This transcript was automatically generated and might contain errors.

[0:00] Alexandra Silber: Hi, I'm Alexandra Silber, and welcome to The Theatre Podcast with Alan Seales.

[0:12] Alan Seales: Hey everyone, welcome to The Theatre Podcast, intimate personal conversations with the industry's biggest names. I am Alan Seales, your host as always, and our guest today is Alexandra Silber, or Al as she goes by non-professionally. We actually got into a really interesting conversation between, as she puts it, the difference between Alexandra professionally and Al personally, and how she's developed this thing called an exit practice, which allows her basically to ritualize putting on and then taking off, is the exit practice part of it, taking off and leaving behind at the theatre the difficult feelings, the emotions, the stories behind some of the content that she has to do as part of the shows she's been in and is currently in.

And between recording this episode and releasing it, I actually did get to go see Our Class at BAM, the Brooklyn Academy of Music, where this is performing off-Broadway, and the show as she describes it, it's just incredible. And we get into the scripted exit practices that are put into the show so that the audience doesn't get too overwhelmed with some of this stuff as well. And I think it's brilliant. So I hope you go see it. I hope you can check out Al and get to experience this all for yourself. Find me online in all the normal places, like you always do. Leave a rating, leave a review, tell your friends, help spread the word, help the podcast grow. And everybody, now please enjoy this episode with Alexandra Silber!

[1:31] Alan Seales: Here you go, one, two, three...

[1:40] Alan Seales: Today's Grammy-nominated guest has performed roles on Broadway, the West End, and on TV and film, and, of course, many concert stages. Her Broadway debut was in 2011 in the production of Masterclass, and may most notably be remembered as Tzeitel in the 2015 revival of Fiddler on the Roof. On the West End, she created the role of Laura Fairlie in The Woman in White, played Hodel in a 2007 production of Fiddler on the Roof, was Julie Jordan in 2008 in a production of Carousel, and she's also an author, having penned both a popular novel and memoir, and can now be seen in the limited off-Broadway run of Our Class, in the role of Rahelka... I hope I said that right. Sorry, Rachelka. Alexandra Silber, welcome to The Theatre Podcast.

[2:29] Alexandra Silber: Hi! I'm so happy to be here. That was... wow. You know, sometimes when you... I don't know if you ever feel this way, where you're like, I, in my head, just, like, watch crime shows with my cat at home, and then you're like, I wonder if I've done anything with my life, and then I hear that, and I'm like, oh, I have! Listen, I... okay, okay, I... when people say this, I like to point to Andre De Shields' Tony acceptance speech, because he said, the top of one mountain is the bottom of the next, right? So you're always continuing to go, and I want to add to that and say, don't forget to turn around when you're at the top of the first mountain to see how far you've come.

[3:12] Alan Seales: Oh, I love that. That's really good. So there you go. Take that with you today.

[3:15] Alexandra Silber: Okay, I will. No, that's really, that's really good. Okay. And also...

[3:18] Alan Seales: It's a pleasure to be here.

[3:18] Alexandra Silber: Oh, thank you. Thank you. And I just want to, like... Alexandra seems so weird to say. You're just Al. You're Al.

[3:22] Alexandra Silber: I'm Al. Yeah, I know.

[3:26] Alan Seales: Yeah, you're Al. Every goodbye, Al.

[3:26] Alexandra Silber: It's really funny, though, because... so, you know, I don't know if this resonates. Like, I've always been Al.

[3:30] Alexandra Silber: Really?

[3:33] Alexandra Silber: And... oh, yeah, like, since teeny babyhood. And there have been... it's really funny, though, how, like, Alexandra can make certain people, like, really uncomfortable. Like, at school, they were like, they just named me Alex. And I was like, that's not my name. But I wasn't quite bold. I was very shy. I wasn't quite bold enough to be like, um, Alex is deeply not my name. But it was my name for 10 years of elementary into middle school. And then what's really funny is, I remember thinking, oh, Al, I'll outgrow Al when I get to high school. I'll become Alexandra when I get to college, when I get to my career. And at every interval, I've arrived into the world as Al Silber. And I know I might sound like a lawyer or a mechanic, but it's my name.

[4:21] Alan Seales: Well, then why... why then, when you first get your equity card, and you have to choose your stage name, why go with Alexandra?

[4:25] Alexandra Silber: Because it's also my name. And I love, I love Alexandra. And it does feel like me. And it's actually, you know, it's a really interesting question, since I know you talk a lot about mental health stuff and perspective things. I think there's something kind of healthy about it. I think it's a projection of boundaries in a certain way. There is an Alexandra Silber. And there's also Al. And it's not that Alexandra Silber isn't me. She is absolutely... everything about her, I'm putting in huge quotes, is true and honest. It's just a very limited slice of me. And Al is an intimacy and a bid for connection and friendship that is something that I elect to bring into my colleagueships and work relationships and friendships at a pace that feels good to me. But, you know, if you meet Alexandra Silber on a red carpet, you're not meeting someone fake or a persona. It's just a very... a name for a very thin slice of who I am. And I actually find that quite helpful.

[5:40] Alan Seales: That's so cool. And that jumps me ahead to something that I was going to ask later, after we cover some of the roles you've done. I mean, here we are now.

[5:45] Alexandra Silber: But here we are now. And this is great because hashtag natural conversation. Yes, I'm a dad. I say the word hashtag. So listen, the roles you have taken, including Rahelka in Our Class, like playing multiple roles in multiple productions of Fiddler. And you're into Greek tragedies and like you adapted some of these and we'll get into all that. But the roles that I particularly know you for are heavy and deep and very like you have to dive into your gut and pull out emotion and to bring the authenticity to the stage eight times a week. While knowing you personally and having spent a little time with you outside of a theater and watching interviews and stuff, even preparing for this, like right now you're smiling, you're happy, you're goofy.

You're like, you're this great kind of opposite. I want to say it is the opposite of these roles that you sink your teeth into. So along with what you just said, like what part of you is satisfied? What do you need to fulfill by diving into these deep roles?

[7:07] Alexandra Silber: What a great question. I have to say, by the way, I don't think in my entire career anyone's ever asked me this question in this way. So this is exciting. Okay, let's start with a couple things. We contain multitudes. Two, many things can be true at the same time. And I think that's actually one of the great explorations of our modern day is, and one of the things fueling polarization in a lot of areas is refusal to welcome in the truth and the discomfort, the exquisite discomfort that multiple things being true at the same time provides the human mind and soul, that really, it can be exquisitely painful for two things to be true, two things, four things, six things to be true at the same time, because the human psyche craves above all else, clarity and comfort.

So that's another soapbox to get onto. But I will say, you know, to say that I've been through some adverse things in my life, not that it's, you know, an adversity Olympics, it doesn't compare to some of the things we're seeing play out on the global stage. Of course, I did not grow up in a war zone, etc. But I think probably some above average for the comfortable Westerner person before the age of 40. And I think one of the things that I had beautifully modeled for me by my parents, one, and I think, ultimately, is the greatest gift they gave me in their parenting was unconditional love and this, was modeling how hope is a function and a response to struggle. And that by showing me how to keep hoping.

Yeah, that like, struggle is inevitable. There are people out there that avoid a struggle, that avoid discomfort, that do everything in their power to shirk from it, to perpetuate clarity and comfort. And what I felt was really modeled for me in my youth and in my growing up was no struggle will, will befall us. Struggle is here. How do we respond? And not necessarily joy, but certainly hope as a response to struggle was something that was modeled for me. And I think the joy is a choice. The awe is a choice that which radical is also sort of fueled by my world outlook and my spirituality. And I think, I feel so, in a lot of ways, I mean, you know, I publicly talked about my health a lot online in the last few years and my overcoming some health things. I think I also just feel so gosh darn lucky to just have the gift of being alive.

[10:08] Alan Seales: You had a real severe case of IBS, right?

[10:13] Alexandra Silber: Well, not even IBS. IBS is sort of tummy trouble.

[10:16] Alan Seales: Right.

[10:16] Alexandra Silber: It's still very debilitating. I had irritable bowel disease, which is, I had a really debilitating form of ulcerative colitis, which is, can be life threatening. And mine was really, really off the charts. And the just, it's actually maybe a good moment to say like the IBS and IBD are very, they're obviously cousins, but they're very distinct things. One is a response to digestive trouble. And one really is a autoimmunity response and an inherent disease that's like a very different function of the body with similar symptoms. So that's a, it's something that's really tough because it took a long time to diagnose. But yeah, I think I'm just so, so happy to be here. And yet, you know, just to talk about the tragedy and the access to sorrow and to grief and to anger, these are not things that we get out and look at very often in our everyday, like running errands life.

I mean, like you had, it's, I always find it so amazing about like where it is acceptable to behave in certain ways that if you had a complete mental breakdown at the bank, you'd be escorted out by security. And if you have one center stage on a Broadway theater, you get an award. That's just like such a strange, isn't that strange, right? But again, it's like about these circles of where things happen and where things don't happen. But that exists in every area of our lives. But one of the things I think is really such a gift is that we all have access to sorrow, anger, envy, violence, hatred, joy, bursting out in song. Those are things that every human being, regardless of who they are, have access to in the emotional spectrum of being a person.

And that's emotional diversity. We tend to, particularly in Western countries, exceptionally in America, prefer heavily positive emotions on that spectrum. And by denying the existence of or fully experiencing the other emotions, we're robbing ourselves of the other colors in that rainbow that provide true emotional diversity. And I think for me, while I do experience those feelings in my actual life, there is a portal, a stage, a sandbox, and a permission in these roles and on stages to go to the wall of these extreme emotions of sorrow and rage and anger, emotions that are not often celebrated, and welcome them into my life, and hopefully also give the audience, the human beings in the audience permission to see themselves in the emotions that I'm portraying as part of the human experience. They belong to us all.

[13:22] Alexandra Silber: I feel like you've got this need to, a healthy need, to embrace sorrow and to embrace the low lights of life, because it gives you perspective, because you don't know you're hot unless you've been cold. You don't know you're in unless you've been out. You don't know you're truly happy without experiencing true sadness. You know what I mean? Is that what it says?

[13:40] Alexandra Silber: I completely agree. I mean, it's why the greatest tragedians in the world are clowns.

[13:54] Alexandra Silber: Any form of dramatic storytelling, stage, film, television, ballet, opera, that by inserting laughter or welcoming laughter into tragic story, it actually opens the heart to receive more deeply the emotions on the other end of the spectrum. So, it's important to include it. And I have to say, I think it's been one of my, just going back to our class for a moment, it's been one of my missions to hold on to, include, and in some ways highlight humor in this otherwise obliteratingly devastating story. And without humor, so many of us would not survive. Our class is interesting, and I haven't seen it yet, because as we're recording this, you're still in rehearsals, and in a few days, you're going to start previews.

But it's about 10 Polish classmates based on a true story. So, five of these classmates are Jewish, five are Catholic, and they grew up as friends and neighbors and then turn on each other with life and death consequences. That sounds ridiculously hard to watch. Yeah. I can't imagine that it will be, it will feel like beautiful medicine, I think. It's going to be exquisite to look at. It is already exquisite to look at. One of the things I talk about a lot is the 10 acting performances that we have, the 10 actors and their performances are first-rate, world-class, from every corner of the world in terms of literal location, training, background experience, all coming together in this incredibly diverse group.

So, that's going to be phenomenal. But additionally, every member of the creative team is like some combination of a gold medal Olympian slash the Beyonce of their field. Like, every single thing that you hear, see, observe, smell is going to be designed by somebody that's the best in the world at what they do. And that has also been sort of insane. So, all of those artistic contributions will make sure that this storytelling and this difficult story is experienced in a way that we're actually able to digest it.

[16:15] Alexandra Silber: Here's the thing. I, myself, will admit, by the way, that I find consuming art that's really, really confrontational and difficult, that feels timely, that feels like it's about contemporary events. I really have to get my head on straight and be emotionally prepared to engage with that kind of art these days and have found myself really understanding the idea of entertainment and escapism more than I ever have before. These are unprecedented times, and I'm ready to live in precedented times. But what I'll say is, one of the things I think is really, really interesting about making art that has to do with hatred and violence. Tell me if you agree with this too. You know, how do you make a play about hatred?

I think for, I was talking about this with a journalist the other day, which, of course, is a slightly different, I mean, not slightly, it's a very different form of storytelling. I think there's a journalism rule that is a good rule right now that says, when tragedy strikes, we should not center the perpetrators. We should center the victims and their memories, and that's really important because we should not create celebrities or cult heroes out of these violent perpetrators. I think that's right in journalism. But it's interesting. I think we've sort of followed that, certainly in the late 20th century and into the beginning of the 21st century. I think we followed that suggestion with art, which actually isn't quite the same directive, right?

We serve different purposes in society, journalists and artists. And one of the things I think is really interesting about this play is it dares to not necessarily center the bad guys, I put in huge quotes, but it presents them, Mr. and Mrs. Smith, that exact atrocities and how their emotional logic allows them to arrive at the doorstep of these choices that are either actions or inactions that seem unconscionable. And rather than distance ourselves as human beings and go, I think often, you know, for close to 100 years now, the Nazi has been almost a synonym for the word bad guy, right? As if they're not human, as if a Nazi is not somebody that was ever a human being, was some kind of animal, was devoid of... And therefore, we distance ourselves and say things like, once upon a time, long ago and far away, they did bad things.

And that has nothing to do with us. We solved that and it's over. And I think that what's really, really dangerous about that is that we can fall under the spell of thinking that we are somehow different, more evolved, or completely absolved from that thinking and behavior that exists latently within us as human animals. And so, a more interesting question that I think Igor Goliak, our director, is requiring each of us in the company to address is rather than going, that was then, they have nothing to do with me, go, what would it take for me to look away or to actively exact these actions? What would it take for me to get there? Because the getting there is inevitable inside my humanness. And that if the violence connects us... You know what I'm saying? Everybody has potential to do anything.

[20:17] Alexandra Silber: So, it's all in us somewhere. Precisely. Hang on, everybody. We're just gonna take a quick break. All right, now we're back. I think one of the things we also hold over people in certain eras, political oppressions, parts of the world, is we hold other people to our morality and our experience of the world thus far. And it takes a very big and open-hearted and open-minded person to go, if I were there, how would reality shift? And what would I even be able to choose to do? Because we have this phrase that's like, there's always a choice. But that isn't always true. We have a choice about how we view things. We have a choice about how we respond. But when it comes to political regimes, when it comes to oppression, when it comes to life or death scenarios that many of us in the West have not faced, that might be less true.

[21:22] Alan Seales: Yeah.

[21:23] Alexandra Silber: Yeah. I 100% agree with you. And the art... This is interesting because the things being written and then the people performing these things are exploring parts of themselves that because we are privileged enough to live where we live and experience the majority positive things, comparatively speaking, like you said, we didn't grow up in a war zone here in the States in this generation. So we don't get to... Don't get or get may not be the right phrase, but we don't understand what it's like to fear that we may get bombed walking to the grocery store. You know what I mean?

[22:05] Alan Seales: Yeah, of course.

[22:06] Alexandra Silber: So yeah, it's tough. And how then in the rehearsal room or even the audition space, do you dive deep enough or find people that are diving deep enough to really do this? And then eight times a week is one thing, but when you're rehearsing, you're doing it eight hours a day.

[22:25] Alan Seales: Yeah.

[22:26] Alexandra Silber: And so you're going here over and over and over again. I guess two parts of the question is like, where are you finding this to start with? And then at the end of it, what are you doing to bring Al back? Go from Alexandra back to Al.

[22:41] Alan Seales: Yeah, I love that. Oh, yeah, you used it.

[22:43] Alexandra Silber: Yeah. So I think that the... Those are great questions. I think the first is that we have to understand that even though each of us individually as 10 actors with 10 paths have to deal with and respond to our character's path in our individual way, but that there's a responsibility, hopefully one we want, to take care of each other and to uplift one another and acknowledge that we're part of a kind of temporary family that has a different kind of responsibility, doing something that's lighter, which is a different kind of responsibility. So I think that's part of it, is that we have to be in this together. I've been in productions where things have gone wrong in terms of dynamic. You know you're in trouble when everybody in the room goes to their own individual corner and sits in their own pool of light.

That's usually an indicator that there's a lack of community or safety or wanting to say the wrong thing. And one of the things that's been great about this process is you see as the scenes disperse when we're on breaks, there's pockets of people being together, which I think is a really good sign. Then I think one of the things to your second point is it's really important to have sort of an exit practice with a play like this. It's a phrase that's really become much more popular and conversant in the arts world since the rise of intimacy coordination as a profession. And I think it's a really, really important concept that your body, our bodies, don't know the difference between fact and fiction.

They don't know that this isn't happening. And the only, you know, the same chemicals fire, the same cortisol surges through our veins as if we're actually being attacked by a tiger, right? Our body doesn't go, oh this is theatrical cortisol. The only thing that's going to declare to your body that you are safe is the willingness of our conscious minds. And bringing that conscious mind into a calming practice that we then bring into our body connects the conscious thought to the chemical productions in our bodies and actually creates a, oh, there is no tiger. There is no danger. This was a play. And now calming, soothing things can fill my body. And I'm the director of what's going to happen in my chemicals post show.

So, I have like a little ritual, especially for some of the tougher things I've done. I remember first doing it when I played Julie Jordan. And I will say, Julie Jordan, when I played her, I was 25. And really, at the beginning of my career, it was only my third professional show. And obviously, a huge legacy and a huge responsibility and a really dark track. And it was definitely before I had this practice in place. And I will also say, I had not really fully processed my father's death and was inappropriately using Julie's story and arc to work out my grief in a way that was not art, right? In a way that I will admit now, I'm like, oh, no, that was therapeutic. And it was not creation. It was just expression using another character's words and scenario.

And the reason I even talk about it is because I think it's really important for people that know actors or people that are actors listening to this or wish to be professional actors to know, I am not sitting here at this stage of my career going, I'm infallible, and I've always been infallible. No, I've messed up. And I've learned the hard way how to get this right. And at the sort of nine month mark in Carousel, I was like, I can't do this anymore. I can't keep opening my veins for this. The artist has to be more important than the art or else the art can't perpetuate. The health of the artist is paramount, right? And I started to create a practice where I actually bought a welcome mat for my dressing room for myself, where I wiped my feet three times and bid farewell to Al, walked into my dressing room, became Julie Jordan.

And when I left for the night, I wiped my feet and left Julie at the theater, and it worked. It was very simple, but it was ritualistic. And when it comes to ritual, I think it's an interesting thing. I know you talk a lot about wellness and mental health.

[27:49] Alexandra Silber: Ritual, I think, is a huge part of wellness and mental health, as well as oftentimes part of spirituality. Like, you know, there are so many things that have entered our lexicon from, like, Shabbat candles to Catholic, you know, everybody knows, like, and also with you. There are things that become ritualistic. What does that mean? For me, ritual is both in a spiritual space and in a theatrical space, which have a lot of crossovers. It's about carving into space and time that this moment, though seemingly identical, is special from another moment. I think that those kinds of rituals can really, really help actors separate the artist from the art, which is an important separation, because without a whole artist, the art cannot perpetuate.

[28:40] Alan Seales: I cannot agree more. I want to add, as well, that I find it admirable that you still, like, you are an artistic person, and by that, I mean that you have to express yourself in one way or another. But in a healthy way, I believe that you're not, you know, you're not all in on performing because you can't be your job. Otherwise, when you don't have a job, when you're not working, you judge your worth based on that. Like, that's not healthy. And you're also an educator, and going back to being an author, as well, right? You've got these, like, just this need to write and to express. And I just, I love that about you in that, like, when you're looking for, like, that creative outlet, you just, you create the creative outlet. Because writing is taking from nothing and putting it down for others.

[29:42] Alexandra Silber: Yeah. It's, thank you. That's such a generous thing to say, first of all. I'm so touched by that. I do feel that there is a creative engine inside me. And I guess the educator part of me wants to say to your audience, like, it's a great question to ask yourself, what is the shape of the engine? And what is its fuel? Those are, because an engine can't run without fuel, right? Those are great questions to ask yourself, because I think they can change. They can alter over time. You can start to discover that you thought the engine was this shaped, and actually, it's this shaped. You thought the fuel was this, but actually, it's this. It runs better on diesel, whatever, you know? So, I think that's an important thing.

For me, writing and acting feel very, very much like the yin and yang of who I am. Despite, people are always very surprised when I tell people that I'm extremely introverted. And I'm, because I think people have, like, a misperception of what introversion actually is, which is, like, you know, I think they have pejorative things about, like, it's aloof, and people-hating, and shy, and it can present in those ways. But really, at its core, introversion is about where an individual gets their energy. Do they get it from others? Or do they get it in solitude, recharging, like, you know, being plugged into the wall? And I am a person that experiences life very deeply, and needs to think, and experience, and process life very deeply, and very slowly, which can, for me, can only be done in solitude.

So, I need lots and lots of time alone. But I love people. My favorite kind of conversation and dynamic is exactly what we're having, which is one-on-one. But I also love parties, and it has nothing to do with the way I feel about other human beings. I find human beings fascinating. But what I'll say is this. In terms of the yin and yang, theater, specifically theater, as an actor, theater is an art form that, by its nature, and by its original intent and design, is an art form that must be created and consumed socially. You cannot make theater without others, and you cannot experience theater outside of experiencing it with others. That is the design currently. I mean, you know, a lot of people are exploding the form all the time.

But that is, you know, when we think about, like, you know, the ancient Greeks, that was its function. It was for group catharsis. And that can mean collaboration at its very, very best. It can also mean collaboration at its very, very worst and most adverse. So, there are pros and cons to being with people, always. And on the inverse, literature, specifically novel writing, but literature and writing in most of its forms, at least in the creating of it, is created and consumed in solitude. And it's a really, for me, a really beautiful yin and yang, where there's a part of me that is so fired up by the joys of collaboration and the joys of being in the company of other human beings and making art that exists in that space.

And there's also equal joy, just the opposite end of the creative spectrum, of speaking completely directly to an audience of one in the theater of their imagination and nothing else. It feels incredibly intimate and incredibly personal. And I mean, think about, it's funny, I think we sometimes, like, you know, obviously, we're theater people, and this is a theater podcast, but think about some of the books you've read and some of the, where you feel like you are in relationship to that author, to that narrator. You know, I have relationships with John Steinbeck and Tolstoy and Zadie Smith, like, they have meant things to me, even though I've never met them. And I'm sure you have similar relationships in books you've read.

It's just incredibly intimate and personal. So, I think for me, that's been a huge part of it, but it all comes back to using art and using the art of storytelling in these forms to reflect back human nature and the existence of humanity back onto itself for deeper exploration, greater understanding, and hopefully on some level, maybe in certain instances, social change. But that's always been the role of the artist. I'm not doing anything new. I might be, like, making new things, but the act of it is what society depends upon artists for.

[34:58] Alexandra Silber: And certain messages of certain shows resonating in different times, just like you said, if we're living in unprecedented times, that a story about something similar is going to resonate more now than it would previously when people can't make a personal connection to it. So, I think to your point, that's why we're seeing a lot more now of exploring sort of these darker tragedies and reliving unhappy times of history, because I think we're on the verge, if we're not already there, of kind of like, as a society, it's all coming full circle again. And you've got modern politicians being compared to some of the leaders of the Nazis. It's pretty bad, depending on who you are and how you view the world. And again, that goes back to what you said about your view of the world, what you are taught and feel is right or wrong. But anyway, that's a whole separate podcast.

[36:00] Alan Seales: Hang on, everybody. We're just going to take a quick break.

[36:04] Alan Seales: All right, now we're back. I want to pivot back to, we've got a little bit of time left. I want to pivot back to, actually, your origin story, because you mentioned Little Al. So, like, what was it originally that made you say, that is what I need to do. I need to be on the stage. And then I also don't want to forget the fact that you got your first musical theater gig without actually having a singing lesson. That's a little bit of a, it's not entirely true. Well, start with the origin story. Okay.

[36:40] Alexandra Silber: Yeah, I think growing up, I love, you know, in terms of origin stories, and one of the things I was so excited to talk to you about is because I know, like I said, that mental health is something that you don't shy away from in these spaces of your interviews. I grew up in a very loving family, but the main event of my childhood was that my father was very sick with cancer. And I have a much older half brother who's 15 years older than me. So, we didn't grow up together. So, I will just say that I also experienced the illness of my father with cancer as an only child in isolation. So, you know, interestingly, I think it kind of paved the way for my two loves writing and acting in theater by creating a need in that little girl who first learned about and endured the fears of her father being sick, and possibly dying.

I was filled with enormous and huge questions. My father was diagnosed when I was nine. What is the nature of existence? What happens when we die? What is left for those who are left behind? I mean, like, I'm nine thinking these questions, and I couldn't talk to my nine-year-old pals about this. But I could talk to books. I could talk to Steinbeck and Tolstoy. I could talk to people that had similar questions, and they gave me such deep and beautiful answers. And I, you know, interestingly, also, I mentioned adult authors, but also children's authors that were operating in very, very deep spaces, like Frances Hodgson Burnett, who wrote The Secret Garden, a musical that then became hugely important to me in my youth as well.

But The Secret Garden was, you know, if you think about it, like, we think about it in such, oh, it's a children's book, but it's about an orphan who's dealing, who moves completely out of her universe without the guidance of her parents, and learns that nature can heal the sick. I think there was a part of me that thought, like Mary Lennox, maybe I could do that for my father, and it didn't end up working. These are deep and profound things, right?

[39:04] Alexandra Silber: I thought that it presented the possibility, and I felt so powerless. Otherwise, why not try everything? You know, The Magician's Nephew by C.S. Lewis. It's one of the books in the Chronicles of Narnia. A young man travels to the ends of the earth to get an apple to potentially heal his ailing mother. These were books that spoke to me, right? And where I got profound intellectual and philosophical answers, I put in quotes, to these questions in books and in literature, I was also filled to the eyeballs with huge emotion about everything that was happening. And again, talking about appropriate spaces, this wasn't something I could express in the middle of, like, algebra. You know, I needed to know where I could put these feelings and their hugeness.

And for me, the theater was a space that's so divinely, to me, it's truly divine. Not only is that level of emotion safe and welcome in a theatrical space, but it is also utterly necessary to execute the art form at all, which makes it totally unique.

[39:59] Alan Seales: Like, were you personally, like, feeling like you could enact this healing power over him at that time?

[40:18] Alexandra Silber: And I sometimes talk about this emotional contract with people that are not necessarily in the arts in a physical metaphor. I use dance as a metaphor because I think sometimes physical is a little easier. The emotional equivalent is in this physical metaphor. If you think about ballet dancers that are partner dancing, they have to touch one another in the rehearsal room and on stage in parts of the body that if they touched in public spaces, it wouldn't be appropriate. But again, in the rehearsal room with the understanding of the contract between them and on stage, not only do they touch in those spaces freely, but it's necessary to execute the lifts at all. And that physical metaphor feels very apt for what's emotionally required of actors in similar spaces. Is that cool?

[41:08] Alan Seales: Whoa. You just kind of blew my mind a little bit.

[41:11] Alexandra Silber: Oh, I'm glad.

[41:44] Alan Seales: Welcome back to The Theatre Podcast. I'm your host, Alan Seales, and today I am thrilled to have Alexandra Silber with me. Alexandra is an accomplished actress, singer, author, and educator, and she has a remarkable career that spans Broadway, the West End, and beyond.

[42:05] Alexandra Silber: Thank you so much for having me, Alan. I'm really excited to be here and share my journey with you.

[42:11] Alan Seales: Absolutely! So, let's dive right in. You have such a rich background in the arts. Can you tell us about your origin story and how you got started in theatre?

[42:24] Alexandra Silber: Sure! My early influences were deeply connected to literature and theatre, which really emerged from the challenges I faced during my father's illness when I was a child. I found solace in storytelling, and it became a sanctuary for me. I remember reading and listening to “The Secret Garden” and how it profoundly impacted my understanding of life and death.

[42:58] Alan Seales: That sounds incredibly powerful. How did those experiences shape your approach to acting and your career?

[43:06] Alexandra Silber: They shaped everything. Dealing with grief through acting allowed me to explore those profound questions in a safe space. It taught me the importance of connection and authenticity in performance, which I carry with me to this day.

[43:30] Alan Seales: You're currently starring in the limited off-Broadway run of "Our Class." Can you share what that experience has been like for you?

[43:38] Alexandra Silber: It's been amazing! The chemistry and connection formed between actors on stage is unique and essential for creating authentic performances. Having a supportive community with your co-actors is necessary, especially in a piece that deals with such heavy themes.

[44:05] Alan Seales: That sounds like a beautiful experience. You also mentioned something called “exit practices” in your production. Can you explain what that is?

[44:11] Alexandra Silber: Yes! Exit practices are techniques we use to help actors transition out of their characters after a performance. It’s important to have a way to decompress and separate from the emotional weight of the role, especially in a show like ours.

[44:38] Alan Seales: That makes a lot of sense. As a multidimensional artist, how do you balance your various creative outlets?

[44:47] Alexandra Silber: It's all about exploration and allowing yourself the freedom to try different things. For aspiring artists, I think it's crucial to explore various creative outlets. It enriches your artistry and helps you grow in ways you might not expect.

[45:20] Alan Seales: I love that perspective. You've had such a varied career, from Broadway to writing. What advice would you give to young artists trying to find their path?

[45:30] Alexandra Silber: My advice would be to stay curious and open to new experiences. Don’t be afraid to take risks and embrace the journey, even when it feels uncertain. Your unique voice and experiences are what will set you apart in this industry.

[46:19] Alan Seales: That's fantastic advice, Alexandra. Thank you for sharing your insights and experiences with us today. It's been a pleasure having you on the show.

[46:30] Alexandra Silber: Thank you, Alan! It's been wonderful to chat with you.