It's very hard to tour.
But anyone who's done a musical knows; whether you're dancing or not, physically it's the most difficult thing you can do.
It's very hard to play a hyperactive character all the time, I try my best, but I end up collapsing at the end of the day.
Traveling is a bit of a push sometimes. When you're doing a lot of miles and you're doing a lot of shows, it does get wearing.
Temperament can really take a toll on the voice. If you get tight in your body with the acting, then you can get tight in your voice. And then you can get tired, and you can damage yourself vocally.
I never really got the book together for the thing, so I had all the songs and the characters. But by the time we'd gotten it on the road and I'd been doing it for 18 months, oh God, I couldn't wait to move on to something else.
To play these twisted, tormented characters is very draining. You have to sit in the pocket of that character for the duration of the shoot, which is normally an average of three months, and that can be taxing!
Basically, 2011 was the hardest year on the road for me because I did a spring tour and a fall tour plus nine weeks in the summer, and I was pretty worse for wear by the time I got home in December. I know I was only 34, but that was a tough lap.
Doing 'Hedwig' was so hard that I kind of burned out on acting.
You're playing a role, but you're still feeling it. You can walk away from it after 'Cut,' but if you're playing a sad or mixed-up person, it's hard to stay in that place for these longish period of times. You kind of have to check out.
I don't live that much with the character. I find it hard enough having to spend so many hours with the character during the day.
It has to be really interesting for me to perform the same role for 365 days non-stop. It becomes taxing for an actor to perform the same character for 12 hours every day, and then, after a point, there's no growth.
I feel like I've paid a really heavy cost, a really heavy physical health cost, for the years of touring and how physical I've been onstage.
We toured that record for a year, which turned out to be the culmination of ten years of being constantly on the road. We were sick to death of touring.
I think you fall out of love with theater while you're doing your eighth show of your eighteenth week and your body is saying, "Please make this end."
The problem with touring isn't the traveling and the shows, it's the vegetal state you get into.
