I auditioned for 'West Side Story' just like everybody else, and I nearly had a heart attack, because I hadn't danced in about - oh, I don't know, about 15 years.
On a TV show, for instance, dancers have to be paid for a week and a half rehearsal time. So unless they're vital to a production, they're just not used.
'Bonnie and Clyde' was the first show and the first role that I got to originate. Being part of that from the ground up and investing three years of my life into seeing that show come to Broadway was really rigorous but also so exciting.
For me the rehearsal period is the part I most enjoy. It's the creating of the story.
When I audition for something, I don't even want to think about who the other actors are in it, who's directing it.
But it was not possible to do this movie, in this matter of time, without a solid rehearsal period.
I auditioned 5-6 times for 'Dangal.' I was just waiting for the final call, as there were about 15-16 girls who auditioned for the role.
The magic of landing my first role on Broadway went 'poof' in a matter of a few weeks.
'Breaking In' shows what it's really like backstage at New York Fringe Theatre.
We're doing a workshop over the first two weeks of December, I believe, with Graciella Daniele directing it.
It's a lot of a workload doing an hour dramatic show. It's just incredible what little time off you get.
I did this play, 'Expedition 6,' that I worked on for three years in between other things. It was a good, interesting time for me because I trained as a theater director, and I went back, and we toured it around.
The regular season, it's kind of like a rehearsal. That's the way I look at it.
Great actors help. Every project is different. Sometimes it's completely open, and I've been able to cast who I've wanted. And then sometimes people want a certain kind of actor.
I met my wife in 1990 when I was on the national tour of 'Bye, Bye Birdie.'
The percentage of people that go to drama college in the U.K. is probably just like anywhere in the world. It's a very hard business to work in. They say that, at any one time, there's only 5% of actors in the world that are actually working and getting paid, which is a shocking percentage, really.
The birth of any show is always a rough one.
I've never seen a schedule where you just go in two hours almost every day of the week and then all day on one day. Then you shoot it at night with an audience and you're out of there.
It was the fashion of the time, still is, to feel that all actors are neurotic, or they would not be actors.
Chorus Line' opened things up a bit. Any show that's successful does that. But 'Chorus Line' was about dancers.
I don't get nervous when I'm directing a play. It's not like acting.
Working with a new style of choreography is always a period of adaptation.
I feel like I go through cycles as an actress.
Nobody could dissapear to their trailer once it was up and running, you were all there on the same stage. It was 10 days of rehearsal and 10 days of shooting, which was very tiring.
I wonder what would have happened if automation and computers had existed when 'Oklahoma!' was having its out-of-town try-out, and three days before closing in Boston, when it was still called 'Away We Go,' they added a new song called 'Oklahoma!' I don't think that could happen today. It's almost impossible to change musicals on the go now.
