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[0:00] Mo Brady: You're listening to The Ensemblist, the only podcast that shows you Broadway from the inside out. Welcome, I'm Mo Brady.

[0:21] Mo Brady: One of my favorite traditions in the Broadway community is the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. It does two of the things that I love most about our industry. One is uniting us with our fans and the kid in all of us. And the other is bringing us together. When shows perform on the Tony Awards, it's one of the few times every year where actors get to see each other and celebrate each other's great work.

[0:45] Mo Brady: So thanks to my friends at Broadway Podcast Network, we were able to recreate that this year by sharing some of our favorite memories of the Thanksgiving Day Parade in a live stream hosted by Broadway Podcast Network. I got to speak to some of my friends in the theater industry who have also performed on the parade. Elliott Mattox from Equity One Podcast, Jessica Rush and Cara Cooper from Mama's Talking Loud. We got to talk about mishaps in the parade, secrets from behind the scenes, as well as their favorite moments of being part of one of Broadway's greatest traditions. Here's our conversation.

[1:29] Mo Brady: Open it up to the group. What is something about performing on the parade that you were surprised to find out?

[1:36] Cara Cooper: I mean, I think when I watched it as a kid, I just thought you were part of the parade. I thought you walked in the parade, and then when you got in front of Macy's, you did your performance, and then you continued on as part of the parade.

[1:48] Elliott Mattox: You thought you did a whole three miles.

[1:50] Cara Cooper: Yes. I was in it. I was like, I'm going to be in the parade. I'm going to be in the whole parade. I fully thought that when I was younger. I think once I got older, I kind of keyed in, but when I was younger, I was very clear that I was going to be in the whole parade someday.

[2:05] Jessica Rush: Yes. Well, you could still be on a float, or you could carry a balloon. That could still happen. I think the thing that surprised me the most was how competitive it is to get a slot. If you're a show, not necessarily on our end, but these slots to perform are invaluable to shows because you get to show millions and millions of people something about your show for them to come see it. It's hugely helpful for shows. With that competitive quality comes, you don't know if you're doing it until very late, like a week and a half, two weeks before. It is so quick.

[2:38] Cara Cooper: Right. Then you have to record. Some people, spoiler alert, we're not singing live because it's outdoors in the elements. So many things could go wrong. No one on the parade is singing live, not the people on the floats. Nobody, y'all. Some people think that you... I saw online the other day, someone was like, I always thought they just sang along to the cast recording. It's like, well, some shows, A, don't have a cast recording at that point, or B, ever have a cast recording, and it's not that. What I think is fun and interesting is, yes, you find out like a week and a half before, and then in the span of those next few days, you have to go to the studio, you have to lay down the tracks, everyone has to... You have to rehearse, and then you get to go and rehearse on the street at night, like after your show. It's just such a fun, special festive time.

[3:36] Elliott Mattox: Whirlwind. We're going to dive into all of those things, but I want to show our viewers some clips of you guys each being in the parade and ask you a few questions about it. So our first clip is of Cara doing All Shook Up.

[3:46] Mo Brady: Cara, you were one of the ones in the pink, I assume.

[3:55] Cara Cooper: One of the ones in the pink.

[3:57] Mo Brady: In the gingham skirt.

[3:57] Cara Cooper: One of the many blondes bouncing around.

[4:00] Mo Brady: Was that the plaid? You're on the front row, obviously.

[4:03] Cara Cooper: I mean, she's Broadway's Cara Cooper, but in a plaid skirt, right? Plaid skirt and sweaters. This is a fun fact about that number that we did. That is a number that was never in the show, the choreography that you saw. So that music was in the show. We performed on the Thanksgiving Day Parade before we even were on Broadway, before we even went to our out-of-town tryout.

[4:24] Jessica Rush: What?

[4:24] Cara Cooper: So we were... Oh, yeah. We were rehearsing in New York, and we got this slot on the Thanksgiving Day Parade. I mean, I don't know who our producer... Like what strings our producers or connections our producers had. But we performed... We created this number for the parade. I don't even think the whole show was staged at that point, to be quite honest with you. I'm not joking.

[4:46] Jessica Rush: That is so crazy.

[4:47] Cara Cooper: Those costumes we have on, we never wore them in the show. They literally pulled stuff off the rack. They got some like, you know, poodle skirts from costume shops. Sweaters from Macy's.

[4:59] Jessica Rush: Sweaters from Macy's.

[5:01] Mo Brady: What about hair? Was it your own hair?

[5:04] Cara Cooper: Own hair. Except Cheyenne Jackson's hair.

[5:08] Cara Cooper: The blonde wig, which was never to be seen of again. That is the only time that Chad the Roustabout in All Shook Up wore a blonde wig.

[5:18] Mo Brady: Thanksgiving Day Parade. What was the weather like?

[5:22] Cara Cooper: So they're all pulling all these sweaters for us. Got our double tights, the whole thing. 65 degrees. We were sweating bullets. We were so covered up and bundled up. I think at the end, they were switching out. You could see some of the girls had short sleeve shirts. They were the lucky ones. But me, Michelle Cottrell, Jenny Ford, we all had these bulky sweaters on. It was really warm. The other time I performed on the parade, it was totally freezing. So I got the full parade experience. But it was really hot. I could have cared less. I was living my dream, being on the parade.

[5:59] Mo Brady: Let's see. Let's move a little bit further into the future. Let's watch Elliott's performance with the cast of Beetlejuice.

[6:11] Elliott Mattox: I haven't watched that in so long.

[6:14] Mo Brady: You don't just watch your own parade performances every week?

[6:18] Elliott Mattox: A Monday morning sort of thing?

[6:19] Mo Brady: No, I don't.

[6:21] Elliott Mattox: I don't. Yeah.

[6:21] Mo Brady: I miss that mustache, though.

[6:23] Elliott Mattox: I have to say. One of the crowning achievements of Beetlejuice's TV performances is that the lyrics were all tailored for that event, right? The Tonys had their own lyrics. Were your lyrics different for this?

[6:38] Elliott Mattox: In the clip that we just listened to, they rewrote the bridge completely to be about, you're going to be sleepy from the tryptophan, and you don't want to be with your family too much so you can survive Thanksgiving. That was the kind of joke. Thanksgiving, you can make it out alive. So that was kind of how Eddie turned the lyrics into this really twisted Thanksgiving moment, which was really fun.

[7:08] Mo Brady: How early did you get those lyrics? Is it the same sort of week time frame?

[7:13] Elliott Mattox: I mean, yeah, really kind of quick. You found out you're doing the parade, and then I'm sure Eddie had already been writing in preparation, and then we got the lyrics and recorded the new version. Especially, like you were saying, you record it ahead of time. We did three different TV performances, and all of them had different lyrics. So the Tonys had different lyrics. Our Today Show performance were different lyrics. And then the parade was different. But I think mainly Alex's lyrics were different. Ours stayed the same except for the Thanksgiving parade.

[7:47] Mo Brady: You weren't talking about turkey at the Tony Awards?

[7:50] Elliott Mattox: We weren't, no.

[7:57] Jessica Rush: Oh my god, Alex is having to learn all these different lyrics and it's so, it's such a patter song for him with, I mean, there's just so many, there are so many words and I just kept thinking he has to be, and then obviously still doing the show at night and doing the normal lyrics. It's like being in previews, yeah for sure. That's the main challenge is like rehearsing those lyrics during the day and then having a two-hour dinner break and then right away is the opening so like you don't have time to get back into it. It's like, okay here we are, do I remember? We're like whispering to each other, we're like, I couldn't even tell you the lyric right now but we're like, this is the lyric, this is the lyric, don't say this tonight, don't say this. Well luckily there's no volume on what you're actually doing at the parade so you could just be like, help! But that performance, you guys added swings, right?

[8:46] Elliott Mattox: Right.

[8:46] Jessica Rush: So how similar, it looks similar to the opening of the show but was it like, were you able to like pick it up and just put it into a bigger space? We had expanded the number for the Tonys before so there was already kind of an expanded version but we added more people into it so this was a completely different thing. We had like skeletons dancing across like, there was like all this random Danny Ritigliano like fed nachos on the sidelines like, that's who that is! Yes, Broadway legends. Those things were all kind of like part of rehearsal so it wasn't even like, okay let's rehearse this number from the show and you know, make sure you're like, we'll like re-block it on the big star. It's like, this is a new number with like five new people in it.

Which is exciting, I mean it made it like a new thing, you know, which was really like fun and we were so excited to get to do the parade and to have swings get to do it as well which was always a great thought that our creative team had, was to involve everyone. So yeah, so it was really, really thrilling and a lot of fun.

[9:52] Mo Brady: Speaking of numbers that you aren't quite prepared for, let's see Jess in, this is last year right? Parade performance of Tina, the Tina Turner musical. Often because they're trying to like keep the parade stuff under wraps, productions like to do that, you don't necessarily know who's going to be in it, what number they're going to be doing, if it's going to be a full cast or a smaller thing. So often the first way to find out is people's Instagram posts in the morning, right? Like you wake up early, when you're a parent like me, you wake up early and you're scrolling through your feed and you're like, oh yeah, they're getting ready, they're getting ready. Jess is getting ready for the parade, why is Jess getting ready? Tell the story of how you got wrangled into the parade.

[10:47] Jessica Rush: No, I'm not, I was living my best iCat dreams, as you could see, like giving you Tina Turner. So in Tina, I play Rhonda, which is a principal contract and I'm not, I'm only Rhonda, I'm not really in the ensemble. And I never dance, I'm never, Katie Weber has a track where she's doing a lot of the numbers and she's always in that, what you just saw. I'm not normally there. However, we had one of our cast members, Mars Rucker, who is normally, was normally in that number, they were injured and were unable to do the parade. So in fact, I'm even wearing Mars' wig in that clip and costume, like I'm wearing Mars' wig and their costume. And so like two days before the parade, because they weren't sure they were going to do it or not.

It was, they were at rehearsals and they were trying to make it happen. And then a couple of days before the parade, they called and it's funny because my husband was just telling the story yesterday. He's like, who do you know? They called me like, we don't really know what you're going to say, but we're wondering if there's a world where you would be okay with dancing in the parade. And I was like, yes.

[11:54] Jessica Rush: And they were like, really? I was like, absolutely. Like I'm always in the wing doing all this dance, all this choreography, like during the curtain call during the mega mix, because I don't get to do all the fun stuff. Like I'm just waiting to take my bow. And so I already sort of knew it just because, you know, I'm watching it every day. And so, and also the parade is a dream. The year before I had been lucky enough to do it with Donna Summer, with Summer, Donna Summer musical. That was my first parade. And so then to get to do it last year with my Tina company was just amazing. It was incredible. And it's, being on the parade was a childhood dream. I mean, it's like, that is bucket list and to get, you know, one time was something, but to get to do it two years in a row and to dance in it, you know, it's like my dancing days, I don't dance that much anymore. You know, it's like that. It was nice to do that.

[12:46] Jessica Rush: Yeah. I have to, I had to, yeah. You, you, you do notice though, if you were to watch that clip, I get around in those spins, but there's one point where there's like this big, like throw the head and then come up over and over again. Mama's back was not quite as far over as some of those younger girls. I do have to say.

[13:04] Mo Brady: It was early.

[13:05] Jessica Rush: It was early. I bet in rehearsal, you really showed them. But the year before that for Summer, it was the coldest Thanksgiving on record. The Thanksgiving day parade on record. It was 19 degrees with a five degree wind chill when we started the parade and I couldn't feel my feet. I mean, that was like, and Ariana DeBose was there in this like little tiny number for the finale. And we're all in these white jumpsuits with like no sleeves. And I remember like taking off our big coats and standing there and it's like, oh my God, oh my God. It's like the wind is blowing and it's so cold. And by the time the number was over, when I was turning, I couldn't even feel my feet. I was like, am I even turning? Am I, am I in the right spot? Like, I don't even know if I'm connected to the ground. I can't feel anything. So it was much warmer last year. I'll take that.

[14:00] Elliott Mattox: Those New York City streets can be such like wind tunnels. On that big star, that big ass star like Elliot was talking about, there's a manhole in one of the points that you have to dance around. It's raised, you guys. Y'all. It's the street. I mean, so there's literally a raised manhole that you're having to dance up and over and on and turn or whatever. I mean, it's, it's crazy. It is a street.

[14:25] Jessica Rush: That's nuts. Oh.

[14:27] Elliott Mattox: And it's that, but that space, that space that you performed it and that later I, and you performed it for Beetlejuice. And anyway, that is 34th street. Back in the day, the All Shook Up performance is on Broadway.

[14:40] Jessica Rush: Oh.

[14:41] Elliott Mattox: So that's even more narrow.

[14:44] Jessica Rush: Shut up.

[14:45] Elliott Mattox: That was tiny.

[14:47] Jessica Rush: So yeah, totally.

[14:49] Elliott Mattox: So it's like, it was like, I've done both, both on the, on 34th street and on Broadway, and it's totally different experience. The Broadway is really narrow and the 34th street's really big. It goes both ways.

[15:02] Mo Brady: Secrets, guys. I love all of this.

[15:11] Mo Brady: Special thanks to Cara Cooper, Elliott Mattox, and Jessica Rush for sharing their stories with us today. The Ensemblist was produced today by Jackson Klein and me, Mo Brady. There are two great ways you can be helping The Ensemblist right now. One is by leaving us a rating and review on Apple Podcasts. And the second is by becoming a Patreon member at patreon.com slash The Ensemblist. Please follow The Ensemblist wherever you listen to podcasts on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or at bpn.fm, the home of Broadway Podcast Network. You can also follow us on Instagram. Thanks for listening. Until next time.