“There can be 100 positive comments and one nasty one and that’s the one I hang my hat on.”

Powerhouse performer Shoshana Bean made her Broadway debut in the Tony Award-winning production of Hairspray in 2002 and has proved a vocal juggernaut ever since.

The Los Angeles-based musical theatre star has inhabited some of the genre’s most iconic leading lady roles including Elphaba in Wicked, Fanny Brice in Funny Girl and CeeCee Bloom in Beaches.

“It was really stifling and frustrating and it made me feel like I was doing musical theatre wrong, that I just didn’t have the instincts to do it right.”

After a 13-year absence where she concentrated on her solo music and performance career, Shoshana was coaxed back to Broadway in 2019 and cast against type as Jenna in Waitress, a refreshingly modern and widely acclaimed musical adaptation of a 2007 film.

In this podcast, Shoshana talks honestly about the acute demands of audience expectation; what it’s like to be publicly judged, critiqued and compared; and how “making it” on Broadway sometimes isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.

“That’s what you think … I’ve got to get to Broadway … then you get there and it’s like, ‘Why is this not enough?’ Because it’s not the Holy Grail.”

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GUEST: Shoshana Bean, Broadway star and chart-topping singer

HOST: Adam Brunes

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