The Star
Ali Ewoldt on diversity in musical theater, her experiences as the first Asian American Christine in Phantom of the Opera, and her hope for the future of Broadway
Ali Ewoldt made headlines as the first Asian American to play the iconic Christine Daae in the Phantom of the Opera in New York’s Broadway. She has performed on national and international tours and in the U.S. regional theater. She has also starred in award winning productions Les Miserables, West Side Story, and The King and I.
We were thrilled to speak with Ali about her cultural heritage and her experiences.
How did you know you wanted to pursue the arts?
I grew up about 45 minutes north of New York City. And there were a lot of great assets to that, one of which was being close to Broadway. My mom grew up in the Philippines and immigrated here when she was about 19 years old and she lived with her elder sisters who were living in Queens. So we were very close with them and the eldest of the sisters, my tia. She always loved music and music was such a big part of Filipino culture in general. But Broadway musicals as well. She had all of the VHS tapes of every movie musical ever made. And she would take us to see Broadway shows, so she took me to see my first Broadway show when I was eight.
From then on, I got to see a lot of different shows. I saw Les Miserables which was probably the first show that I had memorized from beginning to end. Miss Saigon was a huge deal in my family and Filipinos, and I remember watching the making of Miss Saigon. I got to see a Filipino woman starring on Broadway in both Le Mis and Miss Saigon. So that definitely planted the seeds that this might be something that I could possibly do. I got to see Phantom of the Opera when I was about 10 years old.
Apparently I had been dancing around the house when I was young, so my mom put me in dance class. Then I started taking voice lessons. And the other great thing in the tiny town that I grew up in was that we had an amazing public high school musical theatre program. I had an incredible teacher who was a mentor to me. He really instilled in all of us this love and respect for the art form of musical theater and really brought the entire community together.
I was fortunate that musical theater was very valued in our community and and to have such a great education that way. However, I knew that academics was important. My parents would take me to all of my dance classes and voice lessons, but I was also expected to concentrate on academics so I was valedictorian — because you know, overachiever — but I somehow knew I wanted to be able to continue to perform and explore theater.
I ended up going to Yale University where I was studying Liberal Arts. I ended up being a psychology major because that was the thing that interested me the most, and it was the easiest to fulfill all of the the courses for the major so that I could still perform all the time. I was often doing multiple shows at once. Over the summers, I would take voice lessons through the graduate program and continue to perform through that. And then right before I graduated, I happened to be doing an opera with the graduate program with Yale opera. They needed an extra soprano to sing a tiny little song in the Marriage of Figaro, so I auditioned for that and was cast in it. When I was performing, there was somebody in the audience who happened to be friends with a cast member who was a New York agent, and she approached him afterwards. They set up a meeting with me and I got to audition for the agency. So a lot of it was being in the right place while coupled with years of study and training and respect for the art form.
My family has been so supportive throughout this entire process. I think in some ways that’s an asset of being Filipino because Filipinos just love Broadway shows, love supporting each other, and succeeding in Broadway shows. It was lucky that I had a lot of people in my family that continue to come to every show that I do. I’ve traveled the world, they’ve come to see me perform in Japan and Spain and France. And pretty much anywhere they can go, they’ve been, which is really amazing.
You made your Broadway debut as Cosette in Les Miserables. What was your first experience on Broadway like? Was that what you expected?
It was surreal. I was first in the national tour. That was my first big equity job and I was on the national tour for about 10 months. And there I understudied because I was in the ensemble and had an amazing cast. I had so much fun being in that show. I got to play a boy on the barricade and I was handing out bullets. Because I had this foundation with the show, I also got to work with Adam Jacobs, who is also half Filipino and who was my Marius on tour and ended up being my Marius on Broadway. And so, because I had such a great knowledge of the show, by the end of the tour I had taken over the role after I booked on Broadway.
It was definitely tough going into a room with people that you’ve admired for years you’ve looked up to and to envision that I am worthy to be in a room with all of these people. I was very lucky that nobody made me feel that way. I was totally intimidated, except that I had this great knowledge of the show with me. That helped me feel much more confident in the room and we had a great playful atmosphere.
And it was really interesting going from being on tour to doing a show on Broadway. There’s a great camaraderie that happens on the road. It’s a little different when you’re doing a show in New York, you do your job there. Then you can hang out with some people afterwards. But everybody kind of goes away to their lives. It definitely didn’t have the same sort of atmosphere of cast togetherness, however, I got to be part of my normal life.
To perform on Broadway, which had been a dream of mine, since I was a little kid was amazing. Particularly when Lea Salonga ultimately joined the cast and was playing my mother. And so to have this full circle moment of the woman that inspired me to think that I could be in this show in the first place to working with her as a colleague was totally mind blowing. It was a really great experience. It doesn’t make everything magical and it doesn’t fix all the problems that you may have in your life or the challenges that you have personally. At the end of the day, it is a job. But if you love it and you care for it and you care for yourself outside of the job, it’s incredibly fulfilling.
What’s one of the biggest challenges you faced and how do you overcome it?
The biggest challenge is the uncertainty of this business and the rejection that comes constantly and the thing that I have to work on all the time is maintaining my confidence, maintaining my commitment to doing the work that I can do and then letting go of the end result, knowing that I can only control what I can control. It’s very, it’s very hard. I think it’s a challenge as a human being to know that we can work on ourselves.
I auditioned for Phantom of the Opera for about 10 years before I actually booked the job. It wasn’t constant. Sometimes it would be a lot of adjusting the one and then nothing for a couple of years. Sometimes they were for different productions the Vegas production. And by the time they called me in the last time, I talked to my agents and said, Are you sure this is worth everybody’s time because I have auditioned quite a bit and they haven’t chosen me for this role? My agent thankfully said, Just give it a shot. You don’t have anything to lose. And I think in a lot of ways, the journey that I had been on through auditioning for that show really prepared me for the job because by the time I got there I was grateful to be in the room with the creative team. I was grateful to be working on the material and I had already let go.
We can make ourselves the best version that we can be, but at the end of the day, we can’t hire ourselves. I have to show up and give my best version of the material and hope that the people on the other side of the table will agree and want to see more of my work and continue to work with me. But also accept that more often than not, that’s not going to be the case, regardless of what I’ve accomplished beforehand.
You starred as the first Asian American Christine in the Phantom of the Opera. According to a study by the Asian American Performers Action Coalition, in 2016-2017, Asian Americans only made up 3% of all roles on Broadway. How has representation in the industry changed and what can be done?
I think that APAC has done an amazing job of really bringing to the world’s attention how underrepresented Asian American artists are on Broadway. If I hadn’t seen people that looked like me on stage, I would not be here today. I think it’s so important to see ourselves represented in all arenas to inspire us to believe that we can be there. And that was one of the most gratifying things about getting to play Christine. I happened to play Christine at a time when people were willing to talk about representation. I got a lot of incredible feedback, both at the stage door to online. People of all ethnicities, saying, I never thought this was possible. But now that you’ve done it. That’s incredibly rewarding, especially considering that I know personally what that journey is like. It’s amazing that the consequence of that has been making change for other people and keeping this conversation going.
It’s a constant struggle to get representation in the industry right now. What I think is very special about the time that we’re in. When we’re talking about the Black Lives Matter movement on my end of industry people who are now talking about the racism and inherent bias and prejudices that do exist within the theater community. It’s easy to assume that because we’re all very liberal and we are a diverse group of people that we are somehow immune to the systemic racism that exists in this country and we’re not. We’re not at all.
It’s great that people have been bold enough and brave enough to step up and say these are things that have happened to me while I was working on my Broadway show. These are things that are challenges that I’ve encountered In this industry. I think it’s wonderful that people are bringing those challenges to light. And now that you know we as performers can’t work right now part of the challenge of the coronavirus is that theater exists in a space with a lot of people shoved together and singing in each other’s faces and this is not the time to be able to do that safely. So while we’re waiting for our jobs to come back, we can really have discussions about how to better our business, how to better our relationships, how to listen more and how to make sure that all voices are being heard.
How has community shaped you into the person who you are today?
The community that I grew up in is literally called Pleasantville, New York. I think we’re about 5000 people. It’s super tiny. And because of that, you get to know your classmates very well. I don’t know the exact percentages, but I can tell you that in my graduating class of high school, there were four Asians: another Filipino, me and then two other Asian students. That was most of our diversity. I don’t know if it’s because we grew up close to New York City. In some ways, because I’m mixed, I wasn’t exposed to as much overt racism. I did feel very safe growing up safe, both from physical harm and to be myself.
I was fortunate to grow up spending most of our holidays with the Filipino side of the family. They were very close by in New Hampshire and Connecticut and Queens, New York, and we would also have big family reunions. I felt that I really embraced that side of the family of being Filipino, while I felt my white side fit in quite well in the in the tiny town that I grew up in. So I think I’ve been very fortunate to have forged a pretty healthy racial identity because everybody or surrounding me was supportive in that way.
I do think that I am relating to being an Asian American more when I joined the performing arts business when I started auditioning for shows. I realized that we were categorized and that’s when the categories came into play. My first big job was doing Aladdin out in California and it was at the theme park. I happened to meet a bunch of really incredible Filipinos there. And finally, I was sort of drawn to people outside of my family and within that culture and really started to relate to them. As a product of all of the shows that I’ve done, and the friends that I’ve made, and my experiences, I have an amazing community.
I belong to a mixed racial community, but also a very, very strong Filipino one. I belong to an amazing organization called Broadway Barkada that is all about supporting Filipino artists in the musical theatre business and uplifting us by celebrating our accomplishments and creating great workspaces. I worked a lot with the amazing Eric Lee, who has gone on to be this incredible light in the Asian American community and will do these great performances of classic musicals cast with an all Asian American cast. I recently got to play Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Cinderella, and I played opposite a great friend of mine, Josh Dela Cruz, who is now starring on Blue’s Clues.
And I’m so proud of his accomplishments. So I think that I’m really grateful to have found such an amazing Asian American community. In New York, as well as in theater. So we’re just so supportive of each other when I when I booked the job at Phantom. You know, I was really really grateful to all the people who came out to support and to everybody who acknowledged what progress that is and I think it’s really special.
To all the young Asian or Asian Americans still trying to find their path in the world, especially those who are interested in the arts, what is your advice to them?
Continue to be the best version of yourself. I think it is very easy for all of us to do what they call a compare and despair. To look at other people and say, oh, they’re achieving so much, why can’t I do that or I’ll never sound like that, or I’ll never look like this. I fall into that trap all the time, but it’s just not productive. I think the best things that we can do for ourselves, is to continue to get to know ourselves, find out what makes us special and unique and then cultivate your strengths — vocally, dance wise, or artistically. Give your loving care to those things so that when opportunities present themselves, you are ready.
I think that it’s really important for us to celebrate ourselves, to celebrate our small accomplishments. We don’t only have to celebrate a Broadway show or being the first at something: we can celebrate getting into a room with people that we respect and love performing with.
I think that it’s important to be kind to ourselves in that way by celebrating all of these small accomplishments and not just focusing on one big thing at the end, but instead of continuing to to really focus on the joy of the journey.
