When the local high school puts on a musical, it’s not typically a huge attraction.

The students on stage pour their hearts out, dreaming of someday stepping into the spotlight on Broadway.

A half-empty theater applauds enthusiastically, and everyone goes out for ice cream.

It’s nice.

It’s quaint.

But in 2005, our suburban high school outside Buffalo, NY put on a musical that became national news.

From Flame to Fame

I attended Williamsville East High School, a top-rated public school whose mascot is The Flames.

You read that right.

In 2004 a talented junior tried out for Season 3 of American Idol, and managed to make it all the way to the Top 6.

John Stevens was a tall, red-headed crooner in the style of Dean Martin or Frank Sinatra. He was a fresh twist for Idol, who up until then had focused almost exclusively on modern pop voices.

Guys and Dolls

In February 2005, the year after John’s Idol run, our school put on the Broadway classic Guys and Dolls.

John Stevens was cast as the lead Sky Masterson. I was head of the stage crew and running the sound board.

Running live sound for theater is a thrilling nightmare. There are dozens of wireless microphones to keep track of and a million things that can go wrong.

The audience’s enjoyment of the musical depends on you never missing a cue. If you get everything right, nobody notices. If you make one mistake, everyone hears it.

And on opening night, I was in for a doozy.

Walking up to the school I noticed a massive crowd of people standing outside the locked doors.

I asked our theater director, “What’s with everyone outside? The show doesn’t start for 2 hours.”

“Oh,” she said, “They’re not parents. Those are people who’ve driven or flown across the country to see John Stevens in his final high school performance.”

Apart from all-school assemblies, I’d never seen our auditorium full to the point of standing room only.

It honestly felt like Broadway.

Luck, be a lady tonight…

The entire first act went perfectly. At intermission I joined the crew backstage to sternly remind all the leads not to touch their mic packs.

“Don’t take them off, turn them off, or mute them. I have everyone muted at the board, trust me. Just don’t touch anything.”

The second act began and we continued bringing down the house. Finally we arrived at “Luck Be a Lady,” Sky Masteron’s biggest moment of the night. 

Although Sinatra did not play Masterson in the 1955 movie adaptation, he later recorded the song and, for many, it has become the most enduring rendition.

I was standing in a sold-out audience who had come from all over the country to see John Stevens, the Sinatra-esque singer from American Idol, waiting all night to hear “Luck Be a Lady.”

John opened his mouth to sing the iconic first line, “They call you lady luck…”

But no one could hear him. No sound was coming from his mic.

I looked down at the board, thinking I’d missed my first cue of the night and forgotten to push his mic up. But there it was, pushed up where it should be. The trouble is, there was no signal coming from his mic pack.

The problem wasn’t at the board. It was on stage, on the pack, tucked into John’s pants. It wasn’t something I could fix. 

I’d find out later that his mic pack had been set to “mute” at some point during intermission. It may have been an accident. We’ll never know, and at that moment it didn’t matter. 

The audience needed to hear John sing. So I took one deep breath and began “following him.”

Hanging by a mic

Being a high school we didn’t have the budget to mic every single person on stage, only the leads.

The solution was to hang five microphones from the rafters. We spread them out above the stage in order to capture chorus numbers. 

As I took in that deep breath, I realized the only solution available to me was just above John’s head.

I noted which of the five hanging mics was nearest and pushed up the fader. 

“You’re on this date with me…”

John’s beautiful baritone silked through the speakers and the audience went nuts.

But of course, that wasn’t the end of it for me.

John moved all over the stage during the 4-min song and dance number, and I had to keep pushing up and pulling down faders as he crossed under different mics.

It was thrilling, exhausting, and a perfect microcosm of theater as an industry.

Tapping into Creativity

What’s so special about theater is that everyone from the spotlit lead to the stage hand taping down cables is doing something creative.

I recently had the incredible honor of sitting down with two-time Tony award-winning Broadway producer Ken Davenport.

I asked Ken if he was worried about theater people when COVID hit in March 2020, shutting down not just Broadway but live theater in every corner of the map.

Here’s what he said:

“Well, that’s, what’s been amazing. I should have known better when I was concerned.

…

No, they weren’t down. They were like, this is what we do. We’re theater. It’s always hard. So what else have you got for us?

 

And actually, when you think about it, who best to pivot than creative people? People with an incredible imagination.

 

It’s the people that are stuck in the 9-5 I do the same thing, corporate, every single day, gig. Those are the people I worry about the most now because they haven’t been trained in imagination and creativity.”

If you’re not in theater or  the arts, you might be worried by that. But Ken continued:

“Every task can be creative. Every position is creative.

 

Steve jobs, Henry Ford, Sara Blakely – whoever you want to talk about in terms of like a corporate pioneer was an artist – they were artists.”

Being an artist doesn’t just mean painting, writing, or singing. 

It’s creative when a receptionist takes an extra 10 seconds to really listen to a customer and make them feel welcome. 

It’s creative when an accountant discovers how to file a family’s taxes in a way that saves them $2000 so they can take their kid on a vacation.

Creativity is a mindset, not a title, that’s accessible to everyone in any field.

And if there’s one thing I’ve learned from interviewing dozens of people about their 2020 Pivots, it’s that when luck isn’t on your side, you can create your own.

Listen to my full conversation with Ken Davenport where we discuss the future of Broadway, or watch here: