BWW Exclusive: Leading Ladies with Special Guest Jodi Stevens

Leading ladies, leading ladies, leading ladies on and off stage

Welcome to leading ladies. My name is Helen Han. And I'm Sienna Rubin and we're your hosts

Today we are welcoming Jody Stevens who is a Broadway veteran and an amazing teacher. Hi

Just when I all things couldn't get worse, I realized I forgot my purse

But all this stress I must compress, She is the founder of SBEE Studios, which she runs with her husband, Scott Bryce, who we had the pleasure to work with through NPT. Yeah

So, Jody, you're a teacher. How has your experience in theater helped your teaching

It's taught me to watch more. It's taught me how we have to be..

patient with our students, I can empathize with every single challenge young artists are going through

Because I've been there and I have worked through many of those struggles as a performer myself

I wanted to be a teacher because I was missing things in my education

There were things that I definitely were missing and I yearned for and begged for and never

got because this industry has changed so dramatically over the past 20 years

The study and the science behind voice and vocal technique has grown and expanded so much over

the years because of the demands of musical theater and how the styles of musical theater

have evolved. It kind of goes both ways. The acting has informed my teaching and the teaching has really informed my acting So we heard that your family was also gifted in the arts So do you think you would have pursued this career if you had experienced a different upbringing

That's a really good question. I don't know. You know, I mean, it's like my family

when my mother would perform, my mother, my mother was big. than life, you know. So it was always forced upon me in a way. So if they weren't in the business

I don't know, because acting being authentic in whatever role we're playing in the world

And it's not a sense of being not real in whatever job you're doing. It's a sense of being a

human being and tapping into human being emotions. You were talking about your difficulties

earlier. Are there any specific difficulties that you encountered? As a teacher, I want to talk about

my challenge of having vocal trouble as a professional and how that informed my career. So part of why

I heard myself as a vocalist when I was an adult was because I did not have the training

when I was growing up. My family came from the school of, you know, either you got it or you don't

You don't need to study it. And that is just not accurate. And I didn't actually understand that

until I learned by doing. And I hemorrhaged a vocal cord. And I happened to be doing a Broadway show

I was auditioning for other projects coming up. I was doing a concert at the same time and I was doing publicity work for the show

And I had a personal life also and all of that just the tension I didn know how to take care of myself So I went back to school You build a muscle that continues to generate strength You got to continue to muscle and build those muscles because as performers we are athletes

And like an athlete, you need to take self-care and you need to learn how to know when you need to stop and need to take a break

Because I think sometimes we all get too focused on the outcome that we forget, like the process

and the self-care and maintaining everything. I think it's really important to study because this is not a business to go into

if you want your 15 minutes of fame. It's got it, it takes time, it takes living, it takes maintain an instrument, it takes

perseverance, it takes study, it takes a lifetime of study. You work with a lot of young artists

Are there any specific pitfalls that they tend to fall into that you have advice for

The first thing that comes to my mind is breath. I feel that anxiety in the world and at home and at school and on TV and on the media

I think it creates people to breathe shorter, shorter, shorter. The breath is rise, rise, rise, all right here

It's right here. So anxiety, I see a lot. I also, and I see the posture is inverted

And I want to bring everybody open. And I want to just take their little shoulders and bring them on back

So I do see a lot of that. I love to do this breathing technique with some of my students

I call it four square breathing. We're going to breathe in for four

We're going to pause for four. We're going to exhale for four. I'm going to pause for four

Breathe in through your nose. Here we go. Two three four and pause Two three four exhale through the nose two three four and pause two three four that cycle of breathing regulates the nervous system and settles our heart rate down and can get you present for whatever you want to have happen in your immediate future

Speaking of letting go of stress and anxiety and everything that's going on in the world right now, are there any causes that you'd like to talk about

Broadbred Care's Equity Fight Thades, I'm always participating in and always a passionate member of

In my company, we donate to the Actors Fund. I can't say that I'm one person that had like delved into one particular charity that I go gung ho for

There's so much to be a part of out there and there's so much I want to be a part of out there

So I, I, I, I, I spread my, spread it out as much as I can

Make sure to tune in to New Paradigm Theater's Giving Day event on February 25th, which you can watch from your house

And donations are always welcome. Futtloose, summer production by New Paradigm Theater is now open for registration

Yeah, and you can visit New Paradigm Theater's website for more details on both of these events

It was really nice talking to you, Jody, and I think all of our viewers can agree that you had a lot of good points to talk about

I hope so. Thank you. It was really, it was an honor to be here. Thank you for inviting me

It was honored for you to be here for us, too. And remember everyone out there, you can be a leading lady too, on or off stage. Bye

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