completely different ways. I mean, that's literally just being human, being too human.

[23:43] Helen J. Shen: That's just being human. Exactly, exactly.

[23:46] Alan Seales: That's awesome. And then you get to sing all on top of it.

[23:49] Helen J. Shen: Exactly, exactly, exactly.

[23:52] Alan Seales: So have you been taking this into your personal life? Every character, I believe, helps you grow as the actor, the characters you play teach you something about yourself. So are you learning all of this, like trying to not be human? Are you learning how to be human?

[24:11] Helen J. Shen: Oh, yeah, absolutely. I feel like every day coming out of rehearsal, I'm like, how can I be more present in my life? Because that's the lesson that I'm learning reading through the script every day. Like, yeah, just how to not isolate. I think this story really resonates with me post-pandemic of just what we all have now experienced of just what it actually means to really just self-isolate, intentionally or not. That is something that we all know very deeply, just for having lived in the past couple of years. And now to kind of be able to think about choosing connection and choosing how to be impacted by other people, despite knowing pain could be on the other side. Those are all such timely questions to me.

And they make me feel so many things in the room as an actor, as a human actor, playing these robots. But the story every day is just like tugging and tugging at my heartstrings. I've learned so much from just how Claire sees the world. She has a shelf life. And she's like, you know what? I kind of want to do something for the first time that I want to do instead of something that somebody's told me that I have to do. So I think that is such an inspiring lesson to take from her.

[25:43] Alan Seales: It doesn't sound like there's a way to transfer consciousness into a new bot or anything. I don't think that's part of the lore you're creating.

[25:48] Helen J. Shen: No, that's another can of worms. I think it's a good thing because you keep saying these two characters, they have a shelf life. And without an end date, without an expiration date, when your warranty runs out and you die, people could go on forever. And that's not necessarily a good thing, right? Because I think a lot of fear of death or just growing older and all that, I mean, you want to get metaphysical. Metaphysical? Is that the right word? Existential. You want to get existential about it, right? I think everything everyone does, for the most part, is to continue to move forward because if you look back, you get scared. But if you look too far forward, you get scared because you won't be around forever.

And to translate this into a machine language, it's just brilliant. I really can't wait to see this show. It's just really creative people on the creative team. That just sounds stupid the way that I said it, but they're really so brilliant every day. I always look at them in awe. They're always thinking about very new and witty ways to build this story with using this world. It's just creative. It's so fun. Our imaginations are lighting up every day.

[27:11] Alan Seales: Great. It's awesome. Okay. So let's play a little game as we wind down the episode here. We're going to do plot in 60 seconds. So you're going to give me a number, one through 16. I have a list of 16 popular musicals. And so you have to give me the plot to the musical you choose in 60 seconds or less.

[27:28] Helen J. Shen: Okay.

[27:34] Alan Seales: Okay. I'm choosing a number, one through 16.

[27:40] Helen J. Shen: 10.

[27:44] Alan Seales: 10 is Phantom of the Opera. Go.

[27:49] Helen J. Shen: 60 seconds remaining. Okay. So you hear an overture and suddenly the chandelier is going to drop. Cheerleading drops. Oh no. What happened? All the ballerinas and the opera singers come down like, wait, oh God, a show's happening. And turns out it's the ghost of the theater. And the ghost of the theater is all wreaking havoc because he is in love with a girl who's understudying the main opera singer. And so the opera singer, she's like, I can't do this anymore. This is horrible. So then Christine starts singing and we're like, oh my God, it's Christine. She's amazing. She's the best singer in the world. And the Phantom was right. And then her best friend Meg is also there. And I think a dancer, and I think they're dancers together in the choir. 15 seconds remaining.

[28:32] Helen J. Shen: Christine's boyfriend is also in the audience and just loves everyone. And there's, I think, just some like back behind the scenes things that happen, but basically Phantom and Christine fall in love. And that'd be the end.

[28:50] Alan Seales: Good, good, good, good, good. I'll take it. Phantom and Christine fall in love. It's not creepy at all.

[28:54] Helen J. Shen: Nope. Not creepy.

[28:57] Alan Seales: Not creepy at all. Not creepy, sockery. We won't even touch that.

[29:03] Helen J. Shen: Yep. There we go. All right. So as we wrap up now, the three final questions, just the first one is simply what motivates you.

[29:05] Helen J. Shen: What motivates me? I think seeing, knowing that like what I do as a theater performer, doing like my job every night and then having like a people who I can do it for is impactful. And I think that people can do things for people. And like, yeah. And my, and my parents, my parents motivate me. They are immigrants and I feel proud to be a child of immigrants and that motivates me too.

[29:36] Alan Seales: Okay. So next question, if you could only, sorry, that was the third one. I almost jumped ahead. Second one, what advice would you give to your younger self and younger people listening now starting out down a similar path?

[29:40] Helen J. Shen: I'd say just be open to your own experiences, like learn about everyone around you, but looking sideways to compare yourself and looking to kind of completely emulate somebody else. You have to march to the beat of your own drum and there's no one like you. So just keep being more you.

[30:08] Alan Seales: All right. Now, final question, hardest one. If you could only see one show for the rest of your life, but you could see it as many times as you want, what would you say?

[30:12] Helen J. Shen: Can I say a really specific one? Absolutely. I'm going to say my, uh, when I was a freshman in university of Michigan, um, I was crewing a production of passing strange and that specific production I want to see for the rest of my life over and over and over again.

[30:34] Alan Seales: Why?

[30:34] Helen J. Shen: Oh my God. It changed my life. Like I sat in that audience and I was like, this is what I want to do. This is like the kind of stories that I want to even write one day. This is the kind of like theater that I want to build. It was so divisive. And so I saw like a baby every time I saw it and I crude it. So I saw it many times. Um, yeah. So it was just like seeing people who are my peers and also like be part of the devising process was really inspiring. I was like, we're all such great. I love what you guys are doing. Like, it was just, yeah, it was that connection.

[31:20] Alan Seales: All right. So where can we find you online on social media?

[31:20] Helen J. Shen: Instagram? I am, I think it's at Helen J. Shen and TikTok miss underscore Sheldon underscore, I think.

[31:29] Alan Seales: Sheldon.

[31:34] Helen J. Shen: Yeah. So find me there. Sheldon. We got it. We'll put it in the show notes. All right. Thank you. I'm on thread, Instagram, TikTok, Facebook. I'm all over the place. Leave a rating and a review wherever you're listening now. Spread the word. Tell them how much you enjoy listening to Helen and make sure to get your tickets for maybe happy ending because it's going to be awesome. Jukebox the ghost gave us our intro and outro music. Helen, thank you so much. This has been awesome.

[31:59] Helen J. Shen: Thank you so much for having me.