Welcome to our first chapter of Broadway’s Backbone on the Camp Broadway Blog! If you missed his introductory post, this ongoing segment revolve around Brad Bradley and his podcast Broadway’s Backbone. With a career transcending all genres of the entertainment industry, Brad has been a vital member of the Camp Broadway universe for several years. Backbone is a podcast dedicated to the men and woman of the ensemble: the chorus of dancers, singers, and actors that are the foundation of every Broadway musical. These often-unsung gypsies are the hardest working people on the boards and are Broadway’s backbone. Each episode interviews a Broadway vet about their life, career and dreams, but also delves into the real topics that aren’t always shared. The life of a gypsy may be full of passion, but not always filled with glamour. This podcast is in honor of the folks of the ensemble and the people who plan to be them.
This week’s special guest is Broadway veteran Darren Lee. A native of Southern California, director/choreographer Darren Lee began his career at age 11 as a contestant on Jr. Star Search. Shortly thereafter, he became a series regular on Kids Incorporated, a Disney Channel favorite. In the years following he appeared in a variety of national commercials, television shows, and feature films such as Hackers, playing a role (Razor) opposite Angelina Jolie. He also danced alongside Catherine Zeta-Jones and Renée Zellweger in the Academy Award-winning film Chicago. By the early ’90s, Lee relocated to New York, advancing his career into the new millennium with Broadway roles in Chicago, Guys and Dolls, and in the original companies of Shogun the Musical, Miss Saigon, Victor/Victoria with Julie Andrews, Kiss Me Kate, On the Town, Seussical the Musical, Pacific Overtures, and Thoroughly Modern Millie.
Below are certain sections transcribed (truncated for your reading pleasure) with commentary and background so you further enjoy the podcast. If you’d like to listen and read simultaneously, click this link for the podcast: https://soundcloud.com/brad-bradley-17/broadways-backbone-with-brad-bradley-ep-27-guest-darren-lee
On making his Broadway debut…
BRAD: So at eighteen years old you made your Broadway debut.
DARREN. I turned eighteen.
BRAD: So did you get your equity card and everything?
DARREN: Yeah. I got my Equity card in one big swoop.
DARREN: [on having an AFTRA card] I had no idea how big of a deal it was. I didn’t know how difficult it was; I worked with people and heard about their journey getting it. I was just very fortunate.
Camp Broadway: If you don’t know what having your Equity card or your AFTRA card is, they’re literal “cards” that represent your inclusion of the respective organization. Although Equity is for the stage and AFTRA is not, the concept is similar: being apart of the organizations protect you as an artist and also restrict the work you can do. These cards are coveted to many, and so many performers move to NYC each year in hopes of booking a show that can give them their “card”. Benefits include better pay, fair contracts and job safety. Not to say that the jobs that aren’t equity don’t include those, but the equity ones MUST include them. As a member of the Actor’s Equity Association, you even become eligible for health insurance.
On the ever-changing career path of Broadway…
DARREN: There weren’t a lot of Asian-American performers at the time; we all started rehearsal for Miss Saigon two or three weeks after Showgun closed.
The director called all of us into a room and said “I just heard from a casting director that you all will be offered Miss Saigon and I’d like to know from you know if you intend on taking it” and I think he wanted to, you know, assess whether or not we’d be replaceable and keep the show open or if we had to leave the show would close.
Camp Broadway: Sometimes this happens. In a long running show like Jersey Boys or Phantom, the show running does not hinge on people staying in the show. Shogun, along with many other shows that didn’t find an audience to have a long, healthy run, had many other factors in staying open besides ticket sales. Darren explains that if he and the other cast members offered spots in another show left, the show would either have to replace them, or close. The director knew if he had to replace them, the time to audition, rehearse and put new cast members in the show may be greater than the show’s actual stay on Broadway. Conversations like these are not uncommon.
On the glory of Broadway…
DARREN: [on Saigon] It was thrilling. I was so glad to be working again. It was a thrill. I was the center dragon acrobat – because Shogun didn’t run long enough to record an album, I don’t think we even had a souvenir program, and I had to do all those things with Miss Saigon. When you get to look at the pictures outside of the theatre and see that one of them is you and you get to show your parents, it’s a really neat thing to do.
Camp Broadway: Something Brad wanted to make clear in his podcast is that Broadway is not all bright lights and the beauty of the the stage, but he also wanted to include those special stories. This is one of them. While there are many broken hearts on Broadway, it is rare and special to have those “moments”. For Darren, Saigon was the first of many.
On casting…
DARREN: [on booking Beauty & the Beast and turning it down for another offer] It established me as a featured dancer, and at an age that I was very thankful and fortunate to be seen in that way. I think it changed the way that people saw me subsequently for other shows. I was cast nontraditionally. And that was very exciting.
I saw a video interview with Christopher Chadman, from an interview, and they showed a clip of me tumbling and cut back to him and she asked him something and he says “in New York there are asians, hispanics, americans, italians”. He said “I didn’t cast him because he was asian, I cast him because he was the best dancer”. And that’s not something he told me specifically. His work ethic was different. But to hear that so casually in the interview meant the world to me.
Camp Broadway: I’m an asian male in the industry myself, so this rings very true to me. Being cast in shows that are not necessarily perceived as ones with roles for people in the asian community is huge because it tells the world that we have a place onstage other than in roles that need our race before our talent.
On doing hit shows and shows that never found an audience…
DARREN: [on Seussical] They didn’t have rights to the drawings – the music was wonderful, but it just ended being misguided and was really poorly reviewed. It’s the thing (i don’t know if you’ve ever been in a flop show). And you go out onstage every night and you feel like the whole weight of everything is on your shoulders to prove to those thousand people that you’re not terrible. Or that this isn’t terrible. It’s a really difficult position to be in. At the same time, you’re thankful to have the work. This is part of the work. It’s not always going to be, you do what you love and you’re featured and it be wonderful. Many times you’re going to be doing something you don’t like, in line with someone you don’t think is as talented as you, and you’re just going to have to suck it up.
Camp Broadway: I don’t like to use the word “flop” or “failure”, because I rarely believe that any show that makes a performance on Broadway (or even makes it to the theatre and never opens) is not a failure. Art does not fail; this would mean that we, as artists, have failed to do something. This rarely happens. A lot of times, it is that the art did not find an audience. For Seussical, I think Darren was right about a lot of things. Seussical has some incredible music in it, and lives on in regional and community theatre, but never found an audience on Broadway. A lot of the issues with Seussical rely, in my opinion, is that the audiences of the time did not have the same accessibility to musical theatre that stemmed from a famous source work, so they didn’t know why it wasn’t identical to it. This was pre-WICKED, pre-LEGALLY BLONDE, all of the big media-turned-show pieces. Being one of the first in anything is tough, and just because Seussical wasn’t a long-running shows doesn’t mean that the formula is flawed, just that it wasn’t able to find an audience due its nature. And sometimes that happens.
If you enjoyed Camp Broadway’s commentary on Brad Bradley’s podcast Broadway’s Backbone, be sure to come visit us again in two weeks for another chapter in our showcase of Backbone, and tune into Brad’s podcasts at BroadwaysBackbone.com!