Latest / STOPTIME: Live in the Moment. / Ross Baum & Angelica Chéri: Trust, Collaboration & the Road to Broadway

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Ross Baum & Angelica Chéri: Trust, Collaboration & the Road to Broadway · STOPTIME: Live in the Moment.

0:24
Lisa Hopkins: This is the Stop Time Podcast.
0:26
Lisa Hopkins: I'm your host, Lisa Hopkins, and I'm here to engage you in thought-provoking motivational conversations around practicing the art of living in the moment.
0:35
Lisa Hopkins: I'm a certified life coach, and I'm excited to dig deep and offer insights into embracing who we are and where we are at.
0:44
Lisa Hopkins: I am thrilled to welcome my next two guests.
0:51
Lisa Hopkins: Two extraordinary creative forces whose work is shaping the future of musical theater and storytelling.
0:58
Lisa Hopkins: Returning to the podcast is the brilliant Angelica Cherie, an NAACP Award nominated playwright, musical theater writer, screenwriter, and poet, who was recently named by the Washington Post to its next 50 list, recognizing people shaping American culture and society in 2026.
1:20
Lisa Hopkins: And by variety, as one of Broadway's top 10 stars to watch.
1:26
Lisa Hopkins: Joining us for the first time is Ross Ball.
1:29
Ross Baum: First, not last.
1:31
Lisa Hopkins: Definitely not last.
1:32
Lisa Hopkins: A New York-based composer, singer, songwriter, music producer, arranger, and vocal coach whose work spans Broadway, television, recording, and live performances.
1:42
Lisa Hopkins: His collaborators include Tony winners, Grammy nominees, Broadway stars, and artists from NBC's The Voice, and his work has been heard everywhere from Sesame Street and Nickelodeon to Lincoln Center, Radio City Music Hall, and the Kennedy Center, to name a few.
2:00
Lisa Hopkins: Together, these two powerhouses, Ross and Angelica, are the creators of Broadway-bound musical Wanted.
2:09
Lisa Hopkins: Opening this fall at James Earl Jones Theater, following acclaimed productions at Signature Theater and Paper Mill Playhouse, where it was named A New York Times Critics Pick.
2:19
Lisa Hopkins: Their partnership is not only artistically groundbreaking, but historically significant.
2:25
Lisa Hopkins: With Wanted, Angelica becomes the first black woman to write both the book and lyrics of a wholly original Broadway musical.
2:33
Lisa Hopkins: Yeah, hello.
2:35
Lisa Hopkins: And I am just so excited to welcome both of you here today and introduce everybody.
2:41
Lisa Hopkins: If you don't already know them, they're going to be household names.
2:45
Lisa Hopkins: We've got Ross Baum and Angelica Cherie.
2:48
Lisa Hopkins: Welcome back to Stop Time.
2:50
Lisa Hopkins: Angelica and Ross, welcome for your first time.
2:52
Lisa Hopkins: Thank you, Lisa.
2:53
Lisa Hopkins: Thank you, Lisa.
2:55
Angelica Cheri: Incredible to have you.
2:56
Angelica Cheri: Rossi and I were both on the Washington Post list next 50.
3:02
Angelica Cheri: That is true.
3:02
Angelica Cheri: That's the two of us.
3:03
Angelica Cheri: Not just me.
3:04
Ross Baum: Yeah, we did an amazing photo shoot.
3:07
Lisa Hopkins: Yes.
3:07
Lisa Hopkins: No kidding.
3:09
Lisa Hopkins: And we will share some of those photos because that was that was pretty brilliant.
3:12
Lisa Hopkins: Just before we get in, I just this is from my heart to yours.
3:16
Lisa Hopkins: So I had a long day, uh, good day, but long day.
3:19
Lisa Hopkins: Um, mostly with my dad.
3:20
Lisa Hopkins: And Angelica, I know how dearly you you held your hold and held your dad.
3:25
Lisa Hopkins: And my dad's going through some rough times.
3:26
Lisa Hopkins: So I spent a really, really long day today with dad.
3:30
Lisa Hopkins: As I go, I put earbuds on and walk out of that world and start listening to that opening.
3:37
Lisa Hopkins: And do you know, Ross?
3:39
Lisa Hopkins: First of all, the tempo, that tempo never changed that tempo.
3:44
Lisa Hopkins: I felt so empowered, it felt so forward-moving.
3:48
Lisa Hopkins: Which song were you listening to?
3:49
Lisa Hopkins: Gun and Powder.
3:51
Ross Baum: Oh, yes.
3:51
Ross Baum: I suspect it feels like you're riding on a horse or strutting down the street.
3:56
Lisa Hopkins: Strutting down the street.
3:57
Lisa Hopkins: That was me.
3:58
Lisa Hopkins: I was like, just back off, everybody.
4:00
Lisa Hopkins: I am moving forward, and I'll smile at you if you want to smile, but I'm gonna keep going forward.
4:07
Ross Baum: Well, that's that's one of the messages of the song, right?
4:10
Ross Baum: It's like through all the challenges that life throws at you, you you grab it by the balls and you and you take hold of it.
4:20
Lisa Hopkins: 100%.
4:20
Lisa Hopkins: Well, that's exactly what it did for me, and that's that's exactly how I connected to it.
4:25
Lisa Hopkins: I thought, oh yeah, I was in it.
4:27
Lisa Hopkins: Like you captured that Ross.
4:30
Ross Baum: Thank you.
4:30
Ross Baum: You it's I'm so glad that you picked up on that.
4:32
Ross Baum: Tempo is such a funny thing, though, because even like two clicks, faster or slower, can make a song feel like an entirely different song, and it really affects the delivery of the lyric.
4:46
Ross Baum: Yeah, especially in the musical when everything is coming at you for the first time.
4:51
Lisa Hopkins: Yeah.
4:51
Lisa Hopkins: How did the two of you first kind of find each other creatively?
4:55
Angelica Cheri: So we were both musical theater writing MFA students at the Tish School of the Arts for graduate musical theater writing and um at NYU.
5:06
Angelica Cheri: And that program is like basically speed dating between composer lyricists, words people, music people.
5:13
Ross Baum: And so the first year you spend basically rotating between the music people and the words people doing different assignments together, and our assignment to create a basically a montage song, extended sequence is what it was called from a Chinese action movie.
5:37
Angelica Cheri: Curse of the Golden Flower.
5:39
Ross Baum: And we reimagined this sequence as a Grammy's performance.
5:44
Ross Baum: So, like the prince was just in Timberlake, nice, and the queen was Lady Gaga, and we had all of these pop artist references to to represent these Chinese royals, and there was 808s and there was rapping and all these fun pop melodies.
6:10
Ross Baum: It was the first time that I think I really broke out of the musical theater genre, I would say, because it was halfway through the first year.
6:24
Ross Baum: So we had already done probably seven or eight assignments, and we just really spoke the same language and we had so much fun.
6:35
Angelica Cheri: It was so much fun.
6:37
Ross Baum: So then we we chose each other at the end of that first year to spend the second year working on our thesis, which which was wanted.
6:49
Angelica Cheri: Which was wanted at the time, Gun and Powder.
6:52
Ross Baum: Yeah.
6:52
Ross Baum: We met in 2013.
6:55
Ross Baum: We started writing our show in 2014.
6:57
Ross Baum: We've graduated the NYU program in 2015, and we were, I think, the only people crazy enough to keep working.
7:06
Ross Baum: Is that right?
7:07
Ross Baum: You guys the only ones still going?
7:08
Ross Baum: Yeah.
7:09
Angelica Cheri: Yeah, I don't think anyone well, no, but if Alexandra and Eloise, that's true.
7:15
Ross Baum: They just did that at Syracuse.
7:16
Angelica Cheri: Yeah, Syracuse.
7:18
Lisa Hopkins: That's cool.
7:18
Lisa Hopkins: Yeah.
7:19
Lisa Hopkins: Wow, that's some staying power.
7:21
Lisa Hopkins: I mean, we all know it takes a long time to write a musical, but nevertheless, the fact that you're still together.
7:26
Ross Baum: And we also pride ourselves on we've never had a fight really in 12 years.
7:31
Lisa Hopkins: Talk to me about the seminal moment when you kind of was like, I think I really there's something here, this collaboration.
7:37
Lisa Hopkins: Not even the project.
7:38
Lisa Hopkins: It sounds like it probably was a lot people-oriented as well, right?
7:42
Angelica Cheri: Definitely.
7:43
Angelica Cheri: I mean, because we did first, obviously that initial collaboration.
7:49
Angelica Cheri: Then when you look at the finished product, because it's two things, right?
7:52
Angelica Cheri: There's finished product and there's process.
7:54
Angelica Cheri: And the process, like the finished product, we were both like really, really pleased with.
7:59
Angelica Cheri: But even just the process, we were like, we just literally had fun.
8:02
Angelica Cheri: It was easy.
8:03
Angelica Cheri: Like it was, you know, we we had, like he said, like, you know, we spoke the same language.
8:08
Angelica Cheri: So that just goes a long way.
8:10
Angelica Cheri: Yeah.
8:11
Angelica Cheri: And when it came time to figuring out what musicals we would write for our thesis, we were both, you know, tasked to pitch and show and share ideas with different people in the cast.
8:23
Angelica Cheri: And I remember having this idea because we talk about historical figures as being like source material for a musical theme for a musical.
8:31
Angelica Cheri: And I thought about my great-great aunties that I'd been told about since childhood.
8:37
Angelica Cheri: And I thought there's a musical here.
8:39
Angelica Cheri: And I was just like, I feel like Ross would like, what would that be like?
8:43
Angelica Cheri: I think that would really be sick.
8:44
Angelica Cheri: Like, that would be fire if like Ross and I wrote this show.
8:47
Angelica Cheri: So I was excited to pitch it to him.
8:49
Lisa Hopkins: I just find it so fascinating.
8:51
Lisa Hopkins: The the actual moment when Ross comes into your life.
8:54
Lisa Hopkins: How had you thought, or even before the MFA program comes into your life, had you thought about it being a musical, or was it when it became the assignment that you were kind of like, oh wait?
9:03
Angelica Cheri: Yeah, like it never crossed my mind.
9:05
Angelica Cheri: Wow before.
9:07
Angelica Cheri: I I didn't even think that I would be writing musicals.
9:10
Angelica Cheri: I just I it not it just not because it was just like far-fetched, but it just didn't cross my mind because I was so firmly a playwright.
9:19
Angelica Cheri: Like I had done before NYU, I'd done just a MFA at Columbia at just straightforward playwriting.
9:26
Angelica Cheri: But that's when I was introduced to lyrics, but I was a spoken word poet.
9:29
Angelica Cheri: But I didn't think like, okay, I'm gonna, as a career, like write musicals and then getting into NYU and having that experience, I was still not clocking that you're carrying some family narrative because I just I didn't know.
9:44
Angelica Cheri: I had no idea.
9:45
Angelica Cheri: I think it wasn't until the task of think about what your musical you would want to write.
9:51
Angelica Cheri: Yeah.
9:51
Angelica Cheri: And then for Ross, just because he himself is such a vocal powerhouse as a singer, he truly writes for the voice.
9:59
Angelica Cheri: And thinking about Ross, thinking about the strongest way into composing for musical theater, it's gotta be the voice.
10:06
Angelica Cheri: That's the character, that's the story.
10:08
Angelica Cheri: And I was just like, I think Ross would kill it.
10:11
Angelica Cheri: Like, I think we would have fun, I think we would have an amazing time.
10:15
Angelica Cheri: And I was just hoping he would be down.
10:17
Angelica Cheri: It's kind of far-fetched, but what we did with the curse of the golden flower was crazy.
10:22
Angelica Cheri: So I was like, I think he'd be down for this.
10:24
Lisa Hopkins: So when you started kind of working together, did you like low-key go check each other out in your other your work, your other work?
10:30
Lisa Hopkins: Like, did you or do you know what I mean?
10:33
Lisa Hopkins: Or was it, or is it, did you just kind of go with how you how you met each other and what you did together and from there?
10:38
Lisa Hopkins: Because you both had done a lot of stuff.
10:40
Lisa Hopkins: I mean, on your own, like there's stuff to be found, I'm sure.
10:45
Ross Baum: Honestly, I didn't have much else.
10:49
Ross Baum: I had just gra I had graduated college and then I went to to work as a performer on a Disney cruise.
10:57
Lisa Hopkins: Okay.
10:57
Lisa Hopkins: So you were just fresh off the boat.
10:59
Ross Baum: Yeah, literally.
11:01
Ross Baum: And then the very next day after that I stepped off the boat, I started at NYU.
11:07
Lisa Hopkins: Okay, so that makes sense.
11:08
Ross Baum: So there really was not much time.
11:11
Lisa Hopkins: Yeah.
11:12
Ross Baum: Um and it wasn't until I moved to the city and started at NYU that I started doing those other things, like the I I formed a music group with some friends from college, and that was how we did like the Sesame Street and the Nickelodeon stuff, and it was all that all happened kind of around the same time that we started writing our show.
11:43
Ross Baum: So I don't even know that I had that much to check out.
11:48
Ross Baum: It really was just like our experience of each other.
11:53
Lisa Hopkins: Yeah.
11:53
Lisa Hopkins: Had you had you composed much before then?
11:56
Lisa Hopkins: I mean, and you are I I I second that you're an incredible singer, right?
12:00
Lisa Hopkins: So was that one of your um strengths that was sort of guiding you in the beginning, or were you always composing?
12:07
Ross Baum: I was always a theater kid.
12:09
Ross Baum: And I always sang and I played piano from the age of five.
12:14
Ross Baum: My mom put me in piano lessons and then in theater classes when I was about 10.
12:20
Ross Baum: And uh, we grew up uh 30 minutes away from New York City, so I would just take the train in and go see shows with my friends, and my parents love the theater.
12:30
Ross Baum: So I was always a theater kid.
12:32
Ross Baum: I wasn't always composing.
12:34
Ross Baum: I mean, I wrote little things here and there.
12:37
Ross Baum: I I wrote raps, really inappropriate raps in high school that got me in trouble.
12:44
Ross Baum: Um, so I guess you could say I that was kind of a step into composing.
12:50
Lisa Hopkins: That's funny.
12:51
Lisa Hopkins: Did you write songs?
12:51
Lisa Hopkins: Like, did you did were you like a songwriter ever?
12:54
Lisa Hopkins: Um not so much?
12:56
Ross Baum: No.
12:57
Ross Baum: No.
12:58
Ross Baum: I I started writing the the musical as a joke in college, and then um because my mom found everything with piano lessons and the theater camp and the theater program, she she found a summer program at NYU.
13:18
Ross Baum: Um wow.
13:20
Ross Baum: In the in the musical theater writing, they offered us like a summer workshop.
13:25
Ross Baum: So summer before my senior year of college, I did that.
13:29
Ross Baum: And though that was actually the first time I really started like writing real songs.
13:35
Lisa Hopkins: Were you drawn to that?
13:36
Lisa Hopkins: Like, did you suddenly realize, oh, I'm actually pretty good at this?
13:39
Lisa Hopkins: Because it didn't sound like you were watching theater and saying, Oh, you know, I want to write that.
13:44
Ross Baum: Yeah.
13:44
Ross Baum: What I what I really loved was the vocal arrangements and the harmonies.
13:50
Ross Baum: And that's what I really responded to at first.
13:54
Ross Baum: I wasn't thinking about like the construction of the songs and the the overall like story arcs of the musical.
14:01
Ross Baum: Yeah, I was really into the harmonies and the like the ensemble vocals, and then I got into really into a cappella in college, cool, and I did all the arrangements and the music direction for my a cappella group.
14:16
Ross Baum: And so I think there was a natural um progression from there to the songwriting, but like more specifically the the type of um like communal singing that we do in our show because it's very on it's very ensemble vocal driven, and that was that was the thing that I really fell in love with.
14:44
Lisa Hopkins: Yeah, well, that's really that's thank you for sharing that.
14:47
Lisa Hopkins: That's really interesting.
14:48
Lisa Hopkins: You know, Broadway is like so often glamorized, right?
14:52
Lisa Hopkins: But the path there is so long, as you know, and demanding.
14:56
Lisa Hopkins: And I'm just curious to know from both of you, like how do you how do you stay connected to yourselves through all of it?
15:06
Angelica Cheri: Oh my gosh.
15:07
Angelica Cheri: I mean, for one, it's a marathon, it's not a sprint.
15:12
Angelica Cheri: When you the moment you think we're gonna do this, we're gonna write this, we're gonna put this up, it's gonna be on Broadway next week, you that's when you already just have to just take a deep breath and you have to really surrender to the process.
15:26
Angelica Cheri: I think that's the first thing.
15:28
Angelica Cheri: And the other thing is understanding that life has to continue happening.
15:33
Angelica Cheri: Like it imagine if 12 years happened and we only focused on this one show for the whole 12 years.
15:41
Angelica Cheri: Like that's the been the focus of our work together, but the rest of our lives have grown tremendously.
15:48
Angelica Cheri: Ross's career as a singer, songwriter, producer alongside the show.
15:54
Angelica Cheri: And then me writing for television and film and other street theater plays alongside this show.
16:00
Angelica Cheri: Honestly, it doesn't take up the calendar year when you work on obviously right now, Broadway, it is more all-consuming, but every year before that, it was just like concentrated blocks of time because we had this workshop and we had this production and we had this thing.
16:18
Angelica Cheri: But then there would be months where we weren't focusing on it as closely.
16:23
Angelica Cheri: So you had to continue to develop the other things.
16:27
Angelica Cheri: Um, so it's just about remembering that you are a whole person, not just this one show and thinking like, what are your all your other interests?
16:37
Angelica Cheri: Remembering to stay in tune with your spiritual practice.
16:40
Angelica Cheri: For me, it's my faith in God, it's my family, it's my friends, it's all my other interests and being balanced.
16:49
Angelica Cheri: Because when you are dysregulated as a person and don't have your own personal balances, like I like the moments that I just like sacrificed everything just to work, like the work suffered.
17:01
Angelica Cheri: The work is better when I'm regulated and I'm healthy and I'm balanced and I'm, you know, doing the things that regulate my nervous system.
17:09
Angelica Cheri: So that's something I I'll carry with me with everything.
17:13
Angelica Cheri: And another thing I'm noticing too, it's like not feeling like you're not prioritizing the work when you're working on something else.
17:22
Angelica Cheri: Because it's very true that work begets work.
17:28
Angelica Cheri: I can be working on something in TV, but something that I'm you know searching for or perfecting in a pilot or in a TV episode script shines a light on something that is helpful for wanted.
17:42
Angelica Cheri: So it's just like it all serves each other.
17:45
Lisa Hopkins: Oh, yeah.
17:46
Lisa Hopkins: A hundred percent.
17:47
Lisa Hopkins: I think that's a really important point because there is a sort of fear, right?
17:52
Lisa Hopkins: When you think, when you're sort of weighing things by how much time you spend on it or worrying about not spending time on it, how that's helping you.
18:01
Lisa Hopkins: And and you're absolutely right.
18:02
Lisa Hopkins: I think that's a a really huge discovery that obviously serves you very well.
18:06
Lisa Hopkins: It probably took a while, right?
18:09
Lisa Hopkins: To to come.
18:10
Lisa Hopkins: Because I mean, we do that naturally, especially when you're passionate about what you're doing.
18:17
Lisa Hopkins: It can become, you know, if you think of your projects, we talk talk about this sometimes as children, right?
18:23
Lisa Hopkins: It's you can't just leave that child like and you go, well, no, no, you you've nurtured that child well enough to leave it alone for a minute, you know.
18:31
Lisa Hopkins: It's uh yeah.
18:32
Lisa Hopkins: What about you, Ross?
18:33
Lisa Hopkins: How do you how do you stay connected to yourself through all of it?
18:36
Ross Baum: One of the things that's coming to mind is um the idea of control or giving up control.
18:45
Ross Baum: Um, I find that in the moments that I or in the phases that I'm kind of hyper-fixated or really trying to control something related to the show, that is the moments that I get more easily worked up or um or thrown off or frustrated or hyper-fixated on a certain situation or challenge, and accepting the ebbs and flows over the 12 years has been something that I've learned and something that's been really healthy because for for however hard something feels in the moment, when we get um past it with a bit of perspective looking back, it's it always makes sense.
19:39
Ross Baum: I'm always appreciative for whatever that hurdle was, whether it's um an opportunity that didn't end up materializing or a certain, you know, collaboration that for whatever reason um didn't continue, or if we lose a certain actor who we were felt really attached to.
20:07
Ross Baum: Um just like accepting accepting the waves of the journey.
20:15
Lisa Hopkins: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
20:16
Ross Baum: Is really really hard to um like when you're when you're first starting out, it it can be hard to cope with with those things.
20:28
Ross Baum: Yeah, yeah.
20:29
Ross Baum: Because you're going through it all for the first time, and we still are going through everything for the first time, so it really does feel m magnified in some ways.
20:37
Ross Baum: Yeah.
20:38
Ross Baum: Um, you're coming up against all of these things.
20:40
Ross Baum: There's they there's no teaching how to do this because every every show is different, every path of a show is different.
20:49
Ross Baum: Yep.
20:50
Ross Baum: Um, so I think rolling with it has been reminding myself to roll with it helps me, helps me stay grounded.
20:58
Ross Baum: And also, also, Angelica really took the words out of my mouth, which is that there is more to life than this.
21:05
Ross Baum: Um, I'm building a business, I have other musical projects, and yeah.
21:11
Ross Baum: Sometimes you point out to me when we have our sessions, you you haven't mentioned your show at all in like the last few weeks.
21:18
Ross Baum: And that's always like nice to remind myself, I'm like, oh yeah, this is huge, but also it's not the only thing.
21:27
Lisa Hopkins: Totally.
21:28
Lisa Hopkins: You know, the thing about it is it's as you guys were talking, it got me thinking of like, you know, the the trajectory, right?
21:35
Lisa Hopkins: That's a period of a big period of time in people's lives, and the the life of a musical is so ambiguous, right?
21:43
Lisa Hopkins: Because, you know, yeah, in in our you know, our pie in the sky dreams, you know, what I'm writing is gonna end up on Broadway or win an Academy Award or do whatever.
21:52
Lisa Hopkins: And probably everybody would share that dream.
21:55
Lisa Hopkins: But what happens is with this ambiguity, is it keeps the more it moves forward, the more your project moves forward, the more ambiguous it gets, kind of, even though you feel like you're getting closer, but you don't really know what you're getting closer to because there's never the promise, right?
22:10
Lisa Hopkins: So so that's like where the where the commitment requires of you, it feels like more or maybe a different kind of commitment, right?
22:19
Lisa Hopkins: I mean, now it's different, and we'll talk about where you are now because now you know you've got the theater book.
22:22
Lisa Hopkins: But up until six months ago or eight months ago, that might not be the case, right?
22:28
Lisa Hopkins: So I'm taking us back to that journey of getting on a train basically, real slow for a while, slow and heavy, and just picking up stuff on the way, maybe changing paths, and like then it starts getting faster and faster and faster.
22:40
Lisa Hopkins: But I'm just curious to know like the waxing and waning.
22:43
Lisa Hopkins: What talk to me about that?
22:45
Lisa Hopkins: Like, was there ever a time that either one of you felt kind of like, uh, you know, you know, we're just gonna maybe just let this go or there were ne there was never a time that I thought that I wanted to like throw in the towel.
23:00
Ross Baum: That was that was never never a thing for me.
23:05
Ross Baum: What has been really challenging is there are powers that be that kind of operate in Broadway.
23:18
Ross Baum: And there are many shows that are circling at one time.
23:23
Ross Baum: And there have been many times over the past three to four years that it's really felt like, you know, this is this is the reading that's gonna seal the deal, this is the workshop that's gonna seal the deal.
23:40
Ross Baum: We've got one more.
23:41
Ross Baum: We're inviting everybody, we're inviting those powers that be, and this is the one that's gonna seal the deal.
23:47
Ross Baum: And it's like, okay, this is it, and then we do it, and then for whatever reason, sometimes it's as silly as like there's a celebrity who wants to come and do a show, yeah, and they they grab that theater.
24:01
Ross Baum: It rarely has has anything to do with you or your talent, it's just circumstance beyond your control.
24:07
Ross Baum: And so that's been really challenging.
24:09
Ross Baum: It's like this goalpost keeps moving, but we don't know, but we don't know what it is, we don't know what what the goalpost actually is, but we just know that it's moving.
24:20
Lisa Hopkins: You said it way better.
24:21
Lisa Hopkins: That's exactly what I mean.
24:22
Lisa Hopkins: You're on this moving thing, right?
24:24
Lisa Hopkins: Where it's just keeps moving, and the closer you get to it, like with going, okay, no, we've gained enough momentum that this could could actually really happen.
24:31
Lisa Hopkins: It's not pie in the sky.
24:32
Lisa Hopkins: And in fact, a lot of people tell us it might happen.
24:35
Lisa Hopkins: So, okay, here we go.
24:36
Lisa Hopkins: But then they keep moving it, right?
24:38
Lisa Hopkins: The frustration of that.
24:40
Lisa Hopkins: What if it never happened?
24:41
Lisa Hopkins: What if what what would what was your what's your backup plan?
24:45
Lisa Hopkins: If you had never thrown the towel, then what does what does that look like if if you didn't go to Broadway?
24:51
Angelica Cheri: I mean, I don't even think, and I mean, Ross, you can correct me if I'm wrong.
24:56
Angelica Cheri: I don't think it was ever an option for either of us.
24:59
Angelica Cheri: Like, what if this doesn't go?
25:01
Angelica Cheri: Like, because even when we were still students, still just writing this as a thesis musical in 2014, and we were in room 256, practice room at NYU, we said to ourselves, like, this is going to Broadway.
25:19
Angelica Cheri: We had no idea what that meant.
25:21
Angelica Cheri: I mean, we had a loose idea, we didn't know what that was gonna look like, what that would entail, but we just knew like it was going to Broadway.
25:29
Angelica Cheri: And as Ross said, and I same with me, like there was never a moment for me that I was just like, ah, I think I'm done.
25:36
Angelica Cheri: I think we're gonna throw in the towel.
25:38
Angelica Cheri: We had multiple reasons to think that way.
25:41
Angelica Cheri: Like we had a pandemic that happened literally like the whole world shut down.
25:47
Angelica Cheri: Like, literally, we had the first major production at the signature ran from January 28th to February 23rd of 2020.
25:58
Angelica Cheri: Wow, right before the whole world shut down.
26:00
Angelica Cheri: Wow.
26:01
Angelica Cheri: And we were thinking we're going straight to Broadway after that.
26:04
Angelica Cheri: And you know, we had all of this time.
26:06
Angelica Cheri: And the truth is that um there were multiple things that were happening, uh, even beyond that, structural changes, the creative team changes, so many different changes.
26:18
Angelica Cheri: I think it was a combination of multiple things.
26:21
Angelica Cheri: One, I have to say, P3 productions.
26:24
Angelica Cheri: Our producers are and have been relentless.
26:28
Angelica Cheri: That, and that makes the biggest difference is when you have collaborators who believe in you, who are fighting for the show, who are uns who are um unyielding in the best way.
26:40
Angelica Cheri: Like, we are taking this to Broadway.
26:42
Angelica Cheri: And I think that was just that they matched our passion because Ross and I had that same passion.
26:48
Angelica Cheri: Like, this is going to Broadway.
26:50
Angelica Cheri: We don't care if everything is on fire, like we don't care what's going on.
26:54
Angelica Cheri: Like, we're going to Broadway.
26:56
Angelica Cheri: It was never a question where we looked at each other like, well, what do we do now?
26:59
Angelica Cheri: Like, and even like my father passed away in the midst of this.
27:02
Angelica Cheri: All kinds of things have happened.
27:04
Angelica Cheri: I knew that, and I'm gonna get emotional saying this, like, there were times where I'm like, I know I don't have it right now.
27:09
Angelica Cheri: I know I don't have it in me to rewrite this scene or to do this or do that.
27:14
Angelica Cheri: But I'm like, I can't let Ross down because Ross is counting on me.
27:19
Angelica Cheri: I have to show up and and put myself together and do my best because I'm not gonna drop the ball, you know?
27:27
Angelica Cheri: And there's just like so much to be said about having the right people in your corner and partnering with the right people.
27:35
Angelica Cheri: Because if it weren't for that, maybe sitting, we wouldn't be sitting here, but to know, like, I'm gonna fight for you when I don't have it, you've got me.
27:44
Angelica Cheri: When you don't got when you don't have it, I've got you.
27:46
Angelica Cheri: And we have that same sort of support system surrounding us.
27:50
Angelica Cheri: It just was like, there's no, there is no plan B.
27:53
Angelica Cheri: Like this is all the way.
27:55
Lisa Hopkins: It's awesome.
27:56
Lisa Hopkins: Bravo.
27:57
Lisa Hopkins: I mean, it's rare to hear that, honestly.
28:01
Lisa Hopkins: You guys support each other, obviously.
28:03
Lisa Hopkins: Yeah, um, both creatively and personally, but but to have you know the people that are making trying to raise you money, trying to make it happen, um, to feel that way about you beyond just seeing it as a a viable commercial project, which it is, but but clearly that's not their their mandate, right?
28:23
Lisa Hopkins: Like so many, and um, it's really to tell this story.
28:25
Lisa Hopkins: And it's uh you can feel it.
28:27
Lisa Hopkins: The coolest thing is that aside from the incredible story that you're telling, just this energy that you guys have all created in the process of bringing it to the world beyond just the project, if that makes sense.
28:39
Lisa Hopkins: Like it's this kind of surpasses all of it.
28:42
Lisa Hopkins: It's well, in our language, Ross, it's very level six, right?
28:44
Lisa Hopkins: It's really yes, yes.
28:47
Ross Baum: I was gonna say also going off of level six, it trickles down into the company as well.
28:57
Ross Baum: There's like this hunger that I think is like permeating everybody who is involved from our director, choreographer, like creative team, and then the cast is just so um like hungry for it because they everyone believes in it so much, and so it creates it's this this real energy in the rehearsal room, and it really does feel like like co-creation, yeah, like level six, yeah.
29:34
Ross Baum: Um synthesis, right?
29:36
Ross Baum: Synthesis, synthesis, and the core result that is wisdom and joy, and the joy, the joy is I mean, is unmatched, yep.
29:46
Lisa Hopkins: And it's easy to get protective of that, and we've talked a little bit about that.
29:50
Lisa Hopkins: When you when you're creating something so joyous and part of something that is so joyous, it's easy to sometimes feel, especially when you're burned out or you know, things are being thrown at you, to feel a little bit protected about that or defensive.
30:06
Angelica Cheri: I'm curious, does it ever come up for you?
30:08
Angelica Cheri: You know, it's interesting what you're saying is that you know, we definitely have this, and I've never had to identify it in a physical or tangible way.
30:20
Angelica Cheri: Yeah.
30:20
Angelica Cheri: I but there is definitely a filter that we have or this microbiome, this bubble, this protective layer, this you know, atmosphere that we have surrounded our child, the show, you know, because there's it's so, you know, it's so difficult to be objective when receiving feedback or when someone gives feedback, because because of how activating some of the subject matter is in the show, you know, we're talking about racial history, we're talking about the history of our country, we're talking about bloodlines, ancestry, we're talking about so many things that are not neutral emotionally for most anyone.
31:05
Angelica Cheri: And that's especially Americans, but globally, like it's just not a neutral topic.
31:10
Angelica Cheri: So the the reactions that come come from a variety of places.
31:17
Angelica Cheri: And so we definitely, when we receive feedback or when we are in collaboration or in you know creation, we definitely have this filter of, okay, we tell because you have to, when it's something that is when you're creating anything, anything, you have to absolutely, and we learn this in grad school, of course, as well.
31:41
Angelica Cheri: But it's just like, what is useful about what's being shared?
31:45
Angelica Cheri: Because there are things that are fundamentally just not aligned with where the show is going or what the show is about that sometimes come, or something that comes from a place of, you know, lack of understanding of context or different things, different whatever it is.
32:02
Angelica Cheri: Like whatever the thing is, we always it always hits the bubble first.
32:08
Angelica Cheri: We don't allow it to to penetrate the show first.
32:11
Angelica Cheri: We always look at it before it penetrates and say, what's really being communicated through what's being said here?
32:18
Angelica Cheri: Because ultimately, it's never what is being said on the surface.
32:22
Angelica Cheri: Yeah, it's always about what is that thing pointing to.
32:26
Angelica Cheri: It's it's a symptom.
32:28
Angelica Cheri: It's like, okay, there's a cough.
32:30
Angelica Cheri: All right, we don't treat the cough, we treat the the the like the infection underneath the cough, what's causing the cough, right?
32:37
Angelica Cheri: It's like, okay, this question's happening.
32:39
Angelica Cheri: That doesn't necessarily mean that's what we have to address.
32:42
Angelica Cheri: We need to address the root of what this is being, what's being commented on.
32:47
Angelica Cheri: And fundamentally, when we do that, we always find, oh, there is something that is being communicated through this that will fundamentally just make the show clearer, make it stronger, make it more undeniable.
33:02
Angelica Cheri: Because the goal is that when we when we put the pencil down on opening night, we can walk away.
33:08
Angelica Cheri: And for 25 years, people on Broadway will be in the James Earl Jones and they won't be left with the question of I don't understand what I just saw.
33:18
Angelica Cheri: It's I have this visceral feeling because it interacted with this part of me.
33:23
Angelica Cheri: So we do definitely um strive to understand what the root is of everything is, instead of just receiving everything at face value, because that just that you can't be, you can't work like that on anything, I don't feel no, that takes maturity.
33:42
Angelica Cheri: Oh my god, 12 years.
33:44
Angelica Cheri: I hope we've matured.
33:46
Lisa Hopkins: Well, that's what I'm saying.
33:47
Lisa Hopkins: It's interesting that 12 years has served you well, right?
33:50
Lisa Hopkins: Because 12 years ago, you probably would have reacted very differently.
33:54
Lisa Hopkins: You wouldn't be telling me what you're telling me.
33:58
Speaker 2: Definitely.
33:59
Ross Baum: We were talking on the phone yesterday, and I said, I found this really great TikTok video came up on my feed, and it had this amazing quote, and it said, forgive yourself.
34:12
Ross Baum: What was it?
34:14
Ross Baum: Forgive yourself for the things that only time could teach.
34:17
Ross Baum: Forgive yourself for knowing now the things that only time could teach.
34:22
Ross Baum: 100% I thought that was so amazing.
34:26
Lisa Hopkins: It's on point.
34:27
Ross Baum: Yeah, yeah, and we can um we can face certain situations and make decisions now in a more mature way than we could 12 years ago.
34:45
Ross Baum: Because when you're just starting out and you haven't established yourself, or um, you're not quite sure your direction, it's so it's so easy to jump on the bandwagon of like either the first thing that comes your way or the most attractive thing or the shiniest kind of opportunity or um or potential collaborator, you know, like when you are vetting directors or producers um or a team, any any team member.
35:20
Ross Baum: Um but with time you realize what are the right questions to ask and and kind of like how to gauge a vibe.
35:30
Ross Baum: Yeah.
35:31
Ross Baum: Um even as something as specific as like when you're when you're wanting to um hire a music director, like not being shy to ask them for some samples of them playing your score to get a sense of like how they play.
35:51
Ross Baum: But it's like when you when I was in the early earlier days, it's like, oh great, you're available and you've done a show on Broadway, great, let's do it.
36:01
Ross Baum: But then you realize like, oh, it takes a really you know kind of of specific kind of temperament, and it's it's more it's more people skills than musical skills, like when it comes to the that specific position.
36:16
Ross Baum: So things like that like we can handle in much more mature of a way, totally, but only time could have taught that.
36:24
Lisa Hopkins: 100%.
36:25
Lisa Hopkins: The other really cool thing that's striking me about the time piece as it connects to Angelica, what you wrote, like to your show, you guys, is is that that was a that was a told story that that happened through time and that grew through time until it arrived to Angelica.
36:42
Lisa Hopkins: And then Angelica has also evolved.
36:45
Lisa Hopkins: So her she is the ancestor, but her ancestry in 12 years has also changed.
36:51
Lisa Hopkins: And also there's this new family, right?
36:54
Lisa Hopkins: You guys sitting in front of me here and beyond, that has grown out of this.
36:59
Lisa Hopkins: So it's the legacy and the and the ancestry thing that time has afforded it, right?
37:05
Lisa Hopkins: It would be very different even if it would have been successful 12 years ago.
37:10
Lisa Hopkins: There's something really beautiful and um grounding about that, I I find.
37:15
Angelica Cheri: I mean, absolutely, because like I mentioned, like my father passed away during the life of this show, and he is an un obviously just because of being my father and being, you know, this is his mother, the grandmother Dora, who told me who's you know, had the pictures.
37:35
Angelica Cheri: Um he's already inextricable from the DNA of the show.
37:40
Angelica Cheri: But now, as I mentioned before, like Ross and I, there are songs, staple songs that were written at his kitchen table.
37:46
Angelica Cheri: The last flight that he went on in his life was to come to Paper Mill to see gun and powder that was wanted at the time.
37:53
Angelica Cheri: Well, gun and powder at the time that's wanted now at Paper Mill.
37:57
Angelica Cheri: You know, it's just like, I don't know.
38:00
Angelica Cheri: Like it just, I feel like the world also at large has become even more receptive to this type of story because the way the world has changed in the 12 years.
38:15
Angelica Cheri: I mean, I remember sharing this with Leticy, our Tulula, the Queen.
38:20
Angelica Cheri: Um I was having brunch with her yesterday, and I mentioned to her 2014, when we first sat down to write um the show, Mike Brown had just been killed in Ferguson.
38:35
Angelica Cheri: And we said, Oh, this is the time.
38:37
Angelica Cheri: Now we is really the time.
38:39
Angelica Cheri: This is the moment that we have to write this show.
38:42
Angelica Cheri: And so if we think about all the things that have transpired in the world since Ferguson and, you know, till now, the way that we are talking about race and about our history and about identity and dignity and safety and belonging and community, we are not have we're having different conversations.
39:08
Angelica Cheri: We're able to say different things, we're able to be more direct, we're able to be more honest and more receptive.
39:15
Angelica Cheri: And people are wanting and craving more honest conversation than they were 12 years ago.
39:22
Angelica Cheri: And that only has helped to our benefit as well.
39:25
Lisa Hopkins: 100%.
39:25
Lisa Hopkins: The word forgiveness is coming up.
39:28
Lisa Hopkins: Without forgiveness, you can't you can't grow.
39:31
Lisa Hopkins: I don't know.
39:32
Lisa Hopkins: The word just really was blasting loud in my head as you as you were speaking about that.
39:38
Lisa Hopkins: And you know, given that what I do is, you know, for a career is listen, that's all we ever want, right?
39:47
Lisa Hopkins: We is to be heard and to be seen and to move forward in that way.
39:55
Angelica Cheri: It's so interesting you said that because that's actually forgiveness was actually a word that I was meditating on this morning, like in my devotional time as I was like in scripture.
40:04
Angelica Cheri: That's crazy.
40:05
Angelica Cheri: And it was, it's crazy.
40:06
Angelica Cheri: It was because there was it's a it's actually a scripture in the book of Hebrews um about the difference between forgiveness and vengeance.
40:15
Angelica Cheri: Yeah.
40:15
Angelica Cheri: And it's like there's this idea that living in the space of forgiveness versus living in a space of vengeance.
40:22
Angelica Cheri: And I was really meditating on that today.
40:24
Angelica Cheri: I was like, wow, when you want vengeance, it's almost as though, yes, it's a form of justice, but in vengeance, there's something about you that wants someone to suffer because of what they did to you versus forgiveness.
40:38
Angelica Cheri: You just want the situation to be corrected and you want compassion and you want to be seen and you want recognition.
40:45
Angelica Cheri: Because if you can forgive, then that means that you are no longer asking for someone to be punished.
40:52
Angelica Cheri: You are now just asking for them to have a for the change that's necessary to move forward and to see the world differently and to make different choices.
41:03
Angelica Cheri: And that's that's interesting that you mentioned that because that was my whole morning.
41:08
Lisa Hopkins: That's so weird because I was getting I was getting literally this feeling.
41:11
Lisa Hopkins: I was like, I don't know why I'm just gonna say it.
41:13
Lisa Hopkins: The word was like literally forgiveness for you.
41:15
Lisa Hopkins: That's so funny.
41:16
Lisa Hopkins: Well, there it is.
41:16
Ross Baum: Lisa has officially joined the mind link.
41:19
Angelica Cheri: Yeah, exactly.
41:20
Angelica Cheri: We have a mind link.
41:22
Lisa Hopkins: Well, and it's it's really it's really interesting too, because the when when you choose forgiveness, you choose yourself, and that's counterintuitive because it sounds like you're saying you're you're lessening yourself in order to you know to say, okay, it's not that bad, or but not at all.
41:43
Lisa Hopkins: When you choose forgiveness, you're taking care of yourself, right?
41:47
Lisa Hopkins: Because when you hold on to that, it just hurts you, right?
41:52
Lisa Hopkins: And it just is it's so powerful, it's so difficult, but but it's very, very powerful.
41:58
Lisa Hopkins: Yeah, thank you for sharing that, Angelica.
42:00
Lisa Hopkins: I'm glad I'm glad I said something.
42:02
Angelica Cheri: Thank you.
42:03
Lisa Hopkins: Yes, what are you most afraid of?
42:06
Lisa Hopkins: You can take it in whatever direction you want.
42:09
Ross Baum: That's such a hard question.
42:10
Ross Baum: Why is that such a hard question?
42:15
Angelica Cheri: You know, because I don't think in the sense of this, I have really been operating or thinking about fear.
42:27
Angelica Cheri: It's interesting because people, I feel like people project have been projecting more fear than what I'm actually feeling.
42:35
Angelica Cheri: People have been asking, like, oh my god, the pressure, you must be so overwhelmed, you must be so exhausted, you must be so anxious.
42:41
Angelica Cheri: I'm like, not until you like I wasn't, I'm not like you know what's so interesting because I was doing the math, I was like, Yeah, 12 years on this play, but then I've also been writing for a total of 25 years, not to date myself, and I'm just like, Yes, it's Broadway, yes, it's all these things, and not but, but and it's a production, and we've been here, and I think I think the thing I'm most afraid of is giving in to fear, yes.
43:24
Lisa Hopkins: Interesting.
43:25
Lisa Hopkins: Why can I ask why?
43:27
Angelica Cheri: Because then I'm losing sight of why I'm here.
43:30
Angelica Cheri: If I become afraid, then that means that I am negating all the time that I've invested in this show and in my craft and in our collaboration and why God sent me to this position, and then I'm then I'm taking in the external because it's not coming for me.
43:50
Angelica Cheri: Like I feel very certain about, yeah, we're here not by accident.
43:55
Angelica Cheri: So it, you know, like we've we've done the work, we've put in the time, we've invested, we're still asking the questions, we're still doing the work, we're still doing the work.
44:05
Angelica Cheri: So I'm just like yeah, like staying present.
44:14
Ross Baum: Yeah.
44:15
Ross Baum: I would I think uh well, I guess since you said just in this moment, uh one of the things that I fear is my own attachment to the outcome, which is easier said than done to let that go.
44:33
Ross Baum: But it also it it's it means that I'm not living in the moment and that I'm not open to the possibilities that I'm not seeing the the more possibilities than my own projection of of what this outcome could be.
44:55
Ross Baum: You know, one can only dream over 12 years you have a show that's going to Broadway, and you formulate this image of your head of what that's gonna look like and what that's going to lead you to, and all of that.
45:09
Ross Baum: But I think the attachment to that is something that scares me, and that I have to constantly remind myself to uh to let go of.
45:23
Lisa Hopkins: Yeah, fair.
45:24
Lisa Hopkins: Yeah, fair.
45:25
Lisa Hopkins: Thank you for sharing that.
45:26
Lisa Hopkins: I mean, that's that's very real.
45:28
Ross Baum: Then there are moments that I'm like really living in the moment and like super aligned, like sitting in the auditions today.
45:34
Lisa Hopkins: Yeah.
45:35
Ross Baum: And it's like um my my boyfriend Tyler texted me.
45:41
Ross Baum: He's like, have a great day today.
45:43
Ross Baum: Like this, this is something that little you would only have dreamed about.
45:49
Lisa Hopkins: Yes.
45:52
Ross Baum: And that was such a nice reminder of like, it's beautiful, yeah.
45:55
Ross Baum: Like, I literally dreamed about this.
45:57
Ross Baum: Like, we're sitting in auditions for a Broadway show.
46:00
Ross Baum: Yep.
46:00
Ross Baum: This this actually is the victory, this is the outcome.
46:05
Ross Baum: This is this is the thing because we're here.
46:08
Ross Baum: And and I could only have dreamed of this, of even getting to a place where I'm sitting in a room and having all these incredible artists come and sing our songs and being surrounded by a whole table of collaborators that that I love so much.
46:27
Ross Baum: And like this that's actually the thing.
46:32
Lisa Hopkins: Yeah, the ultimate I get to.
46:35
Ross Baum: Totally.
46:36
Lisa Hopkins: Choice with gratitude.
46:37
Lisa Hopkins: I'm here and I'm grateful for it, right?
46:40
Lisa Hopkins: Totally, yeah.
46:42
Lisa Hopkins: Angelica, it's Ross actually answered before I asked about what younger self would be proud of.
46:48
Lisa Hopkins: What about you?
46:49
Lisa Hopkins: What when you were a little girl?
46:50
Lisa Hopkins: Can you think back to to young Angelica?
46:53
Angelica Cheri: It's so funny, and this goes again back to my father because he has said, he's said for many years that I became a storyteller when I was a little girl.
47:04
Angelica Cheri: I did not think that I was going to be a professional writer.
47:08
Angelica Cheri: Like I didn't think that I was gonna write for theater for the longest time.
47:11
Angelica Cheri: I thought I was gonna be a physical therapist.
47:13
Angelica Cheri: But I was doing theater, doing performative things since I was little.
47:20
Angelica Cheri: I was in Shakespeare competitions in middle school, like nerdy, like those drama geeks, you know, like it was the funnest thing.
47:31
Angelica Cheri: And then started writing plays.
47:33
Angelica Cheri: When I say 25 years, like I wrote my first play in high school.
47:36
Angelica Cheri: Yeah, like I wrote a one act in ninth grade and then another uh full-length in 11th grade, and it just started to click there.
47:45
Angelica Cheri: But even when I was a little child, my father and I played because he was a singer and vocalist, and he um did voices with Yogi Bear, and we did this game where I would like he would do the characters and the voices, and I would tell him the storylines and tell him what to say and give him lines.
48:04
Angelica Cheri: And he was just like, you know, you've been doing this since you were a child, like you should um pursue this and take this all the way.
48:12
Angelica Cheri: And so I think little me would be shocked, like little, like six-year-old me would be like, oh my God, like this is crazy.
48:21
Angelica Cheri: Like, we're really playing make-believe for a living.
48:24
Angelica Cheri: Like, this is wild, this is awesome.
48:27
Angelica Cheri: But then I think 16-year-old me in the 11th grade would think, Wow, yeah, okay, so this was not just some fun thing you we did on the side, and like thought, this is cool.
48:39
Angelica Cheri: It was like this really is our life's mission, is to really tell these stories, and that's I think I would be really, really excited.
48:51
Lisa Hopkins: Yeah, and your dad will be so friggin' proud.
48:54
Lisa Hopkins: Well, how do you guys recharge?
48:57
Lisa Hopkins: Like, you know, you have you have busy schedules, you're running around doing a lot of stuff, you're human, you live in a stressful world that we all live in.
49:06
Lisa Hopkins: Anything that really works for you to recharge?
49:10
Ross Baum: Wally.
49:10
Ross Baum: Yeah, my dog.
49:13
Ross Baum: He probably lives in the moment more than any being on this earth that I know.
49:19
Ross Baum: Wally and sound baths.
49:23
Ross Baum: I love a good sound bath.
49:25
Lisa Hopkins: Do you get recharged when you're with people, or do you do you feel like you need to be more alone?
49:30
Lisa Hopkins: What about you, Angelica?
49:31
Lisa Hopkins: How do you feel about that?
49:32
Angelica Cheri: Definitely both.
49:34
Angelica Cheri: Like, you know, I definitely need my alone time, and that's my like my worship, my prayer.
49:39
Angelica Cheri: My cat.
49:41
Angelica Cheri: I haven't I have the fluffiest.
49:43
Angelica Cheri: I'm surprised he didn't make his way in here.
49:46
Angelica Cheri: Um he's sleeping, it's his time, but um he's recharging.
49:51
Angelica Cheri: He's he's recharging.
49:52
Angelica Cheri: I take I take my cues.
49:54
Angelica Cheri: I learned so much from watching cats, but yeah, definitely that, and then my my fitness, like I'm doing hot yoga and step and hiking and just being outside, like all of that fuels me.
50:08
Lisa Hopkins: I usually do uh finish this phrase.
50:11
Lisa Hopkins: Um, most people think this about me, but the truth is, but instead of that, we're gonna do most people think collaboration is, but the truth is, and I'd love to hear from both of you kind of what yeah, you can take a minute to think about that.
50:28
Angelica Cheri: I think most people think collaboration is like just working together and the best idea wins, and that's part of it, but collaboration really is someone helping you to become a better person.
50:44
Angelica Cheri: Because I really feel like our like working with Ross, like it's not just oh, this lyric can be clearer.
50:54
Angelica Cheri: It's just like, oh, I can be, I have learned so much more about where I can be stronger as a person and where I can push and where I can be clearer, and like just the the overall point of our collaboration has not just been about the work.
51:13
Angelica Cheri: It's literally have been has been for me about like who I am as a person.
51:18
Angelica Cheri: So I'm just like, yeah, Rossi has definitely made me a better person.
51:22
Angelica Cheri: Likewise, it's so true.
51:27
Lisa Hopkins: That's beautiful.
51:28
Lisa Hopkins: But yeah, Ross, what do you think?
51:33
Ross Baum: Most people think collaboration is working together on a common goal, but collaboration is leadership in the sense of, and this is something that you have taught me, leadership isn't is as a concept is not hierarchical.
51:59
Ross Baum: It's actually about the exchange of energy.
52:03
Ross Baum: And so I lead not up and down, or I'm not led by somebody who I perceive to be above me, but in a true collaboration, everybody is leading each other at all times, and it takes shifting one's own energy and also reading other people's energy and responding to that and being able to shift your communication in a way that accesses the energy of the other person, and so collaboration is leadership, yeah.
52:44
Lisa Hopkins: Energy leadership, baby.
52:46
Lisa Hopkins: Yes, brilliant, so proud of you.
52:52
Ross Baum: I couldn't have done it without you, I could not be here without you, honestly.
52:55
Lisa Hopkins: Well, it was a collaboration.
52:56
Lisa Hopkins: I mean, coaching is is a is a co-creation, totally.
53:00
Lisa Hopkins: So, because I'd be a horrible coach if I was leading you all the time.
53:03
Lisa Hopkins: If I was leading you where I wanted you to go.
53:07
Ross Baum: I love it.
53:08
Ross Baum: And leadership is be also being willing to to be led.
53:11
Ross Baum: It's not just yanking somebody in your direction and saying, come on.
53:16
Ross Baum: It's also being being open um for that that flow to be led.
53:23
Ross Baum: Because I think the best leaders do not lead with a heavy hand, the best leaders are actually the best listeners.
53:29
Lisa Hopkins: Yep, 100%.
53:30
Lisa Hopkins: Rapid fire.
53:32
Lisa Hopkins: What makes you feel most alive?
53:37
Ross Baum: Roller coasters, dancing.
53:40
Lisa Hopkins: What makes you lose track of time?
53:43
Ross Baum: Music, production, spending time with friends.
53:49
Lisa Hopkins: Okay.
53:50
Lisa Hopkins: What makes you doubt yourself?
53:56
Ross Baum: Overthinking.
53:57
Ross Baum: Oh, can I say overthinking too?
53:59
Lisa Hopkins: Can I steal that?
54:00
Lisa Hopkins: Sure.
54:01
Lisa Hopkins: What makes you keep going?
54:03
Lisa Hopkins: My collaborators.
54:06
Lisa Hopkins: My future.
54:08
Angelica Cheri: Just knowing that there's a future.
54:10
Lisa Hopkins: I love that.
54:11
Lisa Hopkins: What makes you feel connected?
54:16
Ross Baum: Um, deep conversation.
54:19
Lisa Hopkins: What makes you feel hopeful?
54:21
Lisa Hopkins: The sky.
54:24
Angelica Cheri: Oh, I love that.
54:25
Angelica Cheri: Prayer.
54:29
Lisa Hopkins: What makes you feel creatively free?
54:32
Angelica Cheri: Music.
54:33
Angelica Cheri: Seeing the creation in front of me.
54:36
Angelica Cheri: Ah, oh, I love that.
54:39
Lisa Hopkins: What are the top three things that happened so far today, Ross?
54:43
Ross Baum: Top three things that happened today.
54:46
Ross Baum: Well, someone someone came into the audition and just killed it.
54:53
Ross Baum: Like the door shut, and and people were just writing stars next to their name.
55:00
Ross Baum: Nice.
55:00
Ross Baum: Every single person was like, wow.
55:03
Ross Baum: That's awesome.
55:04
Lisa Hopkins: Was it a surprise?
55:05
Lisa Hopkins: Like, were you expecting that to be to happen when total surprise?
55:08
Ross Baum: I didn't had no idea who this person was.
55:10
Lisa Hopkins: I love that.
55:11
Ross Baum: Yeah.
55:11
Ross Baum: Yeah.
55:12
Ross Baum: That's exciting.
55:12
Ross Baum: That was one thing.
55:14
Ross Baum: Two.
55:14
Ross Baum: Oh, my tr my trainer told me I should start a cut.
55:19
Ross Baum: And and um, and for the second day in a row, I'm I'm I'm holding faithful to that.
55:25
Lisa Hopkins: All right.
55:27
Ross Baum: So that was that was two, and I'm doing well on that.
55:30
Ross Baum: And then three, um this.
55:38
Lisa Hopkins: Yeah.
55:39
Lisa Hopkins: This.
55:40
Lisa Hopkins: Nice.
55:41
Lisa Hopkins: Thank you.
55:42
Lisa Hopkins: And Angelica, what about you?
55:45
Lisa Hopkins: What are the top three things?
55:47
Angelica Cheri: So the top three things, um, so I just like I mentioned, but when I I just had this massive revelation when I was in my meditation prayer time this morning, so that was definitely the first.
55:59
Angelica Cheri: And then I did a hot sculpt class that was I I lifted up to I like I went up uh a weight in a couple of exercises.
56:12
Angelica Cheri: So Rossi and I, we both have a physical fitness element in ours.
56:18
Angelica Cheri: Yeah.
56:18
Angelica Cheri: Yes.
56:19
Angelica Cheri: And then um then the third, I found um, oh, what is what would be the third?
56:27
Angelica Cheri: The third, oh, I had the sweetest like voice message from my best friend when I woke up.
56:33
Angelica Cheri: It was just like, oh my god, this is about when our like we hung out yesterday, and so it was just like, Oh my sister, you know, it was that's nice.
56:44
Lisa Hopkins: How about you?
56:45
Lisa Hopkins: Of course, this, yes, we have a movie.
56:47
Lisa Hopkins: This is definitely one of the tops, yes.
56:50
Lisa Hopkins: Um and within this was actually me saying the forgiveness thing, and then and then that was an op that was a place where there was a space, like where I always talk about this.
57:00
Lisa Hopkins: I mean the name of my book.
57:01
Lisa Hopkins: The places where there are spaces, like literally, because I could have just not created that space, and had I not, we wouldn't have made that connection.
57:10
Lisa Hopkins: Do you know what I mean?
57:10
Lisa Hopkins: So that was really special for me.
57:13
Lisa Hopkins: Um, and thank you for coming into the space.
57:15
Lisa Hopkins: So that was really very cool.
57:17
Lisa Hopkins: What is something you're looking forward to after this call, like today, like in the next very short period of time, and then ultimately in the future?
57:27
Angelica Cheri: Oh my gosh, definitely smushing my kitten.
57:30
Angelica Cheri: Definitely looking forward to that when he comes out from under his uh in his he likes to nap in the sink.
57:36
Angelica Cheri: So as soon as he comes out of the sink, I'm gonna like the bathroom sink because he's super fluffy and the porcelain helps with air conditioning.
57:45
Angelica Cheri: His little undercarriage.
57:47
Angelica Cheri: Um, and then what am I looking for to long term?
57:52
Angelica Cheri: I mean, that this might be obvious, but yes, I'm looking forward to standing in the theater on an opening night.
58:00
Angelica Cheri: But even I think maybe more than that, I'm looking forward to the day that we move into the theater.
58:08
Angelica Cheri: That we take the rehearsal into the space and that we get to like move into our home, which is the James Earl Jones.
58:17
Ross Baum: What about your asking?
58:18
Ross Baum: Yeah.
58:18
Ross Baum: I'll I'm gonna do it the um other way around.
58:21
Ross Baum: Yeah, other way around.
58:22
Ross Baum: So what I'm looking forward forward to in the in the future is um I think the first day of rehearsal I'm really excited about to see to stand in the circle and see all of the faces and all of the all of the people who are going to be um on this section of the journey with us because it's always been a different group of people.
58:45
Ross Baum: It's inevitable that it's always a different group of people.
58:48
Ross Baum: And we're obviously in auditions right now, so it's really in flux.
58:53
Ross Baum: And so I'm I'm just excited to see first day rehearsal.
58:57
Ross Baum: Who are the actual people that are going to be telling this story on Broadway?
59:01
Ross Baum: And what I'm most looking forward to right after this is you know, after you have a full day and you turn the lights off and your head hits the pillow, and you just do that end of the day exhale.
59:15
Ross Baum: Um, it's like an exhale of gratitude.
59:20
Ross Baum: And I'm just like, yeah, I did that.
59:22
Ross Baum: I did that day.
59:24
Ross Baum: Yeah.
59:25
Ross Baum: And I love that just that breath, that exhale.
59:29
Ross Baum: Yeah.
59:30
Ross Baum: When your head hits the pillow and you could just release and also just feel some gratitude.
59:38
Lisa Hopkins: Yeah.
59:38
Lisa Hopkins: Oh, that's beautiful.
59:40
Lisa Hopkins: You guys, I cannot thank you enough for coming on.
59:45
Lisa Hopkins: I I I expect that you can feel it.
59:47
Lisa Hopkins: I have so much love, respect, excitement, support coming your way.
59:53
Lisa Hopkins: I mean, it's just it's just a beautiful thing that you're doing, and it's so important.
59:58
Lisa Hopkins: But again, it's the way you're doing it that is so impressive with such love and grace and care and integrity, like all the things.
1:00:09
Lisa Hopkins: And I'm just, I'm just so proud of you.
1:00:11
Lisa Hopkins: I'm looking forward to being there with you on your opening night.
1:00:15
Lisa Hopkins: Yeah, yeah.
1:00:16
Lisa Hopkins: I want to be there so bad.
1:00:18
Lisa Hopkins: So yeah, count me in.
1:00:20
Ross Baum: 100%.
1:00:21
Ross Baum: You know, thank you.
1:00:22
Lisa Hopkins: And and and to to your point, Angelica, um, you said one of your um your answer was hugs.
1:00:29
Lisa Hopkins: Yes, and I'm looking forward to that.
1:00:32
Lisa Hopkins: Yeah, because I've gotten to hug Ross, but not you.
1:00:36
Ross Baum: She gets hugs, you both give good hugs.
1:00:40
Ross Baum: We can do a group hug, maybe 100%.
1:00:43
Ross Baum: After your individual hug, we can do a group hug.
1:00:46
Lisa Hopkins: That's I love that.
1:00:47
Ross Baum: That sounds perfect.
1:00:48
Lisa Hopkins: Perfect, but I'm not going to take up any more of your time.
1:00:51
Lisa Hopkins: I've been speaking today with Ross Baum and Angelica Sheree.
1:00:56
Lisa Hopkins: I'm Lisa Hopkins.
1:00:58
Lisa Hopkins: Thanks so much for listening.
1:00:59
Lisa Hopkins: Stay safe and healthy, everyone, and remember to live in the moment.
1:01:03
Lisa Hopkins: In the moment.
1:01:04
Lisa Hopkins: In music, stop time is that beautiful moment where the band is suspended in rhythmic unison, supporting the soloists to express their individuality.
1:01:14
Lisa Hopkins: In the moment.
1:01:15
Lisa Hopkins: I encourage you to take that time and create your own rhythm.
1:01:20
Lisa Hopkins: Until next time, I'm Lisa Hopkins.
1:01:23
Lisa Hopkins: Thanks for listening.