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[0:41] Kerry Butler: Together you and I are breaking Broadway.

[0:54] Kerry Butler: Welcome to Breaking Broadway. I'm so excited about my next guest. One of my favorite people I've ever worked with. We have done Hairspray. We've done Catch Me If You Can. He has done over 50 shows. I'm sure you know him. I'm sure you love him. Jerry Mitchell. Right now Jerry has the fantastic Boop! The Musical on Broadway. I got to see it. It is so much fun. The choreography is incredible. It's so inventive. Jerry, I get to go to a lot of events with people. So many people are saying this is their favorite show they've seen this season. It was a surprise to them because they didn't know much about it. Welcome to the show, Jerry Mitchell.

[1:46] Jerry Mitchell: Thank you. I'm so happy to be here. I love you so much.

[1:49] Kerry Butler: I love you so much. I love you. I love you.

[1:52] Kerry Butler: We usually start out with what made you love theater? When you were a kid, do you remember the first thing that you saw? How did you know about it?

[1:58] Jerry Mitchell: I was 10 years old. I did a lot of stuff in school when I was in kindergarten to fourth grade. When I was 10 years old, my next door neighbor, Amy Firestone, was in the Papa Village Players' production of The Music Man. They needed boys for the boys' band. She took me to rehearsal. I danced around on stage. They put me in the show. I was bitten by the bug. I said to my parents, I'm going to do this the rest of my life. Literally, it was like that.

[2:28] Kerry Butler: Wow. You'd never taken any dance classes or anything, huh?

[2:32] Jerry Mitchell: I had not taken any dance classes. I danced in the school shows. The woman who choreographed The Village Players owned a dance studio in town. It was very Billy Elliot. She invited me to come, invited me to come. I, of course, didn't go because I was gay and I didn't want anybody to know. It was 1970. Eventually, I went, and she gave me free lessons until I left town. She taught me tap, jazz, no ballet. I didn't learn ballet until I got to college, but that was really where I really focused on the dance right there.

[3:11] Kerry Butler: Wow. She taught you for free?

[3:14] Jerry Mitchell: Yeah. By the time I went to her studio, I was 15. In order to keep me there, I think now in retrospect, she paid me on Saturdays to teach the little kids because I knew how to tap already. I would teach little three-, four-, five-year-old girls basic tap, and she'd pay me, and then she gave me all my lessons for free. I was in that studio 24-7 for three years before I went to college.

[3:43] Kerry Butler: Wow. Then did you go to college for musical theater?

[3:47] Jerry Mitchell: I did. I got a scholarship to go to Webster University, where Jennifer Lewis is from and Norbert Leo Butz is from. Yes. I went to Webster University's conservatory program, and I got a full scholarship, and I was on campus for two years before I came to Broadway.

[4:06] Kerry Butler: Oh. Then how did you find out about the audition for your first Broadway show?

[4:12] Jerry Mitchell: I got my equity card like a lot of kids in St. Louis working at the Muny Opera. Kids in Webster would audition for the ensemble, and I got accepted in the ensemble after my freshman year. That's big. I did the ensemble of two musicals, and in those days you did a musical and you rehearsed it at the Muny, and then you'd take it to the Starlight in St. Louis, I mean in Kansas City, and then you'd come back to the Muny, rehearse your second musical, do it at the Muny, and take it to Starlight. So you had like eight weeks of work, and you did two musicals, and there were two teams. There was an A and a B squad for the Muny, and you'd know all these dancers who were in different shows, but you'd all get to work at the Muny.

So I did that. I got my equity card. Sophomore year I was in school. They were going through town, through St. Louis, and they were doing a national commercial for Dr. Pepper. So they had auditions, and I got cast as a principal in my first national television commercial. A bunch of us from Webster got cast, and I did the commercial, and I got a paycheck. I got a residual check, which was crazy. So I had this money saved up. My friends who I got my equity card with, who now lived in New York, invited me to come to New York for spring break. So I went to New York for my spring break of my sophomore year and saw some shows, and they were going to an audition, and they said, "Come to an audition with us.

You'll see what it's like." I said, "Okay." So I get my little tights and my ballet slippers, and I go to the audition for Brigadoon for Agnes DeMille. She was in the room. First audition. I do my assemblée front and back, and she hires me on the spot.

[6:07] Kerry Butler: Oh, my gosh! First Broadway audition.

[6:10] Jerry Mitchell: I go back to school, and I say, "I got a Broadway show," and they said, "We'll give you credit next year." It was going to start in September. "We'll give you credit as a junior to go there and study and do the show." Because Jennifer had done that, I think, with Eubie Blake or Coming Uptown. She did a show. Other kids in the conservatory had done it. So I wasn't the first. But what happened was, between that and between the start of my junior year, the last two weeks of my sophomore year, A Chorus Line was going through St. Louis, and I went down to the Fox Theater and saw the show, and then I went back and auditioned between shows, and I got A Chorus Line. So I did the national tour of A Chorus Line all summer after my sophomore year, gave notice, went to New York, did my first Broadway show, Brigadoon, and got college credit through all that.

When the show closed in January, it didn't run very long, I auditioned for Woman of the Year with Lauren Bacall, and got in that as the first swing of that Broadway show. I was playing the Palace Theater, and I got that and went and did that. And for six months, I was in Woman of the Year, and then I auditioned for the movie of The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas, and I got that. And the reason I'm going there is because the choreographer of the Whorehouse movie, Tony Stevens, was the choreographer of the commercial I did as a sophomore. So that whole circle of two years of commercial, Broadway debut, second Broadway show, movie, all happened within 24 months. And then I said, "I'm not going back to school." So I never went back to school, and then they gave me an honorary degree when I won a Tony Award, so it all worked out.

[8:00] Kerry Butler: Aww. Did you feel like those two years taught you a lot that helped you, or do you feel like you almost would have gotten it in the first two years?

[8:10] Jerry Mitchell: Oh, no, no, no. They taught me a great, great deal. But actually, the two years prior to that, when I was in Webster, those first two years, I studied ballet. I took three classes a day for two years. I had never studied ballet, so I was enrolled in Ballet 1. I was auditing Ballet 3, and I was in the dance troupe. Webster had a dance troupe, and I was in that, so I was taking company class with the dance troupe. So I had three ballet classes a day for two years. So when I walked into that audition for Agnes DeMille, my ballet was on point. I was the best I'd ever been, and I think if I would have found ballet at an earlier date, I would have been a ballet dancer. Wow. I absolutely loved it. I loved it, loved it, loved it, and I was big and I was strong.

I had huge thighs from all my athletics, so I had a lot of jump and a lot of lift, and I could lift all of the girls, so they loved me in the conservatory dance program because I was partnered with all these senior girls, even though I could barely do a glissade across the floor. But I learned quickly. I learned really quickly. If you want to swim, jump in the deep end.

[9:39] Kerry Butler: Yes, yeah. What was it like working with Agnes DeMille?

[9:44] Jerry Mitchell: She had already had her stroke, so she was in a wheelchair. But I have to tell you, Kerry, it was a real lesson also. I was an understudy to Harry Beaton, which was a principal dance role. John Curry, the British gold medalist ice skater, played the role, and I was one of the understudies, and I got to have a private rehearsal with her on stage after the show opened. And working, Jamie Jameson was her assistant, so he would do all the physical movement. But she would sit in that chair, and without moving, she was able to communicate to me very, very clearly how she wanted me to turn out my foot, point my leg, when to lift off the floor, especially during the sword dance, the cross that she was requiring.

There were two swords, and you had to cross your feet and do all this intricate footwork. She was very clear, and I found it. I didn't really realize it until much later, as I worked with other choreographers, how specific instruction can be without ever having to do a step. She was a director, really, right? So she was directing me through movement, and it was really something. It sticks with me still to this day.

[11:02] Kerry Butler: We recently did a reading together, and you were telling some story about the tour that you were doing, right? Didn't you meet all of your friends on that tour?

[11:15] Jerry Mitchell: Before all of that, before I went to college, I was in high school, and I was praying for a way to get out of school. I had taken all my credits. I was ready to be a performer. I was ready to do it. I got cast in the national tour of West Side Story with Young Americans. I took my senior year. I went on tour during my senior year, and I was given that opportunity from my principal and my parents as long as I came back and graduated with my senior class. I had one course to take, government, so I studied on the road, did a journal for school and got credit. But really, it was that government. I came back in April, took my government exam, passed it, and graduated with my class. But I got to tour the United States in a non-equity, basically one-man show.

[12:15] Jerry Mitchell: What were your parents always supportive or were they like apprehensive at first, you know, leaving at 17? My parents were kind of, you know, when I sort of started to really get into it in my early teenage years. I was in the Papa Village Players, but then I got involved with the Kalamazoo Community Youth Theater and I did Water of Eleet. There was a playhouse in Water of Eleet, and I did shows there, and I did another community theater out of Lautner Marshall. Then I got an apprenticeship at Hope Summer Repertory Theater in Holland, Michigan. After my sophomore year in high school, my parents knew I was serious about it. So when the tour came up my senior year, my parents were in tears as I was in tears telling them this story that I had gone to the mall and found the Young Americans, followed the bus back.

They had me audition in the lobby, said, "You've got it," and I said, "Oh my god, they'll never let me go because the education comes first." So I told them, and they said, "If you go to high school tomorrow and ask your principal, and he says yes and you can still graduate with your class, we'll let you go." And so I told my principal, and my principal said, "Jerry, we all know you're gonna be doing this the rest of your life, so you should go." He was this guy, Mr. Cook, who saw me before I saw me, you know what I mean? I had a lot of teachers like that who sort of knew that I was in it to win it, and I thought that to have an adult see that in you and then validate that, that was a big deal when I was young.

[14:10] Kerry Butler: Did you do anything to like pump yourself up before auditions or anything, or did you just go in like so confident?

[14:17] Jerry Mitchell: And you do know me. I was, I know, I was just full out, full out, full out. I mean, they used to tease me in the Young Americans because I'd always go around, "I'm a dancer, I'm a dancer," you know, and they'd always say, "He's a dancer, he's a dancer," because I danced 24/7. I danced off the walls, and I, you know, people always ask me was I nervous, and I think I was more excited than nervous. So it's a kind of nerves, but it's an excitement, excitement kind of nerve. I don't know. Do you feel nervous like scared nervous or do you feel excited nervous? You know, when you have to perform a role, as long as I'm really prepared, I'm excited nervous. Yeah, oh, I can't wait to show them. Yeah, I did with this. Exactly. I wanted to get in that room and learn the routine and then do it, you know, that was just my whole approach to things.

[15:18] Kerry Butler: So when did you get the idea that you might want to be a choreographer or even a director?

[15:23] Jerry Mitchell: Well, I was always there because I had, again, I had done it already in the Papa Village Players when I was 14. I directed and choreographed the children's production. They asked me if I wanted to do it. I was like 14, and I said yes. And it was called Aesop's Fallibles, and it was a twist on Aesop's fables. And I said, okay. Not only did I direct and choreograph it, I designed the set. I built, like, I got my best friend Diane Karsten to play the piano and be my musical director. I got my best friend Amy Firestone, the one who took me to the place to be in, and play Mod Mouse. I got all my friends and cast them in the show. I built this giant toy box and painted Aesop's Fallibles and put two lids on it, made everybody come out of the toy box.

I thought that was brilliant. That's how the play would start. I got a motorcycle on stage. I was crazy. I would get friends. Yeah, I would like, I was like, whatever it takes, whatever it takes. But that was sort of, so I was choreographing in school. I would choreograph for my girl. I had a girlfriend, and she was in the pom-poms. I would choreograph for her pom-pom squad. I would choreograph for the flag routines for the marching band. I would choreograph at the village class. Went to college, I would choreograph at college. So what happened was, got to New York when I was 20, right? So I did Brigadoon, A Woman of the Year, Barnum, On Your Toes, and The Will Rogers Follies. Those were the shows I performed in.

But when I was in On Your Toes, I was 23, and it was my fourth Broadway show, and we were out of town, and Donald Sadler was the choreographer, and we were recreating the original Balanchine ballets in the piece, and Peter Martens was setting those. We were out of town, and there was a song called Bach Beethoven Brahms, and it really wasn't working. And we were at a, you know, a cast party after the show, and John Marcheri just, you know, asked me, "Well, what do you think's wrong with it?" And being 23 and completely naive, I said, "Well, this is what I think we should do with the number." So, you know, I gave my pitch, and the next day in rehearsal, Donald Sadler asked me what my idea was because John had told him.

John was the producer and head of the music. He was a, John Marcheri is one of the greatest orchestral conductors in the world, and he was producing it and recreating all the music. He told Donald, Donald asked me, I told him, Dirk Lombard was this dance captain, and then we sort of worked on this little idea that I sort of pitched. It wasn't anything big, but it was enough to lift the number, and it gave me that idea right there that I said, "Well, wait a minute. I could actually do this. I could be the choreographer." So at 23, after that show, I stopped dancing, and I started being a choreographer. During the show, I was offered my first SDC contract for the Chan Hassan Dinner Theatre production of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat.

And how that came about was a couple of summers earlier, I had choreographed it at the Hope Summer Repertory Theatre, which is not a union theatre, but it's a, you know, college, and high school kids come together, and they put on shows as a repertory theater in Holland, Michigan. So the director of that, John Cranny, worked in Minneapolis, and he asked me if I would come to the Chan Hassan Dinner Theatre and recreate my choreography for Joseph there, and I said yes. And I had to sign an SDC contract because it was a union theatre. And so I got two weeks off of On Your Toes vacation, and I went and choreographed the show, and it was supposed to run for like eight weeks. It ran for six months.

Wow. Yeah, and then they asked me back to do West Side Story, and that ran there for like another six months. So I suddenly was choreographing, and I said after this show, I'm gonna stop being a dancer, and I'm gonna focus on choreography. And so that was the start of it at 23.

[19:52] Kerry Butler: Wow. But you did so many Broadway shows that you danced in after that, didn't you? I mean, no, only the Will Rogers when I was 30. Will Rogers. So from 23 until I was 40, when I did my first Broadway show, 17 years, I was an assistant. Michael Bennett, Bob Avian, Ron Field, I worked with on White, George Faison, Joe Layton, you know, all of the greats at that time on Broadway. Yeah, I got to work with a lot of them.

[20:27] Jerry Mitchell: So you learn stuff from all of them.

[20:28] Kerry Butler: Oh my god.

[20:29] Jerry Mitchell: I spent a year and a half with Michael Bennett and two years with Jerry Robbins back-to-back, and those three years of working with those guys, Bob Avian and Michael Bennett and Jerry Robbins were like grad school for me, grad school in musical theater.

[20:47] Kerry Butler: Did you like them? Were they nice?

[20:54] Jerry Mitchell: I did. I did very much. To me, they were everything. They were father figures. They were nice. They were inclusive and unbelievably generous, unbelievably generous to me, you know? Just like, not only was I an assistant, and there was no union for associates at that time, and so they would take care of me, you know? I had no health insurance. I was living in an apartment. Michael would make sure I had money. It was just, they were incredible.

[21:21] Kerry Butler: Yeah.

[21:23] Jerry Mitchell: That's so cool. And then what was your first Broadway show that you choreographed?

[21:28] Jerry Mitchell: So my first Broadway show was You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown. And it came about because by now I had created Broadway Bares, my benefit show, and I was into like the seventh or eighth or ninth year, sixth year. I remember we were doing it at the Palladium, and Mark Senderoff, my lawyer, brought Andrew Lippa to the show. And after he saw the show, he wrote me this letter and sent me a cassette tape at that time with a song he had written, saying he wanted to write a song for Broadway Bares and could I use this song in Broadway Bares? And I didn't know Andrew really, and I wrote him back and I said, "Well, next year's theme is going to be a circus thing, so I really want to do a circus song."

And I said, "Would you like to write the opening number for Broadway Bares?" And he said yes, and we collaborated on the opening number for Broadway Bares 7, The Bear Show on Earth, and it became like a major turning point for the event and the start of an incredible relationship for myself and Andrew as collaborators. We were the same age. He wrote the opening number for Broadway Bares, I think for the next 10 years.

[22:51] Kerry Butler: There was even an...

[22:51] Jerry Mitchell: He hadn't been on Broadway at that point, right? He was also just starting out. Perry, do you know how many people have had never been on Broadway and did Broadway Bares first? Choreographers, composers, designers, actors, I mean so many people—myself, Sergio Trujillo, Josh Rhodes, Lauren Lataro, Dante—they all worked as Broadway Bares as choreographers before they got a Broadway show, and I'm so proud of that because it allowed not only for myself but for all of us a chance to be wildly creative with no producer telling us what we can and can't do and working with the best dancers on Broadway. So it really was this sort of breeding ground for this new crop of choreographers while it was fighting, you know, a terrible disease that was taking people away, and it's kind of crazy how that happened.

But going back to that, going back to Andrew, Andrew collaborated on that song, and then Michael Mayer was looking for a choreographer for Charlie Brown, and Andrew was the musical director, and he said, "You should meet Jerry Mitchell." And Michael didn't know who I was, and it just so happened at that same time I had just choreographed a Follies at the Paper Mill Playhouse with Donna McKenzie.

[24:29] Jerry Mitchell: D. Hodie and Anne Miller as Carlotta. And it got a rave review in the New York Times. And so, Michael Mayer came out to see that production. And after he saw that production, he called me in for a meeting and hired me to do Charlie Brown. And that got my foot in the door. And it was produced by Mike Isaacson and Kristen Kasky, who then hired me for the first time to be a director choreographer of Legally Blonde. They hired me for my first job as a choreographer and my first job as a director choreographer. Isn't that crazy? I know. This business is all connections too.

[25:07] Kerry Butler: Hey, everyone. I have some exciting news. I am revamping my YouTube channel, Kerry Butler Official. My first episode is all about Beetlejuice. And I know so many schools are doing Beetlejuice now. So, I'm focusing in on the creation of Beetlejuice and what you need to think about for each of those characters if you're auditioning for them or if you're working on them and kind of what our backstory was in creating those characters. And a fun little thing I'm doing on the YouTube channel is people can submit their auditions to me and I will give you feedback at the end of my YouTube videos. So, if you would like to be included on my YouTube channel, then on Kerry Butler Coach at Instagram, I put a form for you to fill out and I have an email address specifically for submissions for people who want to submit an audition that I will give you feedback and try and help you hit those notes or hit the acting beats. But I just thought it would be a fun way to connect. And be sure to subscribe to my new YouTube channel, Kerry Butler Official, for all the behind-the-scenes stories of the shows that I've done.

[26:21] Jerry Mitchell: How would people, if someone's listening to this and you know they want to be an up-and-coming choreographer, how would they get involved with Broadway Bares?

[26:31] Kerry Butler: Just call up Broadway Cares at 45 days and say, I want to be involved with Broadway Bares. Basically, what happens is the choreographers who choreograph for Broadway Bares are chosen by the director of the season. Whoever the director is, I give the director full creative control. As a creative producer now, I kind of try to support them in their ideas and help them come true because that's what I had when I was working and nobody telling me what I need to do. And how you get involved now is to volunteer for Broadway Cares at 45 days. Get involved with the organization. Express interest. Sometimes you come on as an associate choreographer for the first year and then you get to be a choreographer the next year because obviously everybody wants to do it now because it's such a big event and it's such a wonderful experience for the community, for young people particularly, because a lot of shows don't ask choreographers to do the kind of work they can do in Broadway Bares. I was an assistant for 17 years. All I wanted to do was choreograph a Broadway show and I could not get hired.

[27:53] Jerry Mitchell: The first things I did was I choreographed little scenes and plays. The Manhattan Theater Club hired me early on to choreograph for Terrence McNally's Lips Together, Teeth Apart. So I choreographed Nathan Lane, Christine Baranski, Swoosie Kurtz, and Anthony Held in that play. There was a fight sequence. There was a little dance sequence for Nathan and Swoosie and Nathan and Christine. I would do those little bits. I did Corpus Christi. I did 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, which was a reading of a musical that never happened at all at the Manhattan Theater Club. I choreographed for the WPA for Jeffrey, the play for Paul Rudnick. There were dance sequences in that. I choreographed Hedwig and the Angry Inch off Broadway. I choreographed movies. I did a lot of movies. The first one was Scent of a Woman. Once I did that tango for Pacino, I got called to do every movie for every star who had to dance in a scene. I did that for a long time.

[29:14] Kerry Butler: Did you have an agent that would get you all these jobs?

[29:21] Jerry Mitchell: I freelanced with Eric Shepard at ICM at the time. He was Tommy Toon's agent. He took me in and I freelanced with him. I also had Mark Zindroff, who was my lawyer agent. He was pushing me out there.

[29:40] Kerry Butler: How do you come up with your ideas? What is your process? I feel like even in Boop, I loved the screen behind. I thought that was so fun. I don't think this is a spoiler alert, but the thing that you do with the costumes, you had that idea. Does it wake you up in the middle of the night? What's your process for coming up with these?

[29:59] Jerry Mitchell: For me, it always starts with the music. I listen to the songs over and over and over and over. I start to get images in my head. Then usually, I'll get in a room with the dancers. If I have a dance arranger, like on Boop, I had Zane Mark, who was my dance arranger. We had worked together on Never Gonna Dance and also the first time on The Full Monty. Zane's just a fabulous dance arranger. We get along so great, almost like we just complete each other's sentences in music and dance. I get in the room and we start to play around with ideas. Some of them go away and some of them stay. That opening number, that big tap number, that whole dance, that dance break, was just getting in the room with Zane.

I had Rachelle Rack as my associate choreographer and John Rua. We just worked and worked and worked until we got the numbers the way we wanted. I get ideas. Because I knew I was going to be creating in a black and white world for Boop in the beginning and I wanted, by the end of that number, I said, everybody in the audience has to think Betty Boop is a star. That's the goal. I focused it that way. I spoke to Greg Barnes about the costumes. I spoke to David Rockwell about the set. The newest element for me was Finn Ross doing the video projections.

[31:30] Kerry Butler: Yeah, I love the video projections.

[31:30] Jerry Mitchell: And that was kind of an amazing new experience for me. What I would do is I'd get in the room and I'd film my dancers to the music that Zane was writing for the dance breaks. I'd send that little clip on my iPhone off to Finn and Finn would make a little video on his computer with my dancers down in the corner doing the routine and he'd send it back to me. I could see what he was doing. In the transition, when they go from the black and white world to the real world and it's full of color, from that transition, there were three clips from a Fleischer cartoon that I wanted to use. There was one where the faces come at you like this. I said to Finn, I just see these faces coming at me and I like this.

There was this thunder and lightning that was going like, and I sent him that cartoon and I said, I love this. I love this. What else can we, and then he came up with the swirling thing, the black and white that then turns into color as the dancers throw color at it and it lands us in the room. We just collaborated on how the video could take us from that black and white world to a world full of color.

[32:51] Jerry Mitchell: In Ainsley's number, I Speak Fluent Jazz, when he plays the trumpet and the notes come out and the dancers are all suddenly, they're an expression of his music. All of that on the back wall, he would send me clips of that and I would look at it. When we went into tech rehearsal for the show, everything that was on the wall, I had already seen. The tech was very fast, but what we didn't have in Chicago was an opening number to the second act. I was like, the audience felt so secure with the musical in act one because of that big black and white tap number that starts the show. I knew leaving Chicago, I had to come up with a production number that could open the second act and make the audience feel as secure.

The first question I asked myself is, where are the characters right now in the story? Both worlds are looking for Betty Boop. The black and white world is saying, where is Betty? The color world is saying, Betty's here because we now know she's in New York City. Both worlds are saying, we've got to find her. Then I added Betty's catchphrase, and that was the chorus. I put that on paper and gave it to David and Susan. I said, this is what I think it is. Then they wrote the song and I went into the studio. I told Greg, before we left Chicago, and Finn, I said, I think there's a way now with the tools, what I've learned in Chicago, how quickly the worlds can go back and forth.

[34:34] Jerry Mitchell: And Greg's brilliance as a costume designer, I think there's a world where we can represent the world today full in color and the world of black and white on stage together. What I didn't quite figure out yet was if I put them all in a line and I just make them turn around and the line is black and white, and then the line is all in color, then the line goes back to black and white. If I could do that with the costumes, I said, that could be brilliant. We've all seen the thing where the person is cut this way and it's a bride in a groom costume and they stand like that's the bride and that's the groom. I said, what if it was like this and it was the difference between black and white and full color?

I took that to Greg and Greg said, yes, I think we can do it. I said, before we spend a billion dollars, let's do a test. He got gray sweatpants and color sweatpants, cut them in half, sewed them back together and I got four of my dancers. We went to the studio and we stood in a line and we did it. As soon as we flipped in the sweatpants, I said, it's going to work. Then you add Philip's amazing lighting, which goes from stark white to full color. All of those worlds come together and it truly turned into an impressive number.

[36:02] Jerry Mitchell: When we were in rehearsals in the studio, the dancers thought it was terrible. They didn't believe it because it's not a hard dance number. You know what it reminds me of? Don't Break the Rules from Catch Me If You Can. Do you remember? Don't break the rules, the big number that Norbert did? The choreography was super simple. It just kept building and building and building and building. This number does the same thing. It starts super simple.

[36:43] Jerry Mitchell: The podcast is for a lot of performers who want to make it in the business.

[37:11] Kerry Butler: Do you have any pet peeves about people working with people in the room?

[37:41] Jerry Mitchell: A dollar in the jar. I always show up. I feel like being on time is respecting the other people in the room. Not me, the other performers. If they're there on time, why shouldn't you be on time? Everybody has to deal with the same thing: subways, walking, cars, getting to rehearsal. Get to rehearsal on time and be ready to go. Get there, warm up, whatever it takes. At 10 o'clock, let's go. First of all, musicals are incredibly expensive to do. They cost so much money to do. Most performers, I know when I was a performer, I wasn't aware of that. What that does, as that continues to escalate, it puts more responsibility on the creative people to try and make sure you're making the best product you can so the people who invest in the show get their investment back in some way, shape, or form.

You feel that responsibility. That eight-hour period of rehearsal is so important to the development of a musical. I feel fortunate because I've always been able to take my shows out of town, but it's getting cost-prohibitive to do that for a lot of people. I think it's an investment well-spent, but others debate that and say, is it because it's $3 million now to take a show out of town, at least? Will you get that back? Will your show be able to recoup that on top of all the other costs? Being on time is so important to me. Actually, being present is so important to me. When you're rehearsing a show, the last thing somebody on the other side wants to see is that you're working on your phone or on your computer or not paying attention.

When they say, let's go, your lines aren't learned, your words aren't learned. All of that time when you're not actually being used in the room, you can be using it to get the material under your belt so when you come into the room, you can give up yourself completely to the creative process. Those people who do that, as you know, are the ones who are out of the book. It's memorized. They're ready to take direction and work with you on creating the best scene, the best song, the best dance possible. That is so appreciated by me and by others who have to do that work. I just know it is. You are someone who does use the same people over and over again, like same dancers over and over again. When you find that in somebody, I feel—when you find somebody who comes into the room and is a joy to be in the room with, you are.

There's so many. I always am thinking, well, what about that one? Can they do this? Or I need somebody for a reading. I go, call this person. I know they can deliver this. We're just reading the material right now. The readings have become call actors you know to read the material until you get to the place where you're ready to audition the material because actors are pros. Actors are pros and they know how to come in in a 29-hour reading, deliver the material that's on the page, and help you develop it to the next stage. You shouldn't really have to audition actors for a 29-hour reading. You should know enough good actors that you can call them in with the casting director and get the best version of that reading if possible. Do you have any pet peeves for auditioning, like for things you sing in there or things that people do great in the room?

[42:10] Jerry Mitchell: Well, I think people need to know that I'm not looking for people to be perfect in an audition. Especially if you feel reluctant about a dance audition. I know so many people do. I feel like, of course, there are dancers. You need a dancer for this part. This is a dancer's part. He's got to dance. But a lot of musicals need actors and singers who can move well. All I need to know is that within an allotted amount of weeks, I'll be able to teach that person what I want them to do dance-wise. If you come in and you learn it and you show me that, you can learn. A lot of times, I always say to actors particularly, go home and sleep on it, right? Because the next day, I always do the steps better the next day myself because they get into my body and I don't feel so awkward as the first day I learn it.

The next day, I feel much better. That's helpful. When I'm looking for movers and singers and actors who move, I'm not looking for you to be perfect. I'm looking for you to be teachable. Then when dancers come into the room for a real super-duper dance call, I go, be kind to everyone in the room because I'm looking at you not only about what you're going to bring to the show, but how it's going to be like to work with you. We're getting married, basically. We're getting married for the next three months at least, right? Maybe a year. So I want to go to work and be happy. I want everybody to come to work and be happy. I want everybody to be excited about the work, to be engaged in the work, to be looking forward to going to the theater, not like it's a chore.

That comes from Jack O'Brien, too, who we both worked with. Jack sets such a wonderful space for you to create in and inclusive that I've learned so much from him about that and try to bring that to my shows.

[45:05] Kerry Butler: Yeah, yeah. We've both worked with people in power positions who are not particularly nice. There is something about when you create an environment like with you and with Jack where you feel so safe that if I make a choice that's really wrong, I'm not going to be judged. It's going to be like, yeah, no, that one, go back to what you used to do. And then you can find great things.

[45:24] Jerry Mitchell: Well, it's part of the fun of it, isn't it? To be able to play around. We're doing a play, right? So let's play for a while until we find what's right for this story.

[45:34] Kerry Butler: Do you have anything that you look for on dancers' resumes when you're casting them? Do you care what schooling they've had?

[45:41] Jerry Mitchell: I never turn it over. I know I'm terrible, but I don't look at the resume until I've met the person and looked at the person first. But that's good, actually. It's always been my way. I look at the person who's presenting today first, and then I find out from the process. I am now at my advanced age. I do check up on everybody. I reach out to the community to find out how were they to work with.

[46:04] Kerry Butler: Oh, yes.

[46:06] Jerry Mitchell: I really do. I check out people from other sources because I've had a few instances where I didn't do that, and I should have. I've had people do that to me, too.

[46:14] Kerry Butler: Yeah, they've asked me how I do it. I do that all the time now. I do it all the time.

[46:20] Jerry Mitchell: So what I'm saying is, you're not getting one job, you're building your career. So make sure that the job you take, you want to be there because it will make you better, and you will learn. Whether the show is successful or unsuccessful isn't the point. The point is that you're in a room with people you want to be with, and then that experience will inform the next experience, and so on and so forth. At the end of the day, you'll look back and you'll go, oh, I built a career, right? That's what you want to do. That's what we want to do.

[47:07] Kerry Butler: Yes. Well, thank you, Jerry Mitchell, so much for being here. Congratulations on your nomination. We'll be rooting for you.

[47:20] Jerry Mitchell: Today, we got three Outer Critics Circle Awards.

[47:23] Kerry Butler: Oh, my gosh. You just won them?

[47:26] Jerry Mitchell: Jasmine won Best Actress in a Musical today. Greg Barnes won Best Costumes in a Musical, and I won Best Choreography, or we won Best Choreography.

[47:37] Kerry Butler: I was surprised at 10 o'clock in the morning as I was driving into the city.

[47:42] Jerry Mitchell: Oh, my gosh. That's amazing. I'm so glad I got to celebrate with you today. Everyone, go see Boop the Musical, the award-winning Boop the Musical.

[47:55] Kerry Butler: Oh, and Jerry, do you have social media? Do you want people to follow you? Do you want to add anything else? Do you want them to plug and see?

[48:00] Jerry Mitchell: Just follow. You can follow me for all the latest on JammieProd on Instagram, and right after the Tonys, two weeks after the Tonys, is Broadway Bears at Hammerstein Ballroom. Get your tickets now. It's going to be a sensational show.

[48:17] Kerry Butler: Yay. Thank you so much, Jerry.

[48:19] Jerry Mitchell: Thank you.

[48:24] Kerry Butler: Thank you so much for listening. If you would like me to come to your school or theater group and give a masterclass or a talkback, please reach out at kerrybutlercoach.com. If you like this podcast, subscribe and leave a rating. And in the comments, let me know what topics you want me to cover. You're listening to the Broadway Podcast Network. Together, you and I are breaking Broadway.