Everything's Coming Up Delphi Borich!

Written By: Chelsea & Cynthia 

Featuring: Delphi Borich 

We met Delphi last summer (2022) because she came highly recommended as a monologue coach and repertoire expert. We quickly signed her on as BVC Aspire College Prep program mentor and within a couple of weeks of us working together, she booked Broadway! 

Delphi has been on a wild ride ever since, so we are so excited to learn from her experiences, about how to create a strong body of work, the superpowers of understudies, and the logistics and learning curves of being a working actor.

Let's dive in!

Q: What did your audition process look like for booking Into The Woods on Broadway? 

A: In the past, I had been to a few big Broadway auditions, but not anything where I had gone in for multiple rounds. So my idea of it was, if I ever make it on Broadway, it'll be a long process of many rounds of auditions -but this one was not like that at all.

They were transferring Into The Woods from City Center and to Broadway, and so they had a relatively fast turnaround. My understanding is that it all came together really quickly and so they needed to build an understudy team very fast. So the audition process for it was to send in two or three songs that would fit the show, they gave me an idea of what my tracking would be (which was just a little bit different from what it ended up being, but not by too much) and then they said you can send videos from concerts that you've done or past auditions - but there was no need to like rerecord anything.

Naturally, me being me, decided that wasn't good enough so I rerecorded everything and spent two hours one day just trying different songs, seeing what would fit best, and I ended up sending three songs. It was due on a Tuesday morning, so I sent it in on a Monday night.

On Wednesday, my agents called and said "Just to let you know, you're very much in the mix for this. I just want to give you a heads up because they start rehearsals Monday" - which meant rehearsals could start in just four days. That Thursday I was at my survival job where I had just had a meeting that morning being offered a full-time position, but I had this pit in my stomach all day because I was just waiting to hear either way from my agents. I called them at five to check in, and they let me know they hadn't heard anything yet. But then 15 minutes later, my agent called back and said "I lied to you earlier. I already knew that you had booked it, but we were waiting for an offer. So, you booked it." 

I immediately started sobbing in my soundproof cubicle that I had excused myself to at this survival job. Afterward, I walked out and let my manager know that I had to quit. 

And it's so interesting because I booked this all from one tape, not even an in-person meeting. So it shifted my perspective in some ways because I had a conversation with Geoff Josselson at Telsey after the fact, and thanked him for taking a leap of faith in me. And he said something like, "Well, it wasn't a leap of faith" and that made me realize it wasn't just one tape that got me the job. It was years of them seeing me in completely different capacities, and it was all of that work from years and years and years that led me to a place where they felt they could trust me.

 Q: Can you share with us which roles you understudied?

A: I understudied Little Red Riding Hood, which was the one I went on for the most. I also understudied both stepsisters, Milky White, did some puppetry work in there, as well as Rapunzel.  

In Cinderella, during the last two weeks, our understudy for Cinderella ended up moving up into the role just for the last two weeks of the run and is now on the tour as well. So I volunteered to understudy Cinderella, and and basically four days later after it was official that I was gonna be covering her, I did a full put in for Cinderella.

Q: You started the Understudies of the Woods Instagram account, which took off and gained quite a following. Share with us a little bit about that and also if you think excitement over understudies will grow over the coming years within the industry.

A: Understudies of the Woods was an account we created and ended up posting about which shows we were being put on for. It became a great tool for fans and audience members -  but beyond that, what I found was it ended up becoming such a celebration of us, what we were doing there, and the importance of understudies, swings, standbys, etc. We were surprised that other companies didn't have that kind of shared information, we even later found out certain companies won't allow their understudies to post when they're going on, and it seems so strange to me. I understand it from a producer's perspective, but it's also really sort of disrespectful in a way to not celebrate these people who save your show time and time again. 

What we didn't anticipate with these understudy accounts was that we would gain fans. We had fans who knew us specifically and when we were on. They would start talking like they were collecting baseball cards- "I've seen this person do these three roles, but I really want to wait to come back until they're on for the next two.."

That response and that mindset shift is what I want the whole industry to have. Yes, you have your stars in any given production that people are coming to see. But if you start treating your understudies like stars as well, there won't be any disappointment if those "big names" aren't on stage.

My hope is that it will be supportive like this in the future and those long-running shows that don't allow people to post when they're going on will change those rules.

Q: Back us up before Into the Woods - tell us about young Delphi studying musical theater and your journey to New York in the first place.

A: I knew I wanted to do musical theater from a very young age but I didn't have a lot of information on how to do it. It wasn't until my junior year of high school when I did the University of Michigan MPulse program, where I actually met Cynthia for the first time, that I started to really understand what the path was just by speaking to my fellow students who somehow had all the information. It was such an eye-opening experience and getting a taste of what college would be like too was really wonderful.

From there, I knew what schools to apply to, I knew how to go in prepared, and ended up getting accepted into Syracuse. And the thing about Syracuse was that I was very unsure for a very long time of whether or not I would end up working professionally in musical theater or if it would be straight theater (for a variety of reasons), and I just didn't quite know what I would get hired for. So it was important for me to go to a school that was strong in its acting program, which Syracuse was.

I studied abroad and did a program at Shakespeare's Globe in the fall of my junior year. Syracuse was very helpful because I got everything out of it that I could have. I also had a few realizations of what the old school mentality was with being a person of color and how I might be perceived once I got into the industry and sort of preparing myself for that, but also not allowing that to define what I was going to try to accomplish. 

We actually had a program where we would move to the city a semester early, so January of 2016 when I graduated, was the start of Tepper Semester, where you move to the city and you take classes with Daisy Prince and they bring in all of these amazing people for master classes.It was wonderful because we moved to the city with a safety net because we didn't have any concerns other than just learning about the city, studying musical theater, and simply transitioning.

I decided to audition for the National Tour of Cinderella and ended up booking that as an understudy. I had just moved to the city and then was gone for 10 months, which was wild. But when I got back to the city, I  felt like I was behind because yes, I had just done this great job, but I also saw my classmates figure out the whole survival job thing already and I felt like I had no idea where to start. I still wanted to audition, but I needed to be able to pay rent. So that's when the survival job search started happening.

It really does take some time to figure it out. You want something that's going to be flexible enough to let you audition, but you also want something that pays you enough to be able to live there in the first place. That process took years of starting a job, getting three months in and deciding it didn't work for me, and starting over. It was a lot of trial and error. 

But one of my most consistent jobs was working at The Drama Bookshop.That was a wonderful experience because it gave me a chance to read plays and know what was going on in theater for my job. It's what helps me make monologue recommendations and led to me working with BVC, and it's still amazing to me that something that started as a survival job has really lasted a long time in terms of what I do to this day.

Q: As an Asian American actor in this business, you've had the opportunity to really be a first or one of the first in a number of the things that you've done. Specifically, we know that you were the first Asian American Little Red on Broadway. How does all of that feel? 

A: Personally, there's a lot of pride, as entering the business as an actor, you always hope that someday you get to make an impact in the world in some way, something permanent that you can put your stamp on. And that, for me, is it, having been the first Asian American actor to play Little Red on Broadway. It's a really special thing.

You know, we never know what's going to happen in the future. I might, after this show, never work again. I have no idea. Right? But that's something that can never be taken away from me and is something incredibly special. And to have had that as my onstage Broadway debut is something that I'll never forget for the rest of my life.

Also, just in terms of the representation within Cinderella, I think I was probably the first in that particular production and the tour of that production to have done it. But especially having been on a tour going to different parts of America where young Asian American women might have never seen someone like them on stage in that capacity that means the world to me. There were people who would follow along and let me know that I was making a difference for them and that was very meaningful. A majority of people who still follow along with my stuff today, a lot of them came from when I was playing Belle at Theatre Under the Stars in Houston.

A lot of people who saw the show there, still bring that up every once in a while that they saw me and are happy with where I'm at now. The support really makes it worth it, it makes it special and more than just me going on a stage every night. There's a weight to it.

Q: What about the reality of being a working actor was most surprising or took you off guard?

A: I think what I wasn't prepared for was the schedule. When you're in the show proper every night, and you're not an understudy, you have your whole day, you show up for the show, you do the show, and you go home.

But when you're an understudy, you also have understudy rehearsals, you have the added pressure of always needing to be prepared and so for different roles, that means different things. Sometimes you have to do extra work at home if you feel like you need it. If you're not on stage every night, you don't really know if you have to warm up or not. Small detail things like that.

But the schedule is really tough and I found myself, coming out of the pandemic, I was so solid in my friends that I would see all the time. But that immediately gets cut down because your friends might be working a regular nine-to-five and you're working very weird hours for the rest of the world. So I think the balance of my life was thrown off a lot. I felt in a lot of ways like I couldn't keep up socially with my best friends, and then therefore, that means that I'm less happy sometimes because I'm not getting that outlet. The scheduling is hard and that's something that I'm trying to be better about balancing now.

Q: Can you talk a little about the show you're doing now and what are some of the things you're trying to do the second time around to try to keep more of that balance?

A: Currently, I'm doing Camelot at Lincoln Center, which I'm very excited about. And unlike Into the Woods, I am in the ensemble. So I'm in the show every night and I'm also understudying Guinevere. So we've gone from six roles I'm understudying to one very hard role. 

Work-wise, I can't decide which one was more work, but she's a beast of a role. It's also a new book by Aaron Sorkin, so not only is it a musical where she's singing a million songs, but she's also doing heavy, heavy Aaron Sorkin scenes. It's a huge challenge. 

 In terms of balance, I think our rehearsal process has been much longer than Into the Woods was, which was about two and a half weeks total for me. For this show, when all is said and done, I think we will have done probably two months of rehearsal, including previews. So I have a little bit more time to set my habits and make sure everything is in check. Having my evenings free has been amazing. Just because I feel like I have time to just check in with people that I haven't been able to check in with for a while.

That being said, it's still a bit of a learning curve because I haven't been in the show and understudying the lead since Cinderella. There's something about being an offstage understudy that's so much easier because you can just watch everything and take your notes down and catch all the details. I'm very detail oriented with understudying and it's certainly a shift, but it also in a lot of ways feels like the logical next step for me, and I'm grateful that I have a new job that doesn't feel like I'm doing more of the same. It's a new challenge. It's a completely new job and it feels like shifting from playing six roles in a very much ensemble show to doing this massive show at Lincoln Center, it feels like really gratifying work. 

Q: What's life between jobs and waiting for the next, "big job" to come? How have you grappled with that in the past, and how do you feel like that's changed over time?

A: Earlier in my career, I didn't necessarily think about the in-between as much. I would sort of just be hoping that it would work out and when I was on contract, just being so happy that I was on contract, not thinking about what it would be like coming back.

I think just managing my finances better probably would've been more helpful, I was never in a horrible place, but I certainly do remember having times when I would be back in the city and just be like, "Man, if I had just been smarter about that and saved enough to get me through however many months, so I had that security". But I didn't think about those things. I was just so thrilled to be going from theater to theater, but then coming back to New York it was a weird mix of being so happy to be back, because I genuinely love living in New York, but then also being faced with reality.

That's where you start finding survival jobs like some restaurants where you build really good relationships, which I was lucky enough to find. I found a Japanese restaurant that was in my neighborhood and the owners were all artists of some sort in the past and they were from Japan. Which was wonderful for me because I felt like I had a home away from home with people who genuinely wanted the best for me.

Finding those sorts of spots I think is crucial. When you're looking for survival work and never having to feel like you have to apologize to go and do what you love was something that was really important for me. If I ever felt like someone would be mad at me at my survival job for leaving, then for me, that just wasn't it, that that wasn't ever going be good for either side.