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Jodi Stevens Bryce- Lessons from a Life on Stage · She’s Smart

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Hey, everybody. Welcome to She Smart. I'm your host, Maria Robotham.
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Today, I'm joined by the incredibly talented Jodi Bryce-Stevens,
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an actress, singer, teacher, mentor, wife, and mother who has truly lived a
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life on and off the stage.
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Jodi's story is one of resilience, creativity, and balance.
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She made her Broadway debut in the original company of Jacqueline Hyde,
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went on to originate roles,
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tour nationally, and win a Connecticut Critics Circle Award,
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while also becoming a devoted teacher and mentor to the next generation of performers.
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In our conversation, Jodi opens up about the highs and lows of a life and performance,
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from the magic of her Broadway debut to the moment a vocal injury forced her
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to completely relearn her instrument.
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She shares how yoga, mindfulness, and self-care have shaped not only her art,
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but her life, and why she believes teaching has been one of her greatest accomplishments.
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We also talk about the community she's building here in Connecticut through
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her cabaret and coaching and the joy of watching others rediscover their voices and creativity.
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This is a conversation about artistry, balance, and what it means to keep showing
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up with passion on stage and in life.
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So get cozy as we connect, learn, and laugh together on She's Smart.
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Music.
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Jodi, thanks for being here. I'm so happy to be here.
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Since we moved to Weston, oh my God, 12 years ago, and knew that you were teaching,
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I was like looking at it and being like, I do want to get back into singing again.
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And maybe I'm going to bring up Jodi at one point. Then you did this women's cabaret.
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Oh, yeah. I really hope you bring it back because I would love to actually be
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able to do it. I just didn't get to do it this last time.
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How did it go? a surprise cathartic evening like the women from all walks of
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life came out of the woodwork and women i'd never even met in weston from different
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areas different lifestyles and they all came together and then they were just
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singing their faces off and we were laughing and we were.
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Scared and we were brave and it was all the feels there's one woman in particular
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who like to call a friend now. Her name's Ashley.
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She was at that particular karaoke women's night, and I understand she's killing
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it in this band now. Oh, yeah. Teacup Sally.
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Ashley was on the podcast. She's a friend. Oh, my gosh. Yeah.
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Amazing. We love some Ashley.
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So it's just really fun to see women who are successful in so many areas of
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their lives, and then they come together and we collectively share a little
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part of us that nobody else really gets to see.
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It inspires a creativity or kicks in a muscle that hasn't been utilized in a
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long time. And we go, that felt good.
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And we have been doing it again. So it has grown into a Thursday night evening.
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And I bring in a pianist now and we do an adult cabaret class,
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and we call it Cabaret and Community.
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I limit it now to seven to nine people MAC, so everybody gets some really nice,
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special one-on-one work with me and with our musical director,
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Gerald Goldstein. We're having a great time together.
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Well, that's the best. I'm, I have to try to figure it out. So you have to schedule.
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You should come to see one of our performances. I would love to. I would love to.
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There's nothing, there's a big joke in my family and amongst my friends that
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you just hand me a mic any day of the week because I have a thing for being on a microphone.
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There's something very freeing about being on stage and performing.
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You forget everything around you. You forget anything that happened that day.
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And you're just in that moment. It's something incredibly special that I find,
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at least for me personally, But there's something very freeing about it that
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I don't get in many spaces. It's pretty special.
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You come from a background of family members who were musical and musicians,
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starting with your grandparents.
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Can you tell us a little bit about your grandparents and parents and that upbringing
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into this theater environment?
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I love my parents' history. Their parents were Jewish immigrants,
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moved to the Lower East Side.
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My grandfather really had to struggle for his family.
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He ended up getting a job as a civil servant. Before that, he joined the army.
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He ended up becoming a bugler. He then took on the drums.
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When he came out of the army, he really was digging into his musicianship and started a band.
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And then the band grew to Ray Miller and his orchestra.
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They were a big band in the early 30s. They played in all the joints below 14th
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Street. My mother grew up and she was fronting the band for him.
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She took over as the lead singer of the band. And then my grandfather was fielding
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all these offers for mom.
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And, you know, back in the day, sometimes our parents were, their parents were
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a little bit, you're not going to go into this business.
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They had a business end. And so she didn't, but her love of the art was always
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there and it transferred onto me.
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And also part of why I love having our women coming together and moms coming
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together and singing together, because my mom missed out on that.
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I just am realizing that now.
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My mom became a mom and working and she never got back to that.
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And I think there might be a little part of that that I'm kind of finding.
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I could totally see that. Yeah. So when you were growing up,
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what was that first inclination that you wanted to do it? Was there a play that you were involved in?
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Did you just like performing, like being out there?
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I'm just gonna there's one special story that
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I will share and it had to do with a Chicago-based actress
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named Aline Robertson she's
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no longer with us but when I was living
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in Chicago I was in elementary school junior high school and one of our field
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trips was to the Lincolnshire theater where we saw a musical production of Kid
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Met I saw this woman come out belly dancing with all the bangles and sparkles
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singing this song about Baghdad.
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I went, wow, that's just magic.
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She transported me to this place. I was like, wow, that woman is amazing. I want to do that.
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Cut to 25 years later.
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I'm a professional doing the 25th anniversary of Annie, the musical,
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at the Goodspeed Opera House where it originated.
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I'm living in the after housing, the Lawton House, and this woman is there who's
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playing Miss Hannigan and we're sitting around after rehearsal a day talking
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about our beginnings in the theater and I said,
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there was this woman in Chicago that inspired me to my first show.
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She looks at me and she's like, it was me.
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Or the full circle. I mean, the world looks so small. I beg to share with her.
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So you started in community theater. Is that where you like kind of began?
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But you finished school and went straight to Broadway.
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I never really did a lot of community theater. And my parents were really driving
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me to go to college, which I am very grateful for. I'm a huge proponent of education.
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So I went to college, got a four-year degree in classical theater.
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And then I was going to go to grad school.
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And then I got a job off Broadway and I kind of went, do I want to study more? Do I want to go do it?
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I thought, go do it. I've got my degree. I've been finding my way in the business.
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But you found your way right to Broadway on Jekyll and Hyde,
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like the original production, your debut.
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You know how long it took me to get there? I love that because all the Broadway
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shows you do to get there and the relationship you develop over the years and
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the reputation you build of casting people, fellow directors and fellow actors.
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As you progress through the business, directors and casting directors look at
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your resume and then go back and say, how was working with this woman?
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What was this like? And, you know, so all of that follows you and then they're
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like, this is somebody that we want to work with.
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And then that slowly starts to develop.
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Jacqueline Hyde, yes, that was my Broadway debut.
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I did this off-Broadway show right out of college and then I.
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Just kept going. You get back into class, and you're reading the trades, and finding a way.
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You just keep studying and doing the work so that you were being seen and seeking out representation.
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There was this one casting director that always kept coming back to me. His name is Barry Moss.
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Julie Hughes and Moss were the original casting directors on many 1980s sitcom hits.
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And they were big Broadway casting directors as well. Well, anyway,
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Barry Moss and Julie Hughes would bring me in for a lot of things.
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When this Jekyll and Hyde workshop was coming around, they brought me in,
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and I didn't get the national tour of it because it went on a big old tour before it came in.
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It was kicking around for about 10 years, as many musicals do before they actually hit.
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It seems to be like a 10-year gestation period.
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I didn't get the tour. Barry Moss and Julie Hughes brought me back in again.
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I got very curious. You have to make your own luck a lot of times, you know?
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So I actually got pretty inspired by reaching out and calling the musical director,
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and asking the musical director who he liked to work with and somebody that
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he might recommend that I work with to prepare for this audition.
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And then he gave me the name of his assistant.
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I reached out to his assistant to see if he would rehearse with me.
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I ended up really getting a handle on what they wanted.
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Do you remember the first night walking out there?
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Yeah. It's beautiful. It's magic. You know, it really is.
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And then there's an element of, and I don't mean to not appear grateful because
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I'm so grateful, but then there was this little element of, so what's next?
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Is this all it is? And I don't mean this in any disparaging way,
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but there's so many wonderful things in life to offer.
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Like, it's just one thing. Yeah.
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True, though. You get to one place and then, especially if you're driven,
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you get to one place and you're like, all right, that was good. What's next?
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But you can still enjoy and appreciate what just happened. Oh,
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my gosh. In the moment, you can still be driven to do the next thing and more things. Yes.
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I think that's what makes you have a career.
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The people who don't drive themselves to do more and get better and study.
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And you went through how many different ways of actually learning,
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whether it's acting or voice. I want to touch on those. It's driven.
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In order to do this for a long time, I'm going to have to keep doing it and
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showing up in different ways and better ways.
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The appreciation can always be there and you can still push yourself.
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And he used to always say, if you want to work on your art, you've got to work on your life.
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Okay, I have that quote in here, and I wanted to ask what that meant to you.
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Bill was my first acting teacher when I came to New York City.
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He really opened up my humanity.
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I was so young and sheltered growing up, and I had no idea how rich the world was.
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The work is not really even about you. It's about how you're affecting change
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to the other person and how that other person is affecting you.
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It really took the lens off of looking and being self-conscious and instead
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putting the attention on the object of your behavior, if it were.
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And Bill just kind of cracked me open in the sense of that there was so much
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more than being successful.
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And so it just started me on a journey. And if an actor is somebody who needs
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to tune into behavior, then you have to study behavior.
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And the best way, I think, to study behavior is, yes, being in an acting class,
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but also being in constant study and or therapy or whatever your internal journey is for self-care.
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Bill was a mentor to me for so many life lessons because in working on my life, it made my art better.
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And in working on my art, it made my life better. So it just kind of kept on rolling.
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Did you start singing first or was it acting first?
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And the singing came later. Were they tied in? I kind of was putting my singing
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off as much as I could because my mother was always the singer.
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Anytime I would open my mouth to sing in my house or my room,
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I would always get a knock on the door. You should have heard your mother.
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So I was like, all right. Then I went into classical theater and I thought,
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I want to just do regional theater and I want to create. and I want to just
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do the classics and travel.
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And I was like, well, I do want to eat.
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After I came to New York and did that off-Broadway play, I started doing some
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musical auditions and realized I needed more musical training.
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I was fortunate enough to get a position with a teacher, Joan Lader,
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who she's just an extraordinary gifted teacher, therapist, vocal therapist,
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and just an extraordinary mentor.
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She taught me how to.
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Trained speaking voice as a singer. So you injured your voice at one point, right?
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I was reading about this. You hemorrhaged your vocal cord. I hemorrhaged my vocal cords.
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So yes, that's quite debilitating. Well, debilitating as an athlete.
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I personally look at musical theater as you're an athlete.
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You are an athlete because you're not just acting. You are also dancing and
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singing at the same time and moving around.
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And you're not only having to keep your body limber, but your voice and your
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muscle, these vocal cords are your muscles that you're training and working
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on. So you don't have that anymore.
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What's that like? Because I can only imagine it's an athlete my whole life and
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I injured myself. You just stop doing who you are.
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Right. How do you get through that and come back on the other side doing so
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much more after that? Okay. Okay.
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I know it's a lot. Because first of all, you touched on something that is so
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valuable and that I treat this work like an athlete, like a team,
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because that is what a cast has to be. I love that you said that.
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Overworking. And I was doing Japlin Hyde. I was also, I was an understudy.
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So I felt the pressure of having to prove something.
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It wasn't the first cover. So there's all of these things that I was learning
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being in my first Broadway show.
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And that's something that you negotiate. I was like, what i still
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have to audition so i had to continue to prove myself
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the anxiety and the pressure of that was
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so much i kept working and i kept rehearsing i
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kept training somebody wanted me to do a cabaret show and that's gonna get me
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a little bit more ahead so i'll do that so i was taking on more than my body
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really doing eight shows a week and you know rehearsing i woke up one day i
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went home to visit my parents and my voice was a little forced i took the show off i went home.
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I woke up the next day. My voice was still hoarse.
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It's like, hmm, things just feel right.
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And then I went back to New York. I got in with my ENT, Jeffrey Libin. He was wonderful.
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It turns out I hemorrhaged my vocal cord, which means a blood vessel bursts on your cord.
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The cord itself is not muscle, it's tissue. The muscles surrounding the tissues,
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it ruptured and peels, but you have to go on complete vocal silence.
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And so I went on vocal rest for six weeks. Now...
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In the late 90s, before cell phones came out, I would literally be in a cab driver.
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You know, now if this happened, you can text back and forth.
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I literally wore a button that said, I'm on vocal rest.
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I would have to write things down on little sticky notes and hand it to the
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cab driver and say, please excuse me, I'm not being rude. I'm on vocal rest.
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And can you please take me to da da da. But I have to say that once you get
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over the shock and trauma of you can't speak, there's something that takes over.
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And that's being tuned in to your yoga and your meditation and your inner life.
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You're forced to tune into that inner life when you can't talk.
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And I kind of think that metaphysically, there's a reason that all happened.
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I took the lessons in all of that and I try to bring it forward.
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Not always successful but i try to bring
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it forward into my world it humbled me in
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such a huge way oh my gosh you learn
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so much when you're living with yourself honestly
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there's a lot down there when you just sit there when you
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came back did you find yourself holding back a little bit or did you feel comfortable
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enough after those six weeks to really go back out there i mean you're probably
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you have to give it your all every night how did you remember how that felt
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i what i do remember is that it took me a really long time to get back.
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Your body wasn't letting me do what I did before.
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That's not working for you anymore. So I had to go back into training.
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I had to retool the instrument.
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And now I sing in a much more healthy way.
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Growing up not in voice lessons, I think was a big part of that because learning and.
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Speak on stage in classical work and learning about how we never had microphones
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back then and how in the Greeks and in the Colosseums, you would be projecting
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your voice so it would bounce off those walls.
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That's the kind of big, booming voice that developed in college.
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But then there's a whole other component that was not addressed,
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and that's the breathwork.
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Yeah. To support that sound.
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So that's something that took me a while to, That also comes with age.
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And is that the Alexander Technique? Is that breath work where you're learning
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how to go from the diaphragm? All of that is Alexander Technique.
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It's wonderful work that I did in college.
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And then with Lloyd Williamson at the William Esper Studio, all of that breath work.
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And then I continue that into my yoga work in Panayama.
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That's always a big part of my vocal work. I've integrated a lot of my learning
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and my schooling into the theater and how all of those elements of breathwork, athletic, yoga.
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Therapy, friendship, singing, how all of that can manifest into a happy and functioning life.
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You've done countless musicals, seven Critics Circle nominations and a win in
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Connecticut Critics, right? That was great. This is pretty incredible.
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Many people can't even say they did one, let alone who stayed the test of time
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to continue on. What keeps you going?
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I know you've moved into, you did your own show, which I want to talk about,
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but what keeps you going and doing it?
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Is it the love, the drive, just who you are?
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Do you know what it is that you keep doing it? It's a pretty big question,
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you know, because like there's the safe question, right?
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Yes, I love it. And it always inspires me. And the children are amazing.
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And all of those things are true.
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But then there's like these layers underneath that of always wanting to be an actor.
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I had no idea there was so much more that I was capable of doing.
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And it was like getting cracked open after getting cracked open.
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You make a plan and the universe gives you something else and says, oh, yeah,
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you think that's your plan so you know
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i just move with it you know i feel
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like there is so much out there to experience and
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try and be open to and i want to do it i just want to keep going i don't know
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what that means or what that looks like but it's when you did your one woman
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show did you sit down and choose all your favorite songs that you love to sing
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was there a kind of a theme to it how did that come about for you?
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Oh, I did my first one woman show after I had a boyfriend and he and I broke
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up. I was just like, it was dope.
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I was journaling and journaling. And then I started laughing at all of my journal entries.
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I was like, this is ridiculous. I've got to get it together.
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I got to sing about this. I used to stay away from cabaret because I used to
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call it therapy theater.
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And I'm like, I want to do that. And then I'm like, wait a minute,
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that's there for a reason.
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I gotta check that out. So I started taking my journals and laughing at myself
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and thinking, all right, so what kind of song would go with this mood?
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And I want to make fun of myself about this.
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And then I would got with my musical director at the time, Joan Lynn Burks,
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and she say, well, how about I Can't Take You Nowhere, which is a song about
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a guy that's just a falling down drunk and anywhere you take him,
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he's always embarrassing you. I'm like.
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So we would combine and work together, and it just sort of morphed into a show.
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That was one section of the show, which was really funny.
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And then talking about the different kinds of shows I did to get me where I was today.
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And I wrote about a time in my life where I got to jump in an off-Broadway show about strippers. Okay.
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And I was like, I was a young woman with all of these insecurity issues.
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I met this stripper who showed me how to do it.
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It was a fascinating discovery, and I wrote about it in my one-woman show.
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But the thing that makes it so easy to digest is that I have the alter ego in this is my mom.
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Because my mom, as a singer, was always looking at me going, I could be better.
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I can do that better, you know, and things like that. With her humor and love and all that stuff.
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So she's like my alter ego in there. And she'd be like, I can do that better
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than you. I don't want to give anything away.
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It's got to be in the moment kind of thing. But it just took me a full circle.
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So I think that show was a big element of my one woman show.
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The show sort of morphs over the years. I call the show Abroad's Way.
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And so it allows me to continue to evolve.
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I'm always changing the show because my life just continues. My stories continue.
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Being nominated eight times was fun. I really didn't care. It was just nice.
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To be acknowledged. To be a community is just wonderful.
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And it's so fun. I get to talk about those things. When I first started Cabaret,
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it was like, what do I have to talk about?
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Oh, who wants to hear from me? What, I got a broken heart? Everybody's got a broken heart.
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Then you get older and you're like, well, that might be funny or...
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This could be it. And then all of these stories start to evolve.
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I have a friend who I was in Urban Cowboy with in New York, Sally Mays.
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She's a Tony-nominated Drama Desk winner and the most incredible cabaret performer
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because it doesn't matter what's going on in her life.
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She just brings it right to the stage.
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And it's so unapologetically her.
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It's wonderful to see that.
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That freedom. Yeah. So you won an award for Singing in the Rain, right?
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One of my favorite musicals of all time. And you played one of my favorite characters.
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The movie version, I grew up watching musical theater my whole life.
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I grew up outside of San Francisco, right next to Oakland.
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There was this regional theater called Woodminster Amphitheater.
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It was in the Oakland Hills.
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Every summer, we would get season tickets, and we'd get to see like six musicals.
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And the acting and the dancing. I saw every single musical known to me,
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and it put something in me that I eventually did them in high school and loved
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it because it just was so fun, right?
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The scene in Singing in the Rain where Lena is the character you play is in
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the microphone and moving her face, and every time she moves her face,
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you can't hear what... And I still think about that to this day.
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The simplicity of that kind of joke, where did that go? It's funny.
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It's making fun of the person who's acting, but also the whole situation in general.
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How do you feel to play someone iconic that people remember and that musical that's so iconic? Yeah.
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I love that you grew up watching these musicals.
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Singing in the Rain is iconic. I love Singing in the Rain.
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It's so informative because it's educating us on the talkies.
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When we first were introducing sound in the movies and so many of our stars
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went by the wayside because they had horrible voices and getting used to having
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to direct yourself into a microphone.
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Now we'll have these labs and they're all attached to us.
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This actress, Judy Holliday, who was in the original movie, was a brilliant comic actress.
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You remember Billie Holiday in, oh my goodness, it's out of my head right now.
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Born Yesterday, another one of her classic films. She's just a comic genius.
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When she took the pie in the face, I mean, come on.
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Anybody who could take the pie in the face, it's the funnest look. Well, just magic.
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Are there other actresses, musical or classic actresses that you watched as
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a young woman or as a girl that you just were like, it just drew something out of you?
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Carol Burnett. Yeah. Bernadette Peters. Well, I mean, how can it?
26:14
Patti LuPone is just a force to be.
26:17
Yeah. Yeah. Well, Audra McDowell. I mean, all of these people.
26:20
And then, you know, Sutton Foster. She's just glorious inside and out.
26:24
And, you know, and then Kristen Chenoweth with that crazy fun voice.
26:27
You know, I mean, how can you not stop and listen? So, yeah,
26:31
all of these women and they're funny and unique.
26:33
But Carol Burnett, Mary Tyler Moore, all those that she didn't sing.
26:37
In the dick van dyke show yeah rosemary
26:40
that was yeah all these wonderful shows with
26:44
these amazing physical comedic actors
26:47
and actresses that looked so effortless when they were doing it these classic
26:53
shows i loved watching this growing up we watched this dick van dyke show all
26:58
of these shows my dad and i hi daddy we used to watch all of the bbc shows and
27:03
we would watch, Are You Being Served?
27:05
Do you know this one? No. It's based off of Harrods.
27:09
But all the characters are just these dry, humored English characters.
27:14
Working in the store. And they would go up and down the lift into the different stores.
27:18
And woman had bright pink hair. If you've watched these, I mean,
27:21
anyone who's listening, it is comedy that teaches you comedy.
27:25
It's like Monty Python. Oh my
27:27
gosh. Right? Like our kids might not be fast enough for them these days,
27:31
which makes me really sad i feel like our children are going up in
27:33
an age where they need to be entertained every 30 seconds they
27:36
can't sit through like what show did we put
27:39
on for them the other day 16 candles it was hard for
27:42
them to sit through 16 candles it wasn't moving fast enough i'm
27:45
like guys this is comedy genius like you need to everyone needs to stop and
27:50
take a minute to like appreciate there's a build-up here it doesn't it doesn't
27:56
have to be rapid it's so interesting that you said you know that's like absolutely
27:59
a class in college like Like the John Hughes film has changed like that.
28:03
Nobody has a one camera shot.
28:05
Well, now in our independent work, there's so much happening.
28:07
But an independent shot that just sort of like Lawrence of Arabia.
28:11
And the shot just follows for like 15 minutes and watching as Peter O'Toole.
28:16
Rides the horse into frame and it takes like 15 minutes.
28:20
Nobody does that anymore. You live in Weston. What brought you to Connecticut?
28:24
And Weston in particular, because I drank the Kool-Aid immediately on this place. So.
28:28
Yeah. Yeah. This is a very special, very special place. I am married to an actor,
28:33
director, producer, Scott Bryce.
28:35
And Scott is a Staples player from 1975.
28:40
He went to Staples. He grew up in Westport. Scott and I met in Los Angeles and I booked Urban Cowboy.
28:49
I had to fly back to do that.
28:52
Scott came with me and Urban Cowboy didn't last on Broadway that long.
28:56
Afterwards, I said to Scott, now what do we do?
29:00
He says, do you want to go back to L.A.? I'm like, I'm not so sure.
29:03
Maybe we should stick around. The decision basically got made for us when his
29:08
mother got ill and she lived up here in Westport over at Combo Beach.
29:13
And so we came up to take care of her.
29:16
And so then she was going to move. We're going to downsize her into assisted living.
29:19
And we decided, well, why don't we redo the house and you can live on the first
29:24
floor and we'll take over the second floor and then we can all be together. So we did that.
29:28
And life just kept unfolding. And Scott and I got married and had Jackson.
29:33
And then mom has since passed and we packed everything up.
29:38
We've been bouncing around Weston and bought this house several years ago.
29:42
Our son has been able to be in one school system his whole school life.
29:47
Pretty magical. And I never got that. And I thought that was really important. Yeah, I got to do that.
29:52
Yeah, it's a pretty magical place. And now you've started teaching these kids. Yeah.
29:57
And you started SBE.
30:01
So how did that come about? You have my friends' kids that do it,
30:04
and I love having you all on stage at WestFest.
30:08
It's like magic having those kids out there singing and performing and being
30:12
so young and just putting themselves out there.
30:14
And I think every one of us can learn from that. So I would love to know how
30:18
you started that, mentoring and teaching children.
30:21
Yeah, it's become a real passion, actually. And it started when I was teaching
30:27
a program called Music Together. And in Music Together, I became an early childhood musical advocate.
30:36
And then we learn to teach our children and their caregivers basic music competence
30:42
and how basic music competence aids in social development,
30:47
cognitive development, and the science behind making music in a community setting
30:52
really cultivates foundations of love and learning and sharing and trying new things.
31:00
There's also the idea of modeling behavior that I learned in this program.
31:05
Modeling behavior for our children is the most beneficial teaching tool that
31:11
we could do for our kids. So...
31:14
I took this and processed it into all of my work, not just in my music together
31:21
work with the babies. I did that for several years.
31:24
Then I thought, I'm ready to take this to another level and integrate this into
31:29
my theatrical teaching.
31:32
I was invited to direct several musicals at the elementary school in our town.
31:38
I saw a need for a theatrical experience for these children that was added a
31:49
nurturing component to it that also brought basic music competence to the table.
31:54
Within all of those philosophies, social identification, recognition,
31:59
and modeling behavior for the children could be illustrated best.
32:04
So i started doing some
32:07
private lessons on the side i started getting
32:10
busy with that i stopped doing my
32:14
music together work i took a job teaching
32:17
at a conservatory i started taking classes i
32:21
reached back out to my old teachers back in
32:23
new york i was looking at what they were doing talking to
32:26
them about what i wanted to do wanted to hear their
32:29
feedback you know because i definitely didn't want
32:32
to be one of those teachers i wanted their blessings so i
32:35
did and i keep learning so cut to
32:38
i'm teaching at the conservatory i was
32:42
doing a musical i had a few private students and
32:45
then covid hit no i just finished producing
32:49
music at the elementary school i think
32:52
yeah and and and it was like march 7th or
32:55
8th and then everything closed down yeah so i
32:59
was then i brought back music together and i was teaching
33:02
online and together classes i thought okay i
33:05
want to build my own teaching so i took a business course on how to do online
33:13
work my teachers back in new york recommended some of that so and so and long
33:18
story short this i met with this man and we started to build this idea and it just evolved.
33:26
You know, it was, I took some of the ideas that he was presenting to our class
33:31
and then kind of fit it into what my needs were.
33:35
And then SBE developed.
33:38
I live in a house where I have all windows. So during COVID,
33:43
I would bring in six students, open each window, and each student would stand
33:49
at a bay in the window and sing out.
33:52
We were rolling against them out.
33:55
We took ideal precautions. Then when the weather wasn't good,
33:59
I put up tents in my yard. I started building an outdoor stage.
34:04
Everything was 10 feet apart. Everybody remained six feet apart.
34:08
I put tree stumps in different, I built platforms.
34:11
I created a Shakespeare in the Park in my yard. I did it for two summers,
34:16
and it started growing my individual clients.
34:20
They were very faithful, which was wonderful. It just kept growing.
34:24
Through the classes I was taking, I was learning how to navigate my online presence
34:28
and keep the content valuable and interesting. I just kept going.
34:34
It was incredible. I got to share this fun thing because the woman I started
34:39
building this with, she started off as my son's nanny.
34:44
When Jackson was a baby, this is how tight-knit the community gets.
34:50
My husband went to high school with my assistant parents.
34:55
So Abby and Brad Peterson went to high school with my husband, Scott Rose.
35:01
Abby and Brad had Sarah Peterson. And when I was looking for a nanny,
35:06
Abby says to Scott, you should...
35:09
Talk to my daughter because she happens to do that.
35:12
So 19 years ago, I met Sarah and Sarah has been with me ever since.
35:17
And she helped me start this company. And now she has two children of her own
35:22
and she's still here running all my admin and doing all my costuming and assisting me.
35:27
And it's been wonderful to share with her and teach her how to be a teacher.
35:34
And she's just really blossoming the fabric is
35:37
just so tightly woven in this community oh
35:40
my god i really love that you built an
35:44
amphitheater basically in your backyard i did so what's so funny about this
35:48
is i was talking with a friend of mine jesse schaefer oh who's in good godfrey
35:53
of course we were just talking the other weekend about the fact that weston
35:57
needs its own amphitheater could you imagine if we could build.
36:02
We are in the woods already. So I grew up Berkeley.
36:04
Shakespeare in the Park was right in the Berkeley Hills. Whenever it would come
36:08
out, we would all get tickets. Bring your picnic.
36:10
And you were on the dirt. There was like grass levels, but it wasn't fancy, but it was beautiful.
36:16
You got to listen to Shakespeare all night and watch the funniest,
36:21
some incredibly inappropriate humor that I think is absolutely hysterical.
36:25
But imagine if we could have that in this darling place where people could perform.
36:30
Kids could perform, adults could perform, the community could perform all outside.
36:34
I just feel like it's so my in-laws, being from Westport and Weston,
36:39
this community was such a small town and they wanted it to stay like that.
36:43
That's why they have no sidewalks and all of that. You can't help how we have
36:47
developed and we are growing.
36:48
It would be a wonderful thing for the community to figure that out.
36:52
I mean, we've got what's going on at LaShot, which is so amazing.
36:57
And then over at the Weston to start, Society, the music out on the green.
37:01
I love what Sam Nestor is cultivating with our tree lighting in the center, which is,
37:08
It really does bring our community together, and she's worked very hard to bring all of that.
37:15
I love being a part of that. Whenever the community brings out events like that,
37:19
the kids, it's a great opportunity for them to perform.
37:22
It's a great opportunity for them to be recognized where they may not necessarily
37:27
be in other areas of their lives.
37:30
The theater is very competitive in the schools, and not everybody gets a lead role.
37:34
So here, Leti gets to be a star. And I think that's amazing in their whole expansion in their world.
37:40
Yeah. You talk about balance.
37:43
Balance is incredibly important. You do yoga, meditation, mindfulness.
37:48
That is helping you with acting and your voice. But how has it helped you with just life in general?
37:55
I find that us as moms, as women, we take on so many roles and we have to find
38:01
a way to settle ourselves a little bit. Over time, I have found that if I don't
38:05
settle, I get a little crazy.
38:06
So does that help you with the settling, that balance, the yoga,
38:11
the mindfulness, meditation?
38:13
Yeah, it really does. I mean, I'm not going to say that I don't get crazy up in here.
38:18
I'm human, you know, but at the same time, it really does make everything doable.
38:24
Again it's circling back to breath
38:27
finding that our roles as moms and
38:31
wives and sisters and
38:34
daughters and and as a and
38:37
caregiver you know i was thrown into the role of caregiver over the past year
38:42
in my family if i hadn't had this practice of self-care and it's not cheap it
38:49
is literally an investment that you have to do i realized at some point in my
38:53
life i'm like it's too expensive.
38:54
I'm like, no, it's too expensive not to do it.
38:57
And so I really had to find, even when it couldn't afford it at the time,
39:01
you have to find a way to find that for yourself because there's always access available.
39:06
If I didn't have this, I don't think I would be able to be as good a caregiver
39:09
as I have had to have doing my best. But if I hadn't had it, it would be good.
39:14
Well, I think so many of us dismiss the self-care part of it.
39:17
And that's what everyone, break down after a while. Right.
39:21
And I agree with you. I would love to know if there was like any funny mishaps
39:27
from your stage, from stage, from performing, anything funny that you remember ever happening.
39:33
Hopefully no one like had to have a hospital ambulance called while you're in
39:37
the middle of a performance. Yes.
39:40
More times than I can count. So there's so many, but I'll just grab want.
39:45
This isn't that funny, but it keeps repeating back in my head, so I'm going to share.
39:48
I was doing Jephlyn Hyde, and I was the second cover, right?
39:52
So it wasn't the first cover. I was the.
40:00
Couldn't finish. She was sick. So they called her out of the show.
40:06
And at intermission, the first cover couldn't go on for some reason.
40:11
And they pulled me out of my costume change.
40:15
All of a sudden, all of these hands come in and they're like pulling off this
40:19
and taking off that and redoing your wig and redoing your mic.
40:22
And everything was changing on me. And I just had to focus on
40:25
what i had to do next and then i get to the entrance and
40:29
the stage manager gets on the pa system and says for the rest of the performance
40:36
the role of lucy originally played by linda edder will now be played by jody
40:40
stevens and you i literally am ready to come on and i I literally hear the whole audience go,
40:47
oh, if that's not.
40:53
All right, girl, just don't do your job. I love those bootstraps,
40:56
lady, and just do what you do best. Hades are running.
41:00
But I was like, wow, I really do love this business.
41:05
My gosh. And then everyone claps, of course.
41:09
And then they're like, oh, wow, we probably shouldn't have done that.
41:11
She's awesome. You go in there thinking this, but then the musical director,
41:15
Jason Howland, came backstage and he like put his hands on my shoulders and
41:19
goes, you know, some people come to the theater to see these things happen.
41:24
And then when the understudy goes on, they can do nothing but celebrate. Now get out there.
41:30
Thanks, Jason. It was an awesome experience.
41:33
But this is the living the life. You gotta live the life. You gotta live the life.
41:38
You gotta do life, right? At the end, I asked three questions.
41:40
The first question is, is there anything that you have changed your mind about recently?
41:45
This is a big one. So recently I changed my mind about college because I'm dealing
41:52
with something right now in my family where my son has decided that he wants to take college.
41:58
Time off from college. Now, I have grown up in college, college,
42:01
college, but now I'm looking at my child and I'm going, okay,
42:05
maybe it's not right for everybody.
42:08
And he's very motivated and he's doing really well with all the things he's
42:13
working on and progressing beautifully in his business.
42:17
And I'm watching this going, okay, we're going to keep the door open,
42:21
but I might have changed my mind about this.
42:24
Fascinating. For my child, they're all different. Yeah.
42:27
It's really funny you say that because growing up, you would always ask someone
42:31
when they graduate high school, so where are you going to college?
42:33
Right. Like that's the immediate question. And my foot was put in my mouth when
42:38
I asked that one day a couple of years ago.
42:40
And I was like, oh, so you just graduated. Where are you going to college?
42:43
And they're like, oh, I'm not. I'm doing this. I'm doing something else.
42:48
And it made me feel so bad because the same way. You go to college after you're done with high school.
42:55
Every kid's different. Vocational schools are massively big right now.
42:58
College is so expensive. But now I ask, instead of where are you going to college,
43:02
I say, what are you doing next?
43:05
Because it could be anything. But it took many foot in mouth moments for me to ask that question.
43:11
That's a great change of mind. I love that. Is there anything on your bucket
43:17
list that you want to get to.
43:19
Yes. So I have never taken a vacation by myself. That is totally on my bucket list.
43:24
I tried it just for two nights. I went away to the Omega Institute in Rhinebeck
43:29
just to see what it was like. And it was like, hurry up, you have two nights.
43:33
There's no pressure. I can do this. So that's on a bucket list for me.
43:37
I want to go away by myself.
43:40
The final question is, if you were to give your younger self one piece of advice,
43:45
what would it be? No fishing in the company pond.
43:48
My dad liked to say, excuse my term, you don't shit where you eat.
43:52
It's Miss Swerver God. That's the one thing. I mean, in theater, you know, yeah, don't.
43:59
I mean, you know, it's your job. You don't, you don't want to.
44:03
Job. It gets messy. Yeah. Job.
44:07
That's it. I love it. Jodi, this has been fantastic.
44:11
Thank you for this happy to meet I'm so appreciative that you came and chatted
44:14
with me aww I just love it what special people we have in uptown we do what
44:19
a beautiful thank you thank you it's so fun,
44:23
thank you so much for joining me today on She's Smart new episodes drop every
44:28
Thursday don't forget to subscribe and share stay cozy.