Phillipa Soo Was in the Middle of a Song When Her Father Saved the Day

Places, please for ELLE’s monthly column Showstoppers, where theater’s biggest stars reflect upon the moment in their career where the famous phrase “the show must go on” became a little too real. When things don’t go according to plan onstage, here’s how the pros react—and what they take away from it.

This month, Tony nominee Phillipa Soo, who currently stars as Guenevere in Lerner & Loewe’s Camelot, celebrates her cast’s perseverance in the recent Broadway revival of Into the Woods and shares a scary moment where the show could not go on in the pre-Broadway production of Natasha, Pierre, and the Great Comet of 1812 at Ars Nova. Soo, in her own words, recalls how her communities supported one another and stepped up in trying times.

---

This is a very celebratory moment in theater. We haven’t been able to gather in any capacity for so long. I feel like celebrating. Dance parties, going to church, all these beautiful things we haven’t been able to do. They’ve been fantastic to get back to, but especially theater. Yes, it’s fun, yes, it’s entertaining, but it also feels like a muscle we haven’t gotten to exercise. It’s not just consuming stories and exercising empathy, but it’s to be doing that and practicing it in a room with other people. There’s a level of accountability, generosity, and vulnerability that comes with going to see a play and exposing yourself to a story that you may or may not know anything about. I think that’s really powerful, and I think that it can actually be more impactful in terms of opening people’s minds and hearts than any piece of information you could read on your screen. Exposing yourself to a story and trying to put yourself in somebody else’s shoes is really good practice for dealing with those things in your life where we are asked to rise to the occasion. We have to practice emotionally, physically, and mentally.

I was doing Into the Woods and we were mounting the show at a time when it definitely felt like there was a little bit more breathing room [with the COVID-19 pandemic], in terms of being confident that we can put up a show, and the world was not going to shut down completely. We did deal with illness and people being in and out, and everyone just showed up and did incredible work. I have to give so much credit to our amazing COVID compliance teams, the producers who went the extra mile to make sure we were safe, especially as we were mounting [the show], and our incredible team of swings and understudies—these incredible actors and artists who are preparing from day one to make sure the show must go on. Everybody was just so incredible and there for each other. We were still able to make the story happen. It was such a testament to the strength of this community and the people that are in it.

My “show must go on,” but also, “the show must NOT go on, we need to deal with this first” moment, was when I was doing my first professional job: Natasha, Pierre, and the Great Comet of 1812 at Ars Nova, which is an off-off-Broadway space. It was so small at that point, during our world premiere of that show. This was an immersive theater experience. We had audience members sitting at banquettes, at tables and barstools, and we were walking around, weaving through, and playing in the entire space. I could be doing a scene or singing a song, and I would be sitting right next to an audience member. It was very close quarters in the show.

I just remember I was singing and then all of a sudden, I just see out of the corner of my eye, someone being like, “Stop, stop! We have to stop.” I just stopped. I had experienced this before with technical difficulties. Sometimes, you just have to stop the show. The beauty of a live performance is that there’s always a risk something might go wrong, which is also why it’s thrilling to me, and why it’s really hard, but exciting. There’s an adrenaline rush that comes with that.

My parents also happened to be in the audience that night. So I look up, and the lights come on, and the stage manager makes an announcement that somebody in the audience had passed out. In that specific moment, I remember thinking it’s very important that, because I’m up here on this stage, I’m calm. Nobody else is going to be calm in this moment. [The individual who passed out] was actually sitting right next to my parents at the same table. The stage manager was like, “Is there a doctor in the house?” My dad is a doctor, and he was sitting right there. So I said just that. Thank goodness we were actually able to stop the show and take care of her. We got her in an ambulance, and she was taken care of. We found out she was all right at the end of the day, but it was definitely scary. I thinking [stopping the show] is 100 percent what we should be doing.

In a situation where you have someone who is struggling or has a health issue and there’s a live performance happening, it’s OK to stop in an emergency. You have to stop. Sometimes the show can’t go on. Sometimes you have to take a moment, make sure they’re OK, and make sure everybody’s safe. Then, the show can proceed from there. It was an example of how, in a situation like that, you’re intimately sitting with people very closely. You’re in a space that might be very small, and it’s always important to be safe and take care of each other. You never know what’s going to happen. A huge credit to Ars Nova and to the stage managers at that time. They really showed up and took care of everyone and made sure we were safe.

As we’ve learned in the past couple of years, it’s so special that we can gather in a space and be there as a community. In an event like that, let’s show up for each other. I think we ultimately know how to do that. It’s second nature for us to show up for other people and take care of each other. How can we show up and be there for reach other not in an emergency? Why wait for a pandemic to be helpful and engage your community? Let’s start doing that before an emergency happens.

Talkback

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

Phillipa Soo currently stars as Guenevere in Lerner & Loewe’s Camelot at Lincoln Center Theater. Tickets can be purchased here.