Interview: Ana Gasteyer on the Grueling Differences Between WICKED and SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE, 'Meditation' of Live Theatre, and Her Café Carlyle Debut

Ana Gasteyer is a true renaissance woman. Having been a cast member on SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE for six seasons, she subverted some expectations after leaving the sketch show by going on to play Elphaba in WICKED, originating the role in Chicago's sit-down production before eventually taking her Green Girl to Broadway.

Gasteyer has also had extensive success in the concert capacity, and she is now preparing for a major milestone in any solo performer's career: her debut at the Café Carlyle. BroadwayWorld spoke with Gasteyer ahead of her Carlyle shows, the first of which is on October 25, about the differences between SNL and eight shows a week (both are grueling, but disparately so), why she yearns for the emotional connection of performing live, and whether or not Donald Trump makes her miss being in the trenches of live comedy.

This interview has been edited for content and length.

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CM: In the broadest sense, what can audiences expect from what will be your Café Carlyle debut?

AG: Oh God, hopefully a good time--- No, let's start over: a good time! Not hopefully. It's a really famous, happy room. I am going to do my best to meet the challenge of keeping it lively and musically interesting. It's so intimate and it's so elegant and we will all try to rise to the elegant occasion together.

CM: The Carlyle is such a legendary space. As you prepare to perform in a venue that is historic, is it at all daunting?

AG: Luckily it's legendary with people that are somewhat unorthodox. If it were just Bobby Short, I might be more intimidated. But the fact that Elaine Stritch lived in that room for so long... I aspire to that. I don't necessarily know that I'm anywhere near it, but there's been latitude historically for what kind of performer succeeds there. I'm really excited to be in the room. I mean, if I take the few minutes to really panic about it I definitely can, but I've gotten to the point where I do what I do and I hope that people will have a good time. My goal is always for a lovely, escapist, mildly ridiculous evening. I can't imagine a room that would be better for that set of goals than the Carlyle.

CM: How do you craft the narrative arc for a solo show like this?

AG: I think that, for me, because people know me as a comedian---even though people in New York also know me as a singer---the challenge is always that the audience walks in thinking they're coming to see an evening of wigs and characters. I always feel somewhat obliged to make sure that my audience understands that I do, in fact, have this history as a singer, and a whole life as a singer, without upsetting or disappointing them. I personally can't imagine anything worse than heading out to an evening of what I thought was comedy and having somebody really earnestly sing at me all night long. Luckily, I don't take life all that seriously, and the music that I tend to be attracted to is light and lively and mildly ridiculous. When I first started doing these kinds of shows, when I just finished doing WICKED, I felt more tethered to proving something vocally. That was all wrong, because I think that it's not really who I am. I'm just not a particularly earnest person. I played Elphaba and I loved singing a role, and I love the music from A NEW BRAIN because I loved being in that show, but the music that I tend to dial up has to be much more lighthearted.

When I let go of worrying about whether or not I'm doing anything vocally and I just concentrate on the kinds of songs that I like, that I'm attracted to, I'm really drawn to these ridiculous novelty songs. They're corny and they're fun and they're old and they're jokey half the time. The challenge ends up being actually more of a musical challenge. Rather than taking a serious song and occasionally being funny in it, it's just easier to go to the songs that I automatically enjoy and then finding the musicality within those songs. That's sort of where the set list ends up living, and then I always end up having this hilarious argument with Tedd Firth, my musical director, and going, "Oh my God, this whole set is novelty songs!"

In terms of the overall arc, it usually makes itself clear when you look at your set list and your circumstances. Obviously, I'm going to be getting very dressed up and going way uptown---I live in Brooklyn---to try to pretend like I live at the Carlyle.

CM: You are such a diverse performer. In which performance capacity do you feel most at ease or like yourself, be it cabaret or a full stage production or on camera work?

AG: Every situation offers its strengths and its weaknesses. I'm an ensemble performer, so I love working in this medium because it's very intimate and it's very personal and I'm not a standup comic. As much as I just downplayed all the earnestness, I am allowed to slip into that. If I want to sing a ballad and I want to hit an emotional note, nobody will get mad at me. People who like music in general tend to like a breadth of experience and emotion and so there's a lot of permission granted in that medium. I like the band that I work with very much because it's a very social and convivial group. Their participation is really important to me. I think if it were just me and a piano, I'd get very lonely, frankly. Like I said, I'm not a standup. I don't wake up needing to be in the middle of everything all the time. That's what I like about being in a production.

A NEW BRAIN was like the perfect show, because it's Gordon's story, it's such a critical ensemble piece, everybody had a really important weight to lift, everybody was good, every part was interesting, the music was fantastic. I love doing Musical Theatre Workshops because I love singing new music. I don't go to church and I think any vocalist has spent a lot of time in choral situations, and I really love singing in a choral situation and any grownup who doesn't go to church doesn't have that opportunity. A NEW BRAIN had that component of raising up your voice in song with others, which was kind of incredible.

And I like filming comedy. It's fast, and I think there's an immediacy to it and the writer in me really likes it. Since I came out of SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE, it's such a mosh pit of writer-performers there. Every writer is a performer and every performer is a writer, and it's a very fluid line. When I'm working on a half-hour comedy, just because I was lucky enough to be an anointed member of that club, I know a lot of people in that community and there's a speed to doing bits and doing comedy that's really satisfying. When you're filming, it's just fast, and I like that. I like showing up and learning eight pages of dialogue and doing it.

It's just different. But when I'm doing that all the time, I really start to long for the thoroughness of theatre, and the emotional connection which I experience with musical theatre. So it's all very fluid. I feel unbelievably lucky that I get opportunities in all of it because it keeps my life exactly as interesting as I like it to be.

CM: Is there a major difference between performing live on stage and performing live on camera?

AG: Yeah, there's a huge difference. I think there's a huge difference even between performing as a character in a piece and performing in a cabaret setting. But any live sort of, "This is just me but a little dressed up version of me" is a much more intimate evening. It's very, very personal it's very honest. Somebody asked me recently, "What would you be if you weren't an actress?" I used to have more lofty answers, like my education would ask that I be a teacher or something more academic, but I do have to say there's a big part of me that would be so happy just throwing parties for charity (laughs). I really like having people to my home, I like entertaining, I like cooking and connecting and having people over. That is very much what I aspire to get out of an evening of cabaret, is this sense of connection with an audience and personal relationship with them. That's a corny answer, but that's true. That's what I like about these opportunities. I think that's why people go to cabaret in particular. It's a very unique, personal evening. It's not the difference between live and on camera, but between theatre and TV is the ability to refine, and that is something I love about the theatre. I love that you can get there all the time, and it's almost like a meditation. You can kind of be in the process while it's happening and let it be what it is.

CM: It's very well-attested that both theatre and SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE are two of the most grueling grinds. To you, which is more challenging: eight shows a week or preparing for a new episode of SNL?

AG: It's funny because WICKED in particular was so grueling, and that's really what my walk away from both of those experiences was. They're grueling in different ways. One is grueling just physically. Eight a week is just a physical grind. I don't think the physical grind is really the primary grind of SNL. The primary grind is that it is nocturnal, you are sort of off-kilter, and the fact that the show does not exist and you're under this enormous pressure to generate all the time and generate well amongst extraordinary peers, that's really overwhelming at times and it's really exhilarating at times. That's where the grind starts to come in--- this wear-down of every Sunday, you're starting from scratch. And fear. I was really afraid at SNL at times. That, I wish I wasn't. If I could go back in time, I would undo that. But it was my first big job.

They're just really different. I did this interview for Playbill last year for, I think it was like the 80 gazillionth performance of WICKED, and I was really actually tired because I had just come off of a big job and I was physically tired when I did the interview and so I kind of tapped into that. So they asked what I remember about Elphaba and I was like, "Oh my God, it was so exhausting," and that's like all I could remember. And then I felt really guilty and contrite afterwards like I shouldn't have said that. And then I opened up the interview to read it, and every single Elphaba was like, "Oh my God, it was so f-ing exhausting." The common theme of that experience is how grueling it is physically. I think [original Elphaba] Idina Menzel is a wonder woman, but at the same time if she were to go back in time, I would ask her desperately to just simply do a six-show week. You're just not meant to sing that show eight times a week, and managing that becomes your full-time job, as opposed to playing the role.

CM: I've interviewed many Elphabas who have said the exact same thing.

AG: Yup. And for me, the biggest issue was the smoke and the fog. I actually can do a lot with my voice, but with those artificial ingredients, it becomes very challenging. But again, I look back at things, and sometimes I can't believe the opportunities I've had in my life and Elphaba was an absolute game-changer of an experience. It teaches you so much about your voice, it teaches so much about stamina, it's such a fantastic role. It was a great thing to do, and I'm super, super proud of it.

CM: With the political landscape being as ugly as it is right now, does that make you miss being at SNL or does it make you feel relieved not to be "in the trenches"?

AG: I'm very close to all my girlfriends from SNL and we definitely all had this kind of longing last spring. And actually a couple weeks ago, when [Donald Trump's 2005] tapes were released, I had kind of a longing--- like there was so much material to be exploited. Then something turned, I would say in the last week or two, where it just became like it wasn't even fun or funny anymore, and I was relieved. [Trump] turned very vitriolic. He's always been sort of cranky, but some of this more political process meddling stuff brought me down and I thought, "I don't want to be in the middle of that." So it's a little bit of both. There's no question that the political season is the super-sweet spot of SNL and when there's material this good floating around the universe, any alumni would want to be a part of that. It's just too delicious.

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Ana Gasteyer will make her Café Carlyle debut starting October 25 through November 5. For tickets and reservations, visit www.rosewoodhotels.com.

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