Julie Benko: Becoming Jane

Transcript

Julie Benko: I went back to get my masters in acting after I’d been working in the business for a while, and I graduated in 2021 in the pandemic.

And they make a big deal about your showcase, which is this performance that you do when you graduate. And then all the casting directors and all the agents and all these people are supposed to, you know, watch it and, and, you know, they sort of tell you, like, you’re gonna get snapped up. Don’t worry, don’t worry. And it. But everybody’s stressed, you know? And I did my showcase and it was all virtual and nobody wanted to meet me. Nobody. And I was completely devastated.

I was just, you know, I just sort of saw the list of the empty list that was sent to me and was just like, you know, even though I had worked on Broadway already, I felt like I’m never going to make it. And so then, you know, then, you know, within six months of graduation, I booked funny girl.

And then, you know, about three or four months after that, my life changed, and I suddenly got a lot more attention than I’d ever gotten and was being celebrated.

I was the same performer that I was at my showcase and everybody ignored me, you know, and so it just goes to show. And I always try to tell the kids graduating, you know, these showcases and any audition or any sort of thing that you do, it’s just one thing, and you really never know what’s around the corner. You just keep working hard and, and showing up and doing your best and, you know, be grateful for every opportunity that comes up. It’s almost all of them will not go your way.

So you just hope that one hits and eventually one will.

And in my case, Funny Girl sort of hit in this huge way and opened a lot of doors. And I learned fanny is the hardest part I ever did. And playing that role eight shows a week. Nobody should do it. Nobody. Nobody did except for me in that run. And I was so exhausted. I was in so much physical pain, you know, vocally, I was exhausted physically. If you just, like, hurt your shoulder or tweaked your back or did something to your foot, you had no chance to recover. So you’re just sort of living on vocal rest, and you’re ahead working through illness, and you’re doing all these things. And I just learned I could really work.

I could really work through almost anything. And I did that show sort of really sick without a voice, you know, because there were times where both, like, the other fannies were all out with COVID and if I called out, the show was gonna be canceled. And so I. I found a way to make it through. And after that, I just. Everything seems doable. Everything.

StageNotes: You wrote this beautiful article for Forward, where you talk about the moment, taking the stage as understudy Fanny for the first time, and then the time you took the stage as Fanny for the last time. And in that article, you talk about being a professional understudy for 14 years. I’m wondering if that 14 years of experience prepared you for that understudy to star trajectory. Would you have been ready for that trajectory earlier in your career?

Julie Benko: Oh, hard to say.

I think anytime you get an opportunity, you do your best to rise to it.

But I do think the skills that I learned as an understudy, really learning how to do my homework, how to stay organized, how to be self sufficient, how to watch and see what really. And look at the whole. The whole, and see how you can contribute to the whole, as opposed to just looking at something in a very myopic way through just your role.

It makes you look at things differently. It also makes you. I learn much more quickly, and I have an appreciation for the hard work that the entire company puts in that. I mean, I hope everybody does, no matter where they start. But when you’ve done it and you know just how much work it is and how little recognition you get, not just from the public, but sometimes from your own cast for really stepping up, that was not the case with funny girl. But you work really hard as a swing or something, and sometimes people don’t even say, like, great job, you know? And so I really have tried to go out of my way to make sure all the understudies and standbys in any company that I’m a part of feel being celebrated because they’re a huge part of the company. And we can’t. We can’t do the show without them, and we will do the show with them at any time.

So they need to feel like we’re there for them and celebrating them.

StageNotes: One thing that resonates about you for me, is how you embrace your Jewish heritage on and off the stage.

How is your heritage informed, who you are as an artist and the work you make, particularly those personal projects like The Newlyweds Guide to Physical Intimacy or those kinds of things.

Julie Benko: Yeah, I think growing up in a Jewish family, there are all those sort of stereotypical things that were true for me. You know, education was hugely important, and learning how to be a good student and really caring about just being a lifetime learner and a lifetime questioner, I mean, that’s, like, sort of baked into the Jewish heritage.

I think that that is one of the biggest parts of what’s made me an artist. I went back and got my master’s degree much later. I’m just constantly trying to learn and grow and see how I can take whatever questions I’m dealing with in my own life and put them into whatever projects I’m doing. And then more literal, practical level, I volunteer at this organization called Footsteps, which is the only organization in North America that helps people who are trying to leave the ultra Orthodox community, whether that means little baby steps away, you know, or whether that means actually fully leaving the community and sometimes leaving their families behind.

People who grow up in this community often are given no skills. English is not their first language. They don’t, you know, the women actually speak better English than the men, usually, but they’re based, I mean, you know, elementary school level math, people who are out of high school. So I would. I was an SAT tutor in my survival job. So I volunteered with women who were trying to get their GED, who had left that community or were still a part of that community. But I trying to find ways to, you know, get a job in the secular world to support their families. And so just working with that community really opened my eyes a lot to even my own Jewish. You know, the Jewish world is not monolithic. So, you know, I didn’t grow up in any sort of family. You know, my family wasn’t observant. So my eyes were really open to that community and to the real, I think, bravery of so many of these people who are building their new lives. And so that led to me writing my short film, which centers on two Hasidic people, Hasidic couple on their wedding night, and they’ve never been taught how to consummate a marriage, which is a true thing that happened. They don’t know, you know, so I think. And now because of  Funny Girl and Harmony, I’ve connected with so many more Jewish organizations in the city and beyond. And so I’ve done a lot of performance or singing, you know, at fundraisers for, you know, organizations like the JDC and Project Kesher, and really excellent organizations that do wonderful humanitarian work all over the world for Jews and non Jews.

And I’ve started writing some liturgical music, which I was really not expecting to do. Park Avenue Synagogue. I connected with them, their synagogue in New York City, and their cantor, Ozzie Schwartz, invited me to. They commissioned me to write a song. So I wrote a song for Passover, and now I’m, like, sort of part of that community, and so I’m sort of becoming a part of the creative Jewish community in a way that I think that actually Harmony and Funny Girl brought me to that. I wasn’t as active in it before.

StageNotes: I really enjoyed Harmony. My husband is nothing, a Broadway musical fan. He was on the edge of his seat, riveted in that show. We both just were shook and moved, and it was just an amazing performance. Talk about the process of transitioning from Fanny to Ruth. Talk about that experience.

Julie Benko: Well, the timing worked out unbelievably well. Funny Girl closed on, like, September 3 or September 4 or something, and then we started rehearsals for Harmony, like, September 6. I mean, I had, like, two days off. I had Labor Day, and then, which was great. I loved work, so I love, you know, I love to be in rehearsal. It’s my favorite place to be. So I jumped right in, and I had done the workshop the year before while I was in funny girl, so I knew some of, you know, the material and had worked with Warren and Bruce, and Barry wasn’t there for that workshop and most of the cast, so it was not totally new for me. But I was doing a lot of research over the summer as Fanny sort of came to a close to get ready for Ruth, and then just jumped in and started, you know, and we. We hit the ground running, and unfortunately, we closed really too soon. I think the show.

We closed in February. We opened for previews in October. So I think the show did not get the run that it deserved, unfortunately. 

But it was a pretty amazing experience to end one show and go straight into the next.

StageNotes: It’s a very crowded Broadway season, and I feel like in any other season, a show like Harmony would have just really stuck around and had its due run, because it just was a really. It is a really important story, and I hope it finds a life somewhere.

Julie Benko: Yeah, it really. I agree. It’s a really important story. It was a story really worth telling.

I’m very grateful to have told it.

It just was a tough season. It’s tough for, you know, even though we had Barry Manilow, you know, working hard to get, you know, get the word out, it was.

It was, I think, difficult for many audiences to understand that it was not a show about Barry Manilow’s life, and it was not a jukebox musical. So in a way, that would have been an easier thing to sell, because people just get it. They just go, oh, it’s, you know, it’s like Jersey Boys. It’s like a Beautiful Noise or whatever, and it’s like the beautiful, you know, and you just sort of know what it is. But they were like, wait, Barry Manilow, like, wrote a show about some real historical. What, you know? And I think. I think it was just. It was a hard thing to.

For people to wrap their head around because they just expected it to be like what all of the other rock stars have done and no, no shade, you know, but I’ve always just felt really impressed by Barry and Bruce in that, you know, they really could have just done Copacabana, the musical, and they really found a story that was a true story that needed to be told, that was timelier than ever. And they poured everything that they had into bringing that to life. And, you know, and I really commend them for that.

StageNotes: Moving on to Jane Eyre. What are you learning from Jane as you begin to dive into this work?

Julie Benko: I love Jane. I mean, she’s a feminist. Before, feminism wasn’t even an idea.

And she’s so strong.

She, in a time when women, you know, all they could do was marry, you know, or she sticks to her principles and she does end up marrying very well, but on her own terms, for love, you know, and for.

And only when Mr. Rochester has really atoned for all the things that he’s done. I mean, it’s just. I love that she’s also complicated. She’s flawed. She’s very unusual heroine.

She’s a little moralistic.

She doesn’t have a great sense of humor.

It’s funny compared to Fanny, who’s just like every moment where she’s a little uncomfortable, she makes a joke and she’s putting herself down. And Ruth, who is the most confident character that I’ve ever played, just confident in herself. Confident in her sexuality, confident in everything.

Jane has confidence, but she doesn’t have that sense of humor at all. So, she’s serious, she’s religious. She’s a believer.

She’s kind of. She’s very spiritual. It’s a very different kind of character than anyone I’ve played, and it’s just a beautiful romance as well.

It’s nice. After my last two shows that have ended in, my characters have ended in divorce, that this one that Jane gets her happy ending.

StageNotes: And Megan McGinnis, I mean, she is so lovely. I’ve interviewed her a couple of times. She has a long relationship with the writers John Caird and Paul Gordon, having worked on Daddy Long Legs. So that experience of working with them and their music and their aesthetic, is that what she’s bringing to the table here?

Julie Benko: Oh, yeah. She comes up to me and she’s like, this is what John. This is how John thinks. This is what John is doing here. This is what John, you know how John sees this. They’re also. We email them with questions all the time. They’re gonna come.

They’re gonna come and work with us. And they’ve been making, doing rewrites for this production, so it’s really like a new production where we’re doing all these changes and, yeah, but they’re a text and a phone call away, where we say, what did you mean by this? Or, you know, and they’re so involved, and her relationship with them is a huge part of that. And because they trust her so much from working together so well, and they know how smart she is and how hard working she is, they’re so willing to let her try things, too, and bring her own, her own vision to everything. Also, in a very fun fact, I auditioned to be Megan’s standby in Daddy Long Legs, and I was in the finals. It was down to me and the girl that got it, and I didn’t get it, so. But I knew all the Daddy Long Legs material, and I loved it. And so it’s really nice to work on Paul Gordon, John Caird material. Now after all these years of, you know, being so close and then not.

StageNotes: I mean, Daddy Long Legs, and I’m sure it’s the same for Jane Eyre, the score is so sweeping and intoxicating and seductive in the best possible way. That’s what I found about Daddy Long Legs. It just drew me in it’s not, it’s, it’s a little bit more under toned. It’s not big belting or anything like that. It’s just their music is really beautiful. So I’m excited to see this.

Julie Benko: It is. This one’s a little beltier than Daddy Long Legs, I would say, which, so, but, you know, there’s just some big moments. They’re exciting.

StageNotes: When the show premiered on Broadway, had this huge cast, huge orchestra, made it a little bit prohibitive for regional theaters like Theatre Raleigh to produce. In 2018, there was a newer, smaller version that they introduced, and one of the critics actually said the smaller version was almost better because it had this nuance and intimacy that this large Broadway house didn’t have. And so here you are at Theater Raleigh, which is a very intimate, which is one of the things I love about it. So talk about the intimacy of this production and making it small so that it fits and the storytelling, how this all is coming together.

Julie Benko: Yeah, I think so. That production in 2018, I think, had 15 actors and we have 11 actors, so it’s even smaller. And I think that it makes the storytelling even more effective because the way that it works in this production, everyone except for Matt, who plays Mr. Rochester, and me, who plays Jane, everyone else is playing multiple roles. And so everybody has a lot to do. Everybody is an integral part of the company, and it’s really fun for audiences to watch. Oh, that person was Mrs. Reid and now she’s Mrs. Fairfax and, oh, that person was, you know, Grace Poole, but now she, you know, and so it’s really fun to watch because actors are capable of so much. So it’s really fun to watch the same person play really different kinds of characters.

And I think shows like this, where you have a small number of people playing a lot of roles, it celebrates theatricality, it celebrates imagination. And what I personally just love about theater, personally, like my favorite kind of show is to go to a tiny little house, whether it’s in a regional theater or off Broadway somewhere where there’s 100 seats and you feel in it with the actors, you feel like you are breathing the same air and it’s immersive and it’s happening around you.

That’s my favorite. And in this production, there’s not a lot of costume changes. It’s like you have a shawl and you’re someone else. And to me, that’s my favorite kind of thing. The sort of lower production value that actually makes theater the most fun because it allows the imagination to take over.  It makes it different than watching television or film. You know, for naturalism, you can’t beat watching tv and you know, and watching movies because it’s, it’s, it’s the way it is. But there’s less imagination involved in that because it’s just the person looks exactly the way, you know, and they’re wearing exactly the thing and they sound exactly. Whereas when you go to theater and it’s this other kind of theater that feels more bootstrap, like bootstrappy. It’s more playful. It’s the kind of theater that’s been, I think, made for thousands of years. And I think it’s the kind of theater that, like, people just love to watch because it feels magical because it’s just being made by the people with them. And that’s how you tell the story.

To me, it’s more magical than going to see a big Broadway show with a huge set and a huge, I mean, sometimes that’s great. You know, sometimes that’s great. There’s a place and a time for that and I love that in its way. But that’s generally not actually the thing that makes me really excited. The spectacle is not the thing I go for. I go for the heart and the storytelling and the imagination. And so this is like my favorite kind of thing to do. And it feels, it just feels like, I mean, I just love being in a small space with an audience where you really can feel everyone and you feel like you’re inviting them into your world.

You know, it’s different in a big house. You know, Broadway houses are, they can be big, but, you know, the touring houses are huge. And, I mean, I would go on these when I was in Les Mis and stuff on the road. Like, we would play like, these 4000 seat houses and you can’t hear anything. You can’t feel the audience.

It’s not actually as fun as when you are in a small space sharing a story with people that you can really feel.

StageNotes: Jane Eyre originally published in 1847. So what makes her and the story so relevant for today’s audiences? I mean, I feel like we’re still obsessed with this.

Julie Benko: Yeah. And it’s funny because I’ve been watching, like, all the versions, you know. Actually, last night I watched the Zeffirelli version from ’96 and. But I’ve been, you know, it’s timeless. There were, you know, and there was a version from, with Mia Wasikowska. But there was one a few years ago. They’re always remaking Jane Eyre, and I think there’s something about the romance of it. But it’s not just that it’s a romance. It’s that it’s a real.

Like, real people.

Rochester.

Rochester is tremendously flawed. It’s really about.

It’s really about forgiveness. Learning how to forgive yourself and learning how to forgive others for mistakes that you have made yourself or others have made in the past and accepting someone else with their flaws and loving them because of their flaws and, you know, and despite their flaws and learning to love and accept yourself. I think Jane comes from a background where she’s totally unloved and, you know, she’s an orphan. She’s treated very poorly, you know, by her aunt and sent to this abusive school. And she manages, despite all odds, to make a life for herself that is.

That is one that is pure and good and full of love. And she does it without compromising her morals in a time when it would be very easy to do because she doesn’t have a lot of options. She’s also a character who comes, she doesn’t have money, but she has education, and she has.

She gets to where she gets because of her intelligence, not because of her beauty. Everyone called her plain Jane, but it’s because she is a hard worker who is intelligent. She applies herself, and she just tries to live in a way that feels right to her. And I think that that speaks to a lot of people, because the rich society people in the story, you know, the Ingrams and stuff, they despise Jane because she works for a living, and, you know, how low, how base to work. You know, she’s a teacher, she’s a governess, but she takes advantage of, you know, despite all her difficulties, she takes advantage of every opportunity she’s given, and she rises to the top of her class, and she becomes bilingual, and she, you know, so she. And she’s beautiful artists. She sketches like. She takes advantage, and she develops all of these skills to express her mind and express her heart. I just think that there’s something really valuable in her as a character for all women, because if she could do it then, we can do it now.

StageNotes: If you could go back and give 20-year-old Julie Benko piece of advice, knowing what you know now, especially after these few years, what would it be?

Julie Benko: Well, the advice I always give young people coming up is probably what I would tell myself, which is to start writing now. Start writing sooner than you think you’re ready, whatever that is, writing plays, writing movies, writing music, choreographing. I mean, I was never going to be a choreographer, but, you know, for whatever it is that you do create. And I was very nervous to put pen to paper ever, because I just felt like I didn’t have anything to say or anything that hadn’t been said before. It all felt, you know, trite. It all felt like somebody had said it better.

So what was the point? I think I also felt like if you didn’t just sit down and come out with it all at once, then.

But I’ve learned over time.

Christine Toy Johnson, who’s a wonderful actress and writer and a good friend of mine, she played my mother in a production of Our Town, and she gave me this advice because she, you know, to get going on writing. And she was like, just ten minutes a day. Just ten minutes. So I started following her advice to just do ten minutes a day. And that really opened it all up, because sometimes things don’t come, and that’s okay. But if you just put in ten minutes and, you know, you’re going to do ten more tomorrow, ten minutes turns to 20 or 30 or 100 minutes a lot of the time. But if it doesn’t, that’s okay. It’s just more about the practice of showing up. And I think that being a creator is, like, the most important thing that any young actor can do. Now everybody does everything. You know, used to be you have actors, you have producers. Now everybody does everything. Actors produce, and they write and they direct and, you know, and Megan is an actor who’s directing. You know what I mean? 

There are no rules anymore in terms of that. And working on one thing makes you better at the other thing, becoming a writer. And I wish that I had started sooner.

It made me a better actor because it awakened my imagination and got me thinking like a creator, looking at things from a different angle in a way that I just didn’t.

I didn’t feel, I didn’t have that confidence because I just wasn’t working that creative muscle all the time. And I just doubted myself and thought someone else would have a better idea. And I think.

So I just. I just tell people to, you know, just create something every day, and it doesn’t matter what it is, but take ten minutes to develop that muscle, because you’ll be surprised where that leads you and the doors it opens and the ways it makes you better, even if it’s not about being published, you know, or whatever, that’s not really what it’s about. It just makes you a fuller, better artist and opens doors you just would not have imagined.