BWW Interviews: Brian Stokes Mitchell Talks Pops, 'JAM,' RAGTIME and More!

This weekend, Tony-winner Brian Stokes Mitchell will appear in three concerts with the New York Pops at Carnegie Hall (click here for the details!). We met with him in his dressing room at the Belasco Theater, where he is currently performing in Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown to talk about theater, music, and how great art can change lives.

BWW: How did you get involved in the show?

BSM: I did the gala for the Pops a while back and Steve Reineke and I talked about doing another concert because we get along very well. (I had known him through Eric Kunzel of the National Symphony Orchestra;he was working with Eric a lot.) And I said, "Okay, let's do something." And they called me and said, "You want to do a holiday concert?" And I said, "Absolutely, I would love to do that."

BWW: And why a holiday concert?

BSM: Well, there's no better time to sing and make people feel good than the holidays, and that certainly is the case in point here. And what I like about the concert at Carnegie Hall also with the Pops is that one of the things that I wanted to do is, I wanted to do a true holiday concert where we got to celebrate everybody's version of the holiday, not just a strict Christmas concert. And one of the things that I wanted to do was a Hanukkah medley. Because you never heard Hanukkah medleys, you always hear all sorts of Christmas medleys and everything, and I thought, "You know, let's do that." And I asked about it and they said, "You know, we've been thinking we'd like to do the same thing." And about two days after I'd mentioned that, he forwarded to me an email he'd received that very day and it was from one of the people that goes to the concerts, and he said "I love the concerts and everything but there's not enough Hanukkah songs. I was wondering if you could do more Hanukkah songs?" So he forwarded it to me and he said, "Well, I guess we're in line."

I got together with Judith Clurman who is the conductor of the Essential Voices, a 50-voice choir that's going to be at the concert. She is an incredible musicologist, and she got together all of this text, a lot of it original Hebrew text and folk text from different melodies. And I sat down with Larry Hockman and the three of us put our heads together and we put together this arrangement. The first day, we thought, "Okay, we'll just figure out what the songs are gonna be and then we'll have another meeting and we'll figure out how we want to put them together." But that meeting, all our heads worked so incredibly well together and Judith-the material she brought in was so well organized, very well thought out, that it became obvious and after a two-hour meeting we finished the medley. And Larry took it and orchestrated it and Judith did new translations of the Hebrew text. And then we've tweaked it a little bit here and there as we've gone along but mostly it's what it was when we created it those first two hours together. So I've been working on my Hebrew. [laughs] Which has been fun!

BWW: I notice you did a lot of other arrangements on here. How does that work? Not everyone does that.

BSM: No-it's what I've always done. I studied film scoring and orchestration and conducting and arranging in my twenties, and I scored a lot of television shows and other things. And I've played the piano since I was six--I've had a studio in my house, a recording studio, since I was very, very young. And they've gotten more and more advanced. So I've always arranged music. On my album that I did, I arranged almost everything on that and I orchestrated half of it, also. But this time, I decided to leave the orchestrating to people that do the orchestrations all the time, like Larry Hockman, Jonathan Tunick did one of the tunes, Joseph Joubert did another one--"The Little Drummer Boy." And there's a number of new tunes that I'm doing. Steve Reineke himself did one of the arrangements and the orchestrations for "I'll Be Home for Christmas." But it's really great because I love working with good orchestrators. Orchestrators are generally arrangers on their own, but I can come in with a whole different set of language skills and musical skills and it's really easy to bounce ideas off of them. Or I can come in with a sketch of something and say okay, just orchestrate that. That's what I did with Jonathan Tunick, I had an arrangement of "What Are You Doing New Year's Eve?" And I did it for a quartet. So I just gave it to Jonathan and said, "Do it for 80 pieces now." So he expanded it. That's how it works.

BWW: Four pieces, 80 pieces, what's the difference?

BSM: Yeah, right, it's all numbers. And lots of little dots. [laughs] That's the difference, the real difference. It's why I don't like orchestrating so much, actually: You have to write out every note, every articulation for every instrument. And I hear the arrangement part of it and I'm not so fast at doing that anymore because I just don't do that as much. And meanwhile you have Jonathan Tunick and all these other orchestrators who can sit down and write it all down in a day, two days, sometimes. And I'm agonizing over every thought, color and note. And so I leave that to them, that's just too many dots to do and they do it so much better than I could anyway.

BWW: You've done a whole bunch of concerts in recent years-how do you combine acting with singing and what kind of muscles do you use for each?

BSM: Well, acting and singing-for me, singing is acting, it's all the same thing, it's what I do in musical theater, when I sing a song, I'm acting the song. And it's the same thing in the concert world, I act a song, I don't just stand there and sing the notes. I can but I prefer not to do that, it's so much more interesting to-act the song, more depth you can get out of the song when you approach it that way. And also I don't get so concerned about the purity of the sound, what I'm trying to communicate is the spirit of the song, and that's done best by performing, by acting it the material and understanding what the song really is about.

BWW: And how do you do that? How do you find the hidden meaning?

BSM: You just sing it a whole bunch of times. You look at the words a whole bunch of times, you read it, you do research on it and find out why the person wrote the song. There may be other information about that. One of my favorite songs--I've never done it and we're doing it at this concert--is "The Little Drummer Boy." And I never really analyzed what I liked about the song so much because it's a very simple song, it's almost a childlike song, almost a silly song it seems like, on first listening. But really, it's a very deep song about accomplishing what you were put on the planet to do. In this case, it's the little drummer boy: He has the drum, he has the talent, and that's the gift he's going to bring. And that's what I think, ultimately, the song is about. Everybody comes to the planet with certain gifts. It may be writing, it may be acting, it may be singing, it may be being a lawyer, it may be making a beautiful cabinet, it may be being a spectacular dry cleaner. It could be anything. We all have gifts in different areas. And that's what that song is about: It's about taking whatever that gift is and using it and sharing it and making the world better for it.

BWW: That's a deeper answer than I would've thought.

BSM: [laughs] Yeah, me too! I wasn't expecting that! You start singing it and those are the kinds of things that you discover getting into songs. You know, if you just listen to songs, you don't really give them that much thought, but if you start looking at it, analyzing it, I think, "Okay, what do I want to do with the song? Why do I respond to the song? What is it that's hitting me about the song?"

The other thing I love about Christmas music in concert--and Broadway shows are the same way--I always look for a show that hits me in my heart. And holiday songs, Christmas songs, that's where they hit you. They're not usually, generally, intellectual songs that have to filter through your brain first before you get them. They're not gut songs-they hit you right in your heart and that's kind of where I live when I perform and what I respond to when I go to a performance. And that's why I think it's so much fun to be able to be a conduit for that kind of energy, along with the orchestra and the choir.

BWW: What has been your proudest or your favorite moment in a concert?

BSM: My favorite moment-wow, I've done so many concerts it's hard to say. You know what, there've been so many great moments-performing for the President for the first time in the East Room of the White House was an incredible thing. That was amazing, to feel like, okay, I guess I've kind of made it at this point, if I've been invited to sing at the White House for the President in a small room, the East Room, it's not a very big room. It's, you know, 300 of his intimate friends! Compared to my house, it's a big room! But compared to Carnegie Hall, it's a very small space. So to be there and to be sitting next to the President who's looking at you waiting to be entertained, it's quite a mind-blowing thing. The First Lady and all these politicians and people from all over the world that you've seen on the news so many times. So that's a neat thing.

For the last seven years, ever since my son was born, I wanted to take some time off from Broadway and not do eight shows a week. This has been kind of challenging actually, doing the show, because I don't see him. He goes to school in the morning and by the time he gets home in the afternoon I'm generally headed out to do something, so we don't see each other for very long, unless I get up early in the morning. And now I'm on this night-time schedule. I'm a night-time person again because normally I would go to bed at 3 in the morning. But I can't do that because I have to get up at 6:50 in the morning because that's when he gets up. So, especially if I want to spend any time with him, that's been a challenging part.

So doing concerts allows me to spend time with him. It's a much easier schedule. But I also get to sing what I want. I sometimes get to do a concert with just a piano player, and music gets cut down to its essential nature: the music and the lyrics and the accompaniment, it doesn't get any simpler than that. And sometimes I get to do a concert with an 80-piece orchestra and a 50-voice choir at Carnegie Hall, which is what this one is. And everything in between. So, really, it's great. I just love doing it all. And there's a connection you have with an audience too, because the fourth wall is broken. I can talk to them, I can sing to them, I can react to them, I can tell them stories, I can change my mind at the last minute and sing an entirely different song, or say something entirely different than what I'd planned, just because the audience is giving me that. So that's the joy of it, that's what I love about it.

BWW: As an actor, what role would you think has been your most challenging?

BSM: Oddly enough, this one. They all have challenges-Jelly's Last Jam, that was the hardest role physically that I've ever done. I was on the stage pretty much the entire show, I would leave the stage for a quick change and then have to be back. I would lose, like, five pounds every show, because it's tap-dancing, it's very hot, which is just really difficult to do. King Hedley was hard because emotionally it's demanding and it's also hard on my vocal chords--there's a lot of screaming and yelling--and I rehearsed that show in nine days, which I would never do again. Like the first run of it was three-and-a-half hours long. So that was very hard.

But this show, oddly enough, is the easiest show I've ever done. One of the reasons I wanted to take it was because I wasn't carrying the show. I knew it was an ensemble piece. It wasn't all resting on my shoulders and I could still laugh and scream and yell and make funny noises with my son and not have to worry about my show for the evening. So this show allows me to do it. But what's challenging about it is that of the characters in the show, [Ivan] takes the least journey. He's pretty much the same guy in the beginning as he is at the end. And he's also kind of an unlikeable character. So the challenge is to make him likeable. Or attractive--you don't even have to make him likeable to make him attractive to an audience, to get the audience interested in him and what he does. So that's been challenging.

BWW: How do you make him likeable or sympathetic?

BSM: Well, I think that the key to a guy like this is you have to be funny. And that is not all on me, of course; that's on the writers, the creators, it's on a whole team of people. Because he's a cad, basically, he's a womanizer and of course you're going to alienate at least half your audience when you're a character like that. But if, underneath, he's attractive and if he's funny, he's entertaining, you can get away with anything if you're entertaining, just about. And the other thing about him that I like: he totally owns who he is, he doesn't pretend to be anything other than that. So you know what you're getting, the audience knows what they're getting, the women basically know what they're getting and there's no pretension, he's not trying to pretend something that he's not. He knows he's that, he says he's that and that's what he does, you know? And there's a lot to admire about a person who does what he wants. Whether or not we admire what it is that they're doing is another issue, but when somebody is all out this is what I'm here for, this is what I'm doing, right or wrong, here's who I am, love it or not, take it or leave it in a kind of unapologetic way--there's something very freeing about someone like that.

BWW: What role has been your favorite?

It's between two roles. Ragtime was the most magical show that I've done. I had an incredible experience with that, with the show itself, with the cast, with the audience. The response to that show--my God, it really blew me away, the reactions to that show, the way it changed their lives and altered their thinking, their own self-discovery. I got a letter from a person I'll never forget. It was like a three- or four-page letter, "Hi, my name is so-and-so, I live in Someodd Missouri or somewhere like that and I'm 22 years old." And he kind of told me the story of his life a little bit in the letter. And the last paragraph of it was, "I came to see your show last week and when I left I realized I'd been a racist all my life and I didn't even know it." And that was like-oh, man! To have that kind of an effect on somebody and they've kind of rewritten the way they see themselves and will treat people differently. And I got a lot of responses like that from that show and that was really incredible. And you can feel from an audience how they are responding to a show, and that was one of those shows where every night's curtain call, the energy from the audience was overwhelming.

But the other role was Man of La Mancha, Don Quixote. I love that character and I think maybe we're most similar in a way, he and I. I just totally get him. I love what he was doing, all his craziness and his sense of fun and his sense of joy. And it's about transforming people, and I respond to that: That's what we try to do as artists. And that's what was so great about Ragtime; it had this transformative effect on people, and art, when it's done at its best, is kind of anarchic and because of that, it's also transformative. It can be anarchic and aggressive by shoving something in somebody's face and making people react to it. And sometimes they react in the opposite way and then they go home and think, "Why did I react so negatively to that?" And then they question themselves. Or it can be done in a more gentle way, or in a more introspective way or in a more subtle way. But I think great art of any kind has that effect-we aspire, I think, as artists to do that with any show we're doing. And that's what Don Quixote is: He is transforming people through trying to be, pretending to be this kind of-or not, maybe he was nuts, we don't know-this knight. He's pretending to do the right thing, and in his craziness he transformed all the people around him.

BWW: On that subject, you've played quite a few roles that were not written for African-Americans to play, like in Kiss Me Kate and South Pacific...How do you feel you are influencing the future of non-traditional casting?

BSM: Oh, I don't know, you just do what you do. Something is given to you, you're given an opportunity to do something, you just do it. That's for historians or other people to figure out, that's not for me to figure out. My job is just to do it and to take the opportunity. Again, if it changes people's ways looking at things or opens their eyes-during Man of La Mancha I had a very active role in that because that's the idea of doing that show, it came from me originally, I talked to Mitch Lee about it and met with him and he liked the idea. He liked me doing it because he had thought about me doing it and that's how the idea started. So as a result I had my fingers in a lot of things, in a nice way, and one of the things I was very adamant about was that I wanted the show to reflect Spain and reflect the diversity that was there--and also in the United States, there's no reason not to. And so we did that with the cast. And what the show was saying was that it has nothing to do with the person's ethnicity. Now you can't do that with every show, those are about that subject. Dancing at Lughnasa, for example. Jelly's Last Jam or Pacific Overtures. Sure, you could do that with an all-Caucasian cast. It changes the show and what it's about and though it's not right for the show, there's no reason you can't. Why not? But then you're taking away from what the show is about and the subject matter, and then I think it's distracting. But if it's not ethnically specific about somebody, why not do that? A lot of times people call themselves African-American or Caucasian, call themselves Jewish-American or whatever they are, but then why should they be forced to perform those roles if they can sing and perform and fit in any other categories as well, why limit yourselves? I'm about breaking barriers down. But you do that by example, you don't do it by yelling and screaming about it. Whether or not they're broKen Down, it's not up to me, I break down the ones that I can. Whoever's coming after, now it's your turn!

BWW: Are there any roles that you'd still like to play, or would you rather create new roles?

BSM: That's one of the things that attracted me to this show. I had a list of about five things that I wanted. One was that I wanted to do a new show, I didn't want to do a revival. I didn't want to carry the show. I wanted I wanted to work with an A-team of people. I wanted to do a limited run...and there was one other thing, I can't remember what it was, but I ended up getting all those wishes. But you know what I would really like to do, the one role I would love to revisit? I did it in Washington, D.C. but only for 14 performances, so it was like it was in previews, really. Sweeney Todd. I love that show. It's such a great show, one of my top five, maybe my top three, maybe even less than that, of all time. It's a masterwork. I would love to do it with an orchestra, I don't want to do a reduced version of it or anything; I would love to do it as it was originally done. Or you can do it in a concert version again, somewhere, sometime. I would love to do that role for a year and explore that, because I didn't even get to touch upon the depth and what I could get into that character.

BWW: I thought you did.

BSM: Well, thank you. Because when you're exploring a character like that you kind of get the obvious things. But for me, the process of doing a role over time, exploring a role like that--you're subtlizing it. You're trying to do less, to reduce. And that's what's fun about doing a Broadway show, you get a long time to work on the character. I always say it takes three weeks to know a character and three months to own it. And I think that's probably true of every theater artist. If you really want to see a performance of the show, wait three months. Then the crew knows what they're doing, the conductors knows what he's doing, the band knows what they're doing, the actors know what they're doing...then everyone has experimented with enough audiences to know that this works, this doesn't, oh, I've discovered something new here that I didn't even know about when I was rehearsing it, or three weeks ago. And so it's a constant process of discovery, I think. And that's why I would love so much to explore that role. It's juicy and delicious, it sits in my voice perfectly, gorgeous music to sing, it's such a complex story and that's one that I would love to do again. And if somebody said the only role you'll get to do for the rest of your life will be Sweeney Todd, I'll go-okay! I'd like to do some other things but if there's only one role, I'd like to do that, I could explore that role forever.

BWW: I didn't realize it was only 14 performances.

BSM: Yeah, it sure was. And spread out too; you'd never get a good long run at it. You'd do a show one night and then you'd be off for three nights, another show and then you were off for four nights, you'd do another show. So it was a very odd way of doing it, you never get your head into it. I'm sure if I saw a tape of it I'd go, "Oh, I hate that, why did I do that?" But I know enough that I would love to take it on again.

BWW: What would you say has been your greatest challenge and how have you overcome it?

BSM: Oh, there's been a lot of things. The thing about being a performer is that you have to have an incredible amount of tenacity. You really have to want it. Because-and this is true of anybody in life-you get told no more than you get told yes. You lose more than you win. And this is particularly painful as a performer because it's not your widget that you made that people are rejecting, it's not your paper that you wrote-it's you. It's your voice, it's your body, it's your acting ability. It's very personal and it's very, very hard to keep getting told no all the time. And you keep getting rejected, and keep losing all the time. I've lost more Tony Awards than I've won. I've lost more roles than I've won. I think there's not an actor or performer in the world that wouldn't say that, and it's true for me. People always think, "Oh wow, he's got this great life"-and I have, I've only made my living as a performer all my life, I've never had to wait tables, and I call myself the luckiest dad. I've always made my living as a performer and there's not many people that can say that, and when people look at my career they always say, "What a lucky career; he's always worked," and what they don't see are all the things that I've lost and all the hard work and all the disappointment that's gone along with it, too.

So the biggest challenge has been just staying with it for so long. I think that any actor is just staying with it, doing it, when people are telling you no, or when you have a big failure in something. My first Broadway show was the first Broadway show for a lot of people, and it didn't get very well-received and some of those people never returned to Broadway again, because they were so devastated by the results of it. It's like, well, that's too bad because-you could try it again. That's the thing: It's like rising from the ashes, and that's not just performers, that's anybody that wants to be a successful writer or successful publicist or successful musician or successful cabinet-maker. You're gonna have challenges, you have to overcome them, that's life, unfortunately, that's for everybody. Some people have a whole lot more challenges than I have, so I look at my life, and I have had a charmed life. I'm not starving, I'm not living in Haiti, I haven't had my house destroyed, living with cholera or in many other places where life is terrible. It's a wonderful life and I'm doing what I love for a living. How lucky am I to be able to do that?

BWW: That actually leads to my next question which is what do you feel is your greatest triumph?

BSM: Again I don't think about things-and maybe part of the reason I have enjoyed my life so much is that I don't really set goals for myself. Winning the Tony Award, was that a goal? No-it was a desire, but it wasn't a goal, because after you reach the goal then what? You still have to work, you still have to learn your lines, you still have to learn your songs, you still have to do what you do and you're only as good as your last job. The Tony Award is a name on your resume which is a great thing to have, but the challenges keep happening. My goal is always about doing good work and that's what I try to do. I talk to students often and that's what I tell them: Don't put a solid goal for yourself, like, "I'll be happy when I get to Broadway, I'll be happy when I'm a big movie star, I'll be happy when I have a TV series, then I'll know I've made it, I'll know I've made it when I get my Oscar." You know what, you won't be-because there's always something after that. And if you are, God bless you, but I don't know anyone like that. Life goes on, so what happens after that? You die? No, life goes on, you have to find other things that challenge you, and I think the goal is to make what you're doing about your work. Whether it's about cabinet-making-making the most beautiful cabinet. Or writing the most beautiful story. Or doing the most perfect dive from the diving board. Or whatever that thing is. It's about challenging yourself to always doing something better or discover something deeper in the work that you're doing. And when that happens--I think you can't get too upset when something happens because if you fail at it-okay, well, I failed at it, let me do something else. Or if you triumph at it-okay, that was nice, now what's next? Just because I triumph at that doesn't mean I'm going to triumph at everything from now on. So I kind of don't look at my life that way, and maybe that's why I've been able to stay a little sane? Maybe there's a little denial there, I don't know! But I think that it just makes it so much easier to live and to do what I do.