Cutting Room Floor: More with Teresa Stanley

Patch sat down with actress and singer Teresa Stanley and Nate Jacobs, artistic director of Westcoast Black Theatre Troupe for a wide ranging interview to preview Jacobs' Love, Sung in the Key of Aretha. There's a lot we couldn't fit into our story, so we present to you bonus material of our interview with Teresa Stanley and Nate Jacobs.

Teresa Stanley on Coming Back to Sarasota:

"It’s amazing. I’ve been very overwhelmed and crying a lot of the time. For me it’s a platform we all worked for. We all tried to pave away so we could have a building we did our shows out of because we were moving from place to place. I stepped on the stage for the first time and I had a moment because I remembered what it took to get there. I’ve never got to actually be on the stage and whoah—overwhelmed."

On Making it to Broadway:

Stanley:

"Once I got there, it was surreal in a way. I couldn’t believe it but I had to believe it because I was there— you know what I’m saying? It was happening right there in front of my face."

Jacobs:

"It was some years down the line – "Dreamgirls." The Herald-Tribune critic Jay Handelman called me and said, 'Teresa is now a triple threat because now she can act.' I said I know!

There too, she just had released it and has phenomenal effort. Just to see her come into that flower, seeing her walking on that stage on Broadway with that same light – not diminishing at all.

It was just the best gift she has ever given me. I was like, 'Oh my god, I was a part of that?' I was sitting there like a kid and was being therein the glory of her dream.

It was just worth all of my sacrifice of keeping this platform alive over the years."

How Stanley decided to do Love, Sung in the Key of Aretha:

Stanley: 

"I found out about it while I was doing the tour. We’ve been talking about doing an Aretha show for a long time. What it would be no one really ever knew, but that’s where his end comes in."

Jacobs: 

"I had been talking to Teresa but she had flown off to Broadway and pretty busy. She was down for a few months but been rolling ever since, two, three years straight.

I was like OK, I got the Aretha show, but I don’t got Teresa. She came home for a break after Rock of Ages and she said 'I don’t know. I really don’t want to be away from New York for too long because you know how it is. (Jacobs claps three times, signaling the immediacy of New York.)

When it got closer to the casting, I got a little depressed because I said 'OK, this show is not what it’s supposed to be without Teresa Stanley or someone else to materialize her energy. Then I said if I’m going to go equity, I’m going to go equity with who I really want rather than somebody else.'

So I called her again. 'I don’t know Nate, I really don’t know. I just don’t know what I really want to do.'"

Stanley: 

"I think I said no three times."

Jacobs: 

"So she called me one day and said, 'You know what, everything is telling me I need to come home. I’ve never came back to give back to what has helped me. Everything is telling me now is the time.'

She was telling me, 'Everything was going to be a big blessing for me as well as being a blessing to the company and I want to come.'

I was just like Yes! Because I started not to call. She told me no three times and I wanted her to tell me no one more time. I was just going to try it. She just had enough time to think for a minute."

Stanley:

"Usually you get back, you get right back into auditioning.

You probably start auditioning before you leave and you know, just get right to it.

It’s a choice of balance for me a lot of the times, at the same time, why not come back at home and work with the company that get me to the places where I am now. Where’s that at? I have no idea. It’s at least a step to another level, so I have to give back and give thanks."

Teresa Stanley the Professional:

Jacobs:

"I talk about her all the time. So all the newbies have the highest respect for her. Everybody loves Teresa. You cannot not love Teresa so she comes back and she’s the big sister, the mother to some, and cause she’s a say what you mean, mean what you say, type person.

Everybody in the troupe respects her for that. People come to me all the time oh they're just blown away.

They haven’t really seen her in full scale yet. But even rehearsal the actors come back and say, 'Oh God, Teresa is amazing. She’s just amazing.'

That excellent of a performer and somebody from their platform that is truly out there and working in the business that most of them in my company are dreaming to be.

Teresa knows what that is. That’s a reality for her. They know it can happen. That happen to me because happened for Teresa.

Teresa doesn’t shy away from telling them what they need to get there. She has been doing all of her private inspirational moments with just about everybody in that cast.

Then I told her before she goes back to New York, I really want to give her time where we get a little time where she really sits down and shares what it is to be a working artist in New York because that’s what they all said they want to do, and we have somebody right here that has been willing to come back home to say, 'I love you all and just let me give you the insides of what I know you going to need before you take off.'"

...

"You can see the actors who've never seen her perform. They don't know what to do. They don't.

She'll just mosey, mosey, mosey, and one night, she'll just go OK [and release.]"

Stanley:

"I'm still finding it, but the places I feel secure in, I just go for it because I have to give a full show in about a minute.

You will see the work and all that this man has really put in me from a child come to life on this stage.

All the work, all the times they put me on, all the times I was crying as they pulled this gift out of me."

On Discovering and Developing Teresa Stanley:

Jacobs:

"She opened her mouth singing that song [from Purlie], and it blew my mind. I had audition, audition, audition. It was like a week before I start rehearsal and I’d found nobody.

Out of nowhere, Teresa just came on my end. It’s hard to sing those songs and be the very voice I wanted to hear. It was an amazing experience and she still couldn’t see what I saw.

She stepped on stage and she told her mother, 'Don’t ever take me back to that theater ever again.

For some reason she investigated and that’s what she wanted to do. Some years later she graduate and went to college and told me, 'I don’t like this. My mother’s forcing me to do this but I really want to do, I really want to do this.'

I already knew it. I don’t want to get into it because I didn't want her mother to be upset."

Stanley:

"You never really know what your purpose really is especially around that age. sometimes it’s hard to figure that out. She was just trying to help me get some kind of foundation and she had no idea what I wanted to do either.

We talked in the van about it. The white van was our mode of transportation for about 10 years for everything.

I talked to him and said, 'I really want to do this. I don’t know how I’m going to there there, but I really need your help.'"

How Love, Sung in the Key of Aretha was conceived:

Jacobs:

It’s four women. Three women, more seasoned and mature, and there’s a young girl in love. Their lives are threaded together in life.

It causes Mattie, who Teresa plays in the show, is a very seasoned singer gone worldwide and now she’s settles back home at this apartment complex where these women live with her. And she opens a club so she has another platform to sing in.

She becomes the strong type and inspiration for the community because she is a black woman who came back and making it happen. People respect her highly like that.

Through that story line, the songs everyone knows from Aretha Franklin comes through that end.

What I needed is the spirit of Aretha Franklin, which is a very spiritual experience that Mattie sings. It’s a spiritual experience. She comes from the very passionate place that everybody appreciates singers coming from. She sings and makes her music relative to human experience.

That's why this storyline that these songs are layered on top of makes the impact even stronger.

All of her songs are human experience – everybody can relate. It doesn’t matter what your color is. Everybody has those experiences that Aretha sings about.

And Teresa’s that kind of singer. When you hear her sing it’s a spiritual experience. She just has a God-given gift. Even as a little girl she was able to do that kind of stuff before she knew what she was doing.

It’s not just delivering a song. It’s delivering a experience. So you need a real special singer who understand what that is."

Stanley:

"The audience will hear the music differently as it goes through the storylines. They’ll see how it really relates what you’re going through. Somebody going through this pain or happiness or whatever it is.

They’ll hear the music in a new way."

On being a "star":

Stanley:

"People are like, 'Oh, she’s a star.' I don’t really see it that way.

I’m just Teresa  doing my normal thing and I say, 'Hey, I’m working on it.' I’m so blessed I learned how to accept how I am. It’s not boastful or anything. I just accept that this is my gift, this is my purpose.

Nate is like a father to me. I don’t see it like that. I don’t think about it. 'Oh you were on TV this morning,' I don’t think about it.

'Oh you just did a show and Tom Cruise was in your audience' – I’m just Teresa who does the same thing that everyone else does day-to-day, I just sing and act and I have a platform that I can do it on. That’s a person as a result of life experience, as a result of a journey that I’ve become because life doesn’t afford you many opportunities to share, give back and all of that.

Once you have that opportunity, you have to take it. And the only reason I did that is because someone gave that to me.

The things that Nate shared to me. There’s many people in my life that seeded little things inside and now this is the flower blossoming. This is the flower watered and cultivating.

I have to do it. I have to do what people did to me because I felt like it would be a disservice to the gift that they saw in me. For me not to see that gift in someone else and also help for them to get to their personal level of greatness."

On the guidance of Nate Jacobs:

Stanley:

"He has an amazing gift to help people realize what their purpose truly is. It might not be theater. It might be a singing artist or whatever artist you call yourself being.

I tell them all the time – take advantage of this platform. The things Nate is telling you is not for no reason because believe me.

It’s going to come back. I have called him from the wings, called him crying — 'You just don’t understand, everything you’ve said is golden' I’m an actual case study, and I’ve grown so much."

If Love, Sung in the Key of Aretha can go national:

Stanley:

"I thought about it a few times. We’re about to go into tech and all that.

Everybody who’s apart of this club you hear them. 'Oh my god, this is so good.' Just the thought that oh my God, this show can really [take off.]"

Jacobs: 

"Everybody goes 'It’s like a movie. It’s like a real movie.' And we started hearing it from Day One, which you very seldom hear.

Most of the times the actors show up and do what they need to do, but they’re caught up in the moment that I’m apart doing something really good."

On relaxing in Sarasota:

Stanley:

"The first thing I wanted to do is go by the beach and that’s exactly what I did because I don’t know. It’s very cleansing and especially when you’re away from home for a minute just to say 'OK you can be grounded again. You can walk this journey, you’re going to be fine and have some peace in your life.'

And that’s what the ocean does to me.

Most to be honest, being around family. Spending time with my mom because they’re all family.

... I'm a movie goer. I'm sorry, I go to the movies.  I’ll be in New York, by myself, go right on down — because I have to have the ambiance of 42nd Street — I have to go down and hustle and bustle by myself, but I've gone to the movies a few times since I was here.

And because my purpose has been work, I haven’t been here for the last five years, I come, I go to sleep, I wake up thinking about work. In between then, just spending time together with my family whether going to lunch or going to the beach."