Hello Beautiful People,
Truthfully, Happy McPartlin is like the essence of happiness, so her name is quite fitting. She is an actress, a singer, and absolutely fascinating person. I was so grateful that she took the time out of her busy rehearsal schedule to chat with me about theater, life, New York, education…and well, you name it! Tonight, Mother, Wife, and the Complicated Life opens as part of the New York Musical Theatre Festival – and it’s a show that is not to be missed! Get your tickets here, and in the meantime, get to know the one and only, Happy McPartlin…
TWT: Did you always want to work in theater, especially musical theater?
HP: When I was four, someone bought me the Annie album. This was when Annie was on Broadway for the first time, and I became obsessed with singing Annie, putting on Annie in my living room, making all of my friends do it with me. Then my mom took me to see the show when I was five, (we lived in Connecticut, about three hours from the city) and my mom said that she was afraid that I was going to jump onto the stage. Since then, I’ve always wanted this, the concept of Broadway and performing stayed with me. I started doing Community Theater, I did a production of Annie when I was nine, and then I continued into my high school years. I wasn’t sure if I was any good, but at about 16 years old, I actually started to get lead roles. I always wanted to do this, but then there was the very practical side to me as well. My parents are very educated, smart people, and I didn’t want to just be an actor without some sort of education. Another fear of mine was going to school to be an actor, only to feel like I wasn’t good enough or that I didn’t like it enough. So, to get the ball rolling, I graduated high school early. I auditioned for six months before I went to college. I was seventeen. I was auditioning I was eating chicken soup and dry bagels because that’s all I could afford. It was rough, but I loved it. I ended up going to NYU, and it was a very good program; but being a large school and being located in New York City, people sometimes equate not knowing the students to a lack of talent, which is not the case. It’s a different atmosphere – I didn’t end up with an agent right of school, I had to bite and claw my way through auditions, and into the business. I joke, but I started rehearsals for HANDS ON A HARDBODY almost twenty years to the day when I first came to New York. One day I’ll write a book, Twenty Years to Broadway.
TWT: When you look at your career thus far, what roles are most memorable for you?
HP: I’ve always said that I’ve been forty since I’m 12, always been wise beyond my years. It’s never bothered me, but the only problem is that when you are twenty-three with no credits, and people still think you’re forty; it makes it harder to get jobs. I’ve been biding my time and waiting for the right point in my career when I was right for roles and finally age appropriate for the roles that everyone thought I was. Being in the production of Curtains at the Papermill Playhouse as an understudy started an amazing roll for me doing work that I really loved doing – after Curtains was The Drowsy Chaperone, the Memphis tour, Next to Normal, and now HANDS ON A HARDBODY. By far, playing Diana in Next To Normal has had the greatest impact on my work as an actor so far. When you take on a role that challenging, it makes you look at every other future role completely differently. There’s a depth to the work I was able to do in that piece that I want to apply to any of my future work. I also think I learned how to be fearless playing that role. I believe that is what helped me finally break in to the Broadway ranks with Hands On A Hardbody. The audition for that show – to standby for 4 such vastly different roles – would previously have scared the hell out of me. But after the experience of Next To Normal, I just threw that fear out the window and dove right in.
TWT: If you had to give a piece of advice to students in high school and college who want to have a career in theater business, what would it be?
HP: I think the best piece of advice for anything in this business is to remember that your job is to never stop learning. That is our job as actors. You never know enough to do your next job. The people I know who are really successful continue to take class. It’s how we keep ourselves fresh, it’s how we become knowledgeable about how this business changes – and it’s constantly changing. When I first started auditioning, everyone wore these little flowery sundresses. Now, people show up in jeans. Things change, and you have to keep with it. For me, if you’re done learning, you’re just done.
TWT: Can you describe your experience in working on HANDS ON A HARDBODY?
HP: Doing HANDS ON A HARDBODY as a standby has been quite the education! It’s been quite the experience in learning how I actually learn. You learn from your peers, you see techniques other people use, and you use what works for you. It’s been an amazing and wonderful experience working on this show.
TWT: Just for fun, what sound do you hate?
HP: Ambulance sirens, when I was working at Lehman Brothers I was down at the World Trade Center on September 11th. A lot of people hate that sound, but whenever I hear those sounds it brings that visceral memory back to me. This is actually a challenge, because our theater is right next to a Fire Company that lost a lot of men that day, (on 47th Street). But it’s a beautiful juxtaposition to be where I wanted to be my whole life, doing what I love doing, and realizing that there was a purpose for all of the experiences I had.
TWT: Just for fun, what sound do you love?
HP: We grew up going to Lake George in the summer, and the sound of the water lapping against our beach, and we have a stone dock and the water hitting that also makes this really calming gurgling sound.
TWT: If you were stranded on a desert island, what television series and movies would you want to have with you?
HP: Terms of Endearment. The Office.
TWT: What books are permanently on your bookshelf?
HP: The Secret Garden. I think I can still hear the sound of my mothers voice reading it to me. It’s such a magical wonderful story. It’s about what you want to make out of your life, this girl has had so many terrible things thrown at her, and goes to live in a place where things are almost worse, (at first). But then she’s forced to face the situation of living a life of desperation or making beautiful things happen. The tenacity to keep going at your dream even when people tell you know is something that resonates with me.
TWT: In todays economy, arts programs are being cut. What reasons would you give to a politician for preserving the arts?
HP: It keeps people alive in schools who don’t fit in, or who don’t thrive in other subjects. We need to communicate, and this is how we communicate. If you cut art, what do you have to look forward to? The cold numbers in your bank account and not much else, and some people wouldn’t even have that. It’s the moments of joy and the moments of sadness and the moments of release that we get that make us human beings. Theatre, films, music and opera – these disciplines create those moments for people. I don’t understand how people can even think that we don’t need art. We’re breathing, that’s why we need art. If money is the issue, and it’s always the issue, find a way of budgeting better, to just remove arts out of education is nothing but a detriment.
TWT: Who is/was your greatest teacher?
HP: My acting teacher, Louis Scheeder who was the head of Classical Studio during my time at NYU. He made me feel like I could do just about anything as an actor. I was pushed. I was challenged. He was phenomenal. In my adult life, Craig Carnelia taught me to focus on who I was on a performer, to focus on what I was bringing to the table. He reminded me that if you don’t think you’re good, if you don’t believe in yourself, then nobody else will. It was such a gift to have a teacher like that later on in my life.
Thank you, Happy!
And all you readers out there, be sure to check out Mother, Wife and the Complicated Life, as part of the New York Musical Theatre Festival, and opens TONIGHT, July 19th!
Live, Love, Learn,
Megan &