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[0:01] Brendon Henderson: Here's how it starts, and here's how it ends.

[0:04] Brendon Henderson: A woman in a park starting her life again.

[0:07] Brendon Henderson: This is the beginning of the 2014 Broadway musical If/Then, created by lyricist Brian Yorkey, composer Tom Kitt, and director Michael Greif of Next to Normal fame.

[0:18] Brendon Henderson: In this moment, we meet Elizabeth, a city planner who just moved to New York.

[0:23] Brendon Henderson: Elizabeth thinks she has everything planned out, but soon she's met with a decision that splits her life into two divergent paths.

[0:30] Brendon Henderson: One life that's dominated by finding true love, and another that's motivated by leaving a professional mark.

[0:37] Brendon Henderson: While the musical might seem to tell a simple story, underneath, If/Then presents an inner conflict between an irresistible force and an immovable object, by highlighting the differences between self-service and self-sacrifice.

[0:51] Brendon Henderson: The question is, how do each of these play a role in the motivations of Elizabeth's actions?

[0:56] Brendon Henderson: What are the consequences from each?

[0:58] Brendon Henderson: And what do they have to say about societal values as a whole?

[1:01] Brendon Henderson: I'm Brendon from Wait in the Wings.

[1:03] Jess: I'm Jess from Musicals with Cheese, and I'm Andrew from Musicals with Cheese.

[1:08] Brendon Henderson: And this show calls for a double take.

[1:50] Brendon Henderson: Hundreds of musicals have demonstrated that the human experience is a jumbled mess, complemented by the emotions from the highest of highs and the lowest of lows.

[2:00] Brendon Henderson: If/Then attempts to reveal that life is an intricate enigma, where millions of small interconnecting choices all interweave to create one giant mosaic.

[2:11] Brendon Henderson: Life is choosing to hang out with a new friend instead of an old one, choosing to ignore a phone call or answer it.

[2:18] Brendon Henderson: Choosing to watch the Mets or the Yankees.

[2:21] Brendon Henderson: Essentially, life is a series of if-then statements.

[2:27] Brendon Henderson: If a person decides to go watch the Mets, then they're going to root for adorable losers.

[2:33] Brendon Henderson: If they ignore a phone call, then they're going to miss a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.

[2:38] Brendon Henderson: If they choose to go out with a new friend, then they may find true love.

[2:43] Brendon Henderson: This is the situation that Elizabeth finds herself in at the beginning, where she can either go watch a guitar player in Brooklyn with her new friend Kate, or go to a protest with her old friend Lucas and fight against a New York redevelopment project.

[2:59] Brendon Henderson: The result of these seemingly insignificant decisions ultimately forces Elizabeth to indulge two different parts of herself.

[3:06] Brendon Henderson: One that is self-serving to the benefit of herself, and one that is self-sacrificial to the benefit of others.

[3:13] Brendon Henderson: All of which plays a role in her achieving her main objectives of happiness, fulfillment, and validation.

[3:20] Brendon Henderson: It's here that Elizabeth's story splits into two parallel timelines where each of her different ideologies become their own separate roles.

[3:28] Brendon Henderson: Liz and Beth.

[3:30] Brendon Henderson: To help distinguish the two universes theatrically, Liz rips off Superman and uses Clark Kent glasses to distinguish her character.

[3:39] Brendon Henderson: But the key identifying factor comes in how the lighting design helps tell the story.

[3:44] Brendon Henderson: Liz's person and scenes are hued in a red light, while Beth's lighting design leans more heavily on the color blue.

[3:53] Brendon Henderson: Brief tangent time.

[3:55] Brendon Henderson: Generally, humans have an emotional response to certain colors.

[3:59] Brendon Henderson: Purple represents wisdom, yellow, optimism, and so on and so forth.

[4:03] Brendon Henderson: This isn't just something that advertisers and marketers have relied on for decades, but also professional lighting designers.

[4:10] Brendon Henderson: If/Then is no exception to this, as Liz and Beth both define success differently.

[4:15] Brendon Henderson: For Liz, a red light is utilized, which signifies love, while also having strong emotional connections to anger.

[4:22] Brendon Henderson: More to come on that later.

[4:24] Brendon Henderson: Meanwhile, Beth's blue lighting design fits her professional persona, while also being a distinctively sad color.

[4:31] Brendon Henderson: As the show progresses, the lighting design plays a key role in revealing the inner emotions of each character while they chase their individual interpretations of success.

[4:43] Brendon Henderson: Back to the story.

[5:12] Brendon Henderson: If she had answered, then the man on the other side would have given her life-changing news.

[5:19] Brendon Henderson: This keys us in on the motivations that will come to define Liz's actions.

[5:23] Brendon Henderson: She doesn't answer the phone out of an empathetic politeness.

[5:27] Brendon Henderson: As the story progresses, this is how Liz will continue to base her existence by self-sacrificing and prioritizing the emotional weight of those around her.

[5:36] Brendon Henderson: Whereas, back at Beth's flashpoint, she decides to focus on her direct impact towards the greater world by going to a protest with Lucas.

[5:45] Brendon Henderson: And this time, when the phone rings, he points out where the area code is from, and she answers it.

[5:53] Brendon Henderson: On the other line is a man named Steven.

[5:56] Brendon Henderson: He's the director of the New York City Planning Department.

[5:59] Brendon Henderson: And her old grad school flame.

[6:02] Brendon Henderson: He offers Beth the job of her dreams, and while Lucas begs her not to take it, she knows that it's too good of an opportunity to pass up.

[6:10] Brendon Henderson: This act of putting her own future above others is what will come to define Beth's mindset for achieving success.

[6:17] Brendon Henderson: Beth bases her existence on self-service and advancing her career.

[6:22] Brendon Henderson: And now both their motivating forces are defined.

[6:25] Brendon Henderson: Liz makes her decision through the lens of collective empathy, while Beth makes hers through personal pride.

[6:31] Brendon Henderson: The unifier between Beth and Liz is that regardless of their end goals, they both have an immense desire to achieve them.

[6:39] Brendon Henderson: While their objectives are massively different, this dedication takes a toll on them, and soon, Beth and Liz each come to personify societal burnout.

[6:53] Brendon Henderson: Burnout culture was first brought to public attention in the 1970s when Dr. Christina Maslach and Susan E. Jackson dove into the research of psychologist Herbert Freudenberger.

[7:04] Brendon Henderson: He coined the phrase after observing the slow mental decline of volunteers at a free health clinic in New York City.

[7:13] Brendon Henderson: While they all initially started optimistic and idealistic, Freudenberger noticed that over time the workers became more cynical and bitter.

[7:21] Brendon Henderson: Maslach and Jackson then took this idea one step further and applied it to personal life.

[7:26] Brendon Henderson: Breeda's Psychological Services defines burnout culture as the difficulties in setting limits on how much or in what ways a person is supporting their loved ones, creating a draining situation which makes it hard to know or admit they're burning out.

[7:41] Brendon Henderson: This is the fate that meets Liz from constantly placing the needs of others above her own.

[7:46] Brendon Henderson: At the part, she misses the phone call to humor Josh, and since she never received that job offer, she has to accept a low-paying professorship.

[7:55] Brendon Henderson: She also introduces Lucas to his future husband, David, and later in the show, when her emotions are too much to handle, she tells Lucas to go home to him instead of asking him to stay with her and help calm down, out of fear that she'll be a burden on him.

[8:12] Brendon Henderson: Throughout the whole show, Liz's existence is based entirely on satiating the emotions of those around her, much to the detriment of her own wants, needs, and aspirations.

[8:23] Brendon Henderson: But while Liz is the personification of emotional burnout culture, Beth sticks closer to the original Freudenberger observation and exemplifies professional burnout culture.

[8:34] Brendon Henderson: Beth is placed in a difficult position that is all too familiar to most people in the American workforce.

[8:40] Brendon Henderson: While she's focused on her career in pursuit of self-fulfillment and status, she has to sacrifice the life experiences and connections which make her human.

[8:50] Brendon Henderson: For Beth, work no longer serves as a means to an end, but instead becomes the end itself.

[8:56] Brendon Henderson: This mindset defines Beth's actions and the motivations behind them as the show progresses.

[9:02] Brendon Henderson: While Liz helps others out of the kindness of her heart, Beth does it with the expectation that she'll receive something in return.

[9:10] Brendon Henderson: In both timelines, Lucas is an aspiring author.

[9:13] Brendon Henderson: In Beth's timeline, she actually helps him publish his book.

[9:17] Brendon Henderson: But only if in return he'll stop his organization from protesting her new development project.

[9:23] Brendon Henderson: She also invites the activist organization to the groundbreaking of said project, but only so they lose credibility and can no longer protest it down the road.

[9:32] Brendon Henderson: And she hires Elena, an urban studies major with few qualifications, just so she can pass off her current work responsibilities and focus on moving up the ladder.

[9:42] Brendon Henderson: Each decision becomes more and more selfish, and in any interaction, she tends to only think about what she can get in return.

[9:51] Brendon Henderson: The fallout from each of these decisions eventually leads to Liz and Beth's 39th birthday.

[10:03] Brendon Henderson: But do you know what would help them both escape societal pressure and existential dread? Listening to theater people talk about theater. And that's exactly what you can do right after this video, thanks to our sponsor podcast, Sunday in the Heights with Dolly, hosted by composer Will Lars and actress Caitlin Lee Reed. Join them for a mixture of theater history and theater tomfoolery as they give an in-depth analysis to classic Broadway hits like Cats, Ragtime, and Hello Dolly. It's the best way to get that feeling of hanging out with your theater friends in a bar in Brooklyn without having to, you know, live in Brooklyn. Whether you're turning down a once-in-a-lifetime phone call, helping a friend publish a book for your own selfish needs, or trying to entertain your split personalities and in need of a good laugh, this podcast is the perfect way to do it. You can listen to Sunday in the Heights with Dolly on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, or Google Play. And on that note, let's talk about the birthday parties.

[11:02] Brendon Henderson: Hey everybody. Liz's selfless focus toward others pays off, and all of her friends and loved ones throw her a surprise party. You invited all my friends, good thinking. Whereas at Beth's 39th birthday, uh, Bash, she throws her own party. And the three or so people that attend seem to only do so out of obligation. This is where reality starts to set in that unlike Liz, Beth's single-mindedness has closed her off for making any new friends or meaningful human connections. But the thing that ties Liz and Beth together is that at both parties, each woman finds out that she's pregnant.

[11:45] Brendon Henderson: We're expecting! And this provides the story with another critical juncture that will go on to define each character's journey. Liz sees this as a nerve-wracking yet exciting miracle. Whereas Beth views her pregnancy as a potentially career-ending accident and the result of a horrible mistake after a casual hookup with Lucas. Like she was at the start of the story, Elizabeth is placed at a major crossroads. She has to decide whether to keep the child or move on in pursuit of other life goals. Right on cue, Liz makes the decision to keep the baby and satisfy Josh's desire of getting married, settling down, and starting a family. Likewise, Beth chooses not to have the baby, not inform Lucas of the pregnancy, and keep focusing her time on work.

[12:37] Brendon Henderson: In Liz's world, the decision to keep the child is initially inconsequential because it lines up with her presumed life purpose. She's found a life filled with genuine love for Josh and is now committed to sharing that love with a child when she decides to settle down with him. In contrast, Beth, as an isolated outsider, finds herself walking in New York City alone, surrounded by those same triumphant ceremonies of other people's personal milestones. When seeing the decision through Beth's eyes, there was no way she could have chosen to have the baby. She had a manipulative, codependent relationship with Lucas, and starting a family, even as a single parent, would have gotten in the way of her single-minded goal of achieving success in her career.

[13:25] Brendon Henderson: Beth stuck with her decision, and as a result, didn't allow herself to enjoy the emotional intricacies of being alive. Still, as the second act progresses, Liz and Beth have, in a sense, achieved what they always wanted. Liz has a caring husband, great friends, and two beautiful children, and Beth has cemented her legacy as a force to be reckoned with professionally. But lying underneath those accomplished appearances, the foundations built by both characters begin to crack. Liz's seemingly perfect life comes to an abrupt halt when Josh tells her that he has to ship off to war and must leave her and the child behind.

[14:08] Brendon Henderson: Instead of just accepting the fact and moving on, Liz becomes fed up for the first time in the musical. She has a breakthrough and expresses how tired she is of always being the person who grants the wishes of others at her own personal expense. First, she begs Josh not to go, and then explodes into how much she hates him because she has a feeling that if he goes, she's gonna lose him. It isn't that Liz has always felt this strongly and held back, it's just that she finally realizes the emotional labor of their relationship became too much. She's burnt out and explodes because she sacrificed everything in order to love him.

[14:43] Brendon Henderson: Around the same time, Beth experiences a breakthrough of her own after she offers to help babysit her coworker Elena's new baby. For Beth, this marks the first time in the show that she does this to genuinely support Elena while expecting nothing in return. For the first time, Liz makes a self-serving decision, and Beth makes a self-sacrificial one. And soon the weight of their personal and professional burnout comes to a head. For Beth, Elena breaks the news that she isn't coming back to work because she's relocating to Oregon with her husband. And for Liz, her nightmare comes true when she pays the ultimate price of Josh being killed in the line of duty.

[15:22] Brendon Henderson: These two moments, while different in their severity, are both a turning point for each character. Liz begins to reverently reject the empathetic persona and closes into a hardened, calloused emotional shell created by her own emotional burnout. While Beth realizes that after being single-mindedly focused on her career and own personal gain, she's robbed herself from experiencing the joys of living life with her heart open. Liz and Beth look at their lives and think about what might have been. They both achieved their goals. Liz found her true love, and Beth left her mark on New York City, but at what cost? Liz lost Josh, while Beth lost herself.

[16:03] Brendon Henderson: This leads both characters to a simultaneous inflection point, revolving one main symbol: an airplane. Much like their journeys up to this point, the planes both appear in different levels of severity, but both serve as a stopping point for Liz and Beth to put their lives into perspective. As Beth is on the plane preparing to brace, she finds herself holding the hand of a man she had just met. While Liz starts the process of letting go of the man she felt she had known her entire life. But they both come to the same conclusion. Neither has regrets for how their life played out, but they realize they both stretched themselves too thin, heading in a singular direction.

[17:22] Brendon Henderson: America's economy demands a workforce that forces people to think they have to sacrifice everything for the good of the company, which leaves them with no remaining time or energy to care for themselves. Adversely, there are those who choose to live their life selflessly, always in pursuit of someone else's happiness, that more or less leaves them in a similar situation. Elizabeth is always spending her time either focusing on work or others, to the point that she forgets to focus on herself. At the beginning, Elizabeth thinks she has to choose between either self-service or sacrifice, to have a life dominated by love or one dominated by career success.

[18:02] Brendon Henderson: But at the end, she learns to satisfy her main objective of happiness, fulfillment, and validation, and there has to be a balance. Yes, it's important to have a good career and leave a mark, but it's equally important to not let that overshadow a life enriched by experiences and connections, and vice versa. And so, Liz takes a job from her old college friend Steven, while Beth meets a soldier returning home from his third tour named Josh. Without this balance, the only thing that will come from dedicating oneself entirely to a single goal is going to be burnout, caused by external and societal pressures.

[18:44] Brendon Henderson: And as a result, happiness is always going to stay a stress-ridden, faraway dream that a person will never be able to achieve. But the one thing that's constant is that if a person can walk the tightrope that is life and find a balance between the irresistible force and the immovable object of self-service and self-sacrifice, then the odds become much more favorable. Special thanks to center stage patron Todd Ramsey for suggesting we cover If/Then. And to Jess and Andrew from Musicals with Cheese for helping us kick off this new series. You can follow them on Twitter at Cheesy Musicals and listen to their hilarious show, Musicals with Cheese, anywhere you listen to your podcasts.

[19:43] Brendon Henderson: Speaking of podcasts, Seamless Transition, thanks to our sponsor, Sunday in the Heights with Dolly, for helping make this video possible. As well as a huge shout-out to all of our fantastic patrons on Patreon.