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[0:00] Mo Brady: If you're listening to Let's Talk About Auditions, a miniseries from The Ensemblist, the only podcast that shows you Broadway from the inside out. Welcome, I'm Mo Brady.

[0:16] Mo Brady: Hi guys, this is our series where I sit down with folks on the other side of the casting table to ask them what they're really looking for in a Broadway ensemble. As performers, we hear time and again that the folks casting shows want auditioners to succeed, but what does that success actually look like? Stephanie Klemons is the Associate Choreographer and Global Dance Supervisor of Hamilton. She was part of the process as it grew from a small idea to an international phenomenon with six companies worldwide currently. In addition to being a member of the show's original cast, she now works to cast multiple productions of Hamilton. She's also a choreographer and director in her own right, working right now on Rock of Ages at Pittsburgh CLO. She does all of this on top of being a wife and a new mom. Wow. Here's our conversation.

[1:43] Mo Brady: Hi Steph.

[1:44] Stephanie Klemons: Hi Mo.

[1:45] Mo Brady: Will you introduce yourself and tell us where you live?

[1:48] Stephanie Klemons: My name is Stephanie Klemons and I live in Long Beach, which is a little beach town about an hour out of the city.

[2:04] Mo Brady: So what is a Global Dance Supervisor? Like that's such a crazy title.

[2:09] Stephanie Klemons: So here's the thing. We kind of came up with that title because I'm the Associate Choreographer of Hamilton, right? So Andy and I have created this piece together and when it started to expand, it felt like it needed someone to sort of oversee it. And because, you know, I wanted room for other people to help set the show, you know, Michael Balderrama sets a bunch of the shows and, you know, we wanted to be able to share the titles. And Global Dance Supervisor just felt like the thing that made sense. You know, we have a company in London, we have other international companies opening, obviously like Ham Australia is happening and everyone's very stoked about that. But we also have five U.S. companies.

And so the Global Dance Supervisor just felt like the thing that said, yes, I'm the Associate Choreographer. Yes, I help create the show, but I'm also the person who helps to maintain and supervise each company, meaning that casting has to happen. So I oversee casting here or if there's a call in Chicago or if there's a call in L.A., I sort of like sort out who's going to run the call. Is it me? Is it one of the dance supervisors from another company? In addition to helping the supervisors maintain the integrity of the show.

[3:13] Mo Brady: So how often, how many hours a week is Hamilton?

[3:16] Stephanie Klemons: I always say that, you know, some weeks the job is 110 hours if you're in tech, opening a new company. And some weeks, you know, it's a low-lying week. There's no auditions for new company members. It's just, you know, me calling all the supervisors from all the companies or maybe reading their notes that they sent out for the week. And on those weeks, it can be much lower. It can be 20, 30 hours a week of phone calls and work. And maybe some of it's from home. You know, I recently had a baby. And other than traveling to visit the companies, which I stopped doing at the end of my pregnancy and I've just recently picked up again two months later, there was a lot of work to be done via email. Like, how do we deal with this cash changeover that's happening whilst these other three things are happening? You know, just sort of like the broader 35,000 feet version of how you run a show.

[4:02] Mo Brady: I can't think of a show that has had five companies in the States.

[4:06] Stephanie Klemons: Hamilton's expansion was definitely faster. You know, most shows are open for a year or two and then they open their first tour. And then two years later, another tour or two. We opened five companies and one international company within three years. So sometimes we were going from one rehearsal process into the next. In addition, you have to think we're casting 10 months to a year out for those companies. And internationally, you have to cast more than a year out. So for the first year and a half of my job, I performed in the show as well on Broadway. There was a point there where I think like the scales were tipping as far as like an overwhelming workload. But thankfully, you know, we've brought awesome people into the dance department.

Between supervisors and dance captains, the department now is actually like over 25 people, just ever expanding. And I think it's always exciting to me when you know, we find someone who's either dance captain material or supervisor material, and we get to bring them into the world because A, it means I have another partner on board. And B, it's exciting to see other people take ownership of the material that was previously like felt like was yours. And then you see them and it's theirs. And you're like, Oh, this is great. And it takes a little weight off your shoulders.

[5:13] Mo Brady: So how many supervisors is there one for each company?

[5:16] Stephanie Klemons: There is one supervisor per company. So I sort of pride myself on the fact that I think a lot of people do this isn't to say that this doesn't happen in other shows. But people go to different companies and say, there's no way Broadway is better than this, like this was great. And it's because they've allowed us to have the size departments that we have and the breadth of material and you know, just you're constantly teaching when you're putting people in and just the amount of hours it takes to five people leave their contracts at once. Suddenly, you need help. So we ended up deciding to do a one to one ratio.

[5:48] Mo Brady: How often do you host auditions for Hamilton?

[5:50] Stephanie Klemons: I was doing auditions yesterday. I've done auditions today. I'm doing them next week. I'm doing in the week after that there are some weeks where I feel like it's there's auditions every single week. And then there are some weeks where you get like a two to three week break. But if you think about it, essentially, each company has to have at least two calls a year. So that's at least 10 chorus calls, plus we do invited calls. So that's taking you to about audition every three weeks. And then you have the movement calls for the movers. So like we audition all of our George Washington's burrs, all of those things. So when you add it up, we're doing auditions pretty much every week. And I know that the direction department, it feels like they're doing auditions, you know, they have like a set work session every single week where they just see people constantly.

Equity, we don't really do that with dance calls, like we schedule them, but definitely like once every week, once every two weeks. And what do those calls look like, there's three versions of the calls, there is the open call, which we don't do very much, we do them every now and then they're much less now there is the ECC, right, which is the equity chorus call. And the equity chorus call for us looks like a full day of teaching my shot. So we basically set hour and a half increments out throughout the day, we see about 35 to 40 people at a time, and we just teach them my shot. If not very many people show up, we'll do like a room where it happens call back at the end of the day. But usually we are able to fill the day with all the equity people that are coming to audition for the show.

And then we do invited calls, right? We're like agents pool, we're like, we need someone of this, you know, high voice, this look, whatever it is. And then we have like an invited call where we see those people. So one of two things, but the first audition for dance is always my shot. And how many auditions is an actor going through usually on their journey to so here's the new we've kind of have come up with this system now that we're...

[7:36] Stephanie Klemons: You'll get called back and you'll learn room where it happens. Those things can sometimes happen with a supervisor, like for example Jen Jenkishay, who's in New York, sometimes Michael Mindlin. If you're in Chicago, Michael Balderrama will run them. If you're in L.A., sometimes Ryan Kasperzak will run them. And then all those people fly to New York for a callback, which I will run. So that's like, you'll learn, what did I miss? You'll learn New Yorktown. Sometimes we'll do a bit of Helpless if I don't know you well and I want to see your partnering. So that's now you're at at least three dance calls. In order to get to the first dance call, you have an initial vocal session. In order to get to the final dance call, you have a work session that's a half hour with our music supervisor. So that puts you to at least five or six auditions at that point to just even be considered for an ensemble track in the show.

[8:46] Stephanie Klemons: And you said looks. What does that mean? Are you talking about the specific five men and six women swings? Are you talking about something physical? We have worked really hard at Hamilton to make sure that we maintain this very inclusive and unique stage picture, which is really attempting to get someone from every sort of background, right? We like to have people who are light, dark, big, small. Yeah, we try to get all different looks of people. So for example, if I know that on the Angelica tour right now, we've cast three women and all three of those women are dark-skinned women, then we are going to say, okay, well, let's try to get an Asian woman or a light-skinned woman in. Or if we're looking at the stage picture and we have this situation where three white women and we're like, we need some women of color in the picture.

And so the dirty truth is that we really do want to cast every type of person. And so we work very hard to maintain that and make sure that we don't find ourselves in a position where, oh, these four women dance really well and sing really well, but we're not going to put them all in the same company because they all look the same. We really work to look for that. So the look thing is a big deal for us.

[10:02] Stephanie Klemons: Let's say you were casting a new ensemble, we've got a sixth American company. Which we just did with the L.A. company, right? Oh, there's a sixth company? Well, so it's Broadway, Chicago, tour, tour, San Francisco, and now the L.A. company. Chicago's closing, but it's L.A. is the sixth U.S. company, essentially. So when you're putting together a new company, what are you looking for? So the great thing about putting together a new company, here's the thing about L.A. is that we did end up casting all alumni. But for a brand new company, what is really exciting for me is sometimes I'll see someone in the room who's really thrilling, but I know that they need a little bit more attention. And so I'm less likely to put them in a company as a replacement, right?

So we kind of like hoard people who are like, okay, we can't put you in as a replacement because we want to put them in a new company where they're going to get a full rehearsal process and we can build things around them. So sometimes like the most exciting people actually don't book the show because they're just unique. I can't ask someone with that skill set to like fit themself into this box. And I think that's kind of a hard thing for people to understand, like, you know, when they're like, they come in and like, I feel like I did so great and I, you know, maybe I think you're going to need a little bit of extra attention. Or I know that the pre-made Hamilton show doesn't fit you or that particular person whose track you would be taking over.

You would find it difficult. And I'm always saying that I don't like to compromise people's artistry. And so if I feel like someone would have to change themselves as an artist to do something, I'm not really interested in putting them in that place, even though I'm sure they'd be like, but I want to do it. But you don't because six months in, you're going to feel compromised and the show and the fact that the show is built on an authenticity, the show is going to suffer as well. So sometimes people who have that way about them, I kind of keep them for new companies or rehearsal processes where I know they're going to have me or Andy or someone teach them the whole show from top to bottom, as opposed to what we know a rehearsal replacement rehearsal process can be. You know, the dance captains are absolutely incredible, but they're also doing the show and they're busy and they can't just like focus their energy 100%.

[12:06] Stephanie Klemons: Talk about a moment in the show that has shifted from company to company based on something that that original ensemble was bringing. I guess the best way to sort of put it is originally when we put the show together, a lot of the male ensemble features, we kind of like kicked it over to them, right? So like Seth Stewart is integral in the gun choreography at the top of Stay Alive. And you know, for people that haven't seen the show, male in a red coat comes out and does this like rifle team, like dope choreography that like Seth Stewart had that in his back pocket, right? If it wasn't Seth Stewart in the room, I can't say that the choreography would have looked like that, right? It would have been gun choreography, but maybe someone else would have helped sort of shape it differently.

In a new company, we maintain that quote unquote, like freestyle element of it. So they still have to do Seth's choreography there. Or John Rua was very integral in creating the floor work in a lot of the moments that he's involved in, John Rua and Ephraim Sykes. So like they do floor work in Satisfied, they do floor work in My Shot, they do floor work in Right Hand Man, like that's all of us in a room putting things on those bodies. So if I see, for example, that, you know, we have a man for that's super tall, or like we have, we have had man fours that are like six feet tall, getting up and down to the floor as fast as Seth did is not possible. So we have to like recreate it for them, but still maintain the purpose of what it was originally.

In addition, we find ourselves in the, you know, in the case of Jeffrey Duffy, who's an incredible person who we found in Chicago, he is a high voice male, him as man one will do different things than the man one in New York will do, because the show was built around him. So then anybody that goes to replace him on the Angelica tours, where I think his original track was, they'll do his version of it. So when we're building a new company, I can shift bodies around and I can say like, okay, Sally, and what did I miss is going to be woman two instead of woman four, whatever it is, versus, you know, the original, which is like, Ariana was the bullet and Sally, like woman three did both of those things.

So a new company allows us to shift things and the answer to what things have shifted, it's mostly like the solos, who does the solos, who does the features, and it has a lot to do with what they sing, they sing high or low.

[14:26] Mo Brady: Special thanks to Stephanie Klemons for sharing her stories with us this week. You can learn more about her and how to connect with her online by visiting our website, theensemblist.com. The Ensemblist was produced today by me, Mo Brady. You guys can help others find out about The Ensemblist by leaving us a rating and review on Apple Podcasts. Honestly, it does mean something. So just super easy, just click some stars. You can also download episodes wherever you get your podcasts or at theensemblist.com. And make sure you're following us on Instagram to see the latest posts from our website where we share the stories of talented artists working in ensembles every day. Thanks for listening. Until next time. Bye.