Where we're telling the story of the history of the ensemblist [in the "Ensemblist Essentials"], using the nine musicals that have won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama as fixed points in time We're going from 1931 to 2016 and using these shows to talk about what the typical show was like for an ensemblist at the time; did this show change anything about that job, while it was changing everything about the way theatre was written and produced and made?
Nikka Graff LanzaroneWe don't have a studio, we don't have a radio station, we don't have anybody breathing down our necks to make a budget. We don't have any benchmarks that we have to hit. Our benchmarks are ones that we have set.
Nikka Graff LanzaroneShowtunes might be able to come back into pop music, which is something we haven't seen since the 50s and 60s. Everything is related to everything else because we're in such a niche industry.
Nikka Graff LanzaroneAnd as ensemblists start being asked to do more things that require an insane skill set, that inherent value will, I hope, be held up where it deserves to be.
Nikka Graff LanzaroneWe haven't truly had a zeitgeisty, 'songs on the radio' show, since...I want to say "One Night in Bangkok" was the last musical theatre song that charted. That was so long ago.
Nikka Graff LanzaroneThe biggest possible thing that we're trying to do is change the conversation about what it means to be a working artist today, and hopefully, as the generation of performers that is training and listening to our show at the same time comes up, and becomes a working generation of performers listening to our show-hopefully that's going to change some of the ways they're looking at the hierarchy of theatre and start to blur those lines a bit more.
Nikka Graff Lanzarone