Analisa Lemming is featured on the cover of the December issue of Classical Singer magazine. Get a print subscription at our current special rate.
Analisa Leaming is a brilliant and versatile Broadway performer who has translated her success into mental, emotional, and spiritual support for other artists through her podcast and coaching. In this interview, Leaming shares her thoughts on approaching transitions, the unexpected, and disappointments that artists of all levels must face in an uplifting way.
Analisa Leaming, a fast-track star, is comfortable with both Broadway and classical music. Prior to COVID-19 closures, audiences have had the pleasure of seeing her as Principal Rosalie Mullins in Broadway’s School of Rock, Irene Molloy in the national tour of the revival of Hello, Dolly, and Anna in the Broadway revival of The King and I, among a long list of Broadway, Off-Broadway, and touring productions. A native of Tennessee, Leaming’s charm and hospitality are traits shown throughout every performance. The sparkling blue-eyed star’s voice has the power to transform the room into whatever setting her characters enter.
Some of the aforementioned shows are coveted: Leaming’s success is the kind that many could only dream of. In her case, she’s still continuing to achieve that goal. With the pandemic over the last nearly two years, many artists of all stages have had to put their dreams on hold. Whether a chorus member performing on the Metropolitan Opera stage or a Broadway singer in the limelight, the world all at once seemed to stop spinning to fight off an incredibly damaging disease.
Words like pivot and zoom auditions, and even phrases such as “make it work,” come to mind. Auditions and curtains calls looked much different than at any other time in modern history, and demo reels have become de facto for actors who strive for television and commercial work. Many performers see the energy of a live audience as a necessity for performance, and these closures have been devastating.
Yet, as I sit here virtually with Ms. Leaming, asking her about transitioning and pivoting during this time, her response is striking: “I feel like we’re always in some sort of transition,” she says in a relaxed state in her home. In addition to performing, she is also the mother of a one year old, and so she understands this all too well. There is a level of peace that surrounds her, unlike what many of us have felt in the last long months. She calmly states, “Our minds and our egos are always grasping for certainty and stability.”
She continues, “I think therein lies the problem. I think if we could have students understand a little bit more of the reality of life as an artist…it’s all fluid. We are all teachers, and writers, and performers, and social marketing managers.” She smiles, comfortable with revelations that many young artists are confounded by, pandemic aside. Acceptance of the reality of the singing industry is something that she seems to have grasped early on and held onto.
Her podcast, “A Balancing Act” speaks to the challenges young singers and actors face, focusing on “sharing conscious, uplifting, inspiring conversation around a life in the arts.” She does this by helping find a commonality by way of small snippets of her life experiences.
When speaking of an incident dealing with the cancellation of her first Broadway performance and how it has shaped her career, she recalls it with an ease of mind and a valuable lesson behind her words: “When I booked that Broadway show, it was such a point of validation. Like, OK, I am good enough…. [Then] I got a [cancellation] phone call the night before rehearsals were supposed to start. I had my cute outfit, I had a lunch box that I bought from Target.”
She continues, recalling the details that make the disappointment stand out in her memory: “Here’s what’s really interesting and what I think will be interesting for young artists: I held onto that story for three years. I even had it on my resume.”
Leaming has understood the problems of finding validation in achievement for quite a while. Many singers had dreams of performing at specific companies or in specific venues that did not pan out because of COVID-19. She had this experience and revelation much earlier on and, therefore, understands both the detriment and the lessons from the unexpected. She warns young artists, “Watch yourselves. Don’t wear this like a badge of honor,” with adamancy in her tone and sympathy that anyone with experience in this field can feel.
But why did she wear this cancelled achievement as a badge of honor? “I wonder if I’m being a little unfair to myself. It wasn’t intentional that I was wearing it as a badge of honor. I think that’s when some fear set in that I’ve never had before. I think I always trusted and believed I was going to be on Broadway. And I think that was the first time that I’ve ever experienced this level of self-doubt.”
The lesson she learned then is something she has applied since to most aspects of her artistic life. “I’m always preaching to others: ‘You know, we can’t need it. We can’t need the job. We just can’t need it,’” she stresses. While some young singers reading this article may think it is easier to say this when she has already established a successful career, her answer is much simpler than we can imagine. When asked about how she learned to deal with the inevitable cancellation, or even the fight within herself of saying “no” for peace of mind, she pauses to gather herself, furthering the place of inner peace and balance being at the forefront of her decision making, and responds, “I think there’s this deep knowing that nothing external—nothing outside of me—is going to make me whole. [Nothing outside of myself] is going to truly fulfill me.”
Again, while flashing her radiant smile, she is clear in stating, “We need burning desire. That is how we evolve as a species. By having desire, and innovation, and creativity. But the minute it turns into ‘I need this,’ look at the rest of the sentence: Why do I need this? That’ll tell you all you need to know.”
She goes on to list a few reasons why we may feel like we need our work as singers, some she herself battled through and therefore has made peace with while coming into her own “a-ha” moment. “I need this to pay my bills. I need this because then it means that I didn’t go into all that debt in vain. I need this because it’ll prove to all my friends and family back home that I wasn’t stupid for going to New York City. Usually for me there’s an ego-filled answer on the other side of that question,” she admits.
She is sure to note that she once measured her success by external metrics. “I’ve done enough things—cool things—to know that the shiny penny on the other side, it does fade. And I get it. I used to have that for sure.”
Is she saying this because her passion for Broadway and the work behind the scenes has become a mundane routine? In fact, it’s quite the opposite. She says, “Sometimes I wonder if the drive that I had is why I am where I am today—but we don’t know. I think I always knew I needed to work through this though. Because at age 24, I started a group called ‘A Balancing Act.’ This was before my podcast—I started a group! And we met Sunday nights at The Stella Adler Studio—they gave us the room for free to lead this group for artists. And it was a safe space to talk about our fears and our doubts, and all of that.”
She exclaims, “I would watch my fellow actors live like this!” (She imitates a rollercoaster with her arms, a motion artists know all too well.) “They were questioning everything about themselves. Even a couple of years out of school, I just knew, ‘Oh no, this is not a sustainable way to live our lives. I can’t do this. We can’t do this!’”
Her work at the American Musical and Dramatic Academy (AMDA) as a voice professor has also given her a different prospective on the business of performing. As someone who is a graduate of The Eastman School of Music, a prestigious institution in its own right, she knows both sides of the table. “I want to go to every university and grab the students and hold all of them.” She wants to provide the comfort and grounding that these students need and may not have in their college experience.
Leaming has a special message for those students who are in the midst of toxic situations. She speaks of being 17 years old as a freshman in college, getting yelled at for forgetting to call a conductor “Maestro” when speaking to him. “In the musical theater world,” she remarks, “we place ourselves below everybody often times.” This, she says, can alter your experience at nearly every level of artistry.
There is a bright light that shows through the tunnel for Leaming. She remembers fondly an experience of being in the same audition room with some of Broadway’s top performers. “The most loving callback situation I’ve ever had was with some the highest caliber artists I’ve ever been with, in that room. We were auditioning for the revival of Carousel for the role Carrie Pipperidge. It was me, Tony award-winner Ruthie Ann Miles, Elena Shaddow, and Alli Mauzey. And we sat there, going in and out of this room, saying, ‘Oh my God, you sounded amazing!’ Just having this great conversation.” Instead of viewing each other as competition, it was a pleasant and supportive experience. She recalls the conversation: “Like, wow, we all are very different—they don’t know what they’re looking for! It doesn’t have to be the way a lot of these universities say—that’s old school.”
She goes on further to say, “This is what we need to be teaching: how to support each other. I didn’t get that. I wish my teachers would have taught me how to celebrate the success of my classmates.”
“I think I was engaged,” she said, after recalling a session with an energy healer while singing in Germany at the renowned Kurt Weill Festival. “That’s where I was in my personal life. And I said something to the healer about being a mom and having a family or being a successful artist. He said two things: ‘You are an expansive being. It can be both; it doesn’t have to be either or.’ And then he said, ‘It doesn’t matter what you do. Your gifts can and will come through you whether you are a teacher, a mother, a gardener, a singer….’ And that is when the shackles came off for me.”
When Leaming arrived at a crossroads of her singing and personal lives, she was able to address that duality fully. So many singers are unable to differentiate their artistic lives from their personal ones. In doing so, they can only find worth in one of the many multifaceted abilities they are given. Leaming’s mindset when dealing with transition has given her the vision to be both multifaceted but also kind to herself as a woman in the arts.
She passionately and vigorously proclaims, “I want to create a new paradigm. One that is not based on ‘If I get something, I took something from you’ and vice versa. Can we get out of the scarcity mindset that ‘there’s not enough’? Actors, singers, and dancers saying, ‘Oh, this is a dying art form, there’s not enough for us, I’ve got to fight tooth and nail’?”
Leaming quotes from Irving Berlin’s famous song, “There’s no people like show people,” and continues, “We have internal work to do about knowing we are good enough, knowing our worth—because then we could be of service. That’s when we could be creative. When we’re in a scarcity mindset, we can’t be creative.”
“I’ve come across artists who are generous, who are open to sharing the stage. I believe that when we are in scarcity, when we are in fear—because that’s what fear is—we go to our lizard brain. That’s our ‘flight or fight’ response. And it’s almost as if we walk around the world with our blinders on. We can become fear driven from scarcity. When we shift from a place of ‘This is my why: I’m here to work with incredible musicians, this is how I express love’… when I fall into that [fearful kind of] place, that’s when I’m like ‘Oh, wait…what about that producer in Kansas City that loved me?’ It’s a practice, you know? I have scarcity brain too. Does that make sense?”
It most certainly does.
What’s lovely about speaking with Leaming is the absolute introspection that she gives to her answers. They are not filled with lectures, nor does she strike me as someone who is speaking from a place of “Do as I say and not as I do.” She simply embraces the balance she wishes for others to find. As an experienced performer, she now looks at both sides of the coin. One of her main decision-making factors is the lifestyle that decision will create. For example: “I packed up my little Prius and my dog and my husband and traveled across the country for 18 months. It’s amazing. Unfortunately, so often you can’t interact with the audience. But I feel, right now, I want to be of service. That’s where I am in this moment in time.”
For the business side of the arts, she thinks that things are shifting, even if it’s not at the pace that she would like. But in taking advice from the elders and more experienced artists in her life, she heeds their words, remarking, “It can be very elitist, very exclusive, and I don’t like those things. All of the other generation would say to me, ‘It’ll happen, but change just doesn’t happen that fast.’ And I think that’s true.”
Hello Dolly First National Tour
“I think we can’t give up on change. We’ve got to get in on it. In these opera companies, in these theaters, and in these shows, we have to be the change that we want to see. We have to move into being empowered change makers. Artists are always trained to look to others for approval and permission. But also I think that we as human beings are taught this as well. We aren’t taught to look within for wisdom. We aren’t really taught to listen to our gut about how something feels.” Her approach to her work and life is about recognizing that inner impetus to change: “It’s been my life’s work to navigate this very different career.”
School of Rock at the Winter Garden Theatre
Leaming is someone who first loves herself and owns her destiny: a woman who acknowledges and feeds her different talents and outlets for her art. She is still much like that 24-year-old version of herself who still loves Broadway shows, the grit and hard work behind the scenes. She cherishes the family that she and others like her create while on the road and in the theater. Her bio on Instagram reads, “Bway Actor. Performance Coach. Voice Teacher. Wife. Mama. Creator of ‘A Balancing Act’ Podcast.”
She is all of those things and much, much more. Leaming takes grace, classiness, and hard work to a whole new level. And above all of those bio categories, I would respectfully add “Transitional Innovator.”
Analisa Leaming’s podcast, “A Balancing Act” can be found on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. As a Certified Paradox Process Facilitator, Analisa offers classes and one-on-one sessions as a Performance Coach. She aids artists in navigating self-esteem, self-doubt, auditions, and performance anxiety as well as collaborating with her clients to create the big, rich, beautiful life they desire! www.analisaleaming.com
