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How to Obtain Your Second Act: An Interview with Local Actress Diana Schiro

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photo courtesy of Diana Schiro

The concept of emotional quotient or EQ comes up a lot in my interview with local resident and budding actress Diana Schiro. In order to be a great actress, one needs to be deeply in touch with their emotions and be able to jump into character and emote as that character would. It’s a difficult craft to master and something Schiro always wanted to do but was afraid to take the proverbial leap.

Schiro as Maya in The Year of the Solar Eclipse
PHOTO BY FRED LAM

However on the cusp of turning 40, Schiro did and worked her way up from scoring spots in commercials for companies such as Polaroid and Kartrite Resorts to her latest role as Maya, a psychotherapist in the off-Broadway production of The Year of the Solar Eclipse which opens at the Wild Project, an East Village theater on December 3rd. Tickets are available at www.theyearofthesolareclipse.com The play follows three millennial females in a year of love lost, love found & self-discovery.

I had the opportunity to sit down with Schiro and hear her top ten tips on how she obtained her second act – from a suburban mom working part-time for a local real estate firm to auditioning in the city and ultimately landing on the off-Broadway stage.

1. Embrace your inner voice – Schiro recalls that from the time she was eight years old growing up in Long Island, she always wanted to be an actress and while she took acting classes in middle and high school, she felt that her insecurity when she was younger prevented her from truly following her passion. Nevertheless, she had this nagging voice in her head to follow her passion.

2. Be the best version of yourself – For Schiro, she always envied those in theater. She didn’t want her envy to turn into jealousy or resentment. “I always knew I had the capacity and emotional bandwidth to act” so she flipped her thought process and decided to turn those envious feelings into inspiration and motivation.

3. Be brave in the face of fear – According to Schiro, being brave isn’t the same as being fearless. She contends that she still has fears and is nervous about her upcoming performance. “When you are fearless, you take all kinds of risks” but for her, auditioning was something that was intentional and well thought out.

4. Maintain authenticity – Schiro who is a mom to 11-year old Sarina and nine year old Jared was always encouraging them to try new things but didn’t want to “have a personal narrative of I wish I had done this [acting]. I knew I had to do this in order to be an authentic parent.”

5. Utilize technology to your benefit – “There are resources for acting professionals that I knew about such as backstage.com, so I filled out a profile on them and checked out jobs everyday. I also created eco cast videos where instead of going for live call backs in the city, you can audition virtually with casting directors.”

6. Stay organized and prepare – For Schiro, this new lifestyle is a complete 180 for her family. She now commutes into the city for rehearsals in the afternoon, so staying organized is key. She blocks time on her calendar to look for new jobs and also spends time each day rewriting her lines. She prepares meals for the family in the morning and adheres to a rigorous exercise routine to maintain physical and mental strength.

7. Seek supportive family and friends who genuinely root for you. – Schiro credits both her husband Michael and her local CrossFit community and friends for unwavering support. “I’m totally overwhelmed by the support in the community. I surround myself with mentors and role models particularly in the fitness world and I lean on them to learn and grow.”

8. Continue learning and ask questions – The cast consists of 20 somethings with acting credentials so Schiro asked the director and playwright, Aileen Kyoko for additional guidance.  “I said I am the least experienced here, what should I do or read to help me?”, she recalls. Schiro now is reading what she calls her acting bibles such as “How to Stop Acting.” Taking that first step to ask for help can be daunting but is worthwhile. She also takes private acting lessons with one of the show’s executive producers Mark St. Cyr to accommodate her busy schedule.

9. Follow a healthy lifestyle – Schiro is a certified health coach from the Institute of Integrative Nutrition. Fueling her body with the right foods is essential for her just like her workouts. Especially when making major life changes, exercise and nutrition shouldn’t fall by the wayside, says Schiro.

10. Make time, not excuses – Just like Schiro schedules Acting 2.0 on her calendar to study her lines and look for jobs after this play, it takes commitment to obtain a second act. Schiro didn’t want to live a “what if” life and to obtain a second act, you need dedication. With her determination and focus, she just might make it to the Great White Way.

Greeley Alum Shapes a New Era of Theatre

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Carly Brooke Feinman, a Chappaqua native and Greeley alum, is making a splash in the theatre world just two years after graduating Wesleyan University. This past summer, her original musical co-written with Cassie Wilson, If Sand Were Stone, made its Off-Broadway debut as part of the New York Music Festival. As if that wasn’t enough, her play Reflux was selected to premier Off-Broadway a few weeks later as part of the Broadway-Bound Theatre Festival.

Feinman loved growing up in Chappaqua.  She always enjoyed poetry and writing and assumed that would lead her to a career in journalism or poetry.  Her favorite teacher at Greeley was her creative writing teacher, Mrs. Chadwick. She “was the first teacher to really take interest in me and encouraged me to continue writing. I’m so grateful for her,” Feinman says.

Feinman’s road to musical theatre began when she took a class in college with the Pulitzer Prize winning playwright Quiara Alegría Hudes, who wrote In the Heights with Lin Manuel Miranda. “She changed everything for me… She is an epic human and one of my dearest friends and mentors. She showed me that the things I love about poetry and the fun language gymnastics I get to do really do lend themselves to theatre.  She pushed me to dig deeper and take more classes and I found that I loved it,” recalls Feinman.

If Sand Were Stone Actors (L-R): Mari Uchida, Jhardon DiShon Milton, Jennifer Reed , Alexis Floyd and Tabatha Gayle PHOTO BY HAYIM HERON

It was in Hudes’ musical theatre class where Feinman was paired together with Wilson for an assignment. They immediately clicked and became great friends and collaborators. “To find someone that you want to work with for the rest of your career is such a gift to receive at a young age.  We’ve been working on the musical for two and a half years. There will be future iterations of it and it’s more fulfilling every time we touch it,” says Feinman.

If Sand Were Stone is a musical that follows a poet as she and her family grapple with her early onset Alzheimer’s Disease at the peak of her career. It’s based on a true story about Wilson’s grandmother. Despite the sad subject, there is joy to be found in the moments on stage between family members. In preparation for writing this musical, Feinman and Wilson volunteered at an assisted living facility for memory care. “Just as many times as we would leave crying, we would leave laughing.  Where there’s sadness, there’s joy. That’s a fundamental belief of ours,” says Feinman.

Feinman is proud of the fact that the musical’s creative team was all female, under 25, and included women of color. “Cassie and I are from very lucky backgrounds, we are hyper aware of the advantages we’ve had, and we have no interest in doing anything besides trying our best to be inclusive and to use what we’ve been given and share,” she explains.

Her other production this past summer, Reflux, is an absurdist comedy in a dystopian world where a man and woman are paired together randomly, and sent by boat to navigate the ocean to the honeymoon island where they must have sex. They try to figure out what sex and marriage is and how it fits into society’s expectations spoonfed to them since birth. 

In Reflux, the couple is played by two gender non-conforming people of color. “We have all seen the man-woman romantic comedy and I was really interested in disrupting that whole Adam and Eve archetype… I’m interested in centering historically marginalized places and including people who have historically been disenfranchised by the institution of theatre. That’s not something that I’m looking for applause for. I just think it needs to be more of the norm,” says Feinman. Generally, she is drawn to art that disrupts and is different than anything she has seen previously. She was greatly inspired by the musicals Hamilton, In the Heights and Fun Home.

PHOTO BY HAYIM HERON

Feinman is not afraid of laying bare her creative work.  “I don’t think you could fail if you try. This summer, if both of the shows were flops, that wouldn’t have been a failure to me. The failure would’ve been chickening out and saying that it would be too much to do in one summer,” she contends.

Feinman is living her dream career. “I’ve only ever wanted to be a writer. To be a songwriter was one of my early goals as a young girl but I don’t know how to play any instruments. In writing musicals, I’ve been able to call myself a songwriter. I’ve always wanted to be a poet and in writing plays, I’ve been able to do that.  I’ve always wanted to collaborate with artists I admire and I’m getting to do that now. I’m so happy,” she concludes.

From Windmill to the Great White Way…

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Armonk Native Bonnie Gleicher’s New Children’s Musical Addy and Uno Captures Audience’s Hearts

“I actually sang before I spoke,” reminisces 29-year old former Windmill resident Bonnie Gleicher, who wrote the music and lyrics for the children’s off-Broadway show Addy and Uno currently playing at The Kirk Theater on West 42nd Street. The family musical featuring a colorful cast of characters represented by puppets touches on themes such as disability, kindness, bullying and friendship.

One of the main characters “Uno”, a math whiz, is entered in a math competition but fears being on stage due to his autism. But his friends with other disabilities ranging from ADHD to mobile impairment help him overcome taunting from the school bullies and ultimately succeed in the end. There are themes any grade schooler can relate to resulting in a heartfelt musical with soaring tunes that is sure to leave audience members smiling and cheering for “Uno.”

A Love for Theater at an Early Age

Music was a big part of Gleicher’s life from a young age. She recalls as a toddler prancing around her house, pretending to be “Ariel” from The Little Mermaid. As an elementary school student in Armonk, Gleicher landed the lead roles in both Peter Pan and The Wiz of Oz.  She soon yearned to audition for roles in the city and the talented Gleicher was cast as the orphan “Kate” and the understudy for Annie in the Broadway national tour of Annie as a 10-year old and then as “Young Jane” in the Broadway musical Jane Eyre when she was 12.

Gleicher is thankful for her supportive parents, Teri and Kenny Gleicher, who still live in Windmill and helped her achieve her dreams. “Growing up, my mom drove me in and out of the city along the West Side Highway to audition and perform in New York. She never pushed me to do any of this. She basically saw I was living my dream and sacrificed a lot by touring the country with me in Annie for eight months while my dad and grandmother helped raise my sister. “

Gleicher took a hiatus in high school from performing in the city and instead focused on her schoolwork while continuing to take piano lessons at home. “It basically took two years until my piano teacher told my parents that they were wasting their money,” Gleicher says with a chuckle.

Instead of practicing Chopin, Gleicher was writing songs. She stopped piano and began to focus on songwriting more seriously. She still did a few talent shows and open mic nights at Byram Hills High School but stayed out of the limelight.  Gleicher recalls how her social studies teacher Matt Allen was always supportive of her and they still keep in touch today.

Meeting at Decca Records: A Defining Moment

And go places she did. A journalism student and Phil Beta Kappa graduate of the University of Wisconsin at Madison, Gleicher was lucky enough to have one of her demos heard by an executive at Decca Records as an undergraduate. “He told me this all sounds great to me, but I hear theater in it.” It was a defining moment for Gleicher.  “I thought to myself, oh my God. That makes so much sense. That brings everything that I’ve ever done together.” And so Gleicher wrote her first full-length musical in her senior year of college and has continued writing ever since.

The Addy and Uno show was conceptualized by Dr. Nava R. Stilton, a developmental psychologist who wrote the Realabilities Educational Comic Book Series. The series was developed so that individuals with disabilities can see themselves represented positively on-screen, and typical children and adults can become increasingly knowledgeable, sensitive and interested in their peers with disabilities. Gleicher met Stilton through a mutual friend and Gleicher was so excited about it that she knew she had to write the music and lyrics.

National tour of Annie
Gleicher in The Wiz of Oz on the left

The Show’s Short Timeline

Gleicher describes the writing process as “euphoric” and “seeing the impact the show has had on audiences is incredible. While writing the music, I knew it had to feel fun and playful and comical, while revealing the characters’ disabilities in a way that was sensitive and touching.” The day after meeting Dr. Stilton she wrote Uno’s anthem “Brave” and was able to complete all the music within a month.

The show was first performed at the 14 Street Y downtown and then went to Off-Broadway within a year and a half which is a very short timeframe, notes Gleicher. Most shows take 5-7 years until they come to fruition. Gleicher credits the producing team of Tom and Michael D’Angora of making the show more interactive and improving the dialogue before the production moved to off-Broadway.

“Writing musicals is such an investment in every way. There are so many up and downs with doing what you love but it is really satisfying when you get to see the impact this show has on people,” comments Gleicher. “There are a lot of shows that the world wants but not what the world needs. Addy and Uno is a story that the world needs.”

The Future for Gleicher

Up next, Gleicher is writing an original family musical called Little Things. Gleicher who previously lived above a children’s playground in the city, used to love listening to the children at recess. “It is such a beautiful sound and I thought how can I capture that in a musical. It’s about children tasting freedom and going up against a tyrranical principal.” The show is currently being produced by the New York Theatre Barn and NYU Tisch’s Graduate Musical Theatre Writing program.

Addy and Uno will be performed at Gleicher’s alma mater Wampus Elementary School on May 15 and Gleicher will be in attendance. So what would Gleicher say to any aspiring songwriters or thespians in the audience? “If you love what you do, you believe it’s your purpose, and your intentions are pure, you will live your dreams.”