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[0:00] Mo Brady: You're listening to The Ensemblist, Broadway's original podcast. I'm Mo Brady.

[0:24] Mo Brady: The Band's Visit is one of those Broadway musicals that does not have an ensemble, per se, but in which every actor is working together to present a cohesive point of view. Yes, there are leading roles and supporting roles in the show, but more than in most musicals, the entire company of actors, musicians, and actor-musicians create a mood, a feeling, and a sense of place. And so we honor the remarkable run on Broadway with this episode featuring some of our favorite stories about The Band's Visit. Over the show's run on Broadway, The Ensemblist has been given a unique insight into the show's creative process. Earlier this year, George Abud wrote a remarkable blog for us about actor-musicians and the theatrical magic that can happen when artists with that unique skill set are employed.

Here again, in his own words, is George Abud. In defense of instrumental music in the American theater, as utilized by performers as a means to heighten, expand, and develop character and story visually and orally on stage. By George Abud. As the old saying goes, when you can't keep it in, you speak. When it's too much to speak, you sing. When it's too much to sing, you dance. Perhaps, when it's too much for all that, you play.

[2:09] George Abud: I find myself these days walking the tightrope between two worlds as the only actor-musician in the Broadway production of The Band's Visit. In playing the character of Kamel, violinist for the Alexandria Ceremonial Police Orchestra, I would like to offer my thoughts on what the show does through instrumental music as utilized by characters to advance the ways in which we storytell. The theater almost seems to be an art form created to verbalize music. Only through music can we express most purely and most directly what is incommunicable inside of us, and only through music can another receive instantly everything we are going through. They couldn't possibly comprehend it all, but they can receive it.

If the voice that comes out of your mouth is that of your head and your heart, perhaps the voice that comes out of a musical instrument is that of your guts. Perhaps we are always trying to get at these gut feelings when making something in the theater, but the means by which performers attempt to summon these deepest truths seem to have been limited to a few core abilities, the human speaking and singing voice, and the human body in stillness and in motion. The logical next step, it seems to me, is the use of musical instruments by performers, those who are integral to the storytelling of a particular piece. For what more pure extension of the human body and voice could there be than a musical instrument?

Here we'll group this kind of performer into two categories. One, actor-musicians, here defined as actors who play music in service of their acting, and two, musician-actors, or on-stage musicians, musicians who are made part of the physical storytelling on stage. The use of actor-musicians and on-stage musicians, prevalent in the American theater in the last two decades, has already seen much success. So why has this new form not yet received the universal acceptance as of singing and dancing? The disconnect seems to lie within the following. One, acting is one thing, and playing an instrument, entirely different from singing and dancing. The disconnect seems to lie within the following. One, acting is one thing, and playing an instrument, entirely another thing, and these two separate art forms cannot merge.

Two, unfamiliarity. Many individuals' association with instruments in the theater is usually off stage, not on stage. Those who play instruments are in the orchestra below, or piped through speakers, or elsewhere, rarely visible. Three, instrumental music, like dance, is a wordless expression, and people can feel disconnected by something they do not readily comprehend. Four, there are not as many actors that play instruments proficiently as there are those who can sing and dance. Those dismissive of this form fail to grasp the huge breadth of a musical instrument's on-stage theatrical range. How the instrument itself can become its own character, or an extension of a character, or a connection between characters, when actually made present on-stage, is a mystery.

The pluck of a string, a long bowed note, the dryness of a reed, the sensuality of a brass instrument, can often echo what a character is going through with their feeling in their bones, what they can't seem to put into words better than any other expression.

[6:02] George Abud: Let us take, for example, the dinner scene in The Band's Visit, in which Andy Polk, playing the character of Avrum, sings the beat of your heart. He tells the two Egyptian officers in his daughter's home that he, like them, also plays in a band. And what do you know? He's a violin player, just like my character Kamel. Through the song, Avrum connects with Kamel, talking about music being this pulse in his chest, this food of love. And during the song, my character is moved to the point of making a statement. For Kamel, a man who is guarded, suspicious, and nervous, he would not sing something back to Avrum, and he would not bust out into some sort of dance. He would not even respond verbally.

No, he could do nothing else but speak through his violin. The violin then becomes an extension of the acting. And so, what better storytelling device could there be to connect these two strangers than for my character to bust out a violin and rip through an improvised solo, played upon the same music that Andy's character has created? In this case, the violin is the only means by which Kamel could actually penetrate the heart and memory of the man who began the song.

[7:49] George Abud: The use of playing the instrument in this case heightens the storytelling in several ways. It is a visceral way of bringing these two strangers together, of propelling the character of Avrum into a more vulnerable and emotional place by triggering his own memories of playing, of advancing the song, and also, for the first time, showing that music is the common language of these two differing cultures. This, to me, could not have been accomplished as strongly, as dramatically, if I, the actor, couldn't actually play the violin and play it live in that moment. The scene would be less without it. The musical instrument takes the storytelling to that next level, and the need for an actor-musician here is essential.

[9:00] George Abud: We go to the theater because we want to be in the presence of the event. The effect is overwhelmingly different. Hearing the human voice is one experience. Seeing the body it comes out of while hearing it is an entirely different one. Same goes with instrumental music. Where is the person? Where is the breath coming from? Where are the hands? Where is that part of the story? While I feel appreciation of this form is not fully here yet, I do believe it's coming, and I believe that The Band's Visit will be part of the journey of bringing greater prominence, specificity, integrity, and interest to musical instruments functioning in this way on stage. In a story about music, about instruments, about a culture defined by its music and poetry, it is only common sense to make sure that the instruments are a central part of the statement. But how you use them within that form, that is everything.

[10:53] Mo Brady: Thank you, George. Now, as The Band's Visit was preparing for its Broadway opening, The Ensemblist had a unique look inside the creative process. Cast member Sharone Sayegh sent us weekly voice memos from the rehearsal room, detailing how the show was developing and changing from their off-Broadway run at the Atlantic Theatre Company the previous fall. While those voice memos resulted in three separate episodes that we shared in 2017, we've compiled some of our favorite moments into a super-cut segment for you now. Taking us back in time to the show's route towards opening night, here's Sharone Sayegh.

[11:30] Sharone Sayegh: Hey there, this is Sharone Sayegh. I play Anna in The Band's Visit, and I'm coming to you from New 42nd Street Studios. Today is Saturday, September 9th, and we just finished week one of rehearsal. We just started at the beginning of the show, and we revisited, you know, blocking and dialogue and all that stuff that we had done downtown at the Atlantic, and kind of discussed what we wanted to keep, what we wanted to change for this new run at the Barrymore. It was really cool. You know, you don't often get a chance to do a show, close it, and then get to revisit and kind of refine. So we're kind of in a lucky position that we got to do it before off-Broadway, and now we're transferring to Broadway, and we get to fix things we wanted to fix and change things and make them better and make them unique.

Rehearsal this week was really, really cool. And it was awesome because we were already kind of such a family, so it was just like coming back home, which was really special. My favorite moment of the week was a roller skating rehearsal. There was some roller skating in the show, which was super fun. We're kind of adding on to it for this production, and we're kind of extending it a little bit. So we played around with all this different kind of movement we can do on roller skates. And so that was a really fun day of rehearsal with our choreographer Patrick McCollum. And I think that's going to be really fun for audiences to see because you don't get to see that every day on a Broadway stage.

[12:56] Sharone Sayegh: It is Saturday, September 17, 2017, and we just finished week two of rehearsal. Friday we started the day with an hour of Gaga. So Gaga is a movement language developed by Ohad Naharin. He's this Israeli choreographer, dancer. He started this dance company called Bat Sheva, which is kind of a very big dance company in Israel. So Ohad developed this movement language called Gaga, and it's kind of a way of gaining knowledge and self-awareness through your body. So it's not only something that started in Israel, and our piece takes place in Israel, so it's obviously appropriate, but it's also just an incredible way of exploring your body and exploring how you can tell stories through your body and opening yourself up. It's really beautiful. I think it really gets the entire cast in their body, and it connects us all, and it just allows us to be free and open up and warm up and be loose and just be ready for the show, which is really cool.

[14:04] Sharone Sayegh: Today is Saturday, September 23, 2017, and we just finished week three of rehearsal, our last week in the studio. Thursday we had our Sitzprobe, which is always my favorite day of the rehearsal process. So Sitzprobe is the first time that the entire band and orchestra and the entire cast gets to sing and play together and hear each other, because usually in rehearsal, sometimes you just rehearse with a piano, sometimes you rehearse with a piano and drums. It depends on every show. Sometimes there's a little bit more of the band in the rehearsal room, but usually the orchestra rehearses separately and the actors and singers rehearse separately, and then on the Sitzprobe day, everybody comes together.

So you get to hear the musical arrangements, and the band gets to hear the singing, and it's so exciting and so fun. And our amazing, amazing composer, David Yazbek, you know, once he hears everything together, he sometimes may change somebody's vocal line or he may change a part in the orchestra, which he did quite a bit, and it's really cool to watch him work. I'm coming to you this time from the Barrymore Theatre, which is where we're going to be showing on Broadway, which is really exciting. Oh, we completely restaged the opening number this week, so if you saw it in the first week of previews and you saw it in the second week of previews, you saw a different opening number, or you saw a different staging for the opening number, which is pretty crazy.

I don't know if we're going to change it again or not, but we'll see. We also, we took one character out of one scene, which I won't give away which one, but that was a big change that we did this week.

[16:06] Sharone Sayegh: What was really special for me this week is I met a couple people at the stage door that were either in their teens or in their early 20s, so younger performers, basically, of Middle Eastern descent, a bunch of different countries. A lot of Israeli kids, I met a girl from Palestine, I met a girl from Syria. They loved the show, and they were saying how special it was for them to see themselves on stage on Broadway for the first time. And that was so wonderful for me to hear because when I was growing up, I loved Broadway, I loved theater, and I never really saw anyone on Broadway necessarily who was of my ethnicity or who looked necessarily like me, but I didn't even know that I was missing it in a way. But it was just really cool to hear the experience of these kids that are coming to see the show and hear what it was like for them to see this show that is set in the Middle East and to hear Hebrew and Arabic on stage, so that's been really special.

[19:03] Sharone Sayegh: We just had our opening night! Oh my god, it was so great. I got to the theater really early, and there were so many gifts on the dressing room table, which was so nuts, it was so sweet. All of our producers and our creative team members and our other cast members, everybody gave each other these beautiful, funny, and heartwarming gifts. And then we did the show, which was crazy. We had a couple little snafus during the show, which was pretty funny, but everybody there on opening night was so supportive, and it actually, I think, made the show even better. There was this one moment in Dina's apartment scene where Ari, who plays Khaled, and Tony, who plays Tawfiq, are eating watermelon with Katrina, who plays Dina, and I guess the watermelon slipped out of Ari's hand and it fell on the floor.

And he stayed in character, they all stayed in character, and he picked up the watermelon and kept eating it, but it had left a lot of water on the floor. And so Tony, who plays Tawfiq, took a napkin and gave Ari a terrible look, like, why'd you just do that, in character, and wiped it up, and Ari gave him a look like, what, what do you want from me, also in character. And the audience totally laughed and was with us, and it was really great. And I think it made the show even more enjoyable, which was fun. And then after the show, we had a party at the Copacabana, which was super fun. It was across the street. And it was really, really special for me to have my parents there. Not only has it been my dream since I was a child to be on Broadway and to be in an original cast, and it was special for my parents to see me realize that dream, it also was even more special because my parents moved to Los Angeles from Israel, and they raised my sisters and I in Los Angeles.

To see me fulfill my dream, not only on Broadway, but in a show that takes place in Israel, is about our culture, is about, you know, the two sides of my Israeli culture, which is, you know, there are so many Arab Jews in Israel, and my family is one of them, we're Iraqi Jews. All these Jews moved to Israel after World War II. You know, that's a big part of my life. It's been a really big part of my life growing up, and it's kind of always something that wasn't really a part of my professional career because it didn't really have a place in American musical theater. And because of this show, it now does. So that's been really, really special for me to not only work on this show, but to have my parents there on opening night.

And then at the party, we had this amazing Arabic band. One of our drummers, Osama, he also plays in a band. And so his band came and played. They were playing all this music in Arabic, and my parents knew all the words, and they were just in heaven. My dad turned to me and was like, I can't believe this is an opening night of a Broadway show, and this is the music they're playing. And I said, I know. And he's like, I feel like this is one of our family weddings. I said, I know, this is so crazy. And my agents were also there, Jamie and Justin from Clear Talent Group, and we danced all night, which was super fun. And they were like, this is the best opening night party ever. We never get to dance at opening nights. It's always very schmoozy and talky with people, which is fun. But this was like a party, and that was really cool.

[20:19] ♪ Musical number: "Only Me" — performed by Sharone Sayegh ♪

[21:03] Mo Brady: Special thanks to George Abud and Sharone Sayegh for sharing their stories of The Band's Visit with us over the years. The Ensemblist was produced today by me, Mo Brady. You can help others find out about The Ensemblist by leaving us a rating and review on Apple Podcasts. You can also download episodes wherever you get your podcasts or at theensemblist.com. Follow The Ensemblist on Instagram to see the latest posts from our website, where we are sharing the stories of talented artists working in theater ensembles. And you can let us know what you think of this episode, slide into our DMs, or email us at info at theensemblist.com. Thanks for listening. Until next time. The Ensemblist.