Heidi Blickenstaff
[title of show], the joyous, sometimes hilarious and surprisingly moving 90-minute musical about the creation of a new musical — which debuted in 2004 at the New York Musical Theatre Festival and has since traveled to the O'Neill Center, Ars Nova, Off-Broadway's Vineyard Theatre and, finally, to Broadway — is currently in previews at the Lyceum and stars its original four players: co-creators Hunter Bell and Jeff Bowen as well as their leading ladies, Susan Blackwell and Heidi Blickenstaff. The little-show-that-should also boasts vocal cameos by a host of diva favorites, including [SPOILER ALERT] Kerry Butler, Marin Mazzie, Victoria Clark, Christine Ebersole, Sutton Foster and current Gypsy star Patti LuPone. Two days following the explosive first preview of [title of show], I had the pleasure of chatting with the humorous Blickenstaff, who was recently seen in Disney's The Little Mermaid and boasts a beautiful, textured and rangy Broadway belt. Blickenstaff's co-star Bell told me earlier this week, "Basically, Heidi is a rock star. What constantly amazes me about Heidi is not only is she beautiful on the inside and out and can sing her face off — that voice is stunning — she is a hell of an actress: so smart and constantly making smart choices and adjustments in her performance. It's been a tall order to play this character that is based on her life but tweaked for dramatic effect, and Heidi is constantly surprising me and amazing me in how she comes to life each night on stage. Plus, she's super funny and super sweet — pretty much the whole package I'd say. And for the record, it's about time I read about my girl in Diva Talk! Just sayin'!" Read on, Mr. Bell. . .

Question: Tell me about the first preview, which I heard was quite exciting.
Blickenstaff: I have never, ever been a part of anything like that. It was totally off the chain, mayhem, craziness! I think we're all still quite stunned about it. If you go to the ([title of show]) blog, there's a video clip of us with the fans who came to the stage door after, and it looks like…it's total mayhem. It was amazing. There were hundreds of them. We were packed to the rafters, and it was just all of our super fans, who know every nuance of the show. They were just so with us — just every joke, every everything. It was for the most insider-y insiders. It was a big love fest. After "Nine People's Favorite Thing," there were like two minutes of applause, and they stood up before the end of the show. It was crazy! I was telling my boyfriend, who is also an actor, "May every actor have that experience." It's really overwhelming. Every human being should have that moment where you're just standing there and…

Question: …people are screaming.
Blickenstaff: Yeah! It's so freaky and amazing. My eyelashes were singed. It was amazing.

Question: What was going through your mind when people continued applauding?
Blickenstaff: This group of people is very unusual. Not that I haven't worked with actors who are grateful, but this group of people is just shocked and overwhelmed by everything that has come our way, the bounty of it.… All of us talked about [the response to the first preview] briefly when we had a moment the next day. Every second of it, I know I was really trying to take it in and not take it for granted and just really trying to feel it. I'm very aware that this could never happen to me again in my lifetime. [Laughs.] It is the culmination of a lot of hard work and many years of kind of machete-ing through this whole process. And, also, I'm not a youngster. I've been in this business for many, many years and have had wonderful nights, but nothing like this. I was just really focused on breathing and trying to take it all in and trying to store it in my hard drive forever.

	Heidi Blickenstaff with Jeff Bowen in [title of show]
	photo by Carol Rosegg

Question: One of my questions was actually going to be, "Why do you think this show has had such an appeal to a certain group of people?"
Blickenstaff: When the show starts, a lot of people that I know that have seen it have said, "You know, it's just this great little story and you guys are great and we really want you to succeed." But somewhere in there, around the middle of the show — and generally people say it's around "Die Vampire, Die!" — people stop sympathizing, and they start empathizing. They start seeing themselves. Even if they are not in showbiz, everybody knows what it's like to wish for something, to have a dream, to do something. Somewhere in the middle of the play, the people that are going to take the ride really get on and commit to taking the ride at that point, and they start feeling things for themselves and not just for us. I think a lot of people are reminded about the things [they dream about] — a lot of New Yorkers are like, "Why did I come to New York? What brought me here? Was it that I wanted a big career in business or I wanted to be an actor?" Whatever it is — because New York is just the center of the universe. [Laughs.] Whether that happened for them or not, I think they're reminded of those first dreamy feelings. I think it's something we all share.

Question: How did you originally get involved with [title of show]?
Blickenstaff: I got involved because, like the play states, Jeff Bowen and I did a tour of The Who's Tommy many, many years ago. We're going on like 10, 11, 12 years ago now. We stayed friends and just always were really cut from the same cloth. Jeff and Hunter had had this idea, and Susan was helping them shape it, and they brought in Michael Berresse as the director and an outside eye to help them shape it, and they needed someone to help them sing it. Jeff gave me the script, and I read it, and I thought it was crazy… but, like, awesome crazy! It was just a shred of what it is now, but the heart was totally the same. It was all these weird fragments. So much strange stuff was in there, but I definitely saw that golden heartbeat, and I was like, "This is weird and awesome." I called Jeff back and I said, "Yeah, totally. I'll come in and sing some stuff, and we can all feel each other out and see if it might be a good fit." So I went in and sang a little bit with them, and it was pretty instant. It was just a really great fit, and Cupid kind of flung an arrow, and it didn't take long for me to get engrained into the fabric of the whole thing. And, then we just started [working]. All of us worked on it for free, essentially, for a solid three years. We did it first at the New York Musical Theatre Festival, and then we were optioned by Kevin McCollum. From there Kevin encouraged us and helped facilitate to get us to the O'Neill Center, along with Michael Bush. We went to the O'Neill Center to develop it, and that's where a lot of the show got written.

That's such a wonderful place. It's like camp for actors. It's like sleep-away camp for adult actors. It's just this amazing place where you literally write under an oak tree, and you have lunch with Penny Fuller, who is working on her cabaret piece, and you swap ideas and you sleep in these tiny little rooms with no air conditioning. You really are kind of set free to just develop your piece and, at the end, you share with everybody. That was our first glimpse of "Wait a minute, what's going on?" because when we did the piece at the O'Neill, everybody's head popped off. The audience went crazy. And all of those kids, the college kids that were interning for the summer, that was when we first sniffed that we were connecting with younger people, and that was exciting. When you're in college, that's such an important time when you're figuring out who you are and what you want to do, and there are a lot of people — your parents, your teachers, society — telling you what path you should be on. Our show kind of says, "Yes, totally listen to those people, but also don't be afraid to listen to yourself. If you have passion for something, that's a really important voice you need to listen to, too." At least for us in our little [title of show] family, we've all been poor, and we've all done terrible jobs, all so that we can continue pursuing what we're passionate for. Our show says that's okay, and a lot of college kids are like, "I like that idea." That was sort of the beginning of the love affair with college kids and older high school kids.

After the O'Neill we did it a couple of times at Ars Nova. I think we had like nine performances. And that was crazy…Stephen Sondheim came! Suddenly, all these people were coming and we were like, "What is going on?" And then we got the green light to go to the Vineyard. Doug Aibel came and let us have the Vineyard space, which was amazing. We first were in the season at the Vineyard, and we were such a hit that we ended up having a commercial run there when the Vineyard is actually dark, when their season was off. Doug gave us the space for the rest of the summer to continue doing a commercial run. And, then we had kind of a blue period where the Off-Broadway show had closed, and we all went on to different things. Life continued even though we all were very much longing for [title of show] to have another life, whatever that would be. But we all had to continue to feed ourselves and pay rent, and so I took a couple of other jobs, including Meet John Doe in DC at the Ford and Little Mermaid.

	Heidi Blickenstaff with the [title of show] cast
	photo by Carol Rosegg

Question: When you were Off-Broadway, was Broadway in your mind? Did you think that was a possibility?
Blickenstaff: That's an interesting question because I think all of us were so thrilled at how far we got, period — even just making it to the Vineyard. I don't think any of us were ever like, "The pinnacle is Broadway, and we're not going to stop until we're a Broadway show." I do think that all of us thought, "Is this a Broadway show? It's so small. Will people come? If it were a Broadway show, would we have to change everything? Would we have to make compromises? Would we be willing to do that?" I think, at the time, we were just so thrilled that we got as far as we got. This really was a writing exercise to get the boys off their asses. [Laughs.] That is true. They were unsatisfied creatively, and they were like, "Let's just write what makes us laugh." And then Susan and I were brought on board, and Michael and [pianist] Larry [Pressgrove], and it just, for some reason, started connecting with people. We never were like, "We're not stopping until we get to Broadway," but the dream when you're a kid is — not to say that Off-Broadway is not awesome, but the dream is, "I wanna be on Broadway." So there was always that golden nugget inside of us, and it's kind of like we didn't seek it. Like, "He whose name shall not be named" or whatever that is. Of course, that was always the dream. It's just sort of miraculous that we got it.

Question: What stands out in your mind the most about the Off-Broadway run?
Blickenstaff: Lots of things. The first thing that comes to mind is how much I love that staff at the Vineyard. That is a tremendous group of people, and that was the perfect place for us to go. Doug Aibel and his staff there — Sarah Stern and Rachel Ayers and Jenn Garvey-Blackwell — all of those people were such great shepherds for us and never, never wanted us to be anything but who we were. A lot of people who wanted to get their hands on this show had big ideas for us to add a big orchestra and for us to add moments of — even if it was a joke — pyro and acrobatics, and we were like, "That's not [title of show]." Thank God for Kevin McCollum who optioned us at NYMF and everyone who has helped us along the way. We were fortunate enough to get in bed with people who have the same ideology that we did. The Vineyard staff was definitely along those lines. It was the perfect space for us. It was the right number of seats that we could fill. . . . It was just a great place for us to cut our teeth. Also, for me — not that I don't love doing Broadway shows, because I do — I think the intimacy of the Vineyard is really special. That's a very Zen space, and I loved being able to develop that show looking into the audience's faces. That's a really great space and for [title of show], because I do think people see themselves in us so much, the audience is absolutely the fifth character in the show. Seeing their reactions, really being able to connect with people and look into their eyes, was really important.

Question: When did you find out that the musical would be transferring? I know there were a lot of rumors, but when did you actually find out Broadway was happening?
Blickenstaff: Not for quite awhile. I think it was in March or April. I was still in Mermaid.

Question: Did you have it in your Mermaid contract that you could get out if that was to happen?
Blickenstaff: I did. That was something that I had always planned for. As much as I loved my Mermaid experience and I love those people and I will always be totally grateful and just have nothing but lovely things to say about that group of people as well, [title of show] is my heart. I always knew that, even if [title of show] would have gone to Peoria, I would have gone with it. How often do you get something that is this special? Not that Mermaid's not, but this is … I'm playing myself — this is important for me. I always knew that whatever was next for [title of show], that's where I would be going.

Question: When you did find out that you were going to Broadway, do you remember your reaction?
Blickenstaff: It was funny. We had heard lots of rumors, but one of the things with [title of show] was there was always talk — there was always gossip about what was happening next. Even back when we were doing Ars Nova, we weren't sure if we were going to be able to have the Off-Broadway run, so every step of the way when we had a landmark, we would hear things before we would hear for sure. The same thing happened with the Broadway run. I kept hearing rumors, but my agent never made the phone call to me because they don't want to make those phone calls until it's for real. I was over at my boyfriend's house, and I woke up and got a text message that said, "Look at Playbill.com." I went to Playbill.com, and there was a [story] saying, "[title of show] is going to Broadway," and I screamed! I woke my boyfriend up and I couldn't believe it! I was like, "How could Playbill.com know before I know? How is that possible?" [Laughs.] And I was like, "I gotta call the people at Mermaid, so they don't freak out and get mad at me." But they had known all along. They were very supportive of all of this. They knew it was coming, so it wasn't a total shock to all of them. But I found out sort of as everybody else found out.  Continued...