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Making It on Broadway: Actors' Tales of Climbing to the Top
by David Wienir and Jodie Langel
Making It on Broadway goes beyond the glitz and the glamour to show what really happens both on a Broadway stage and in the personal lives of Broadway actors. In their own words, Jason Alexander, Terrence Mann, Donna Murphy, Lea Salonga, and more than 150 of today’s Broadway performers—including fifty-five Tony Award® winners and nominees—talk candidly about living and working in the new era of the mega-musical.
From first stepping foot in New York City with only a suitcase and a dream, to stepping up to the podium and accepting a Tony Award®, the actors in this book discuss all aspects of their lives and careers—no matter how controversial. Whether it’s paying the rent, maintaining a family, performing eight times a week, or dealing with the “Disneyfication” of Broadway, the contributors to this book handle it all in the same way: with frankness and humor.
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Reviews
"This book is one of insight and delight to anyone who has reason to walk through the doors of a Broadway theater...If you dream of working on Broadway, this book will help to prepare you for what it takes to 'make it,' maintain it, and go on loving it. If you live to see a Broadway show, this book will give you insight into the joys and struggles that go into serving you, the audience."
—Jason Alexander - Tony Award Winner and star of Seinfeld
"If you think working in theater is glitzy and ritzy, you've gotta read 'Making It on Broadway.' It's a heartbreaking, humbling, and hilarious look at today's Great White Way, told by pros who know every stage of showbiz."
—Wayman Wong - New York Daily News and Playbill.com
"The Broadway performers reporting in this devastating multiple-memoir on the real life of actors are hilarious, grim, rueful, resigned, even forgiving, but somehow, in every mood, their recollections are inspiring and transparently honest. Loving intensely what they're looking for, and even looking for it in what should be the right place - Broadway - they're pretty much shocked by the reality. But like saints and lunatics, they never lose the vision, see it as real, and sometimes, even for a moment, find it.
When you start out in New York with little money, and with rats in the walls of a closet you're supposed to think of as a whole apartment, it is not, God knows, any part of the dream that got you there. And then, when you find out later that life after 'making it' is not all that different, and certainly not different enough - there's reason to be discouraged. But like a torturous love affair, there is, after all, at the bottom of it, love. So, if this book is a warning, it is also PR for a hard, still proud, way of life.”
—Leon Katz - Emeritus Professor, Yale School of Drama
"How is a life in the theater possible when 'making it' is a false concept and 'Broadway' is no one's permanent address? This book is a wise, uncompromising, and invaluable document, featuring the passionate voices of those wrestling with the question and living the answer. Long live their history!"
—Mel Shapiro - Head of Acting and Musical Theater, UCLA
"Usually, when you climb to the top of the beanstalk, you discover a giant monster. This book describes that trip up, and what’s there when you arrive. Some of the contributors to this book were once told what life would be like once they finally 'made it' on Broadway...but they didn’t believe it. Now, the actors in this book tell it like it is - they destroy the myths and inject the truth. Yet, will it discourage any young artist? Not likely."
—Arthur Bartow - Artistic Director, Undergraduate Department of Drama, NYU Tisch School of the Arts
"Making It on Broadway strips away the thin veneer of glitz on Broadway and exposes the true iron and steel needed to 'make it' on the Great White Way. It's the truth, spoken by the soldiers in the trenches. This book doesn't sugarcoat the experience of being a Broadway actor. It shows the real blood, sweat, and tears that makes up our profession. It shows through the B.S. and tells it like it is."
—Rick Sordelet - Broadway Fight Director
"Making It on Broadway is a must-read for anyone who has dreamed of one day performing on the Great White Way. It is honest, thorough, and inspiring, and lends important insight into the world of show business."
—Jamibeth Margolis - Director/Casting Director
"The names in this book range from the familiar...to the unknown, and every story is equally fascinating and engrossing. A must-read for anyone who has ever dreamt of life on the wicked stage-or just loves going to see live theater."
—Jeffrey Epstein - Senior Editor, Out Magazine
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