Ep #23: The Show Must Go On…

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Well, hello and welcome all you beautiful, confident performers. I am doing an episode on Monday. I am a little late today. I have had a doozy of a week. And I really wanted to focus this episode on something that is a heavy subject, a heavier subject. But this is episode 23 and I want to title this one, The Show Must Go On. And I’m going to share some insights and information about my own life.

And then I’m going to share some tips and tools on how you can cope through some of the things that you end up going through while you are in the midst of doing a show or doing a big tour or being a large part of something and it has to go on regardless. This comes on the morning of waking up and hearing my sweet little kids’ grandmother passed away on their father’s side. And I thought about the energy that that carries and I thought about oftentimes when you are on the road, the things that happen to you and you don’t really quite know because you’re not immersed in them.

You don’t really know how you should be feeling and you process a lot of different feelings and a lot of it is the, you wish you were there. You wish there were different things that you could do. Sometimes you even question, am I doing the right thing? Am I in the right business? Am I self-centered? Am I center focused? What is going on? And there are so many things that run through your mind and stick with you and sometimes gets you in the space of judging yourself that will absolutely not serve you.

But it is imperative that you know that that’s a part of what comes with being in the industry or being a part of something bigger than yourself, or being a small part of a big pie. And I really like to look at an entire show or an entire tour that way, where we all have our parts. We all have our things. They’re all very important. And my job is to do the thing where I show up and do what I’m supposed to do when I’m supposed to do it regardless of what I’m going through. Those times are harder to do, than you count on, but it’s so necessary for you to end up showing up for the rest of the team.

Now, in my shared opinion on this, I definitely know that there will be people who disagree. And if they disagree and they’ve been in a situation where they’ve been able to be on tour and maybe go through tough things and take a minute or whatever it may be. I would love to have that feedback influenced in the things going forward.

And what I want to share from my perspective and my angle are just a few of my stories, things, especially when you don’t really plan them. So, when you are facing challenges where somebody in your family gets in an accident or something bad happens or there is something that was not planned that ends up happening and impacting the entire family and there’s really nothing you can do.

You are in Oklahoma and your family’s in California and there is not anything that can happen. You can’t instantly fly back and magically cure anything. And sometimes your presence being there doesn’t even make any sense. And there’s just a number of factors that I want you to consider are a great potential in this industry. And when I say that show must go on, that’s really the focus that I really want to keep through all of this, that thread throughout.

And Ted, my man is so good, and of course doing the thing when the thing is called to be done, and he does so sometimes, obviously to a detriment. He is able to turn off his emotions and he’s able to go and do the thing and execute what needs to be done in the moment that it needs to be done which is highly impressive to me, very, very, very impressive to me.

But it is absolutely, I look at it as an occupational hazard because every now and again that type of energy kicks into times when it’s not advantageous to operate in that manner, to turn off your emotions or to not address what this giant elephant in the room may be. Or be there for an entire process of something that is actually really hard to go through. So, I’m going to give you some examples.

I was on the first tour, the first big tour that I ever had, and that was the American Idol tour. And there were obviously, I was in some shows, I mean I started when I was 16, so there were some shows earlier on a decade before where there were times I was ill. There were times that I was really, really sick and I would just get up and do the show. We had five shows a week at the professional playhouse that I was at. And there were times you would just get up. And when you’re in a venue that is that small, you don’t have understudies. You don’t typically have people who cover you or cover your part.

Now, everybody knows that when you’re working in a little place, a little theater, Summer Stock or whatever little playhouse, you get blessed to work with or work in. There are limited resources for understudies and limited resources for people to cover your part. Sometimes you make massive adjustments at the very last minute if something does happen in someone’s life. And everybody going into that contract typically knows that that’s part of it and is willing to do those adjustments and adjust accordingly.

But truly, we’re under the mindset that you go into the contract and you do every part of it. There are times when it is extenuating circumstances and you can’t. So, I remember being on the Idol tour and I was pregnant and I was doing, what did we do, 55 cities in, I think five short months. And it was the United States, Canada and Singapore. And I remember being physically exhausted. And because I was pregnant, I was physically exhausted but I was also in this unnecessary tumultuous, really challenging back and forth, I guess we could call it, abusive relationship.

And with the heaviness of that, there was so much of that influence that’s around us, that’s like, well, you should take time off, you should do this and you should do this. And everybody is shoulding all over you and telling you what you should do and you have to decide for yourself. Well, I ended up getting the advice from my doctor and my doctor did recommend, “Hey, you’re going to want to take a few days off. You work so many days in a row and it’s going to be a strain on your body and it’s going to be a strain on your baby and you don’t want any of that.”

So, I ended up taking a few nights off, and that few nights off equals a lot of money. And when you just get your first major job, the last thing you want to do is take a few nights off and how it reflects. I think about the challenges that I was facing during that time and I don’t particularly have a very close family on my end. It wasn’t something that I had a great supportive mom who reached out and said, “Hey, sweetie, this is what you would do. And hey, sweetie, don’t you worry about this. This is how it goes, and I’ll be there for you.” And it just doesn’t, it didn’t work like that and I don’t have that and that’s totally fine.

So, what I’m advising each one of you to do is in your own personal circumstance, you do what is best for you in the moment that you think is the right choice to make. I always advise all of my clients, do what is best for you. And sometimes we are in the midst of something that is so much bigger than us, that we’ve never experienced, a decision that can impact our life or our career. And sometimes we make the wrong decision and that is fine too.

Even having that kind of feedback or great insight into, maybe I would have selected a different option and it could have gone better for me. And that’s the truth, no matter what. We can pretend that that’s not the case. We can say no bad days. We can say no bad decisions. But we all know in this world that we will make decisions that may not have been the best but our brain at the moment and the conditioning that we’ve had in that life so far says, “Let’s do this.”

And sometimes, a lot of times it’s due to the emotional impact we think it will have on our life and our capacity to be able to deal with that because our brain is trying to protect us. So, I ended up taking those days off. I ended up losing that chunk of change. And it was one of those things that I absolutely think if I would have done anything different, I would have pushed back. I would have said, “You know what, I’m actually just going to focus on myself. I’m just going to be on tour. I’m not going to have any of the other outside influences impacting me or my decision.”

And I would not have opted to take that time off because my brain would have been able to lighten up had I not had the heaviness associated with the relationship that I was currently in at that time.

Moving on to another quick story. Now, I was in the Joseph show and the Joseph tour, you’ll hear me reference often. I was going through the divorce and the separation simultaneously of the turmoil basically of that same relationship that impacted my life.

Thank goodness that my production developer knew me, could see me, could understand me, Louanne Madorma, she’ll be a guest soon. She was able to guide me and be there for me and be there in ways that I know was absolutely outside of her job description but it was just a part of who she is. And she is wonderful and brilliant and kind and beautiful. And, if you know Louanne Madorma, and if you are blessed enough to know her, you know exactly what I’m talking about. She is just the ultimate dearest heart and genuinely advocates for the artists and the humans that she works with.

And it is a truest blessing of my entire career to know and work with her and call her my friend. But she had great protection over me in ways that I didn’t even know she was always working. In that contract, there were times that same kind of imbalance or almost turmoil that I was going through. My kid’s dad would come out and we were together. He would come out and then he would have these spurts of, “I have to leave”, and then he would leave. And he was supposed to be there caring for our son. And I would have a show that night and we would be in a city.

And I remember one night it got just so terribly uncomfortable, terribly ugly. And I remember him deciding, well, I’m just going to leave. Now, mind you, last minute plane flights, if you’ve ever done that, you know how much they cost. You know how much that last minute impact is on the wallet. He didn’t have a job and his job was to watch our house and sometimes come out and join the nanny and then give the nanny a break. That was the job and he was not able to do that and he would come out.

And I remember being in Chicago and some dear friends of mine were intermittently out and they had just left that night. And I was so happy they came out. And it was one of those times that he was like, “Well, I have to go.” The nanny was no longer there as well. Her mom had been sick and she took leave. And I said, “Well, that’s not going to work because I don’t have anyone to care for our baby.” At the time, he was almost a year old and I had a show. I had multiple shows that weekend and multiple shows coming forward and I remember thinking, what am I going to do?

Now, in the meantime, all of the other stuff that’s happening is my life, my show life. And that’s not even the part that I’m referencing now, but my show life is happening. I need to be warmed up. I need to be healthy. And that is why I have opted to create this podcast, because if any of this hardship or challenge or the things that I have been through, work for you as a story to be inspiration, work for you as a story to develop your own learning track, I want that, I need that.

I want to know if there’s anything you think, hey, I’m going through this and I don’t really know what to do. Reach out to me. Walk through that with me. That is something that is so important for your journey. But that day that I’m referencing, he just leaves. So, I had myself, I had a baby and I had a show in Chicago and I didn’t know what to do. And I remember I called Luanne and walked through the things with her and I did something that you don’t do. I had people intermittently care for my baby while I was on stage and I was there.

And it was one of those things that looking back in my career is absolutely a day I would change. It was absolutely a day I would put myself and my feelings and my baby and my baby’s well being absolutely first. And I want each and every person to know that you will have those challenging days. You will have those dichotomies if you choose this, if you choose that, you will have those crossroads. And I promise you, the story will impact you.

And what you need going forward is the understanding and the grace that you give yourself to say in the moment you did the best you can. And in the moment I did my job and I went on stage and I performed and I put on a show. And mind you, simultaneously, I’m in tears intermittently, just overwhelmed, just wishing I wasn’t in that situation, wishing I had a stronger supportive system. Many thanks to my co-stars.

Many thanks to my sweet understudy, Lisa. I remember her mother actually came out when we didn’t have the nanny there even in the next city. And I think it might have been, I don’t even know if it was Buffalo or something like that but her mother came out and stayed with my baby and it was impressive and wonderful. And so, building that sweet foundation and that sweet village in the time that you’re in, in order for you to do the thing that needs to be done, in my brain, in my heart, I was able to have the show go on.

And those impacts and those side stories that other people are going through that we truly never, ever know. Those are to be considered so that we show up in our most kindness, in our most gratitude and our biggest heart full of love, more often than we don’t. And I say that because I’ve learned, absolutely learned my hard ways and I was ultra impatient at times, especially as I’m going through these massive heaviness and just impacts of things that I’m experiencing with my heart and my family.

And I absolutely would have chosen certain things, like I said, differently. And I think to myself, I don’t know if there really is anything I could have done differently. And as I say this to my beautiful, sweet, confident performers, your journey is your own. Your story is your own. Write your own way. Decide what you are going to do with this information? Here I am nearly 10 plus years away from that experience and more obviously closer to two decades, sharing that same story in hopes that it can inspire and influence a young artist out there going through some challenges.

Majority of the things that seem to impact us in a greater negative way and when we compromise our sense of self, to have somebody else feel better. And I say that because there is no room to do that if you choose a life of performance, if you choose this industry because at the end of the day the show must go on. And as the curtains opened two minutes before, I was just crying my eyes out and asking my dresser if she could watch my baby for 15 minutes. I opened up those curtains, I reassessed my body and I started my song with some folks dream of the wonders they’ll do before their time on this planet is through.

So, to my beautiful, confident performers, I say to you, love yourself well, protect yourself well, choose the focus of yourself and your journey. Nobody has to live with your choice or your decisions. And in all of this, most importantly, give yourself grace, give yourself constant love, you will absolutely make mistakes but take care and be well.

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Thank you for listening to today’s episode of The Confident Performer. If you want to learn more about living your truth and showing up as your most authentic, beautiful self, visit www.amyadamscoaching.com. See you next week!