Interview: Susan Egan on DISNEY PRINCESS - THE CONCERT and Her Own Disney Legacy

Starting at Feinstein's/54 Below in 2015, Broadway Princess Party's YouTube videos received more than 20 million views, catapulting it into an official tour of DISNEY PRINCESS - THE CONCERT to nearly 100 cities that features more than 30 favorite songs, behind-the-scenes stories, and massive animated projections.

The upcoming second leg of the tour will preview at the Minnesota State Fair on Sept. 5 and Utah State Fair on Sept. 13 before officially kicking off in October. For more information and to buy tickets, visit www.disneyconcerts.com/disney-princess-concert-tour.

The September dates will feature Broadway leading ladies Susan Egan (BEAUTY AND THE BEAST, HERCULES), Isabelle McCalla (THE PROM, ALADDIN), Anneliese Van Der Pol (RAVEN'S HOME, BEAUTY AND THE BEAST), and Syndee Winters (THE LION KING, HAMILTON). Throughout the fall, Christy Altomare (ANASTASIA, CARRIE) will join the mix, with four of the five women performing at each concert depending on the date. They'll be joined by music director Benjamin Rauhala (FIDDLER ON THE ROOF, THE SECRET LIFE OF BEES) and Adam J. Levy (MOULIN ROUGE, ZORRO).

Tony Award nominee Susan Egan opened up to BroadwayWorld about the evolution of DISNEY PRINCESS - THE CONCERT from its humble beginnings to its current Disney-fueled iteration, as well as her legacy as Broadway's original Belle in BEAUTY AND THE BEAST and the voice of Meg in HERCULES.

The concert has come a long way from Broadway Princess Party at 54 Below. I remember seeing the YouTube videos that Ben Rauhala would put up and wishing I could experience it in person. It was exciting when it made the transition to tour, and I loved seeing it in Utah in 2019. Can you tell me about how Broadway Princess Party got started originally and how you became involved with it?

You know, we talk about those Utah shows in Sandy and Layton. They were our favorites that we ever did with Princess Party, and so we've just been jonesing to get back there. Being in an outdoor venue...the audience was just ready to have a great time...it was our first time ever having four princesses on stage instead of three... Just everything about it was one of those, like, oh, everything feels right...

And those YouTube videos are the reason we got to experience our "glow up" as we call it. We liken it to that. That lovely little piece of animation where Cinderella goes from her pink dress that she made herself, which was lovely, into that transformation to that ballgown that the Fairy Godmother created for her. We feel like that's what happened to our show, and it was really thrilling.

So Ben had this idea based on the cute princess tea parties that Disney produces on their ship where you get to meet all the princesses. He went with Jeremy Jordan one day when they were working on the ship, and he's like, "Well, that's kind of interesting. I know Broadway's Cinderella and I know Broadway's Jasmine. I know Broadway's Belle. Wouldn't it be cool to get all of my friends together and do a concert that's like this?" And it was supposed to be a one-off. And he called Laura [Osnes], and Laura is like, "That's a great idea." And they put their heads together and came up with a big cast of ladies, and it was just supposed to be this crazy one-off and it just took off. It struck a chord. I think for reasons that we sort of discovered later.

So they repeated it, they did it a couple more times in New York and ultimately were invited outside of New York. And lucky me, it happened to be in Orange County. So they called me up because that's where I was living in California. And so that was my first time doing it. And then I sort of became fast friends with Ben, and I looked at him like, "You know, with my animation background, I'm sort of contractually obligated to go to these comic cons. Have you ever been to a comic con?" He's like, "No, tell me more." I go, "Well, there are girls and people walking around all over these comic cons with princess dresses that honestly rival Broadway costumes, and they spend so much time and energy and money on these outfits, and we should give them another place to wear them. I think that we should really become more interactive. I think we should do this around the world." And so we formed a company, and we started developing the show over the next two years at clubs all around the country, to create a show that had a little bit of a wider appeal than the insider jokes that we would have in the 54 Below shows.

What can you tell me about how the partnership with Disney came about?

Ultimately, it was going really, really well. But all of our solo careers were a little bit, you know, more lucrative. And then Laura and I kept getting asked by our symphony contacts, "Hey, do you guys have the rights to do this with symphony?" And, "No, if we do symphony, we need to go get the charts and then you pay licensing and all this good stuff, which is fine, but we would need permission." So we all sat together and said, "Well, it's been a really good run. But the only upward mobility for this is really by calling Disney because the majority of this material is owned by Disney. Should I make that phone call?" And we all agreed that the answer would likely be no, but that we'd had a really good run and we loved each other and let's just make a phone call. So I called Disney and I said, "Hey, you know, I usually rent two or three charts from you guys when I work with symphonies, but I need 26." And they're like, "Yeah, above my paygrade," and it escalated to the vice president.

And ultimately, we had just a beautiful conversation, sent them all those YouTube clips you were talking about. I think they understood very quickly that we had a really beautiful grassroots growth and following of loyal fans who resonated with how we presented this material. I think they appreciated that we respect the material, we never make fun of it. We love this material. We love these characters. And what I was sort of saying on the phone was, "You know, what we've learned over the last three years is that girl who loved Ariel in 1989 at age seven never outgrew her love, she just grew up, and there's no material for her." And they said, "Funny you should say that." They were about to rebrand their entire princess franchise, and they were a year away from launching the Ultimate Princess Celebration, which was a worldwide company-wide campaign that every faction of Disney would be presenting, and Disney Concerts did not have a live component. And they just said, "You could not have called at a better time. We love what you're doing. Let's partner up." It's the first time Disney Concerts has ever had a partnership agreement to co-produce something, and we just lucked out. We really won the lottery. And we're then immediately going to have access to the animation and the marketing department and their special effects department and Princess franchise and animation franchise and also the Frozen franchise, which is its own thing. Who knew? And we signed the deal on March 1st of 2020.

So we were supposed to do these symphony concerts starting in spring of 2020. The world shut down. We figured out right away it was not going to be a three-week closure and that it was going to be a long time before 80 musicians and a couple of singers could be on a stage together. So we thought, okay, when the world comes back, we want to be one of the first shows out that door. How can we do this and make it COVID-safe? And we thought, why don't we do a bus and truck where we can double our cast. Let's keep it just the five singers and Ben on a stage at a piano because we can be distanced. We're not going to be able to travel with musicians. Even though that is our ultimate goal, to be this symphony concert, let's pivot because COVID taught us to do that, right? And have a first version of this, which is what we've ended up doing. And then, you know, we played our first 60 cities in the spring starting from January to April. And then we did make our symphonic debut at the Kennedy Center with the National Symphony Orchestra where we got to have those 80 musicians with our original idea.

But this is basically what Ben and I did over COVID. We met with our amazing cohorts at Disney Concerts and our creative director and the animation and all of these people, and we developed the best truck PAC tour. Because there aren't musicians on stage, we need to have a set, we need to have special effects, we need to make this more theatrical, which has been a lot of fun exploring it in different ways where that audience gets something that's kind of above and beyond what the symphonic audience gets. Of course, the symphonic audience gets to see those musicians live. Ben and I recorded an orchestra during COVID in Nashville, a few musicians at a time to keep everything safe, and so we have beautiful tracks with Ben's new arrangements, and it is that "glow up" that we just took step by step and then ultimately got to premiere this last year, and we're about to embark upon the next 40 cities on our tour of 100 cities. But first, we get to go to the Utah State Fair where it's a very full circle moment for us. We're back outdoors, which we love. We're back in Utah, which we love. And we get to bring this "glow up" and say, "Hey, you guys supported us when we were that cute pink dress. Come see the sparkly gown that now we get to show you." So it's really special for us.

That's amazing. Can you talk a little bit more about some of the similarities between the "glow up" and the original, and some of the things that were done to make it new and different?

I think what we loved the most about this new partnership with Disney is how much they loved what we did with Princess Party. So the thing that made it special is it wasn't just a revue of princess songs with women who had voices who could sing it, it was the women who'd played the characters on Broadway or in the movies or wherever, right? So when you're hearing "A Whole New World," it's not just a pretty voice, it's a girl who did it for hundreds of times onstage. And so we have an opportunity, and we deliver on it, to peel that onion. Everybody knows the character of Jasmine. Half the people in the audience are dressed up as the character of Jasmine. But now, that actress gets to talk about what happened when the carpet broke down, or what happened when that child shouted out in the middle of the show, "Hi!," or whatever it was during their hundreds of performances in that character. You know, what your diet was because you had that costume that shows your midriff.

Disney has done a great job of--we've got the original animated features, now we've got a lot of these live action. So with BEAUTY AND THE BEAST, for instance, there was the animated feature and it was brilliant, and then the Broadway show that was BEAUTY AND THE BEAST 2.0, and then the live action that was BEAUTY AND THE BEAST 3.0, and in some way, this is the 4.0 where I'm not the character of BELLE, I'm Susan who is loving on the character of BELLE like the audience is loving on the character of BELLE. But I finally have a forum where I get to talk about Terry [Mann] accidentally pulling my wig off onstage or talking about how heavy that yellow dress was and how you had to brace yourself and he really had to hold onto me, because when you waltz, like 45 pounds of dress is trying to knock you off your feet. And you could just share these stories so that everybody gets to experience what it was like to play that character for 1,000 performances on Broadway. It's always fun to talk about what went wrong in live theatre. It's always fun to have things go wrong even in our show, and people get to be there, and we get to laugh about it. And so that's what was behind the decision to appear as ourselves.

We're passing the torch in a way. It's that next person's turn to be Belle, and we get to talk about that character together. You get to sing along with us. You guys can dress up as that character if you want to. We get to pay homage to the animation which is right behind us, the composers who developed these strong female roles which we love, and it's so multi-dimensional in that way, and that is what Disney responded to and wanted us to maintain and keep. I think you'll be amazed at how similar it is except that now we have a 45-foot LED screen with the animation on it, and we have full orchestrations, and we have special effects with lighting, and we have costumes that cost a little more than our Princess Party dresses. And so, you know, it's just finally realized. I feel like the production is now matching the size of heart that was always there.

What are your favorite parts of the setlist this time around?

My favorites are the quartet moments. It's very lonely being the heroine in the show because you're the only girl, and one of the aspects that I know all of us in the cast love the most, and I think it permeates and it's part of the magic of our show, is how much we genuinely love each other and how that translates across those footlights to the audience. That we are four women on stage who are diverse in our talents and voice qualities and looks and ages. I am representing those ladies in their 50s, bless them. And you know we've got a princess in her 20s, princesses in their 30s, and then me, and I think what we get to show is how we are supportive of one another. I think there's unfortunately in our culture an aspect where we feel like women are pitted against each other, and in the Broadway community that just is not the case at all. It's a small community, and her success is my success. And we really do feel that way.

And getting to sing in four-part harmony with Ben's original arrangements, reinventing some of these songs, paying homage to the original but breathing new life into it in a new way where I get to sing with those three voices with me, I mean, it's a dream that in my--because I'm old--long career I've never had the opportunity to do. It's shocking to me that Disney has never had a live show that has this setlist, that represents all 12 Disney princesses and the two Frozen queens. Doesn't that seem crazy that they've never done it? And that when we made that phone call, they're like, "We're asked weekly. We get calls weekly from people saying, 'Don't you have a show that has the Disney princesses in it?'" and we were then going to fill that hole, and our production company had the bandwidth to produce it. And they have the IP and access to all of the art and creative directors and whatnot, and so it was just a wonderful partnership. But my favorite part is definitely singing with these women and singing Ben's arrangements. You know, the solos are fun, of course, but, I mean, it's thrilling, it really, really moves my soul to get to sing these harmonies with these ladies.

I assume you'll be performing songs you originated from BEAUTY AND THE BEAST and HERCULES, as well?

Yes, of course, yes, I love it! Always, always. And what's fun with HERCULES is that now that we have the animation, I actually get to sing to--there's something called "lip flap" where we can't have a voice sing to Ariel "lip flap" because only Jodi Benson gets to do that. Because it's Jodi Benson's voice. Disney doesn't want to confuse youngsters that like, "That doesn't sound like the little mermaid," because they have good ears. But I actually get to sing to the actual clip from the movie with the "lip flap," which is really fun to do onstage because it's different than anything else we do. So I really do love doing that. And I like paying homage to Meg, who is not a Disney princess, but she deserves her spot. She was a spicy girl in her day and still is, and so that's a lot of fun.

I think what's also really exciting is that we get to--we did a few little battles with Disney, and let me say, we didn't have to battle very hard, but because Disney did purchase Fox, we do get to sing ANASTASIA. "Journey to the Past" is one of my favorite princess songs. Anneliese Van Der Pol is going to sing that, and, gosh, she blows the roof off. So that's always really, really fun, too.

But yes, we get to sing stuff that that we are known for. Watching Syndee Winters sing "Shadowland" from THE LION KING is like watching a master class in performance. You know, she played the role for so long on Broadway, and it's exciting to get to introduce material to people who do only know the animated features, to introduce some of the OG songs from the Broadway productions. That gets to make its play into our show as well. You'll see Issi McCalla sing "These Palace Walls," which was Jasmine's solo, but we do a big mash up where she sings half of "These Palace Walls" and then she gets to go into half of "Speechless." You get to see within this one medley the evolution of the character Jasmine.

I love that you're mixing up those different iterations and sharing these songs with people that may not know them. What does it mean to you to have originated a role in Belle that thousands of women have performed after you and look to you as the iconic performance of that role?

Oh my gosh, I never think of it in that way. You're really sweet. I call it the Belle sisterhood. You know, I do a lot of Cameo videos for young ladies whose parents reach out to me and, "My daughter's going to play Belle in our high school production." I'm like, "Oh, welcome to the sisterhood!" I always feel like it's so hard to explain what it's like to wear that blue dress, that yellow dress, but another young woman who's played that character, she gets it, she knows, she understands, and I love how more and more people are having the chance to play that role, and it just gets better and better. I always encourage them to find their own inner Belle, to not listen to that OG cast recording or any illegal YouTube clips, that what really brings the character to life is bringing yourself to it. And so it is really fun. I even had the opportunity on Kristen Bell's show ENCORE! on Disney+ to mentor and coach a young woman who was playing Belle and to really talk and to get to share. The one thing that I had access to was Alan Menken and Linda Woolverton and ask them, "Well, why did you write it this way? Why did you do it that way?" And I feel like one of the exciting things now is getting to pass those stories on, and then those actors will get to pass those stories on that I shared with them to the next generation of Belles, and hopefully they'll just get carried forward.

But that's where the legacy falls for me of getting to be sort of that fly on the wall in the development of the stage production of it and to be able to share those stories, because the evolution does inform how you might play it. The changes in lyrics, and why they changed it to this, and what Linda was thinking. You know, Linda is really Belle. She's the screenwriter, and she wrote the script for the adaptation for the play. And you know, she based Gaston on an ex-boyfriend, and I got stories about that, and so that really informs how you treat Gaston and what she's really thinking behind the scenes and also makes you think, you know, gentlemen, never, never be unkind to a woman because she may, I don't know, make you a Disney villain sometime.

What are some of your favorite memories of BEAUTY AND THE BEAST and HERCULES and doing those original projects?

I think connecting with an audience with BEAUTY AND THE BEAST. It was Disney's first Broadway production. You know, they were learning. I was learning. It was Alan Menken's Broadway debut. Kind of crazy to think that. Meeting the little girls in their yellow dresses after the show, and just getting to share more about the character. The play's an hour longer than the movie was, and so I got to delve a little bit deeper and show a little bit more about it. And again, that live action movie, you learned even more, like what happened to Belle's mom or just adding the complexities, which I love.

I think it was the cast for me. It was my Broadway debut working with legends like Terrence Mann and Gary Beech and Beth Fowler, and how they were so kind to me and created just the most magical experience of all time. You know, we were not welcomed in the New York, the Broadway community. We did not get excellent reviews, and they really showed me the lemonade. And obviously time will tell it is a classic now, and Disney is a staple on Broadway now, but that was not the case in the moment. But you know, Gary Beech was the perfect Lumiere because he was the light of our show, just as a human being, and, I mean, I get weepy 30 years later, and I miss him dearly, that when things were looking glum, he would just take me outdoors and we'd look at the line of people waiting to see the show. And it was so many of their first times in a theatre, not just the kids but the parents too. And Disney did that. Disney brought people to theatre, and that was exciting to be a part of the production that hopefully helped keep Broadway alive a little bit longer. You know, we all thought in the 90s it was going to go away pretty quick. The theatregoers were getting older, and there was this one-two punch of Disney in '94 and RENT in '95. So we brought the families, they brought the teenagers, and now Broadway is alive and well. So that was really exciting.

For HERCULES, it was to be a part of something timeless. You know, live theatre goes away by 10:30 at night--maybe a few illegal clips on YouTube. Nowadays maybe you get filmed for Disney+, but in my day it was just live and in the hearts and minds and memories of your audience. So to be doing HERCULES and to get to witness the brilliance of those animators and our directors Ron [Clements] and John [Musker], and another woman at the helm, Alice Dewey, as our producer was phenomenal. You know, working with Linda Woolverton and working with Alice Dewey back to back was really exciting as a young woman in this industry. Watching these women break that glass ceiling was pretty thrilling, and to get to play a character that was a little different--she's not a villain, she's not the princess, she's somewhere in the middle, which made her I think so relatable. She was flawed and also really funny, and I wish that in my own life I could think of the one-liners that Meg thinks of in the moment.

Well, I just love that you are so open to being part of that legacy, moving on to this new 4.0 version, as you say, giving a new opportunity for people to get to know you as the brilliant artist that you are, and being willing to continue to sing those songs that people know but also share these experiences you've had. Is there anything else you'd like to say about the concert?

So the concert is one of those things where it's the magic of Disney that can bring together people from every quarter and every generation. To see families coming together where, you know, one generation is remembering Cinderella, one generation is remembering Ariel, and the next generation is thinking of Moana. It's so exciting to be part of that family with this concert. I am eternally grateful to Disney. Obviously they changed my life, but even in this iteration, their trust in letting me executive produce this with our little company and Ben and to work with them as partners. They've been nothing but brilliant and gracious and hilarious, and to spend two years on Zoom with them creating this and never really knowing if this was ever going to actually happen... Ben and I were like, "Yeah, it'll probably never happen." But then for it to have happened, and now just still so supportive and so collaborative... This has been a thrill, and I love performing, yes, but I love creating jobs for other people to perform. I love passing the torch. I love getting to be behind the scenes and sort of express my own Alice Dewey and Linda Woolverton, and these women who shaped me in my 20s, and to now be in my 50s and hopefully passing the torch and giving those opportunities to the next generation. So it's a wonderful legacy that is multi-dimensional, that includes the audience and all of the young people in that audience.

You know, I think about this every day. I did BEAUTY AND THE BEAST on Broadway 800 times, right? And at one performance there was a seven-year-old boy in that audience. And he went home after that show, and it was his first Broadway show, and he wanted to learn how to play the piano. And so until he could get lessons he would drape a blanket over two chairs, and he would pretend to play piano to the original soundtrack to the song "Home" and the girl that was singing that song. And that boy was Benjamin Rauhala. Who knew at that performance that I was doing that? I wasn't thinking about that. There was a seven-year-old in the audience who would change my life.

I just feel like there's purpose and there's guidance from, you know, whatever you want to think in your own personal life, but it doesn't slip past me, and so we feel grateful every day. And we do the show every day for that seven-year-old that's in the audience that might become the next Lin-Manuel [Miranda] or the next Belle or the next producer or the next Walt Disney. Do you know, who knows?

This conversation has been edited for conciseness and clarity.

Photo Credit: L-R Isabelle McCalla, Susan Egan, Syndee Winters, and Anneliese Van Der Pol. Courtesy DISNEY PRINCESS - THE CONCERT.

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