Nikka Graff Lanzarone (Born November 20, 1983) is an actress and dancer. Born in Los Angeles, California. She is the daughter of actress Ilene Graff and niece of director and actor Todd Graff
If things come up, we can say, "We're not ready for this, let's move some things around. "
And as ensemblists start being asked to do more things that require an insane skill set, that inherent value will, I hope, be held up where it deserves to be.
We remind ourselves that it's a hobby [The Esemblist]; nobody is setting these deadlines for us, except us.
Time's going to pass anyway, so it's prioritizing what to do with that.
Where we're telling the story of the history of the ensemblist [in the "Ensemblist Essentials"], using the nine musicals that have won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama as fixed points in time We're going from 1931 to 2016 and using these shows to talk about what the typical show was like for an ensemblist at the time; did this show change anything about that job, while it was changing everything about the way theatre was written and produced and made?
We're just trying to restore equilibrium to the Universe, that's all.
Showtunes might be able to come back into pop music, which is something we haven't seen since the 50s and 60s. Everything is related to everything else because we're in such a niche industry.
It [The Esemblist] is also about the generation of audience members that are watching shows and listening to us at the same time; hopefully, in time, when they listen to our show and then go see a show, they'll realize even more what it takes to make a show, and they'll know even more about everybody on stage, rather than just people above the title of the show.
We haven't truly had a zeitgeisty, 'songs on the radio' show, since. . . I want to say "One Night in Bangkok" was the last musical theatre song that charted. That was so long ago.
We also have a team that works really well together, that knows whose turn it is to pick up what someone else can't continue-the five of us work really well together and if someone says, "My plate is too full, I can't handle this," then someone else will always grab onto it.
We don't have a studio, we don't have a radio station, we don't have anybody breathing down our necks to make a budget. We don't have any benchmarks that we have to hit. Our benchmarks are ones that we have set.
I'd like to see the first act of Sunday in the Park with George, and the second act of Hamilton. Every day.
I've never done Something Rotten either.
The biggest possible thing that we're trying to do is change the conversation about what it means to be a working artist today, and hopefully, as the generation of performers that is training and listening to our show at the same time comes up, and becomes a working generation of performers listening to our show-hopefully that's going to change some of the ways they're looking at the hierarchy of theatre and start to blur those lines a bit more.
I think that a solid team, solid communication, is the number one thing in life at all times.