Broadway Swings: Covering the Ensemble in Musical Theatre

“Scene Partner” app There is an app that can help Swings to learn their lines more efficiently, called Scene Partner. Scene Partner is a mobile app for iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch that helps Actors learn their lines. It uses text-to-speech technology, to turn the text of your play into speech, so that you can listen to just your lines, just your c

physically exit and re-enter a room to help “change hats.”

Rob Ashford pulled me aside after the closing night party at David Hyde Pierce’s house and he said, “You know, everyone is very happy with your work, I want you to continue with the show when it happens in New York as Dance Captain, but I want to give you the option of either being onstage or offstage. It’s your choice.” I was really grateful and f

In some lucky cases, Musical Directors are giving Swings the incredible gift of a CD or MP3 files with all the vocal parts recorded separately for each song in the show. For any of you Musical Directors out there, reading this book, we really love this and would be so grateful to always get to have this! We are hoping that with the ever-advancing t

I would say be open enough to understand what everybody is doing and why they’re doing it. Don’t look at exactly what they’re doing. Your job is to find out why they’re doing that. JACK LEE (Musical Director of nine Broadway shows)

“Broadway’s Navy Seals”—ready at a moment’s notice to do whatever it takes to save the show.

One night, in Phantom, I had to cover two roles in the show at the same time. One role was the confidant with a painted white face and bright pink cheeks, etc. The other role was a Christine Daaé double in the white negligee gown. I had no time to paint my full face to perform the confidant while doing the double track so I just painted half of my

Or in Chicago, we had so many people off one day that we did “Cell Block Tango” with one empty chair! Flying on adrenaline makes you feel so awesome!

“Mer-Blades.”