Hi, I saw the show on February 4th and it was so amazing!! You were so fantastic as Jessica; I related to that character a lot and even wore an outfit inspired by her/ Caroline to work the next day lol. I also really appreciated how you stayed at the stage door for so long talking to people - fully expected you to leave before you made it the whole way down the line (which I would have supported as it was very loud and very crowded/ overwhelming. I almost left twice). Anyway, I was wondering if you have any thoughts about being recognized just in daily life because of htdio. Obviously being on broadway puts you in the public eye a little bit but not to the level of a tv show or movie. Would it be weird if someone came up to you and said they loved the show, or would you be excited? (Largely asking this because I’m 95% sure I saw Amelia Fei in a coffee shop yesterday and I wanted to say something but instead I just stood there, frozen, actively listening to the songs from the show.) I might ask some other people from the cast this too so if you see they’ve replied and don’t want to answer, that’s cool. Thanks for reading my long rambling message and hope you’re feeling better after the surgery you posted about!
First of all, your username is excellent. Fact.
As to your question about how I feel about being recognized: it's a good and reasonable question in and of itself, but knowing it was asked of one autistic person to another adds all kinds of intriguing nuances. And if there's one thing I love about Tumblr (and one thing that I wish people on not-Tumblr would do more often), it's how invested people get in all the intriguing nuances. So...here goes something.
I should probably preface this by saying that I'm still in the relatively early stages of being known on this level for this thing, and I'm still working through what it all means for me in both my professional life and my personal life. In many ways it feels like I'm relearning how to be a human with a whole new set of social rules or expectations or limitations that did not exist for me before--and, in a perfect world, would not exist. On top of that, the cultural concept of "fame," and the social rules surrounding it, is evolving rapidly. So whatever I say, feel, or believe right now may not necessarily reflect where I stand a year from now.
But back to your question.
Would it be weird if someone came up to you and said they loved the show, or would you be excited?
First of all, I can guarantee with 100% certainty that absolutely no one, no matter how famous they are, will ever get tired of people saying "I love your work." You might think it's tired and cliched and doesn't really mean much to them because they've heard it before and you're just another voice in the chorus.
But the thing is--we know you're not just another voice in the chorus. You're you. The story of how you became familiar with my work, and how and why it resonated with you, is completely unique to you. Your life. Your memories. Your relationships. Your pain. Your joy. We might have drastically different upbringings, cultural backgrounds, life and work experiences, political views, religious views, whatever...and yet, something in the work I did transcended all of that and connected with you.
In a world that expects us to be constantly and aggressively polarized and divided over all sorts of things, what could possibly be more important than that?
If my very soul doesn't joyfully blaze like a bonfire of gratitude at every single voice that tells me they love my work...then what's the point of the work? What's the point of anything?
THAT BEING SAID...
Yeah, sometimes getting recognized can be a little jarring. While I luckily haven't had any outright negative experiences with being recognized (yet), anticipating the possibility of being recognized certain places has raised several etiquette considerations that I simply never had to think about before.
For instance, when I waited outside the Barrymore for two hours one frozen morning to get rush tickets for the last Thursday matinee of Harmony, a few people on that line recognized me from Ohio. They were very nice, and not at all intrusive, but I remember thinking, I hope nobody recognizes me in the audience at the actual show. I didn't want my presence to distract anyone from their experience with a show I was not working on. Especially a new musical that had opened while we were in tech, we had signed each other's opening night cards, and now we were closing within a week of each other.
My concern about being recognized in that space was not rooted in "I don't want people to talk to me," but rather in "this is their show and I don't want things to be about me right now."
I got a box seat at the matinee, which all but eliminated the possibility of people recognizing me (or even really seeing me), and even if they had, it's not like I'm, you know, a celebrity celebrity. So my concern about being recognized may have been a bit disproportionate to the situation.
But that could change one day. No matter what my humility-cum-imposter-syndrome impulses want me to think, the plausible and pragmatic reality is...that could change. So I might as well start processing all of those things now, when my presence in the public eye is at a significantly-increased-but-still-manageable level.
What sucks, though, is that I haven't been able to find or access very many mental or emotional health resources specifically tailored towards "how to process and cope with a life in the public eye." The few therapists out there specializing in those issues wouldn't take my insurance; they're overbooked with celebrity celebrities.
And that's a bummer. Fame-related mental and emotional health issues are not just relevant for wealthy A-listers, especially in the age of social media. An ordinary person who's not even looking for the attention can post one video and go viral within 24 hours--sometimes for positive reasons, sometimes for negative reasons, but either way, they are overwhelmed, because nothing in their upbringing even thought to prepare them for a situation like that. Whether you're an A-lister, an accidental viral star, or a mildly niche-famous T-list Broadway person, I don't think humans, on a neurological level, were built for fame.
Our natural trajectory of cognitive and emotional development is intended for our families and immediate communities. We are not naturally neurologically equipped to handle attention from "the masses." It's well-documented that we have a more difficult time empathizing with "the masses" than with individual people--psychology calls this the identifiable victim effect.
This effect is not rooted in cruelty or apathy--it's a well-documented neurological survival mechanism that all humans have, and all humans need in order for their empathy to function at all.
But try telling that to anybody on American social media during an election year. Everybody needs you to believe that all of the people on ~the other side~ are numb to human suffering or are refusing to take action on behalf of a group of people because their brains sometimes have to focus on other stuff.
You ever see a celebrity post an innocuous, uncontroversial Instagram picture from their regular degular life, and the comments are like, "don't you realize there's a WAR going on? how can you just SIT there, eating a BURRITO, with your CATS?" Or like, "well, it's obvious you care more about your CATS than about [insert cause/issue/group of people]." Or like, "it's been X amount of time since Y atrocity and you have said NOTHING about it. What's the matter, are you afraid to speak up for [victims of atrocity] because it'll interrupt the aesthetic of your burritos-and-cats feed? Your silence is DEAFENING."
To tie it all back to the original question: no, it's not inherently weird or bad or awkward to be recognized in my current daily life as a T-list Broadway person. So far, it has been a generally positive and harmless experience.
But I'd be lying if I said I didn't worry sometimes about my future ability to just eat a burrito with my cats without someone making an Internet about all the things they think they have the authority to tell me I should be doing instead.
