Veteran stage actor Johanna Day is up with her second Tony nomination and vying for her first win this Sunday, June 11 at the 71st annual Tony Awards. She came by Backstage’s Brooklyn HQ June 1 to discuss her work in playwright Lynn Nottage’s Pulitzer Prize-winning drama, “Sweat,” under the direction of Kate Whoriskey. Catch the highlights below, where she offers insight on creating chemistry with her co-stars and keeping a long-running show fresh night after night.
Keep your eye on cast chemistry, even through confrontation.
“What helps me every time I’m on stage, because there’s a lot of confrontation [in ‘Sweat’, is] if you just keep remembering who you’re talking to, that you’re talking to your best and oldest friend. Even when it’s confrontation, there’s a different way that people talk to each other. Sometimes even rougher. But also, it’s pleading in some of those scenes, to have one of us understand each other. You just have to remember you love each other.”
There’s a ‘never-ending education’ to long-running plays.
“I’ll do a play for the longest time and three months after finishing it, I’ll be thinking about it walking down the street and [have a new realization]. There’s still parts in this play that I’m [figuring out], which I love, but I’m constantly working on [it], trying something different every time. You know, some of [the scenes] aren’t so easy. It’s never-ending learning, especially when you’re in a play about tight relationships. That’s a never-ending education.”
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Never stop reading the script, even after opening night.
“In a perfect world—and these days, we don’t have as much rehearsal time—but in perfect land, I like to read the play a million times and then when a rehearsal starts, I don’t put the pages down right away. I memorize the lines better that way because there’s a reason you’re saying what you’re saying. Even though that can change through the course of rehearsal, there’s a reason you’re saying this because you’re going over to the table (or whatever).... Another thing that happens, too, is I think it’s important to keep looking, no matter how long you’re doing the play, to keep looking at the script. Because first of all, you might forget some stuff…. That’s a panic attack right there. So I like to keep looking at the script to kind of remember what it looks like on the page.”
Mutual respect is imperative in the audition room.
“I think you need to remember that the casting directors, director, writer, whoever’s in the room, are seeing a lot of people, and they don’t need you to do a little, ‘Love me, please!’ act. You know what I mean? I think you need to be friendly and straightforward and don’t waste their time—and that’s why you should really, really prepare as much as possible. And also, I think it’s important, if you start out and you don’t like the way it’s going, you have every right to to be like, ‘I’m gonna start again.’ I think that’s something I didn’t realize for a long time. It’s your life you’re working on there. You’re trying to get a job!”
Want to hear more from Day? Watch her full sit-down with Backstage here.
Want to star on the Broadway stage? Check out Backstage’s theater audition listings!