PrintIt’s Saturday night. You scamper into the theater and toss your tickets at the usher, overwhelmed with anticipation about seeing that big-name performer everyone is raving about. You ease into your seat, open your program, and there it is: the dreaded slip of white paper.
“At This Performance the role of will be played by ....”
Though audiences often cringe at the thought of anyone but a star performer playing a leading role, in a TheaterMania.com poll asking theatergoers if they have ever been to a performance and seen an understudy or standby whose performance exceeded their expectations, a surprising 96 percent answered yes.
But who are the understudies and standbys— more commonly known as covers or swings—exceeding expectations and ensuring that the show goes on?
To help audiences unearth the answer, casting director Stephen DeAngelis created the series At This Performance. Debuting in 2003 at Musicals Tonight!—a theatre company that specifically houses underappreciated theater—DeAngelis’ series continues to seek acknowledgement for the underrated work of covers, as well as to showcase their talents. The series, which now tours nationally, explores the lives of covers through individual performances and talk-backs.
“It was important to me that not only they [the covers] show that they are great covering, but that they are great and important and that they are appreciated and recognized rather than labeled,” says DeAngelis.
The series educates audiences, explaining that standbys are fresh faces while understudies usually cover multiple roles and often perform as members of the ensemble when they are not covering.
Catherine Walker—current understudy for Mary in Disney’s Mary Poppins—is one such ensemble member. Though now she has performed Mary as many as 100 times, she was selected from a mass of hopefuls at an open call for this, her Broadway debut. She’ll never forget the whirlwind experience of her first night on.
“It was a Saturday matinee, and we had already started the show, actually, and I was in my ensemble costume,” says Walker. She reminisces, “I was thinking, ‘Wow, how funny, I’m finally comfortable doing my thing.’”
But Ashley Brown (Mary Poppins) had fallen ill onstage. Walker was bombarded by an onslaught of hair and makeup artists, sound technicians, and costumers. “I had been waiting for five months about, waiting for the first time, imagining how I might feel,” says Walker.
Walker admits that she was nervous about the audience’s reaction that night, especially because they already had a peek at Brown. But after a 20- minute delay, the audience roared in thunderous applause at the utterance of her first line. “They were along for the ride with me, and you could feel that energy in the theater,” remembers Walker.
Understudy life requires one to trust that ride and go with the flow. No matter how many times she had rehearsed the role in previous months, nothing was the same as the real thing. Walker’s adaptability proved invaluable in the time of need.
Though this kind of versatility may seem to be a blessing, “the depth of their [the understudies’] talent can almost be their curse,” says DeAngelis, “A producer can hire one person rather than having to hire two people and save themselves a salary.”
Understudies—as opposed to standbys—appear economically advantageous. “They want to get away with as few of us as possible because it is expensive,” says Allyson Tucker, former understudy for Aldonza in Broadway’s Man of La Mancha.
Obviously, this presents challenges to every actor in a show. If an understudy fills one role, the location of every performer onstage may change. “You have to know the show of 22 different people as a swing,” explains Tucker. This can be especially trying choreographically: as Tucker says, “If you are a man, you have to know how to lift anybody who fills the spot of your partner.”
“An understudy’s job is to make sure that the ship stays right,” says DeAngelis. Covers have few opportunities to add their own personal flair to the part. “Even if they want to do something else, their job is to do what the other actors need to do their job,” he continues.
“It [covering] is just amazing because it requires such a special skill set,” says DeAngelis. Though covers have a reputation for being second-best, some famous actors like Kevin Spacey, Chita Rivera and Sarah Jessica Parker were once understudies.
Production teams frequently prefer to cast an understudy after a principal because, according to DeAngelis, “there is a dynamic in play that they need to replicate to keep the show on track.” An understudy must be able to reproduce the chemistry between the leading characters previously created by the night-to-night actors. “It isn’t that they didn’t get the job the first time,” says DeAngelis. “Very often they weren’t even around when the show was originally cast.”
Clearly, covers lead more interesting lives than most theater fans might think. It’s no wonder that At This Performance has been such a success. “Everyone is itching for a connection, someone they can root for, the inside story,” says DeAngelis. What better underdog to root for than the understudy?
So rather than dreading the moment that the little white slip falls into your lap, embrace the moment. Not only do you see the exact same show as anyone who watches the billed performer, but you may also witness the birth of the next big star.