Theater

Subterms

    More stories

    • 88 Shares159 Views

      in Theater

      Interview: Taking the Jellicle Cat on Tour

      by

      Linus Karp talks about taking his latest show on tour around the UK

      Linus Karp became the first guest to appear on our Runn Radio show twice, and we couldn’t be happier. Always full of positivity and support for everyone else, he makes the most delightful of guests.

      We sat down with Linus just before Christmas to hear about what he has been up to lately, and how the plans for the UK tour of How to live a jellicle life: life lessons from the 2019 hit movie musical ‘cats’ are going. And as ever, he was the most purrfect of guests.

      You can find the full list of tour dates here

      As you will hear in the interview, the show will be livestreamed from Belfast on 4 March, and then available to watch on-demand for a limited time afterwards. You can book tickets for the stream here.

      You can also read our review of the show here

      And if you enjoyed hearing Linus talk about the show, you can hear our previous radio interview from July here More

    • 138 Shares179 Views

      in Theater

      Theater 80 in New York City Could Become Another Pandemic Casualty

      by

      Battered by a coronavirus lockdown and conflict over a loan, Theater 80 could become another New York City casualty of the pandemic.There are fewer and fewer places left in New York City where you can walk through a door and feel transported back in time. Among them is 80 St. Marks Place, a Prohibition-era speakeasy converted into an Off Broadway theater in the early 1960s.Inside the front door there are still hooks embedded in the brick where steel plates were once hung to buy time during police raids. The lobby walls are covered with framed, autographed photos from dozens of famous actors, including Katharine Hepburn, Joan Crawford and Myrna Loy.A narrow hallway connects the theater lobby with William Barnacle Tavern, where you can still get absinthe from a bar that has been in place since the 1920s. The performance space itself, Theater 80, is intimate, with a 199-seat capacity. You can hear someone speaking at a normal volume from anywhere in the room.The space of William Barnacle Tavern, which is connected to the theater, was once a Prohibition-era speakeasy.Zack DeZon for The New York TimesBut like so many of the city’s treasures, the theater, the tavern and the Museum of the American Gangster, on the second floor, are all facing extinction because of the pandemic.Lorcan and Genie Otway, who own the connected buildings at 78 and 80 St. Marks Place and live in an apartment upstairs, are now scrambling to prevent a mortgage investor from auctioning them off.“The shutdown offered us no protection from creditors, which I think is unconscionable,” Lorcan Otway said during a recent tour of the building and its underground tunnels, through which contraband was smuggled during the 1920s and ’30s.Otway, whose father bought the buildings in 1964, said that the theater, museum and tavern were in good financial health until March 2020, when they were shuttered by a state mandate that affected virtually all corners of the performance and service industries. Shortly before then, he had taken out a $6.1 million mortgage against the properties to settle an inheritance dispute, pay legal fees and finance needed renovations.With the pandemic lockdown and a precipitous decline in revenue, that loan went into default and was purchased by Maverick Real Estate Partners about a year ago. The firm, according to court documents, has closed over 130 distressed debt transactions, with a total value of over $300 million.The lobby walls are covered with framed, autographed photos from dozens of famous actors.Zack DeZon for The New York TimesOtway, who dug out the theater space with his father when he was 9 and had turned down numerous offers by developers over the years, said that he had hired an attorney to renegotiate the payment terms, but the original lender stopped returning his phone calls and sold the debt to Maverick without his knowledge.Maverick, Otway said, then raised the interest rate to 24 percent, from 10 percent, bringing the roughly $6 million debt to about $8 million. The company did not respond to messages asking for a comment.Joe John Battista, the artistic director of the 13th Street Repertory Theater, is familiar with a conflict like this. His company was recently evicted from the space it has called home since 1972 after a majority of the building’s shareholders locked it out.“Real estate is real estate, but this is the arts,” Battista said. “There ought to be some special attention paid when the city stands to lose a piece of cultural history like this.”Theater 80 hosted plays throughout the 1960s, including the pre-Broadway run of the musical “You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown.” From 1970 until Otway’s father died in 1994, the space was used to screen movies; for a time, it was New York City’s longest continuously running house devoted exclusively to revival films.City Councilwoman Carlina Rivera grew up on the Lower East Side of Manhattan and remembered seeing Shakespeare at Theater 80 when she was a teenager. “This is a heartbreaking story,” she said, adding that the complexities of running even the smallest business in New York now require a team of experts.“This is a huge advantage to the larger developers, the real estate companies, the financial institutions that can both take on this cost and hire a team to manage it,” Rivera said. “And the detriment is, not just to the small landlords and the deterioration of assets to people of otherwise moderate means, but also to the community at large who lose the landlords who are interested in providing beneficial things.”The 199-seat theater is so intimate, you can hear someone speaking from anywhere in the room.Zack DeZon for The New York TimesArthur Z. Schwartz, a lawyer with a reputation for representing underdog clients, said that there needs to be some type of legislative change to rein in distressed mortgage purchasing.“Beside the fact that you have a predatory lender who set this up so there was basically no way he would ever be able to make the payments, then shift it from being a mortgage to being some kind of commercial paper,” Schwartz said. “That lets you get around a lot of the stuff we have these days protecting mortgagees because of Covid.”John McDonagh, an old friend of Otway’s, has scheduled a benefit performance of his show “Off the Meter,” a comedic monologue about his decades of driving a yellow cab in New York, with all the profits benefiting Theater 80.“I’m just trying to help save a theater that Covid, gentrification and big bankers are trying to take,” said McDonagh, whose show runs Jan. 21-23 as part of Origin Theatre Company’s 1st Irish Festival.“St. Marks Place without Theater 80 would be like Houston Street without Katz’s Deli,” McDonagh said. “It would always feel like something was missing from the East Village.” More

    • 100 Shares159 Views

      in Theater

      On Broadway Stages, the Beautiful Rooms Are Empty

      by

      In recent musicals, hyperdesign is outstripping writing and direction for clarity, expressiveness and excitement.When Bobbie’s balloons are more fascinating than she is, your production of “Company” has a serious problem.I’m speaking of the inflatable Mylar numerals that, in the current Broadway revival of the Stephen Sondheim-George Furth musical, keep drawing the eye away from the main character as she is feted by friends on her 35th birthday.Those balloons — stand-ins for Bobbie’s disappearing youth — aren’t the only scene stealers. Bunny Christie’s ingenious design for the revival is filled with visual gimmicks that in representing the production’s themes keep crowding out the characters.During the song “Another Hundred People” — a barbed tribute to the missed connections of urbanity — large neon letters that spell the show’s title start wandering about the stage, as if stalking the cast. Eventually, three of the letters regroup to spell “NYC”: a neatly made point, though I couldn’t help wondering what happened to the other four.Then there’s the warren of interconnected spaces, some joined by trap doors, that paints Bobbie’s path to companionship as a cross between Alice in Wonderland and Chutes and Ladders.But for all the cleverness of Christie’s designs, they don’t so much nourish Marianne Elliott’s production as overwrite it, filling its many dramatic holes with eye candy.That’s no news on Broadway, which never met a conceptual problem it couldn’t attack with confetti cannons and other weapons of what we might call hyperdesign. Spectacular effects are part of the brand, and when used smartly can both thrill and inform.Yet, looking back at the shows that have opened or reopened in the last few months, it seems to me that designers, bringing evermore astonishing prowess to bear, too often outshine the work they are meant to support. As if to compensate, the stories are getting dimmer; their beautiful rooms, to paraphrase Kafka, are empty.In “Diana, the Musical,” Buckingham Palace was thinly suggested by some electric bulb tracery.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesTake “Diana, the Musical,” which I won’t rake over the coals again except to say it was phony from first to last. (It closed, after just 49 performances and previews, on Dec. 19.) Nor were its sets especially assertive: Buckingham Palace and other locations were thinly suggested by some electric bulb tracery.But apparently having decided that what audiences would want most from a fantasia on the life of the People’s Princess is a jaw-dropping parade of extravagant costumes, the producers budgeted accordingly. The 38 outfits designed for Diana by William Ivey Long dramatized how she transformed herself from kindergarten teacher to royal frump to executive princess to international fashion plate far better than the writers did.No wonder those dresses — and the quick-change artistry that in one scene allowed her to change them six times — won applause. Unfortunately, in the process, the character herself was rendered about as expressive as a clothes hanger. That was almost literally so in her wedding scene, as Jeanna de Waal, who played Diana, disappeared inside a gown built like a cage.A clever enough metaphor, but why was the costume design forced to do so much work that the story should have done itself?The problem is even more evident in Lincoln Center Theater’s production of “Flying Over Sunset,” though it is a far more interesting musical. In Act II, its book, by James Lapine, imagines a weekend at the end of the 1950s during which Cary Grant, Aldous Huxley and Clare Boothe Luce experiment with LSD simultaneously. Their hallucinations are meant to address the unresolved conflicts carefully set up in Act I.But how do you dramatize a hallucination? Even if you can describe it in words, it will never be as interesting to those not tripping as it is to those who are.How do you dramatize a hallucination?“Flying Over Sunset,” starring, from left, Robert Sella, Harry Hadden-Paton, Carmen Cusack and Tony Yazbeck, tries to pull it off with psychedelic light and sound design.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesLapine’s book does not overcome that obstacle, but as the director, he has been able to assemble a team of designers who at least get close. In this case, it is not the set or costumes doing the heavy lifting so much as the lighting (by Bradley King) and projections (by 59 Productions) working in concert with the sound design (by Dan Moses Schreier). In their hands, psychedelic imagery, amplified footfalls and intensely colored light become a trip in themselves, peeling away the skin of everyday life to reveal a richer world inside.It’s not a real solution, though; the often-beautiful imagery has the side effect of making ordinary perception, unenhanced by pharmaceuticals, seem banal. As soon as the characters talk, the illusion of richness evaporates. If it’s arguable whether the trips change the characters, as Lapine posits, it’s certain that they do not change us.“Flying Over Sunset” left me trying to decide whether muscular design takes over because the ideas are too frail or the ideas retreat because design hogs all the attention. Either way, it’s a predictable problem, and some productions have developed workarounds. “Moulin Rouge! The Musical,” for instance, is smart enough to keep dialogue to a minimum as it inundates the theater with sound and color. If it ever lets the audience come up for air, the silliness of the story might be revealed as the wrong kind of distraction.Which is not to say there’s a right kind of distraction. A show with enough on its mind, with a minimum of muddles and longueurs, doesn’t require bombarding with extraneous sensory excitement. That doesn’t mean it should be visually dull, even if for economic reasons that’s often the case.Take “Kimberly Akimbo,” one of the finest and most feelingful new musicals of 2021, with music by Jeanine Tesori and words by David Lindsay-Abaire, based on his 2000 play. The Atlantic Theater production might have been even better with a more exciting design to support those feelings and a bigger frame to set off the prodigious performance by Victoria Clark as a teenager who ages too quickly. Perhaps we’ll have the chance to find out, if the show, which is scheduled to close on Jan. 15, transfers to Broadway in the new year.“Kimberly Akimbo” might have been even better with a more exciting set design to support the wonderful performances by Victoria Clark, left, and Justin Cooley.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesIn other words, Broadway pizazz is not the problem; often enough, it’s the solution. A set that can change locations instantaneously, or costumes that pin down time and class with almost taxonomic exactitude, can anchor while also heightening the illusion of life.That’s true even in nonmusical plays that have become much more visually abstract in recent years. You seldom see sofas and kitchen sinks onstage anymore, and even more seldom miss them. The 164 years of American commerce covered by “The Lehman Trilogy” take place convincingly in a rotating glass box.But for the most part, hyperdesign is a hint that something fundamental is missing. Often that missing element is the conceptual discipline that allows a piece of theater, even when set on an empty stage, to hang together and score its points. You can see it working perfectly in shows as wide ranging as David Byrne’s “American Utopia” (with its sleek aluminum chain curtains) and “Dear Evan Hansen” (with its hypnotic walls of online data) — productions in which design and direction go hand in hand.And you can see it, perhaps most vividly, in “Six,” which turns conceptual discipline into a fetish. Each of the wives of Henry VIII depicted in this sing-off gets her own theme color, song genre and pop star queenspiration. And though the set is minimal — it might have worked just as well for “Diana” — the lighting (by Tim Dieling) and costumes (by Gabriella Slade) are rock concert maximal, expressing the story’s ambition to thrill.Which it totally does, because sometimes the secret to effective design is proportion — and knowing when we really need the confetti. More

    • 113 Shares129 Views

      in Theater

      Interview: We get entangled in Eight Legs Eight Arms

      by

      Author: Everything Theatre

      in Features and Interviews, Podcasts, Runn Radio interview

      29 December 2021

      11 Views

      Writer Jane Morris tells us about Eight Arms Eight Legs

      Eight Arms Eight Legs was one of six plays that formed part of The Fright Before Christmas, a collection of short horror plays at The Space.

      It proved to be quite an abstract piece that explored violence against and by females that left us fascinated to learn more. So it was perfect when the play’s writer, Jane Morris, offered to sit down and chat to us. It was fascinating to learn how the play came about and more about what it all meant.

      You can find out more about Jane Morris and future works by following her via Twitter here. More

    • 75 Shares99 Views

      in Theater

      Hugh Jackman Announces He Has Covid-19

      by

      Hugh Jackman, who is starring as Professor Harold Hill in “The Music Man” at the Winter Garden Theater on Broadway, announced on Tuesday that he had tested positive for the coronavirus.“I just wanted you to hear from me that I tested positive this morning for Covid,” Jackman said in an Instagram video. “My symptoms are like a cold: I have a scratchy throat and a bit of a runny nose, but I’m fine. And I’m just going to do everything I can to get better, A.S.A.P., and as soon as I’m cleared, I’ll be back onstage.”Shortly after Mr. Jackman posted his video, “The Music Man” announced on Instagram that all performances would be canceled through Saturday. Tickets can be refunded or exchanged where they were purchased. Performances will resume on Sunday, and Mr. Jackman will return to the show on Jan. 6. Several other Tony winners star in “The Music Man” alongside Mr. Jackman: Sutton Foster as Marian Paroo, Shuler Hensley as Marcellus Washburn, Jefferson Mays as Mayor Shinn, Jayne Houdyshell as Mrs. Shinn and Marie Mullen as Mrs. Paroo.Preview performances for “The Music Man” began on Dec. 20, with opening night scheduled for Feb. 10.While “The Music Man” has managed to stay open, other shows have not. The New York City Ballet announced Tuesday that it was canceling its remaining performances of “The Nutcracker.” The producers of “Ain’t Too Proud,” a jukebox musical about the Temptations, also announced on Tuesday that their show will close on Jan. 16. The show has not run since Dec. 15, citing coronavirus cases. It is planning to resume on Tuesday, Dec. 28, and hoping to run for three more weeks before closing for good. Last week, the musicals “Jagged Little Pill” and “Waitress,” as well as the play “Thoughts of a Colored Man” announced that they had closed without so much as a farewell performance — all were already on hiatus because of coronavirus cases among cast or crew.The efforts of “The Music Man” to stay open had just been highlighted on Thursday night, when the actress Kathy Voytko, a swing and an understudy for Marian Paroo in the musical, filled in for Ms. Foster, who had Covid, at the last minute. After the show, the actress and dancer Katherine Winter posted an Instagram video of Mr. Jackman praising understudies and swings as “the bedrock of Broadway.”“Kathy, when she turned up at work at 12 o’clock, could have played any of eight roles,” Jackman said at the curtain call. “It happened to be the leading lady. She found out at 12 noon today, and at 1 o’clock she had her very first rehearsal as Marian Paroo.”As the coronavirus and its Omicron variant spread, understudies and swings are becoming more important than ever: Shows are relying on them to step in for sick or unavailable leads.“This is unprecedented,” Mr. Jackman continued. “It’s not only happening here at the Winter Garden, but all over Broadway. This is a time we’ve never known.” More

    • 113 Shares99 Views

      in Theater

      Neil Marcus, Whose Art Illuminated Disability, Dies at 67

      by

      A playwright and actor, he saw his life as performance art. He was best known for his play “Storm Reading.”At each performance of his play “Storm Reading,” the writer and actor Neil Marcus offered his audience a reminder: “Disability is not a brave struggle or courage in the face of adversity. Disability is an art. It’s an ingenious way to live.”Mr. Marcus, who had dystonia, a neurological disorder that causes involuntary muscle contractions and affects speech, starred in the play, which comically illuminated how he passed through the world in a typical week, through vignettes of him conversing with grocery shoppers, doctors and passers-by.In 1988, when the show had its premiere at the Lobero Theater in Santa Barbara, Calif., people more often than not looked away from those with disabilities. “We’ve always been taught as kids we don’t point, don’t laugh, just basically ignore them,” Rod Lathim, the director of “Storm Reading,” said in an interview.In contrast, “Storm Reading” encouraged audiences to laugh with Mr. Marcus about his experiences.“Neil invited and welcomed, and in some cases demanded that people look,” Mr. Lathim said. “And so he brought them into his reality, which was not a reality of disability; it was a reality of his definition of life.”The success and longevity of the play, which toured throughout the country until 1996, turned Mr. Marcus into a pioneer of the disability culture movement. He called his work a reclamation of personhood in a world determined to deny people with disabilities their autonomy.Mr. Marcus died on Nov. 17 at his home in Berkeley, Calif. He was 67.His sister Kendra Marcus said the cause was dystonia.In 1987, Mr. Marcus and his brother Roger contacted Mr. Lathim, the director of Access Theater, a Santa Barbara company that regularly mounted plays featuring disabled artists. Neil Marcus sent over samples of his writing and asked Mr. Lathim if the theater would be interested in adapting them.Their conversation led to the genesis of “Storm Reading.” Mr. Marcus, his brother and Mr. Lathim worked together to draft the play, whose cast of three originally also included Roger as “The Voice,” who portrayed Neil’s thoughts during his interactions (the role was later played by Matthew Ingersoll), as well as a sign language interpreter.The show was physically taxing for Mr. Marcus. But it also invigorated him.“There’s no drug, there’s no treatment, that is, in my opinion, as powerful as the interaction between a live audience and an artist on the stage,” Mr. Lathim said. “And watching Neil transform from that was astounding.”Scenes from “Storm Reading” were filmed for NBC as part of a 1989 television special about disability, “From the Heart,” hosted by the actor Michael Douglas. The cast reunited in 2018 for a performance at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington.Neil Marcus was born on Jan. 3, 1954, in Scarsdale, N.Y., the youngest of five children of Wil Marcus, who worked in public relations, and Lydia (Perera) Marcus, an actor. When Neil was 6, the family moved to Ojai, Calif.Neil was 8 when he learned he had dystonia, and he attempted suicide at 14 after a taxing series of surgeries, he said in a 2006 oral history interview for the Bancroft Library at the University of California, Berkeley.But counseling gave him confidence. He attended Ojai Valley School, where he was often spotted zooming around in a golf cart. After graduating from high school as valedictorian in 1971, he traveled to Laos; when he returned, he hitchhiked around the West Coast and eventually took classes at Fairhaven College, part of Western Washington University, and elsewhere. He moved to Berkeley in 1980 and became active in the disability activist community there.He explored art through various partnerships. With professional dancers, he participated in “contact improvisation” performances, which eschewed formal choreography and instead followed the seemingly frenetic movements of Mr. Marcus’s dystonia.He also wrote widely. He worked with the University of Michigan professor and activist Petra Kuppers on the Olimpias Performance Research Project, an artist collective that spotlights performers with disabilities in performances and documentaries. Their conversations on disability as art were published in a 2009 essay, “Research in Drama Education: The Journal of Applied Theatre and Performance.” The two also wrote a book, “Cripple Poetics: A Love Story” (2008), which features poetry and photography highlighting the physicality and sensuality of disability.The Neil Marcus Papers, including his essays, poems and correspondence, are held at the Bancroft Library.In addition to his sister Kendra, Mr. Marcus is survived by another sister, Wendy Marcus, and his brothers, Roger and Russell.In 2014 the Smithsonian National Museum of American History commissioned Mr. Marcus to write a poem dedicating its online exhibition “EveryBody: An Artifact History of Disability in America.”His poem began: “If there was a country called disabled, I would be from there./I live disabled culture, eat disabled food, make disabled love,/cry disabled tears, climb disabled mountains and tell disabled stories.” More

    • 150 Shares169 Views

      in Theater

      ‘Ain’t Too Proud’ will close on Broadway as Covid takes its toll.

      by

      “Ain’t Too Proud,” a jukebox musical about the Temptations that opened on Broadway in early 2019, will close on Jan. 16, the show’s producers said on Tuesday.The musical is the fourth Broadway show to announce a closing in the last eight days, as the spike in coronavirus cases from the Omicron variant has deepened the financial woes of an already pandemic-damaged theater industry.Last week, the musicals “Jagged Little Pill” and “Waitress,” as well as the play “Thoughts of a Colored Man” announced that they had closed without so much as a farewell performance — all were already on hiatus because of coronavirus cases among cast or crew.The Broadway production of “Ain’t Too Proud,” about the powerhouse Motown group, has not run since Dec. 15, citing coronavirus cases. It is planning to resume on Tuesday, Dec. 28, and hoping to run for three more weeks before closing for good.The musical also has a touring production that had to postpone shows at the Kennedy Center in Washington because of coronavirus cases; it is scheduled to have its delayed start on Tuesday night, as well. More

    • 113 Shares99 Views

      in Theater

      On Broadway, Newly Vital Understudies Step Into the Spotlight

      by

      As Omicron spreads, shows are relying on replacement actors more than ever. And productions without enough of them have had to cancel performances.One evening in November, just a few hours before showtime, stage management told LaQuet Sharnell Pringle to prepare. A practiced swing, Pringle covers the female parts in the ensemble of the new Broadway musical “Mrs. Doubtfire.” She also understudies the role of Wanda, the social worker usually played by Charity Angél Dawson.The musical was still in previews. Pringle had never really rehearsed as Wanda. But she had studied the script, mastered the choreography and watched dozens of performances. So when Dawson called out (for a reason unrelated to Covid-19), Pringle went on.“It’s the job,” she later explained. “It’s the gig — to be able to be thrown on in a moment’s notice and to be able to deliver.”Swings and understudies are the undersung heroes of Broadway theater. (Off Broadway and regional theater productions may or may not hire them, depending on a production’s budget and priorities.) If a curtain rises when one or more actors has suffered illness or injury, that’s because a swing or an understudy has stepped in, sometimes with just a few minutes to get into costume, sometimes in a costume that isn’t even theirs. At a time of pandemic uncertainty, their contributions have become even more essential.For those unfamiliar with the terminology: Understudies can fill in for one or more of a play or musical’s principal characters. They may regularly appear onstage in a smaller role or they may spend most nights backstage, performing only if needed. Swings have no regular role in a show. Instead they cover up to a dozen ensemble parts in a musical, each with its separate vocal and dance track. Swings may also cover a principal character or two. (Some shows also use alternates, who take over principal roles for a number of performances on a predetermined basis.)In the past week, about half of the shows on Broadway canceled some number of performances. Charlotte St. Martin, the president of the trade association the Broadway League, seemed to blame certain understudies for these cancellations in an interview published Monday in The Hollywood Reporter. “My educated guess is the newer shows maybe have understudies that aren’t as efficient in delivering the role as the lead is,” she said.St. Martin quickly apologized, but not before fans and stars had leapt — or maybe, grand jetéed — to the defense of swings and understudies. “*My* educated guess is that when employers consistently reject our efforts to negotiate for more swings, understudies and sub stage managers, because the industry model has grown dependent on people working sick/injured, it’s short sighted and unsafe,” Kate Shindle, the president of Actors’ Equity, wrote on Twitter.In an interview a few hours later she expanded on those comments. “I hope that Broadway producers will be as proactive as possible in making sure that there is adequate coverage,” Shindle said. “Covid has changed how that looks.” Shows that don’t have enough coverage are forced to cancel.Hiring practices aren’t the only conventions worth re-examining. Historically, swings and understudies have not typically received dedicated rehearsal time until after a show’s opening night. Thursday night, after the fourth preview of “The Music Man,” Hugh Jackman saluted the understudy Kathy Voytko for going on for an absent Sutton Foster, despite having first rehearsed the part of Marian Paroo earlier that day.Without their own rehearsal schedule, swings and understudies have had to learn scenes, songs and choreography by observation and osmosis. (And in reverse, as they were often relegated to watching from the house.) If they had to go on in previews, like Voytko did, their castmates knew to “shove with love,” nudging them toward their correct positions.But the pandemic has encouraged a reckoning with the “show must go on” culture. Graham Bowen, a longtime swing for “The Book of Mormon,” described the mood backstage as, “Hey, if you’re just not feeling great, don’t come to work. It’s OK. We got this.” He referred to nights when only the Playbill-listed cast performs as “unicorns now.” (In mid-December, Bowen tested positive for Covid-19 and had to quarantine, so other swings, many of whom he has trained, are performing in his place.)In response, a few shows are rehearsing understudies earlier, sometimes right alongside the main cast or with the principal director rather than an assistant. “I told them from the jump, ‘We have to all trust each other because there’s all this intimate work. You can’t just come in halfway through,’” said Robert O’Hara, the director of “Slave Play,” which includes several sex scenes. And there is also a drive to allow some understudies to deliver distinct performances, rather than simply copying the work of listed performers.Rehearsal makes some aspects of the job easier. But it doesn’t alleviate the anxiety of not knowing whether you will go on. Or the weirdness of earning a Broadway salary when you may not set foot on a Broadway stage for weeks at a time. Or the feeling that you may be disappointing ticket holders if they see your name printed on a Playbill slip.Despite her longtime career as a swing for “The Phantom of the Opera,” Janet Saia said she once returned a ticket when she arrived at “The Producers” and found that Nathan Lane was out. “That show is all about him!” she said.Yet understudies and swings are always hired because they can do the role — or the many roles — with the virtuosity that Broadway demands.“We’re the last resort,” said Reynaldo Piniella, an understudy on “Trouble in Mind.” “But I do know, watching my understudies rehearse, these people are incredible artists.”On Wednesday night, about 10 minutes before curtain, Piniella got his own call. Though he had already booked a last-minute job on a different Broadway show, “Thoughts of a Colored Man,” he hurried to the “Trouble in Mind” theater, stepped into a costume he had never worn and made his entrance. “I bumped into pretty much every piece of furniture on that stage,” he said. “But I was prepared to tell the story.”In late November and early December, a few weeks before the current string of cancellations, I interviewed a number of swings and understudies about the rewards, stresses and peculiarities of the job and how Covid-19 has altered waiting in the wings. These are edited excerpts from the conversations.Galen J. Williams of “Slave Play” started rehearsals much earlier than usual for an understudy, partly because the play contains quite a bit of intimate work.George Etheredge for The New York TimesGalen J. WilliamsUnderstudy, “Slave Play”What makes you take an understudy job?I’m an Aries, we thrive on spontaneity. It keeps the job exciting, never really knowing when you have to turn the light switch on. Every time you go on, it feels like it could be the last time. So let me really give it my all, go full in and have a good time.Andrea SyglowskiUnderstudy, “Pass Over”What was your rehearsal process like?From the first week, we rehearsed with the main cast, warmed up with them. We were never under any obligation to do exactly what the main cast was doing. We were actually encouraged to create our own characters.The show ended its run before you went on. How did that feel?It was really upsetting. It became increasingly possible that I was going to go on at the end of the run. So the anxiety and the tension increased. I was so excited to be a part of the first Broadway play back. I wanted to be able to show my work. I’m sure every understudy feels that way.“My fantasy is that the actor I’m understudying books some big Marvel movie,” said Reynaldo Piniella, an understudy on “Trouble in Mind.” George Etheredge for The New York TimesReynaldo PiniellaUnderstudy, “Trouble in Mind”How do you feel about understudying?I equate it to being the sixth man on a basketball team. You’re not a starter, but you understand that you play a very vital role. When your number is called, you want to make sure you’re on your game. My fantasy is that the actor I’m understudying books some big Marvel movie. This show is my Broadway debut, and I would love to get on that stage at least one time, feel what that’s like.LaQuet Sharnell PringleSwing, “Mrs. Doubtfire”How do you keep all of those roles in your body and head?I physically need to do choreography every single day, I physically need to say words out loud every day so that it’s a part of my muscles. I will do cross training to make sure I have the stamina to do all of the dance choreography. I increase my voice work so that I am strong enough to sing the songs no matter what. I generally read the script two to three times a week.If you’re not on, do you ever relax backstage?It makes me feel weird if I’m just chilling out. As I’m watching the show, I try to say the lines in real time. I’m trying to go over steps that I want to perfect and really understand. I wait until I get home and I’m in my Epsom salts bath to relax.Graham BowenSwing and co-dance captain, “The Book of Mormon”How does it feel to receive that last-minute call?I have experienced the stage manager coming into a dressing room and saying, “Hey, we need you for the next scene.” And that scene would be in a matter of minutes. It’s kind of one of the best parts of it. You have this adrenaline rush. It’s definitely nerve-racking. But you can ride that and really have a wonderful experience.Janet Saia outside the Majestic Theater, where she’s an understudy in “The Phantom of the Opera.” “You make mistakes, but then you say to yourself, ‘I’m covering eight roles, give me a break,’” she said.George Etheredge for The New York TimesJanet SaiaSwing, “The Phantom of the Opera”What makes a great swing?As a swing, you have to have the fantastic five. First, you have to be fast, you have to learn things fast, you have to adjust to change fast. Second, you have to be fabulous at what you do. The next one is focused, really, really focused. And flexible. And then the last one is fastidious, you’ve got to pay attention to all the details and make sure they’re all in there.With so many roles to cover, have you ever mixed them up?There’s a number in “Phantom,” “Don Juan.” It has all the people I cover in the ensemble around a table with props. One time I went out there and I had the jug and everything. Two seconds before the curtain goes up, somebody came in and said, “That’s my jug.” Then I realized, I’m not this part. Instantly, I had to switch my brain and go into the correct part. You make mistakes, but then you say to yourself, “I’m covering eight roles, give me a break.”Cameron Adams is an ensemble member and understudy in “Mrs. Doubtfire,” which recently resumed performances after a 10-day hiatus prompted by coronavirus cases.George Etheredge for The New York TimesCameron AdamsEnsemble member and understudy, “Mrs. Doubtfire”Have you ever felt that you were disappointing an audience?I covered Kelli O’Hara in “Nice Work if You Can Get It.” Her name is above the title, people are excited to come and see Kelli O’Hara. I understand, because I want to see Kelli! I don’t think I’ve ever come off feeling, like, “Oh, my God, they hated me.” But I sometimes think, “Why do I do this to myself?” Because I get so nervous every time. That doesn’t go away.Sid Solomon of “The Play That Goes Wrong” said he has “an even greater personal sense of pride of showing up to the theater every night.”George Etheredge for The New York TimesSid SolomonUnderstudy, “The Play That Goes Wrong”Has Covid-19 made you feel differently about the job?I have an even greater personal sense of pride of showing up to the theater every night, knowing just how important having understudies is, so that nobody is ever put in a position where if they’re sick, if they’re injured, if they have a family issue, they ever have to think, I’m choosing between my well-being and whether or not a show happens that evening. I’m glad to be part of a production that’s really sort of living those values right now. More