Behind the Scenes with Chelsea Wilson

Written By: Chelsea & Cynthia

A few months ago, we had the opportunity to sit down with our very own Chelsea Wilson to learn more about her story, her journey onto Broadway, and what led her to co-found Broadway Vocal Coach.

If you haven't had the chance to read that post, you can check it out here. Her career took a different path than she initially thought it would, which is what makes it so inspiring for performers and teachers alike because it offers a perspective of a career on Broadway that we don't normally get.

In this feature of Chelsea's life, we are going to dive deeper into her Broadway career as a vocal coach, working on productions like The Phantom of the Opera, School of Rock, and Jesus Christ Superstar. Plus, she's sharing her best advice for aspiring Broadway performers.

Let's get started! 

Q: How did you get into the 'Vocal Coach on Broadway" side of the business?

A: The story of how all this came to be ties into another recent episode of the BVC podcast that we've done, which was episode 13, where we discuss how to network in the theater industry and not feel icky. These opportunities really came from a connection that I had built previously, and I've considered myself incredibly fortunate to have been able to make these relationships and be in the right place at the right time.

My background was as a performer and that's what I went to school to do, but I was simultaneously doing private voice teacher certification. When I moved to New York in 2012, I started teaching voice professionally, and over the course of many years and lots of struggle, I have built up a really thriving private vocal studio.

Around 2015/2016/2017, I was doing a lot of voice teacher training, specifically about musical theater singing, which meant I was working with other voice teachers and delivering classes about how to help them with their musical theater students. One person I had in class was Fiona McDougal, a fantastic voice teacher, and coach in London. At this point, she had been coaching on just about every Andrew Lloyd Webber production in the UK and even in the United States. His production company is the Really Useful Group, so anytime they were mounting a new production, Fiona was there, boots on the ground. She would work with singers to get ready for opening night, for the cast album, helping bridge the gap between the music team and what they needed from the singer.

In about 2017, the production of School of Rock on Broadway was in need of someone to be working with their lead leading men playing the role of Dewey (the Jack Black character in the movie if you're familiar) on a regular basis. It is a very demanding role, almost like the Elphaba for men, in my opinion. These folks are singing like High A Flats, A's, and B Flats over and over and over for a two-and-a-half-hour show while running, jumping on furniture, jumping off furniture, and playing the guitar.

So around this time, I had Fiona in a class of mine and this need came up at School of Rock in New York. Fiona recommended me to the producer and shared that I would be a great fit for the job. I was referred to the producer Ken Davenport, and I remember I was out to dinner one night with a group of friends, and I got a voicemail. I excused myself to go listen in the hallway leading to the bathroom, and I hear, "Hi, this is Ken Davenport from School of Rock, and I just wondered if we could talk to you about..." and I was just stunned. Fiona had not given me a heads-up that she had referred me for this job and it was coming out of thin air. 

It was a life-changing opportunity to work on a Broadway show, as up until that point, I'd been working with Broadway actors privately in my own studio, and they'd be on national tours, Broadway shows, regional work, and I worked too with plenty of people who were just singing for fun. But to be employed by a Broadway show and to work with the music team is a really different experience because you have to keep in mind the goals and objectives for the production as a whole.

There were four leading men who played that role - one played it six times a week, another played it twice a week, and then two men in the ensemble were on stage understudies. I met with all four of those men every week for a voice lesson, and essentially you could think of it like physical therapy. We would work on rebalancing their voice, checking to see if everything's in good working order, and making sure they are able to support their performance. Within those sessions too, would be implementing notes that the music team would pass to me to share with the performer or that they had received in music notes and were wondering how best to implement those notes.

At the time I was 27 when I got that job, and I was really still quite young. I think one of the challenges in that role was taking myself seriously and being taken seriously at times. Being able to come in with a sense of authority and saying I have tools to help you. There's also the factor of being a woman in the Broadway industry in general.

Q: What might be different for a singer to expect working with a private teacher on audition material, versus if they are cast in that role, what might be different now in terms of how you approach them as a singer?

A: I had the opportunity on both School of Rock, and then about a year later on Phantom of the Opera, to serve as the associate vocal coach, while Fiona remained the primary vocal coach. I was in New York doing that weekly work, but I also had the opportunity in both of those shows to be part of bringing in replacements.

One of the reasons why I was brought on to School of Rock was because they were in the process of bringing in a whole new cast. I got to be a very small part of that, in that the handful of guys that were in the final callbacks, they'd come in and do a session with me. I would run them through the ropes, price them with adjustments, and prep them for that final audition. I would also give a little bit of feedback to the rest of the team on where their voice was at and what it might take for them to do six shows a week versus two shows a week.

--- When it came to working with these singers in the show versus people coming to me for a private lesson, so much of our time together had to serve the show. That didn't mean that we were working on music from School of Rock in every session in fact, very often that wasn't the case. But working on other material or vocalizing in a different way helped bring more balance and agility to these singers' vocal repertoire which could make singing the role a little bit easier.

The other difference was that they had the job - they were actively involved in a role. We weren't necessarily working on audition material or trying to prep something for next week. We were focusing on upkeeping their voice and feeling as good as possible doing the most demanding job ever.

Whereas students who had come to me for private lessons were working on a whole host of things: audition material, working on dream roles, dream songs, and focusing on getting technique and style to a place where they could tackle those things.

Q: When new performers were brought in, to what extent were they expected to match or morph into the person who had been in the role previously?

A: That's a great question. Those two shows, School of Rock and Phantom, could not be more different in this way. With School of Rock, I came in right at the beginning of a casting process and it was the first time they split the role. Previously, Alex Brightman and the person who followed him, Eric Petersen, they were playing the role eight times a week. But when they recasted, Justin Collette led the production six shows a week, and Conner John Gillooly played the role twice a week.

And those two actors could not be more different. Justin had perhaps a more typical Jack Black look, sound, and height. While Conner, who played the role twice a week, was younger than me, tall, thin, light hair, and he sounded different too. He played it as a version of himself and vocally, I would say there was a lot of room to play with that role. Despite it being a very intense singer role, I think for audiences, there wasn't the expectation that Dewey Finn only sounds like "this".

Whereas for many other long running shows,  like  Wicked, or Phantom of The Opera. It was actually really cool to see in that casting process, for the role to go to someone who really was not typical or how it had previously been been cast.

When it came to Phantom of the Opera, I had the immense pleasure of coming onto that production when Ali Ewoldt was leading the show and Ali was the first Asian American woman to play that role. She was phenomenal, she is just truly a class act. I think with a role like this, from my perspective, there is a really specific expectation of what Christine sounds like. It is a light, clear, beautiful, dynamic soprano sound. I have been pleased in the last several years to see a more diverse group of women being cast in this role, different looks and ethnicities, while still maintaining musical consistency.

Christine was just being Christine, while still singing the songs and the range that she had to sing in the typical sound. There was a sound that the team was looking for, with a definite level of skill and talent to be able to accomplish it, whether it's six, eight or two times a week.

Q: Tell us a little bit about how you got involved with Rock of Ages Off-Broadway 

A: It was January 2020, so the world was open and shows were still running. I was teaching a series of master classes for a bunch of international students from Mexico and South America over the course of a two week period. One of my friends, Bronwyn Tarboton, was playing for me for most of these classes, but there were a couple classes that she couldn't do. So she was finding me some subs for these classes, and one of those was Jacob Yates, who was currently the MD on Rock of Ages off Broadway. They had just moved into New World Stages, and he was MDing the production.

I was working with singers and we were working on a lot of technique, masterclass style, so a lot of people would sing in the course of a two hour class. And afterwards he just came up to me and was like, "Wow, I love how you teach, you're making amazing things happen with these singers. I could really use your help over at the show I'm doing, Rock of Ages."

And they had just brought in Dot Marie Jones into the show, and she was doing about a six week period.
I think it might have been her first time on Broadway or off Broadway. Her role was to be played by a tenor, and if you're familiar with Dot's voice, she has quite a low voice. There were some challenges there, for that to feel comfortable for her. So, Jacob brought me in and I had the pleasure of doing several sessions with Dot, being able to go to her put-in, take notes at the show, and work with her throughout the beginning of her rehearsal process and the beginning of her performances.

And I loved that experience and that story because, in this business, you truly never know who's gonna be your accompanist for the masterclass you teach (or attend!) that day, and the relationship that you'll form with those people. You never have any idea who you might meet, and that they've got a need that you might have a specific skillset that will be the solution to their problem. 

That was a really fantastic experience that was cut short by the pandemic. At that time too, I was really enthused by how that had come about, to meet Jacob and to get to work on that show . I had just seen Six and I was so inspired by what the women were doing in Six and I wrote a personal note to the music director of Six and delivered it at the stage door. I was just like, "I love what you're doing, if you ever need any vocal support, I'd love to offer you any assistance. Here's, you know, a bit of my resume, what I've been doing for these other productions", and then we all know the world shut down.

But I was at this place that I was able to do all this really exciting work, that's different than working with students in a private voice lesson scenario, but really working to benefit a production as a whole, to be able to support people to do their very specific, hyper-focused job. I loved that experience and I'd love to do more of that in the future.

Q: Is there any advice that you would give to singers who are hopefully going to embark in a role requiring eight shows a week (or are currently in eight shows a week?)

A: Something I like to think about is budgeting your vocal energy. Imagine that you have $10 to spend over the course of your two and a half hour musical, especially if you're in some sort of leading role or you're singing a lot of the material. Budget out which songs need and require the most of your energy and then budget the rest accordingly.

So if I'm Dewey Finn in School of Rock, when I climb to the top of Mount Rock, the opening number, is going to cost me $1.50, or even $2 to do that number vocally. Therefore, you can't spend $7 on the second number of the song, you have to save that. You have to budget that out for the rest of the show.

You can apply this to to the song that you're working on this week. Of these four measures, this is the money note. This is where I'm going to spend the majority of my vocal energy, and then I only have 90 cents left of my $1 in this song to spend vocally.

I would say for folks who are doing this professionally, and currently working or auditioning, be mindful of your vocal technique. That sounds so trite, but work to understand how your voice operates, how you can find balance in your voice, and how you can warm up in a way to find that balance. Go and do your show that is maybe vocally demanding, and then do a cool down after the show to bring you back to vocal balance, to a sense of ease and efficiency. Those are skills that you don't want to learn two months into your Broadway show or a month into the tour that you're a part of. Not just your Broadway tour, but the non-equity tour where you're in a van and moving cities every day.

It's crucial that you understand enough about your voice before all of this is required of you. It's like the saying, the best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. I feel the same way about your vocal technique and understanding how your own voice operates best. Everyone's voice is different, some people can eat whatever they want and do an eight show week, and others have to avoid spicy food and dairy because it affects their reflux too much. There's no right or wrong way to prescribe, but knowing yourself, knowing your voice, taking ownership of your vocal health and your longevity, no one else will do that for you.

Nobody else will hold up boundaries around your vocal health and your vocal stamina. So you must. You must be the one to do that, to take care of your voice, otherwise, if you're in a demanding show or role, you run the risk of tiring yourself out, injury, and just not being boundaried about your time, energy and efforts.