BWW JR: Broadway Moms Part III - PRISCILLA QUEEN OF THE DESERT's Jessica Phillips

"Having it All....Just Not All at the Same Time" featuring Jessica Phillips

Recently I got some solid "Broadway Mom" advice from Super Moms and Broadway veterans Marissa Jaret Winokur and Kerry Butler. This month I got to continue my quest to find the secret to having it all when I spoke to Jessica Phillips, a mother of two who is currently playing Marion in Broadway's "Priscilla Queen of the Desert".

I was in the audience of the fourth preview of "Priscilla", and by the end I was exhausted from laughing and applauding. Which of course led me to wonder how on earth Jessica, after singing and dancing her butt off for two hours, was going to get up early tomorrow morning to take her two boys, ages seven and ten, to school.

"I've just adapted to getting less sleep than I would like to get" Jessica told me, "It's just a part of my busy lifestyle now that I have a lot to juggle....If I get home at eleven then I go right to bed until Nicholas [Jessica's husband] has to leave for work. I wake up, pack the lunches and take the boys to school. It's not completely unmanageable".

But it wasn't always so simple.

"The thing I want to really stress is that one of the things that makes my life manageable is that my children are school age. There is nothing easy about anything I'm doing or have done."

Jessica was referring to her early years as a mom, when she decided to leave the business and dedicate herself entirely to motherhood.

"I made the choice to focus on my family first so when Nicholas decided to change careers and become a lawyer, we took that opportunity to leave New York. I took two years where I didn't perform, didn't work in the business and I focused on being a mom completely. Then I started to get the bug. We were in Georgia, it was my third year out, and I got a call from a mentor who said ‘I'm putting this tour together and I think you need to play this part' and I said ‘I can't go now, I've got these things attached to my breasts. I can't even THINK about putting on a wig.' He said to give it some thought. So you know, I thought about it...and I wondered if it was something I should consider....a European tour....so my mom said ‘Hey I'd love to see Europe‘ and she came with me to Europe for six months to help with the kids. Nicholas stayed in Georgia and finished his first year of law school."

The show was "Tommy" and Jessica was playing Mrs. Walker. The mere thought of traipsing around Europe doing a high-energy show while breastfeeding and infant and chasing a toddler overwhelms me, and I wondered how Jessica managed it, even with Grandma to help.

"It was rough. I got so thin I was actually malnourished. I was working full time and traveling full time and up at 5:30 or 6:00 am with an infant after not going to bed until 1:00 AM. I wasn't sleeping. I was exhausted. I was really stressed out. In retrospect I don't think I would have done that again knowing how much it burned me out. It was too much. I couldn't fulfill both responsibilities well enough. The good news was that the tour had an end point. And then we were living in suburbia so I could live off our salary and focus on being a mom again. Coming home was very healing. Being back home with my kids helped me recover."

But despite it all, the performer in Jessica been awakened and ready to be back in the spotlight.

"I was still very much in the mind set that being a mom was my job now. But in there somewhere there was something that became reawakened for me. That something had very much to do with the fact that now that I'd had these children and had this incredible life of experience of removing myself from New York and the business and starting a family. I found my performance had these layers on it that I hadn't anticipated. I had deepened my life experience such that it was reflected in my work and it caught me by surprise."

It's a similar theme for many performing parents....when a person builds a full life outside of the world of show business, they become a fuller and more interesting person on stage. And if Jessica's thrilling performances in "next to normal" and "Priscilla" are any indication, her life choices have certainly helped her become a more solid performer.

"I thought ‘Oh god I'm not done. I have something new to bring to my work.' So I started to audition for small projects from Georgia. Short, regional things that were either commutable or close enough for me to just go and bring the kids for a couple of weeks. It was an interesting and bumpy process figuring out how to do both. How to bring my new role as mom into my work and also how to come home from the show and take that actress hat off and dive back into my life at home These are still tricky things for me."

So the family moved back up to New York. Nicholas started working as an attorney, the boys started school, and Jessica was ready to dive back in. It was during this time that Jessica stood by for Alice Ripley in "next to normal". The part is certainly one of the most demanding roles musical theater has seen in years, but as a standby, Jessica had ample opportunity to conserve energy where she needed it. And luckily, her boys were old enough to understand.

"I have, over the years, become more adept at understanding what my own needs are going to be. I can look ahead and say, ‘I'm not going to have a lot of extra energy to be a mom during these particular weeks. I'll have to focus my energy on mounting show, learning music, whatever it is'. I can give myself room for that and I can also articulate it to the kids and they can understand it. They know what it is when I say ‘I'm in ten out of twelve's' or ‘I'm really super tired right now' and they know that's just a temporary period of time and that in a few weeks my schedule will change and I"ll get time and energy back. They understand this about my job. They're old enough now. It wouldn't have been the same if I had an infant or a toddler. A kid that age can't adapt to a parent's schedule change".

It was good training for what was to come: Creating the role of Marion in the North American, Broadway-bound cast of "Priscilla".

"I was really excited to build a character that belonged to me and to do that over the course of a whole year. That was the great part about it. The crappy part was that like all original pieces do, it had to play out of town. That was the compromise for being part of a new piece I was excited about. I had to leave town for three months."

So how did her husband and sons deal with this prospect?

"We sat down as a family to talk about what that would mean and to work it out logistically. There were lots of other people involved. Babysitters and grandmas and of course it was a big burden on my husband. I think that ultimately all those people believed in the piece as much as I did and that helped."

So Jessica and her family began to travel back and forth....she'd return to New York on her day off and her family would visit her during school vacation. Thanks to an über-supportive work environment, Jessica was able to take her kids to the theatre when she needed, and they ended up finding the time away to be very rewarding.

"The amazing thing about being out of town with kids is that it's this incredible opportunity to spend great, concentrated time together. You're not distracted by any other life responsibilities. You're living in a hotel so someone else handles food, housekeeping, all that stuff. There's a pool to play in....all I had to do is go to work and be with kids. So we could get up and just enjoy each other. We did a lot of traveling, went to museums, read books, saw movies. Not typical life stuff when you are home and have so much to accomplish in your day....I'd forgotten how nice it is when you're not in your own home and your only responsibility is your job."

So then how does she handle the juggle back here at home? Could it be possible that this Broadway Mom has achieved balance in her life?

"The truth is that I essentially accept that my life never feels quite caught up. I sort of always have a list of things to do and I never get everything done that I set out to do in the morning. I just run out of time. I choose when I'm with my family to just be with my family. I have to be disciplined in that and structure my day such that I'm dropping kids off and going RIGHT to the grocery store and structure in a tight schedule so when I pick them up in the afternoon I'm really with them doing homework or playing or going to the park or going to an activity. I have to be deliberate about making time. I don't go back to sleep after I drop them off in the morning."

It still sounded exhausting to me. And since I'd already seen first-hand what kind of stellar performances Jessica has been turning out, I wondered if she finds it possible to be the kind of mom she really wants to be.

"My parenting philosophy since coming to work in New York has been this: That I want to try to adapt my family to my work and I want to try to adapt my work to my family. My goal, and I don't always achieve it, is to have those two parts of my life coexist in a sort of fluid dance. So that sometimes I'm going to have extra energy to give to my kids because I don't have a hugely demanding responsibility to the show but there will be times where i have less energy at home. But the way I deal is to be up front with the kids that this is my job, this is my work. It's important for me and supports us and it's an important lesson for my children I believe."

It seems to be working out pretty well for Jessica and for her family.

"It's not a perfect system and I still don't do it very well all the time. I struggle with guilt and feeling resentful....being a parent is inherently about giving away your time and energy. That has to just be folded in. But as they get older I enjoy them more and more and I learn better how to try to achieve balance between the two areas of my life".

Jessica might be very close to actually having it all.

"I feel like I have it all I just don't necessarily have all of everything at the same time. And the cost is that I never quite feel like I've completed everything. I never quite feel like I've gotten everything done. And the older I get the more I accept that this is what life with kids is."

The bottom line seems to be that this Broadway Mom is happy to be doing it all and maybe that's what "having it all" really is.

"Ultimately, I'm in love with the fact that I'm living every moment of my life." Jessica says. "Even with incomplete lists, it really is bountiful. I'm fortunate to have these rich relationships with my children, with my husband, with my community and I have a rich relationship with my work. That's my version of success."