When all the world’s a stage, it’s sometimes hard to get your footing quite right and steady, especially in such a competitive career choice. This is something very familiar to actor, singer and stage performer Andrea Macasaet.
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Before her rise to Broadway stardom with SIX the Musical, Macasaet was once very close to giving theater up. But then a small spark and a chance taken on herself. Next thing she knows, she’s under those big bright lights and wearing those iconic green sleeves.
SIX the Musical just finished its first-ever run in the Philippines this October 20th, giving Filipino fans a taste of what they’ve been missing all these years since the inception of the iconic theatrical marvel created by Toby Marlow and Lucy Moss. Initially performed at the cultural Edinburgh Fringe Festival in 2017, SIX has since been seen on grand stages such as that of the West End and Broadway. It also has quite the list of accolades, from winning several Tony Awards to being nominated for a Grammy for their Broadway Opening Night live recording.
Andrea Macasaet, one of the original Broadway Queens who took on the role of Anne Boleyn finds solace in that very same recording, knowing that the live screams of the audience not only include the voices of Lin Manuel Miranda and other stage legends, but also the excited and proud calls of her family. But it hasn’t always been easy for the performer. Even now, there are still striking moments of uncertainty for her. One thing Macasaet is sure of is that wherever this career takes her, she will always find time to ensure that her feet stay firmly planted on the ground.
THE MAKINGS OF A QUEEN
Born and raised in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Macasaet’s early life was shaped by this cultural blend of her Filipino parents and the Canadian environment surrounding her. Her dad hails from Lipa, Batangas while her mom is from Pasay. Growing up, she watched her entire family work hard and prepare for their jobs with the utmost care.
There’s something about this Filipino work ethic, the hopes of making one’s family proud; it’s an energy that lingers throughout Macasaet’s life, including her career. “As Filipinos, we’re just ingrained to work hard and show the best of ourselves in any room,” she says affirmatively in our interview. Yet hard work and determination weren’t the only things imbued onto her by her Filipino roots. She also saw adventurous karaoke competitions, even at an early age.
She started taking singing lessons at the age of six and was first introduced to the musical theater scene in elementary school. But she never truly pursued it seriously until she got to high school. As a child, she had the Filipino icon of Lea Salonga to look up to. Yet there was something very intangible about her experience in a smaller city within Canada wherein she didn’t see blatant representation in close proximity.
“When you’re growing up, you’re going to dance studios and local plays, and the people there don’t look like you. It makes it hard to see tangibility in that career,” she says so, earnestly. That’s why it’s so important for her that now, she’s in a position of being someone she needed when she was younger.
EMPOWERED BY SIX
The journey to achieving her dreams hasn’t exactly been easy for Macasaet. She finds fortune in the fact that she never felt the familial pressure of having a concrete and practical career path, a stereotype seen in most Asian representations. Her parents, although they never wanted to see her rejected and heartbroken, have always been supportive of her dreams.
Macasaet does, however, stress that the verbiage and expressions were something she and her parents worked hard on. “There have been times when things didn’t go my way and my parents didn’t know how to navigate what that looked like emotionally. The easy thing to say is, ‘Okay, that didn’t work out! You can always do something else!’ While that is encouraging, it might not always be helpful,” she admits. But having a loving and supporting family is only ever half the battle, especially in such a make-or-break industry.
When she first auditioned for SIX, it was at a point in her life where she had completely given up musical theater. She was getting rejection after rejection, and it was starting to take a mental and emotional toll on her. “I finally had enough because it was making me question my worth and it didn’t put me in a great headspace,” she recalls.
At the time, she had been working at Lululemon and found that she liked her job. She went back to school and aimed to pursue a career in human resources. All of a sudden, she stumbled across open-call auditions for this elusive musical called SIX. It was the last day to submit and at the time, Macasaet didn’t have any representation.
But as if destiny was doing its thing to lead the artist to that very moment, when she got the call to go to Toronto, she took a chance and used her savings to fly herself to the last slot of the day for the Toronto auditions. It was a big risk, but she knew if she didn’t try, she would always be wondering what could’ve been.
That small step forward proved to be a game-changer and opened a gateway for Macasaet in terms of finding a place within the industry. It felt like a weight was lifted off her shoulders. She also found confidence in Anne Boleyn as a character who helped her become unapologetic about being herself.
“It was a gift to do it every night with inspiring women who are some of my closest friends even now. To be so free and authentically myself because – the way that Toby and Lucy have written Anne Boleyn is feisty, sharp and smart – she’s so fearless in what she wants! Playing that every night, it starts to soak into your everyday life; that fearlessness and being so, word for word, Sorry Not Sorry about how you walk the world.”
WHERE IS A QUEEN TO GO FROM HERE?
But even with the high she initially felt with SIX, the anxiety and pressure to constantly solidify her place in the industry will never truly go away. It’s a profession of uncertainties and with chances of stagnation, and it’s a daunting world to be a part of. She knows this very well.
“Choosing a career in theater is always going to be a scary, scary place. Of course, we’re only human. We’re going to feel anxious all the time. But I think we always have to remember that when we get the opportunity, there’s so much joy in it. We get wrapped up in ‘What’s going on next?’ or ‘I need to get booked for this,’ that when we do get the chance to do it and we’re in it, we forget to soak in the joy of doing it. We need to be experiencing life in the now, not like in the future.”
Feet firmly planted on the ground, and SIX behind her, Macasaet is now moving forward with brand new adventures in her career, and making previous dreams come true. Among other achievements, she played Mimi Marquez at the Stratford Festival production of RENT, something she once thought was unattainable. Beyond that, she also found herself in an all-Filipino production called Ma-Buhay!
For a little girl who didn’t see herself represented in the local productions around her small city, being part of something that is made by Filipinos for Filipinos was a gift she never thought she needed. With her spirit set in the right direction and the confidence gained from her time at SIX, Andrea Macasaet moves forward, taking the rest of her career one day at a time.
Photos courtesy of Andrea Macasaet
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