How I Produced a Show in a Foreign Country Following a Global Pandemic
What do you get when you take an actress, send her to a foreign country, and then force everyone into quarantine? You get a one-woman show.
In the spring of 2021, I was feeling lost, discouraged and honestly, quite bored. So I decided to do something about it. I gathered my journal entries and favorite showtunes and wove them together to create my own one-woman show, “The Real Emily in Paris.”
For the better part of a year, the Netflix hit had been haunting me. Its clichés and fantasies, though fascinating, did not come close to the reality of my life in Paris. And so my show was born. Writing the script and arranging the music was easy. But actually creating and producing a show from scratch, presented a real challenge. To make matters even more difficult, I only had access to one theatre; a theatre that only had availability the final week of July. Most Parisians flee the city for the month of August, many of them leaving a week in advanced. If I managed to produce this show, would there be anyone in the audience?
My first task was to find a pianist to accompany me onstage. I hired a jazz pianist who had little musical theatre experience. The show opened with Rodgers and Hammerstein’s “I Have Confidence,” from The Sound of Music. I want you to imagine this iconic piece of musical theatre played in a relaxed, uneven tempo. Ça ne marche pas. But I had faith in my pianist and we had six weeks to rehearse. Ça va aller.
The next item on the to-do list was to advertise the show! This is where I got creative. My largest network lived outside of Paris and I needed to sell tickets. I asked the theatre if we could arrange a livestream and sell virtual tickets at a reduced rate. Their first response, “c’est pas possible!” But if there’s anything I’ve learned from Emily in Paris, it’s that when the French say “non,” she says, “mais oui!”
After some persuasion, the theatre staff agreed to the livestream. But I still wanted people cheering me on in the audience. So I called everyone I knew, everyone I’d met at a random expat event, every living soul I could think of who might possibly be in Paris on the evening of the 29th.
In the meantime, I had to create the fiche technique, the technical plan for my show. This mainly included lighting design… something I had not even thought about since my stage lighting class at Oklahoma City University. Thankfully I had several mentors who came to the rescue and advised me. Once my tech sheet was complete, I had to translate it into French. Who would have thought I’d be designing lights, let alone translating the design into a foreign language? Netflix didn’t include that storyline on Emily in Paris.
As the show date approached, rehearsals with my pianist became more frequent. He became more comfortable with the musical theatre material, I and even “jazzed up,” a number or two. It was time for our first run through. What’s the saying, “bad rehearsal, good show?” If that was true, we were in for an excellent production. The run through went horribly. Ticket sales were low and my spirits were even lower.
This is when the doubt starting to trickle in and invade my mind. Would we be ready in time? Would my jokes land? Who was even coming to my little show anyway? Why did I move to this country? What was I doing with my life?
But then I remembered the reason I was doing this show in the first place.
Would it be a career-defining moment? Probably not. Was I going to sell out the theatre and make a lot of money? Definitely not. But it wasn’t about that. I was doing this for me. It had been over two years since I performed and I was tired of waiting for an opportunity. This was a way for me to tell my story; to work through the excitement and anticipation that accompanied my arrival, the shock brought on by the Covid-19 pandemic, and everything that had happened since. I had made it this far, I just had to have faith that everything would turn out okay.
The final stage rehearsal went much better than the first. Finally, we were ready. Ticket sales soared on the day of the performance. When the lights came up in the theatre, I was delighted to see a half-full house, not bad for my Parisian debut. I had even more people tuning in via the livestream; friends and family viewing from across the US, Europe and even Japan.
There is only one word to describe how I felt in that moment: grateful. I was grateful for each face smiling back at me from the audience, grateful for the man sitting behind the piano, grateful for the theatre staff and for the mentors who coached me.
Was it a career-defining moment? En fait, it was. I created a show from scratch, got people to come see it, and they actually liked it! Did I make a ton of money? No, but I made enough to pay the theatre, my pianist, and used the rest to cover my visa fees. My jokes landed and I hit my high notes. But most importantly, I had fun.
How do you overcome writer’s (or in my case, performer’s) block?
Did the pandemic rob you of a role, or did you recognize it as an opportunity to create your own?
10/10 recommend building your own project from the ground up. You’ll challenge yourself, learn valuable skills, and you may even have fun!
Check out a sneak peek of my show here!