We also have a team that works really well together, that knows whose turn it is to pick up what someone else can't continue-the five of us work really well together and if someone says, "My plate is too full, I can't handle this," then someone else will always grab onto it.

We 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.

We 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.

And 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.

It [The Esemblist] is also about the generation of audience members that are watching shows and listening to us at the same time; hopefully, in time, when they listen to our show and then go see a show, they'll realize even more what it takes to make a show, and they'll know even more about everybody on stage, rather than just people above the title of the show.

Time's going to pass anyway, so it's prioritizing what to do with that.

If things come up, we can say, "We're not ready for this, let's move some things around."