Life is rosy for this “pink lady.” Like many little girls, Bridie Carroll played dress up when she was a mere toddler dreaming of a future on the stage. But this little girl has grown up to find herself clad in a $6,000 costume and starring with American Idol winner Taylor Hicks in the national tour of Grease.
Carroll, who plays Jan, is high as a kite, but there are overtones of reality in her voice: “It’s still really exciting, and it’s a blast to do this every night, and it’s so great to be with the people I’m with. But it’s officially my job and it finally feels like, OK, this is now my career. You know, this is what I do.”
Life on the Road
What she does is perform with 25 others eight times a week, usually in a different city each week. The only day off, Monday, is reserved for travel, which can sometimes turn out to be a 12-hour day as cast and crew get to their next venue. The rest of the week doesn’t leave much downtime either. “Our prime hours are 8-11 p.m. for show time. Eating before the show can make you really sick because of the heavy amount of jumping and bouncing around that we do, so we normally eat after the show and don’t get to bed until about 1-3 a.m.—and then wake up around 11 or so the next day and start all over again.”
Staying healthy is essential for life on the road, but it isn’t always easy or convenient. “We don’t always have a gym at the hotel. You don’t have the ability to have a refrigerator in every hotel [room], so you don’t have cereal and milk. It’s so second nature each morning to say, ‘Where’s Starbucks?’”
But maintaining vocal health is something that is essential, says Carroll. “There’s not a day that goes by that I don’t warm up for the show. I have a 25-minute warm-up that I do, and I recently started to warm down, which I’ve never done before. This show takes a lot out of you. I might only have two solos in the show, but I sing in just about every other number. It takes a toll on your voice. So, you have to be very respectful of that instrument and that muscle, and make sure you’re sleeping enough and you’re hydrating yourself, and that your vocal warm-up is a strong one.”
Carroll was classically trained at the Boston Conservatory and says her vocal training there gave her the foundation for performing in musical theatre. In Grease, her role demands everything from belting a high E-flat to singing “legit.”
“What I’ve learned most is to have a nasal placement where the head and chest resonance come together, to get as much ‘ping’ in the sound and to get it as forward as possible. And that’s been the safest way I’ve found to keep my voice healthy and strong.”
The Audition Process
A strong voice is just one ingredient in a long and sometimes arduous audition process. This journey to landing the role in Grease took months to complete. After the initial audition, Carroll says she didn’t have a good feeling. “I went in and I sang ‘One Fine Day,’ and I think I had two or three of the Jan sides (parts of the script) with me. I read two of them, and the casting director gave me some direction and said, ‘OK, you’re a little too this and you’re a little not that’—and I went through them again and I actually thought, at that point, it wasn’t a good audition.”
But then her agent called and said she had a callback. This time it would be with Kathleen Marshall, the director/choreographer of the 2007 Broadway revival. That callback was much like the first audition—a little “One Fine Day” and some reading. The final callback came weeks later. This time the only face Carroll recognized was that of the casting director. Everyone else behind the audition table had changed.
“I went in expecting to sing my comfortable ‘One Fine Day’ again, and the new director said we want to hear ‘It’s Raining on Prom Night.’ I had it with me. I had it prepared every time, but no one had asked me to sing this yet. I sang that and did all three of my sides and had to learn part of a dance routine for ‘Born to Hand Jive.’ I found out the next day that I got the part.”
Carroll believes talent is essential to landing any role but, as she discovered, it doesn’t hurt to have a little help from your friends. “A dear friend of mine who is actually subletting my apartment in New York was a casting director at the time, and she threw my head shot out to the casting director of Grease and said, ‘This is your Jan.’ She told me the story months after I got the part, and I burst into tears because I didn’t know. So she submitted my headshot and résumé, that was the first step.”
Carroll maintains that while contacts may get you in the door, preparation is the key to getting called back. “You don’t want to be caught off guard at an audition, because they can present you with little twists and turns that you weren’t prepared for. Being as prepared as possible makes that so much easier. In a callback for Xanadu, I remember having to say some of the lines from the Muses and I hadn’t been up for those roles. They suddenly threw the script at me and wanted me to learn the Muses and be doing an interpretive ballet and hip hop dance at the same time, and that stuff happens all the time. How do you prepare for that? You can’t. The best thing to do is to feel as grounded as possible going in.”
Carroll claims one of her best auditions happened when she was forced to think beyond herself. “I was in final callbacks for Avenue Q. I had to do four puppets, two different songs, and four different sides. When you have a puppet in your hand, you can’t have a script in front of you, and you have to talk like the puppet does and have motions and head movements all like the puppet does. How can you prepare for something like that? You mentally had to care more about the puppet than you did about yourself. It was so much less about being inside your head as it was being more in the puppet’s head. As a result, it was one of the best auditions I ever had.”
The audition process is never easy, but it’s an essential part of being a working actress. “It’s a hard thing when you’re standing in line with 500 other people of the day to go in and sing for 16 bars or 32 bars. You know, you sign up at 5:00 in the morning and you wait your turn.”
Living in Manhattan
After touring in hundreds of towns around the United States and Canada, Carroll is looking forward to coming home to New York. “After being in all of these different cities, it makes you appreciate New York so much—things staying open late, the ability to have literally everything at your fingertips [and] a subway ride away.” Carroll shares a tiny two-bedroom apartment with rent that is higher than her parents’ mortgage for a two-story, four-bedroom house in Ohio.
“The first time that thousand dollars is taken out of your bank account for just your half of the rent, it’s like, ‘What? I just worked so hard for that money and it’s gone.’” Still, she wouldn’t trade it for anything. “I think when you decide this is what you’re going to do, it’s not even an option of thinking of living anywhere else. This is it. And waiting tables is what you do when you’re not working and you are auditioning. It’s that kind of life.”
Family and Faith
It’s the kind of life, Carroll affirms, that is maintained by a strong relationship with her parents and her faith. “My parents have been my foundation. They’ve never said no to me doing this. They’ve always encouraged me, told me I can do this. They’ve been there supporting me.” Indeed, Carroll’s parents have seen Grease dozens of times. “Mom’s always been the exact opposite of stage moms. She’s not one after a show to say, ‘You were fantastic!’ or ‘Amazing!’ She’ll say, ‘You know, you did a good job.’ She wants to keep me mentally where you should be. Dad, on the other hand, is a proud papa and it’s fun to have that too, to have both worlds.”
Carroll got her singing start as a member of the children’s choir at St. Thomas Aquinas Catholic Church in Alpharetta, Georgia. Even today, her faith plays an important role in her work. “On a really bad day, grabbing a prayer before the show is sometimes the best thing in the world. My dad always blesses my vocal chords, so Allie (Rizzo) and I started doing that right before we pop out of the doors.”
Advice for Crossing Over
When asked what advice she would offer other classically trained singers wanting to break into musical theatre, she doesn’t hesitate to exclaim, “Training!” In addition, Carroll says studying the repertoire, both old and new, is essential. “Involve yourself in whatever you can and begin to immerse yourself in learning shows from the current Broadway season to classic Rodgers and Hammerstein and Sondheim. Having knowledge and training gives you a great foundation when you enter the world of auditioning.”
Reflecting on her own training at the Boston Conservatory, she is quick to acknowledge its role in preparing her for where she is today. “I have been singing since I was a little girl, but never received legit voice and dance training until I was in college. I . . . had a fantastic faculty that provided all of the students with more than the essentials of voice, dancing, and acting. It’s an incredible environment filled with incredible talent that makes you work hard and constantly feel inspired.”
Now, with the national tour of Grease closing this month in Cleveland, Carroll feels excited about the possibilities in her future. Even as she looks forward, she is quick to recognize the importance of the past. “I wouldn’t be where I am today,” she says, “if I hadn’t had the opportunity to begin focusing on my passion and craft so intensely.”
For more on Bridie Carroll, visit her website at www.bridiecarroll.com.
