Gayle Seay
Interview Highlights
Women in leadership positions can drive needed changes in the theatre industry.
Change is hard, and it doesn’t happen overnight.
It’s important to use your power to advocate for new voices, including women and people of color.
Open communication and cooperation are critical for theatre. We’re all working toward the same goal.
Find Gayle Online:
Gayle’s Current and Upcoming Work:
Check out the 2022 season at STAGES St. Louis!
The Karate Kid May 25–June 26
In the Heights July 22–Aug 21
A Chorus Line Sept 9–Oct 9
Bio
Gayle Seay (she/her) has had three lives in the theatre so far (she was once a Cat named Demeter, ya know!). She has been a performer on Broadway, national tours, cruise ships, regional theatres, symphonies, commercials, commercial print, etc. She then went on to be a casting director and co-owner of Wojcik/Seay Casting, casting all of the things she once did on stage. She is now the artistic director of STAGES St. Louis and currently working on the pre-Broadway production of The Karate Kid - The Musical. She will be the upcoming director of the last show of the STAGES season, A Chorus Line, cementing her 4th life in the theatre... Having once been a cat, she wonders what the other 5 lives will be....
“The opportunities I’ve had for travel, for learning, the different cultures and the different people I’ve been exposed to, are all part of what makes me who I am. And it all came from this business and this industry.”
Gayle’s Creative Journey
Amy: We are here with the fabulous Gayle Seay! Gayle, please introduce yourself, share your pronouns, and tell us about what you do in the theatre industry.
Gayle: My name is Gayle Holsman Seay, I go by she/her, and right now, I am the artistic director of STAGES St. Louis in St. Louis, Missouri.
Hayley: Gayle, how did you find your way into theatre?
Amy: And into your current position?
Gayle: This is my third life in theatre. I started as an actor. I graduated from high school and went on a tour of a show and never looked back. It’s fascinating that I’ve done all of the things that I’ve done without a college degree. I’m not saying that people shouldn’t go to college. But at the same time, we are in an industry that is more about what you bring to the table than what you’ve learned. So I did this little stock tour. I was going to go to college, and I said to my parents, “I’ll go back if this doesn’t work out. Let’s see what happens.” And knock on wood, it worked out.
I was extremely fortunate. I got to do national tours and cruise ships and symphonies and Broadway shows and regional shows all across the country and commercials and independent films. I really did have an extremely fortunate career. I ticked off all the things I wanted to do.
Somewhere in there, I was at an audition for A Chorus Line, and the casting director said, “What would you do if you couldn’t dance anymore?” Which is the premise of the play. And she went down the line of people. Luckily, I was toward the end, so by the time she got to me, I had had time to think about it. I said, “I think I’d like to do what you’re doing.” The next day, I called my friend Scott Wojcik, who was working in casting, and said, “What exactly do you do? And can I help you?”
I started interning at the office, and it became my survival job. And then I started working with a couple of different offices. I was doing Cats on Broadway and I was going to that casting office every day, and on my one day off, and sometimes between shows - taking all that stuff off my face and running down there and running back - I realized, “I love this. I love casting. I love what I’m doing.”
I loved the pace of it, that it was different all the time. There are different directors and different visions - the creative muscle gets to work too. I loved being able to give people opportunities that perhaps wouldn’t get them. I loved getting people in the door. Once you gain the trust of directors, it’s easier to say, “I know this person has nothing on their resume, but please see them.” Or “I know that this is a straight play and this person only has musicals on their resume, but they’re an amazing actor. Please see them.” And I would say 99% of the time it worked. We were able to establish such good trust with directors.
For a while, I was doing both performing and casting. I kept my union name as Holsman, and I used Seay for casting, to try to differentiate. At some point, I was like, “I think I’m good. I can transition into just doing casting.” I did it on my own for a little bit, I was living in California. Then Scott Wojcik and I were together one New Year’s Eve, and he said, “Do you want to come back to New York? Let’s do this.”
So then I was casting with Scott for about 12 years. We did great, it was very successful and really awesome. And the industry started changing a lot. Everything was harder. To me, our jobs started becoming less creative, less input, less like anyone cared what we had to say. We were doing replacements constantly, and it was so hard to put any show away and work on the next one when people kept leaving. Actors are really quick to jump ship now, and that’s their decision, I don’t fault them for it. But it just wasn’t as fun anymore.
Then this opportunity came along, and I didn’t see it coming. I was so perfectly content doing what I was doing - we were still fighting the good fight, and I was still in it. I’ve always loved actors and wanted to advocate for them no matter what. So that was my number one goal, to advocate for actors while still keeping our clients happy. It’s funny, when people asked, “What do you do?” I would say, “I manage personalities.”
I came to visit some friends here at STAGES St. Louis. The artistic director was thinking of retiring. These two guys started this theatre with a tiny budget 35 years ago, and now we’re in tech for the pre-Broadway tryout of The Karate Kid. What they’ve grown is astounding. So I came out, and they showed me the new space and asked if I’d be interested in applying to be their new artistic director. It meant leaving my business that was my baby and moving here and doing something completely different. They did a national search, and I had a million interviews.
I said to Michael, the artistic director, “I don’t even know exactly all of the things you do!” But I did have a lot of institutional knowledge about STAGES, because I was an actor here for the first time in 1996. In 1998, I started casting for them - that was in my transition period. So I’ve been on the payroll since 1996, I’ve been out here every year, I knew a lot of people who worked here. That was definitely a bonus, all this knowledge I had of the theatre in general.
And they showed me this amazing space. Our theatre is absolutely gorgeous, and it got me thinking, “Wow, if I’m actually in charge, maybe I can help some of the change happen that I would like to see.” I would actually have a say. That was really attractive. I’m also on producing teams for a couple of shows in development, so I’ve been learning so many things from so many different places in my life that this really did seem like the culmination of all of it.
Having been on all sides of the industry, I have so much respect for the tech crew and wardrobe and all the people who work the various jobs. I know what they do, and I value them, and I’m already fighting and advocating for them here in ways I couldn’t before as a casting director. There’s a performing arts academy attached to our theatre, and I am making it a goal to shine a spotlight on it and expand programming. I’ve already started master classes. Some friends who are on the Hamilton tour and the My Fair Lady tour and the Mean Girls tour just came and did classes here.
So that’s how I got here. In terms of what I do, I do a lot of things. I still manage personalities - just more of them.
Gayle’s Current Work and Creative Mission
Hayley: Can you tell us about what you’re working on right now?
Gayle: The show that’s happening right now is The Karate Kid pre-Broadway tryout. It’s directed by Amon Miyamoto, who is the first Asian director at Stages. He was the first Japanese director on Broadway, for Pacific Overtures. Drew Gasparini did the lyrics and the music, and Andrew Resnick is music directing. They are so flipping talented. And our choreographers, Keone and Mari Madrid - I come from a dance background, and they blow my mind every day. I can’t wait for the world to see what they are doing.
The story is beautiful, the set is beautiful, the way that it's written and the take on a story that everybody knows is really quite good. I was like, “A Karate Kid musical? Really?” And then when I saw the workshop, I said, “Oh, okay!” It’s not what I expected at all. It's beautiful and heartfelt. What this team is doing is a game changer. I haven’t felt this way about choreography since I saw Hamilton. The storytelling is within every beat of the music.
Amy: Your passion is so exciting, it's exciting to hear you talk about it.
Gayle: And I’m just as excited about the rest of our season! The next show is In the Heights. And they've never done anything like that here either. In the Heights is my baby, because it’s the first time I got to pick the team here - the director/choreographer, the set designer… We have the Broadway set designer, Anna Louizos. She's amazing and magical, and our crew loves every second of being with her. And Luis Salgado was in the original production of In the Heights, and he's the first Latinx director here. And A Chorus Line is the third show of the season, that’s the one I'm directing.
Hayley: I love hearing about all the changes you’re implementing already. Many people in your position would be nervous to disrupt the community, and I love that you’re coming in and saying, “This is what I believe in. This is what we’re doing.” That’s what we need all over this country.
Gayle: It’s a challenge. I don’t think it’s that anybody doesn’t want the change, it’s just that change is hard. And I have to remember that too. If I feel beaten down, like, “What am I doing here if I can’t do anything?” And I have to remember that change isn’t going to happen overnight. This is a red state. Things that are not normal to me are normal to a lot of people here. So things that are very acceptable to me aren’t acceptable to other people. We have to inch them in rather than shove it in their faces.
Amy: What’s your big-picture vision for where you want the theatre to go under your leadership?
Gayle: I would love for it to be a place for tryouts and developing new shows. We have all the capabilities - clearly, because we’re doing it! Our shops are astounding and huge. When you hear “regional theatre,” you don’t think, “We can do this, we can do that.” But we can do all of the things.
It’s also very important to me to advocate for new voices in general. More women, more people of color - directors and writers, just new voices being heard. I’m very conscious of the fact that there are other theatre companies in the area - we have a Black Rep and we have St. Louis Rep, and I don’t want to oversaturate or pull from anybody else’s territory. So I’m trying. I get to pick the seasons, and I am talking to different directors, people they’ve never had here before. It’s not gonna be a season of Anything Goes and Oklahoma and Carousel. I’m putting some things in there that these audiences haven’t seen yet, at least not from Stages.
Hayley: Gayle, what is your creative mission?
Gayle: I don’t know if I’ve really thought about having a mission. My goal is to make good theatre that makes people think or allows an escape for people. Going in and laughing for two hours is sometimes just as good as going in and walking out with good conversations.
I really want a happy environment. We've all learned the hard way what’s important in the last few years. It’s really important to me that everybody communicates, that people get along better, and that people are accepting of each other and of each other’s ideas and needs. It’s hard to accommodate everyone’s specific needs, but if people are heard, I think that’s more than half the battle. What Actor A might really need is completely against what a designer wants, but there has to be a middle ground. If everybody just complains in their corners, then nothing will ever get accomplished or get better. It’s theatre, you know? It's not brain surgery. It’s not COVID. It’s theatre, and it should be fun.
Hayley: And fulfilling and exciting and passionate - all those things.
Gayle: I said to a director, “My philosophy is: There’s no crying in baseball and there’s no yelling in theatre.” It was very funny because he hadn't seen A League of Their Own, so he was very confused. And then he laughed. In one of my interviews for this job, they asked me, “When you've had conflict in your casting job and in life, how do you deal with it? When things get heated and voices get raised…” And I said, “Yeah, that’s never happened with me.” It doesn’t get that far. I immediately say, “Okay, let’s sit down, let’s talk about this.” Get this out in the open, ‘cause there’s just no time and energy for people to walk around holding things in.
We can’t be that fragile, or we can’t be in theatre. Everybody has the same goal. That’s the thing everybody has to remember at the end of the day. No one’s discounting your feelings or thoughts or opinions, but we all have to get to the end of the road together. Yeah, but I don’t know if I actually have a mission.
Amy: Well, that sounds like a lot of elements of a mission!
Thoughts on Gender, Identity, and Mentorship
Amy: What does womanhood mean to you, Gayle, and how does it fit into your identity?
Gayle: I never really thought about it. I certainly have noticed pluses and minuses in my life. We used to joke, “Oh, go flirt with that person and you’ll get what you want.” It's so interesting how things have changed, and now I find that so - not repulsive, but incorrect. Not the way it really should be.
There's so much change in the world, and in terms of this, I am all for every bit of it. Women need to get paid the exact same amount as men. That’s still not happening, and that is so frustrating. I find women to be extremely good multitaskers, have more patience - this is just what I find, but there are probably studies that agree with me. (laughs)
I am definitely proud to be a woman. I’m glad I’m a woman. I also feel like we can take a little bit more on our shoulders. Part of it is inherent, just in what women are physically built to go through in life, like having babies and getting your period…
Hayley: Gayle, have you had influential mentors who have guided you along your journey?
Gayle: I’ve had different people at different times. Scott Wojcik has probably been my biggest mentor, honestly. He was already in casting when I went to work for him. And then other people gave me opportunities. I worked with a gentleman named Joel Carlton, who passed away a few years back. He was a casting person and then an agent. Then I worked with Jamibeth Margolis for a while, we had Margolis/Seay Casting, and I definitely learned a lot from her. Then going back to Scott’s office - Scott’s really good at what he does, I got to learn a lot from him.
Also Michael Hamilton, the artistic director I replaced here. Sitting in the casting room next to him for 15 years - the way he treated every person with such respect from day one. Everyone had a smile, a little conversation, eye contact - everybody had their moment and everybody was seen. I learned that from him, and I took that into my casting too. If you just take a second and say hi and smile at somebody, it changes everything.
How to Improve the Theatre Industry
Hayley: You talked a bit about the changes you’re implementing at Stages. What would you like to see change in the theatre industry as a whole?
Gayle: Communication. People don’t communicate. They jump to conclusions about what they think is happening without knowing it all. If everybody was just transparent and just said the things, we’d have so much less of all of it.
I took this amazing course at Commercial Theatre Institute. You sit in a theatre for 3 days, and every single person you could imagine comes in, from lawyers to general managers to agents to casting people to people who book tours to directors to people who own the houses, company managers - all of it. Every actor in the world should be able to go to that. Because the things I learned made me just relax about everything. Budgets and things, to see how it all works. I just wish people were more transparent and would communicate more.
Amy: It’s amazing, particularly in actor training programs, that the business side is just - people don't learn it. Like at all. How the business works.
Hayley: The industry is so opaque right now, and transparency would benefit literally everyone.
Gayle: I agree with you, 100%.
Amy: I couldn’t agree with you more about communication too. So many problems in the world would be solved if we could just communicate.
Gayle: Right, like if we just talked about it, we’d be so far past this. Recently, there was a back and forth about a set piece, and I was like, “You guys, the amount of time we’ve spent talking about it this week, we could have built three of them.” It’s just so silly.
Hayley: When the designer moves on to their next contract, they're not even gonna remember about that particular thing.
Gayle: Exactly! It’s such a tiny thing.
Hayley: Sometimes it’s a conversation I have with myself too. Do I really need to be fixated on this one thing? Is it gonna matter next week?
Gayle: I think a lot of that is experience. As time goes on, you figure out what the priorities are.
Thoughts on Work/Life Balance
Amy: Gayle, how do you balance your creative work with the rest of your life? Especially in such a big leadership role, how do you be a person and also do your job?
Gayle: Right now, there’s no person. Honestly. People are like, “Oh, you’ve been in St. Louis four months now? What restaurants do you like?” I have no idea. I haven’t done anything fun. Right now, it’s hard. We’re in tech this week, and for a few days, I was at the office by 9:30am and at the theatre till 10:30pm, and I was like, “I can’t maintain that as a human.”
So this morning, I got up, I did some emails. Then I went and sat outside with my book for half an hour and left all my devices inside. When I come home at night, I leave my watch and phone in the bedroom and come out to the living room to get away from the devices. Nothing’s gonna fall apart in an hour. I have to give myself the separation or I’ll go crazy.
Hayley: Boundaries are so important.
Gayle: It’s new for me to put the boundaries in. With the casting, I never did. There were days I'd come home and sit on the couch and cry, just sitting there with the weight of the world. In casting, it was all of the responsibility and none of the power. We couldn’t say who they should pick, but if they didn’t like who was in front of them, it was our fault. Even if they saw 50 people who were more than capable. That was really hard. There’s a little bit of that still, but it’s also a transition as I’m learning my job and people are getting to know me. I instituted Champagne Friday in my office.
Hayley/Amy: Love that!
Gayle: There are people who come to my office on Fridays who had never even been in that area before. I’m like, “I'm open door. You come in whenever you feel like it.” It felt so important to me that people talk, that we all remember we like each other at the end of the day. No matter how hard the week was. Last week, there were like 12 people sitting in my office - box office and marketing and company management… It was like, “Yay, everybody come in! This is good.”
Hayley: I think that’s so great too in terms of your values of communication. If people don’t feel like they can come to you, how are you going to know what’s going on? There’s this very old-school idea of fear-based leadership. It never made sense to me, because if you open your doors, people are more likely to go to you with a problem when it hits, instead of waiting till it’s a catastrophe.
Gayle: 100%. It’s a generational thing, I think. I’m very happy that STAGES is a very female-centric company. The academy is run by a woman, the finance department is run by a woman, the box office manager… When we have staff meetings, I’d say 75% are women.
Amy: That’s remarkable. That has not been my experience of regional theatre at all.
Gayle: I know. Which I love! You know, the two people in charge were men. One retired, and now there’s me. And the executive producer is stepping back this year too, so there’s a search for a new executive producer right now. I don’t know who that will be.
Benefits and Limitations of Womanhood
Hayley: Gayle, how has your gender benefited you throughout your career, and conversely, how has it limited you?
Gayle: Sometimes it has definitely been easier for me to go ask somebody for something. We’d joke, “Wear a tight shirt when you go talk to that director because he’s gonna look at your boobs the whole time anyway.” And honestly, there have been times when I will totally use that to my advantage. Because I’m not gonna get him to talk to me or give me the information I need unless I flirt with him, so let me just do that.
It was very interesting, we worked with a Korean producer, and their culture is very different with women. He wouldn’t look me in the eye and he wouldn’t speak to me at all, he’d only speak to Scott. The first time he came with his interpreter and his assistant for a meeting, he’d talk to his interpreter and the interpreter would ask the question but would only look at Scott. So each of my team at some point would turn to me and say, “I actually don’t know. Gayle’s the one who's handling this, so what do you think?” They made them look at me. It was very sweet.
They were very conscious of making sure those people understood that I don’t work FOR Scott. That happened quite a bit. There were other teams where it wasn’t a culture situation, it was just a boys club or whatever.
Amy: Just a misogynist situation.
Gayle: Exactly. And for the most part, I didn’t give those people the power to upset me. I gotta do my job. If the check clears, it’s fine. You won’t matter to me when this is over, so that’s fine. The only thing I could do was tell other people working on the project, “Just so you know, this is the vibe of so-and-so.” Not personal, it’s just the way they are.
Final Thoughts
Hayley: Gayle, what are you most proud of?
Gayle: I feel very fortunate that I have met and worked with some incredible people. The opportunities I’ve had for travel, for learning, the different cultures and the different people I’ve been exposed to, are all part of what makes me who I am. And it all came from this business and this industry.
I grew up in Trenton, New Jersey in a small town, low-class family. We had nothing growing up. So when I look out at my house and my yard and this position I have, I pinch myself. Honestly. I really do. And I don’t need any more. I don’t need the applause, I don’t need the awards. Though I would love to get a regional Tony some day, that would be really awesome.
I’ve worked with some amazing people, and I’ve been really lucky. That’s what I take from it is all the luck I’ve had and all the amazing humans and experiences that have made me who I am. And I have this amazing husband who I still love and am still excited to see after being with him for 25 years. We’re very lucky, we know we are.
Amy: That’s so sweet, I love that.
Hayley: Thank you so much for your time, Gayle.
Gayle: Thank you!
