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BWW Exclusive: Leading Ladies with Special Guest Janelle Robinson
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Oct 27, 2022
Today on Leading Ladies is special guest: Broadway veteran, Janelle Robinson. For the past ten years, Janelle Anne Robinson has enjoyed an ongoing professional career on the operatic and musical theater stage. She has performed in France and Japan, and also toured extensively within the United States. Janelle has also been honored with several awards, including The Richard Tucker Study Grant and the MacAllister Award.
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Leading ladies, leading ladies, leading ladies on and off stage
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Welcome to Leading Ladies with New Paradigm Theatre Company. My name is Helen Han
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And my name is Sienna Rubin. We are both part of the youth board for the New Paradigm Theatre Company
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and we will be your hosts today. Today we're welcoming Janelle Robinson, who we are both so excited to have
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Yeah, she is an amazing actress who has performed in many, many places, including on Broadway
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She is a teacher and has done a bunch of things with New Paradigm Theatre Company, like the holiday show
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She was the judge of the last So You Want to Be a Broadway Star, and she is an adult board member
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How has your background in the arts influenced you becoming a leading lady
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I grew up in, well, I was born in Jamaica, West Indies. My dad's Jamaican and my mom's American
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My parents met in Jamaica and I moved to the States when I was six and I moved to New Jersey
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My mom was an avid supporter of the arts. So when we moved up to the States, she was really interested in nurturing that in her children
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And I started singing when I was really little. Then I just started doing more and more shows
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I loved it. My mom really sought out local theater, regional theater auditions
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I ended up doing a ton of music theater throughout high school
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And then I decided I wanted to do that as a profession and realized my passion and love for music theater and went to college for it and then started a career in it
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An opportunity came up to do this show called Mark Twain the Musical
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There was an actor in the show who was an equity actor and he showed me an audition for Ragtime I went down and I auditioned and I got a call back
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And then I got offered the understudy of Sarah's friend to go
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But I had to go to Toronto to do the show because it was the out of town run before it came to Broadway
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And at the time, my daughter was two years old. and I was going to have to move to Toronto in two weeks
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And so I turned it down because I just like, I couldn't see myself leaving my daughter at that time
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And I also had a couple other gigs lined up that I couldn't get out of at the time. But fast forward
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the casting people at the time really took a liking to me
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and they started calling me in for a couple other auditions. And one of them ended up being Showboat
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which was also being revived. on Broadway at the time and they needed a replacement for one of the ensemble members
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and so I went in and I auditioned and I got hired and so I started doing Broadway shows
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and from there I started doing national tours and then I did regional theater as well and then as I
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was going along, I started getting asked to do masterclasses. I realized how much I loved
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teaching as well and the education side of the business. And so I started doing more of that
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Yeah, that sounds really fun. Yeah. All of your many experiences in the arts and in theater
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Have you had any struggles being a woman? Back in the 80s, typecasting was really
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really prevalent back then. And so when I was growing up, I started voice lessons in high school
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and my voice teacher had a classical background. She'd gone to Juilliard
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And so when I started studying, my lessons, my technique and my tutelage was primarily classical
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It is the truth in hand. And unfortunately, oftentimes when I would walk in the room for auditions because of
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the color of my skin they would see me they would typecast me So when I walked in the room everybody would assume that I would just be the gospel singing belting skrelting female
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and that's not what I did and um so I was limited because uh
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they just made assumptions as to what I should be doing or how I should be cast
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Yeah that that makes a lot of sense um do you have any advice for our viewers or
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other leading ladies out there who would be interested in having a similar career as you
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Sure. The advice I would give you nowadays is to not give up. Because now, first of all, there are so many more opportunities as far as a woman, but also the BIPOC community
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I think that a lot of barriers have been broken in the last 10 years
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You know, thinking outside the box as far as using artists, utilizing their talents, regardless of their skin color or their physical abilities, whether they are in a wheelchair or not
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there are a lot of artists now that are being being seen and having the opportunity to have
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careers that 20 years ago you know might not have been possible so what I would say to
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females or any artists that feels like they're struggling at any time is to not give up what I
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always say to my students is do not limit yourself yes you might be interested in music theater
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but your music theater experience could be used at the white house hamilton was you might be used
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on a television show uh on national television or on netflix so do the work train uh master your
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technique and just keep putting yourself out there as much as you can are there any charities or causes you would like to talk about today I have many charities and causes Just because I okay first of all I an animal lover
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So the first charity I think of, it's a local place that I look to to help out
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It's called Dawes. It's Danbury Animal Welfare Society. Sorry. And I donate to that organization just because I think that every dog and cat deserves a healthy home
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But I also am so happy and grateful to be a new member of the board of New Paradigm Theater
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And of course, I support and celebrate them for several reasons. One of the reasons why I really was interested in joining this board when I was asked is because of what New Paradigm gives back to the community and the outreach work that they do and the fact that they work with other not-for-profit organizations
8:35
So for that reason, primarily, I highly support New Paradigm Theater. Speaking of New Paradigm Theater, there's a New Paradigm Theater event. It's called On the Long Concert, and it is on October 10th. You should all go. It will be a lot of fun
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It's an opportunity to be outside and support these beautiful, talented artists that we have that are going to be there next Saturday
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Thank you so much, Janelle, for joining us. You're welcome. Leading Ladies
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You're welcome. I'm thrilled to do this and I'm so happy that you guys have started this program
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I hope, I wish you the best of luck and I can't wait to see what other, the other artists that you get to be on the show
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I'm really excited and look forward to it. We can't wait either
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And remember, you can be a leading lady too, on and off stage
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Leading ladies, leading ladies, leading ladies on and off stage
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