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STEPHEN FALA: I’m Stephen Fala, and you’re listening to Pipe and Drape, the only podcast that spotlights the creative minds behind the theatre for young audiences industry. Every two weeks I sit down with a theatre professional to hear their stories about the audition, rehearsal, and development process of theatre for young audiences. Each of them have bridged the path from youth to adulthood while living in worlds created for children. My guests have mounted shows small enough to fit in a minivan to productions so big they travel by caravan. You can join the conversation by emailing PipeAndDrapeStories@gmail.com or messaging @PipeAndDrapeStories on Instagram.
This is Episode 8 of Pipe and Drape. My guest bridged the path from backyard games to multiple shows Off-Broadway by touring children’s theatre out from a home base in New York City. In this episode you’ll hear all about TYA from an Equity actor/assistant stage manager’s perspective.
S: Today's guest is actor Jodi Snyder. You may have recently seen her haunting Stage 42 as Fruma-Sarah in the critically acclaimed production of Fiddler on the Roof in Yiddish directed by Oscar and Tony Award winner Joel Grey, or you have heard her singing the equally haunting score of Hunchback of Notre Dame a few miles north at White Plains Performing Arts Center. Jodi and I met on deck nine of the Disney Magic just over a year ago where she was on vacation and I was a horse. Jodi and I are in my Washington Heights apartment sniffing a candle and discussing her experience on the national tour and Off-Broadway production of Pete the Cat with the renowned theatre for young audiences company TheaterWorksUSA. Jodi, welcome.
JODI SNYDER: Thank you for having me. What an intro, sniff sniff.
S: Last time we saw each other, we were on a ship in the Caribbean.
J: Just like now.
S: The only thing that's missing is Mickey Mouse.
J: You don't have to Mickey Mouse here?
S: I mean…
J: I have to go.
S: [Desperate] No, wait, don’t leave, I have Goofy!
J: That'll do, that'll do.
S: I took him with me. What were the games that you made up when you were a kid? What did you do to entertain yourself?
J: Games when I was a kid, okay. I definitely turned my sister and brother into dogs and fed them carrots and they were my pets and that was a game for us. [Laughter.] I made them do things like play fetch and I played the owner and they were the dogs and I'm so sorry to them for that. That was definitely a game that I played as a kid, but you know, a lot of playing pretend and dress up and house and things like that. But for some reason that one comes to mind.
S: So, did you want to be a dog trainer when you grew up?
J: I definitely wanted to have a dog. I don't know if I actually knew about the training of the dogs. But I knew they had to be fed, so that's where the carrots came in. Not really sure if they are supposed to have carrots, I still don't have a dog, but they were the next best thing so…
S: What did you want to be when you grew up?
J: I think an actor.
S: Wow.
J: Yeah, from a very young age, I wanted to be an actor. And of course you always say, ‘I want to be a doctor and have this and have that,’ but for as long as I can remember, I definitely wanted to be an actor.
S: Do you remember seeing theater when you were in school?
J: Yes and no. It's so funny, I grew up in a suburb of Chicago and you'd think that I would be going into Chicago all the time to see lots of theatre, because there is a lot of theater in Chicago, but I don't remember that as much as I remember…my mom would take us to the library and she knew that I was so into theatre, and so she would rent all of the musical movies that ever existed, ever were. And I watched those from a very young age instead. So that's something I really, really remember. And I love those. So when people are like, ‘Oh, A Chorus Line the movie that's terrible,’ I'm like, ‘That's the only one that exists! That is the one!’ Or like, Hello, Dolly! or, you know, all the versions of The Music Man and things like that. So we were always renting those from the library.
S: Multiple versions of The Music Man?
J: Yeah, I think there's definitely at least two or three. There's the one with Matthew Broderick, and then there's one that's like older, and another I can't remember.
S: Did your school ever invite theatre companies into your gym/gymnacafetorium to perform for you?
J: Definitely. I do remember at least one about Benjamin Franklin.
S: Was that a one man show?
J: It may have been. Did you see that one?
S: We used to have “composers” come in and it would be a one-man show. And at the end he would take off his wig and he was like, ‘I'm not Beethoven.’
J: I feel like there was a wig moment for sure. There was a reveal for sure. I don't know why that's the one I remember, but I know there was probably many more.
S: So how did you go from being a Chicago kid playing dress up, throwing carrots to your siblings, cheering on Benjamin Franklin and Matthew Broderick, to moving to New York? What was the in-between period for you?
J: I definitely had a great high school theatre experience that propelled me into applying to schools for musical theatre. And I got into Syracuse university in Syracuse, New York, upstate. And then Syracuse, when you're a musical theatre major (or any theatre major actually), our last semester we spend in New York City. So all of my friends and I moved to the city in January of 2016. And we had about four months there where we were taking classes on East 31st Street. And we got to see two Broadway shows a week and had amazing masterclasses. And that was my introduction to New York City. And then I graduated and from then on I stayed and started auditioning.
S: Wow. That's pretty lucky that you had a program that throws you right into it like that.
J: I'm so lucky that I don't know any other way of doing it. I can't imagine taking off your cap and gown and then being like, ‘Well now what, and where do I go? And how do I get there?’ There was such a path laid out for us, which was really special. And I'm really appreciative of that.
S: Do you remember your audition for TheaterWorksUSA?
J: I do! My roommate Brian had done their Off-Broadway production that summer (the summer right after we graduated, so 2016) and he was doing Junie B. Jonesand he was an understudy and was loving it. And he was like, ‘They want me to audition for this upcoming new production.’ And then it was, ‘They booked me for this upcoming new production,’ and I was like, ‘Oh, that's sounds so amazing, that's so cool. I wish Iwas going on a children's tour,’ you know? And I was really not loving my restaurant job at the time and I was auditioning constantly. And then I saw a listing for the role of Mom for this production that Brian was going to be in—this tour. And I was like, ‘I really am a mom. This is really my time. I need this role.’ And Brian's like, ‘That'd be crazy if we were in the same show.’ And I had a manager at the time and I was like, ‘You need, need, need to get me in for this role. I have to be seen as Mom.’ And then the weekend that my sister was visiting (of course) was the weekend I got to go in. So my sister sat at some corner of New York, just like waiting for me to do this callback probably for like an hour and a half. And I was like, ‘I'm so sorry, but this is really important to me right now. So you're just going to have to wait.’ I was really excited about it ‘cause Brian had told me they had offered the part to other people and they either didn't accept or it fell through or something, something kept happening. I think rehearsals were starting in like a week or two, and I was like, ‘I really need to book this.’ And I think it was just me and one other girl going for it. And I just kind of went super crazy in my audition, making really bold, big choices. And then I think they had me come in a second time, not like a separate time, they had me go back in the hall and then come back in for my audition and do it again, make new choices, put it on film for the director. And, and then I left, and then I felt like it went really well. It was really fun, at least for me. And so I had high hopes, and that was my audition experience.
S: And then you booked.
J: And then I booked! I got it. I can't, I actually don't remember the exact moment of booking, but I just remember being so excited and so shocked that Brian and I were actually going on this tour together as roommates and best friends who you're going to like do this together. It was such an amazing opportunity. I was really excited for him.
S: How quickly did you quit your restaurant job?
J: Uh, the next day. ‘Cause I think rehearsals were coming up really soon. So I was like, ‘Two-weeks notice!’ or I was like, ‘Week and a half or can I quit now? I'm gonna go.’ Like, I was so excited to leave that job. It was a Midtown restaurant and so you could understand.
S: That's too scary.
J: It was a little scary and I never worked in a restaurant again.
S: What was the rehearsal process length like for this tour?
J: I believe we actually had a longer rehearsal process than most TheaterWorks tours. I want to say we had two weeks, which now that sounds really short, but you know it depends what kind of… And it was a forty-five-minute show, but it was a newer show for Theaterworks, so we got two weeks, I think we had like three or four days to do music and run-throughs of the script, and then a week to put it up on its feet and really get the blocking down because it was just so new. It was super fun and super sweaty. Oh my gosh. And not even like…I was probably the least sweaty of the (how many of there were?), of the five of us. The boys were like…we would always joke, like, ‘Did I do a show or did I take a shower?’ because they were so soaking wet. It was really gross. All four months. They were just drenched all the time.
S: I've actually seen the show. It's…there's a lot going on with props and you're moving around constantly—nonstop. And you are also moving set pieces, loading in the set, loading out your set.
J: It's a marathon. And I don't know (I mean, I do know who decided this, the costumer, decided this) but Pete the Cat wears a turtleneck and full jeans and Jimmy his friend wears a button down and a sweater vest over it. It was just disgusting. [Laughter.] It was not great fashion choices, but you know, they looked great when they were dry.
S: Did you experience a lot of changes throughout the two-week rehearsal process, being part of a newer show?
J: Yeah, definitely a lot of changes. I played a shark and they just couldn't decide what they wanted this shark to be, and the shark had like three lines but for some reason it was really important to get the essence of this shark. So I think I was a valley girl shark for a little, and then I think I was a Southern shark for a little, and then I was a [Surfer voice.] “dude” shark for a while. I think I landed on the dude shark. Again, three lines, so I can't even really remember right now when we landed on, but that went through a lot of changes. The shark went through a lot of changes.
S: So you finish up this rehearsal process and then it's time to take show on the road. What is this like touring a show out of New York City? Sometimes you are performing within the city limits. Sometimes you are going cross country with it.
J: For a couple of different times (and we didn't have to do this so much) but we were…well we were going and meeting in a parking garage in New York City, hopping in the van when it was really, really dark in the morning, and driving maybe an hour/an hour and a half away. And I liked doing that because, you can end up in your bed at the end of the day and see friends still and do shows in the morning and do you know, whatever else you need to do at night. But there also was definitely an appeal to traveling across the country and seeing… I actually was hanging out with this little boy I babysit yesterday and he was like, ‘How many states have you been to?’ and I was counting the states I've been to and so many of those are because of Theaterworks and that's really cool! That's a really cool thing to say. I visited all those places, and I was paid to visit those places, and I drove to most of those places, and we were a really fun and adventurous group that really tried to see and eat as much as possible. We really took advantage (We were in the South a lot), we really took advantage of barbecue everywhere. And we wanted to see different landmarks and, and, and just fun. We were always looking up like, ‘Where do we go for here?’ or, ‘What stores can we shop at there?’ and I was really glad that we did that because I didn't want to stay inside the hotel room all day, every day after a show.
S: What kind of hotels were you in?
J: We were in motels, so maybe I shouldn't say hotels. I'm trying to forget that the motel situation still. No, some of them weren’t bad, some of them were really bad, some of them were terrible. We loved Holiday Inn Expresses. So if you're listening and you're looking for a good hotel/motel midway experience, the Holiday Inn Express as the place to go—they were really good cereal. Red Roofs? You could skip it, things like that. I can't remember if we stayed in a Motel 6 or not, but definitely things that were similar to a Motel 6. So I wouldn't recommend that, there were definitely nights where I slept on top of a comforter and would not slide slide in there because I just didn't want to fling open that sheet and see what was in there. [Laughter because the joys of youth.] But again, the Holiday Inn Express, of all the positives, that was fun. We always looked forward to breakfast and it was pretty clean too. So that was, that was good. Kind of.
S: So sometimes lucked out and got that continental breakfast life. And what were some highlights of eating and exploring on the road?
J: Oh my gosh. That's the only thing, I wish I had journaled more and like wrote these places down so I could go back there one day. One of the states that we went to had something like Chelsea Market, but it was like, it was a little different, but it was so beautiful. And there's so many different food stands to try in different like ice cream places all within one place. And it was really, really…it was called like Ponce Market.
S: Yes. In Atlanta!
J: It is! In Atlanta! Oh my God! [Laughter.] Really, really fun. I want to go anywhere where I could try a bunch of different things and like see people. And that was really, really a fun experience for us. Atlanta: we went to like little five points where all the thrift stores are. And I had a friend in Nashville who took us to (oh man, I'll never forget this I love this.), she took us to this family style brunch where you sit at this huge table with like, probably like twelve to fifteen people that you don't know. I mean, you could know them, but it was just my friend, Brian, and myself, and they just pass around the best Southern breakfast. They just keep bringing huge plates of fried chicken, pancakes, waffles, biscuits, it just goes on. Cinnamon buns. Those were amazing. And you just like pass to the…the rule was like “pass to the left” and like, “don't have your phone on the table.” It's very classic brunch in the South. It was so much fun. I'll never forget that, that was really fun. And then we were lucky that my friend Bonnie took us around Nashville just to go to see the nightlife and go to different places in Nashville and that was really fun. Again, it's just like a lot of really fun places and we really tried to take advantage of seeing cute and trendy places, but also the classics. It was like that.
S: So that makes me so happy (just as someone who loves to travel) and like yes, take advantage of that.
J: And especially since we weren't staying in the nicest of places again, like, it was really fun to say, ‘Where else could we go go then here?’ you know, that's not too far of a drive because we did spend a lot of time driving a lot of time driving.
S: Had you driven a big minivan or a large fifteen-passenger set van before?
J: I had driven a U-Haul before. I drove our U-Haul from Syracuse to New York City for four and a half hours. And I come from a big road trip family; we would drive from Chicago to Florida every year to see my grandma, which is like twenty-two hours and we would drive all the way through. So driving was not foreign to me. I knew I was always…I was on with the driving. However, there is something different from doing it for like twenty-two hours straight than having to drive (pretty, on a normal basis) at least two hours every day, that was like at least. Normally, maybe four to six hours and so, you're always on the move and on the go. But we had a lot of fun in the car. We would play 20 Questions but without twenty. So someone would come up with a person to guess, and we would be guessing that person for maybe hours. If we couldn't get this random character or person we would just do it for hours. And anyway, that's just something silly that we, we took up our time with. We also listened to a lot of comedy on the road, different podcasts together. We were pretty good at getting along and wanting to listen and do things together, which was nice and not a lot of casts have that. So that was really nice.
S: Yeah, it takes a really special group to bond in that way. Spending all that time in a car, choosing places to go to hang out. In addition to working together, you're playing together. What was the process of loading out that big set van into schools or theatres before performing?
J: Everyone is assigned their specific job. I was luckily props, but we all worked together to get the really heavy things off of the truck. And then once we get those really heavy things off of the (or I guess it's the van) off of the van, then it's time for everyone to do their smaller jobs. And we really, again, we had it down to a science where I don't remember it honestly bothering me too much. And I'm really not like a, not like a builder or like a doer in that way, that's not really my thing, but we had our routine down and so it really became super, super easy. Loading back onto the truck after doing all the shows and knowing that we were going to drive after that, that was a little bit harder. But there were some days that (if we were in a theatre) they sometimes had a crew there who worked at the theatre. They would help us and it would be so seamless and so easy. And they would be like, ‘What do you want us to do?’ and we’d be like, ‘Everything!’ they'd be like, ‘Okay!’ because they were bored because they don't do anything during the show. So they were like, ‘Work time!’ and we were like, ‘Absolutely, do whatever you'd like.’ And loading in as well, that was really helpful. Especially (and so sometimes also), it's not always like there is an on ramp or a nice loading dock. Sometimes if it's a gymatorium or whatever cafetorium…is that what it's called?
S: It depends on what's in there. Sometimes there's a library in there too.
[Laughter.]
J: If it's that, normally it's two doors with like a metal pole in the middle. Yeah. And so that's when it gets a little more complicated and when…if it normally takes two people to move the bed in and now four people have to do it and you have to do it an angle and everybody has to be like super tiny all of a sudden—and that's when it gets really difficult. But we managed. And if there was snow or rain or, you know, whatever we managed, we did it and we really rarely broke anything. During the show we broke things, but not loading in and out. We rarely ever broke anything. So, that wasn't so bad. Yeah.
S: Was maintenance of set and props up to your cast and stage manager?
J: My stage manager did a lot of maintenance of certain props. Yeah. He liked to be in charge of that. Now that I think about it, I'm like, ‘Shouldn't have that have been my job?’ But I didn't do it, so oops. I was acting.
S: You had a lot going on. You were the Mona Lisa at one point…
J: I was the Mona Lisa! Oh, what a bit. My favorite bit probably ever of all time is the Mona Lisa. Everyone: the Mona Lisa kills, okay? She's the belting Mona Lisa too so she really kills.
S: And what do the kids have to say?
J: So the kids were really, really fun and they think they're at a Broadway show right now, which is so amazing for us. And they're yet they're chanting like, “Pete the Cat! Pete the Cat!” and I think we have some video footage of them doing that, and Chris and Brian who were the leads, they were like celebrities to these people. We would do mean greets afterwards and no one wanted to take pictures with the mom. They probably would want to take pictures of the Mona Lisa, but they didn't know that I was both.
S: What did you do to stay vocally and physically healthy on the road? Between doing the job, traveling, and you mentioned snow (so we have some winter going on during this tour) it's a lot.
J: Yeah. Luckily I was spritely and fresh out of college. And you didn't even mention the early morning shows. Sometimes we had shows at 9:00 AM. We found time to warm up. I'm a big warmer upper. And normally I would really try to find some time to at least do some lip trills, sirens, something to let me know that I have high C or whatever. There was like one really high note for me. I was like, ‘I got to just make sure that one's there.’ I would really try to keep vocally warm. Outside of just warming up for the show. There wasn't a lot of time for personal singing or working on things like that. It's kind of difficult to do in a hotel actually, to keep that up as well as working out. Working out. With that, I’m a person who likes to work out probably like six times a week if I can, and waking up that early and being on…not necessarily my own schedule, that was really difficult for me. Whenever there was a hotel gym, I was like, ‘We're going, we're right there. Like, that's great. That's amazing.’ But sometimes we had to do our own bodyweight workouts if we could. If we had the time though, there wasn't a lot of time. Other times I would take the van to Planet Fitness because I kept my Planet Fitness membership and that was really helpful! I probably went to five different Planet Fitnesses in five different states a couple of different times, and that was really lovely.
S: It's no joke, the physical stuff and the vocal stuff that you have to do in children's theatre—it's surprisingly hard. The score is all over the place and there are only five of you.
J: Yes, it is really all over the place. I felt pretty lucky. Nothing was too scary for me. And my high C or whatever I was singing wasn't necessarily like an operatic high C, it was like, ‘Let's mix that out or whatever, you know, like whatever comes out comes out,’ and it's kind of why I love playing some funny characters. They don't fully have to sound like the best singers in the world. It could be like a weird screech one day and you kind of get away with it. That's what's also really fun about these Theaterworks tours and these children's theater pieces: you can have such fun and different voices for these different characters and it's really fun to get to differentiate those from each other and to find different voices within yourself and to see how that sounds and how it evolves as well on tour (because sometimes that happens, things change and it's really fun.)
S: So how do you feel that this experience traveling with the show propelled you forward as an actor in New York or just a young adult?
J: I actually was on tour during the 2016 election.
S: Wow.
J: We were in Arkansas. I don't really know what your audience is going to be, but…
S: I think it's safe to say.
J: Who knows, but we were in Arkansas and we went to bed in Arkansas and we didn't have results that evening. And we woke up in kind of a changed America (in our opinion.) And it was great: Theaterworks reached out to us through email and they were like, ‘You know, this is a really trying day for you guys; for all of us. We're all struggling through this country's decision right now, but try and give your best and give your all for the kids because the kids deserve a great show.’ And I definitely felt that way too. I mean, we still have a job to do and we still have a performance to do. And it was still so much fun doing it that day even. It didn't stop being fun, it's still the same fun show, but it definitely was such a feeling coming down to breakfast being like, ‘Wow, like what, what really just happened and how are we in Arkansasright now? And the world has changed.’ And it also was crazy because leading up to it we were in the South. We were seeing different rallies on different corners of cities in Florida and being like, ‘That can't happen, that won't happen,’ and finding out that it did…it was really crazy place to be in time to be out in the world, you know, not just in New York City where you feel like everybody has the same opinion as you (for the most part, or at least everybody you know) and seeing a different world perspective…or not world, excuse me, country perspective. It feels like the world!
S: As scary as it is, it's awesome that you are able to have the opportunity to travel and bring joy to all of these kids across the nation.
J: I felt so lucky to book the show. I felt extremely lucky and I still feel extremely lucky about booking that show. I still, like so many times, I'm like, ‘Oh, when I was on tour, when I was on tour that one time, that one place, I went to so many states!’ I got to do what I loved two, maybe three times a day every day for four months. It felt like such a great opportunity. And while I was on the tour I was (especially since I hated my restaurant job before the tour), I was like, ‘Ah, after this what will I do? How will I go back to my normal life?’ It was so fun getting to sing and dance on the daily and getting paid for it. I just felt so lucky and felt like I had such a taste of what life as an actor could be like. It's a very specific taste. But I just felt so incredibly lucky, and I think that propelled me forward to keep working hard and keep auditioning, and try to book the next thing, ‘cause once you get a taste of it you just want more. And so after doing the tour, a couple months later I ended up doing Pete the Cat again Off-Broadway at the Lucille Lortel, which was really fun to revisit Peteand feel like an actor all over again and enjoy a new cast. And I was understudying, so I got to try out a new role for a week, which was really crazy, And a new theatre, a new space. So it felt like a gift that kept on giving. And I was so lucky to do that, and I met other actors doing that, and they inspired me to try and do other things and made new connections that way. So it really propelled me into doing… just to keep like striving for more of that ‘cause I just knew I loved it so much.
S: Jodi, thank you for Speaking with me today. Is there a way that our listeners can find you/reach out to you?
J: Sure! I'm on Instagram, @jodez18.That's probably the best way. Should I give my phone number?
S: Yeah. And your mailing address, too, and your Venmo handle so we can request four thousand dollars.
J: Or so you could pay me! No.
S: Make sure you check out Jodi's Instagram, and also if you find her Venmo, Venmo her $4,000.
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