S1E8: Rachel Covey
In this episode, Hayley and Amy speak with up-and-coming musical theatre writer Rachel (Rae) Covey. We talk about writing about gray areas in a time of absolutes, balancing strength and sensitivity, and making the theatre industry a more supportive space to develop new works. Scroll down for episode notes and transcript!
Episode Notes
Guest: Rachel (Rae) Covey
Hosts: Hayley Goldenberg and Amy Andrews
Music: Chloe Geller
Episode Resources:
Read about Rae’s theatrical projects on her website! Including:
Painting Faye Salvez
Noise - October 2022 off-Broadway workshop production at The Tank
Where We Are - Song cycle based on From Here to There, a collection of found maps curated by artist Kris Harzinski
How I See It: A Personal and Historical View of Disability, a memoir by H Penny Mishkin
Guest Bios
Rachel Covey (she/her - Rae, to her friends!) is a playwright, composer, a member of the BMI Workshop, and a 2020 graduate of Northwestern University. She makes theatre that finds beauty in the most human moments. Her original musicals, PAINTING FAYE SALVEZ and NOISE, have received readings and workshops at the New York Musical Festival (NYMF), the Library at the Public Theater, Tuacahn Theatre, The Tank, Emerging Artists Theatre, Common Ground Theatre Company, and The Chicago Dramatists Guild. Favorite spots where her music has been performed include 54 Below, The Greenroom 42, the York Theatre’s New Works Concert, Titchfield Festival Theatre (UK), and Under the Arch Incubator’s New Work Cabaret (featuring the national touring cast of The Band’s Visit).
Find Rachel Online:
Website: www.rachelcovey.com
Instagram: @rcoveymusic
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Episode Transcript
(Music)
Hayley: Hello, beautiful people, and welcome to the Women & Theatre Podcast! We're your hosts, Hayley Goldenberg…
Amy: …and Amy Andrews. Grab a cup of coffee and join us as we explore the experiences of women and nonbinary people in the theatre industry.
Hayley: On the pod, we interview people from different backgrounds with varying levels of industry experience and professional roles.
Amy: Our goal is to build community, identify the unique benefits that women and nonbinary folks bring to theatrical spaces, and pool our collective wisdom to break down the barriers we continue to face.
(Music)
Amy: In today’s episode, we speak with Rachel Covey, who is a playwright, composer, a member of the BMI Workshop, and a 2020 graduate of Northwestern University. Rachel makes theatre about finding beauty in the most human moments. Her original musicals, PAINTING FAYE SALVEZ and NOISE, have received readings and workshops at the New York Musical Festival (NYMF), the Library at the Public Theater, Tuacahn Theatre, The Tank, Emerging Artists Theatre, Common Ground Theatre Company, and The Chicago Dramatists Guild. Favorite spots where her music has been performed include 54 Below, Greenroom 42, the York Theatre’s New Works Concert, Titchfield Festival Theatre in the UK), and Under the Arch Incubator’s New Work Cabaret (featuring the national touring cast of The Band’s Visit).
Hayley: Hello, everybody. We are so excited today to be sitting down with Rae Covey. Rae, could you please introduce yourself, share your pronouns, and tell us a little bit about what you do in theatre.
Rachel: Hi. Thank you so much for having me. My name is Rachel Covey, but everybody calls me Rae. I'm a writer/composer. I write book, music, and lyrics. I have a couple projects in the works, but I'm really just sort of finding my footing in this weird time that is being in your early 20s in a pandemic.
Hayley: Totally.
Amy: That's really real. Can you tell us a bit about how you came to theatre and to your creative work?
Rachel: Yeah. Well, my mom started out as an actress and my dad started out as a jazz pianist. So I feel like the odds were stacked against me: I was gonna go into theatre. I started as an actor, which I think a lot of us do. But I realized that being on stage and writing the story that gets put on stage are sort of the same impulse, which is the impulse to tell a story. So I've sort of found my own corner in all of that in the last couple years.
Hayley: I love the way you put that. Can you tell us about some of the exciting projects that you're working on right now?
Rachel: Yeah, well, just like 48 hours ago, we finished up our run of my newer musical Noise at The Tank. We had a workshop production, which was completely surreal because I'd been picturing it in my head for almost five years. And then some brilliant designers came together and built a set, and all of a sudden these characters were moving and interacting with each other. And especially because it deals with time and place in sort of unconventional ways, I was just completely geeking out the entire time.
Amy: That's so cool. Congratulations.
Rachel: Thank you so much.
Amy: Do you wanna tell us a little bit about the show?
Rachel: Noise is a story about a researcher conducting a clinical trial on a college campus who becomes increasingly fixated on this young man who doesn't quite qualify, but who she believes would really be helped by the drug that she's studying. So it sort of slips into this gray area of what justifications can you make when you believe you're doing the right thing, cut with this other story about an unlikely friendship between two college students that takes a really abrupt turn. And as the two stories start to echo and parallel each other, it brings up questions about what we unwittingly carry with us from our pasts that sort of inform our future.
Hayley: That's super interesting.
Amy: Sounds amazing. Yeah. Do you wanna tell us about the project that you're working on about found maps?
Rachel: Yes. Oh my gosh. You know, all my life, people are like, “You have to adapt something. It's really important as a writer to adapt something.” But I'm like, “I wanna come up with the story. I wanna have complete control, like a monster.”
And then, in the laundry room in my boyfriend's building, I found a book. This artist, Kris Harzinski, had an installation where he curated a bunch of found maps. And then he published the maps as a collection in a book. And there's just so much theatre in it. Some of them are so beautiful and so silly and tell such perfectly contained little stories. Like, a guy got really lost dropping his kid off at college and they pulled over and got directions on the back of a receipt and he saved it for years.
Hayley: Oh, I just got goosebumps. That is so cool, Rae. Oh my gosh. I love that.
Rachel: I’m adapting it into a song cycle, which is sort of different territory for me, but really, really exciting.
Hayley: Yeah. Have you learned anything exciting as you're delving into a song cycle for the first time? Like, has it changed your practice at all?
Rachel: Yeah. You know, everyone says a song needs to start in one place and end in another, and I think I've gotten used to sort of moving a story forward with a song. It's another thing to tell an entire story in a song.
Hayley: Yeah, it's like a whole mini-musical in one.
Rachel: Yeah. Ultimately, it's probably a tiny slice of somebody's life, but you have to tell the entire thing. So yeah, like a mini-musical in two minutes.
Amy: Yeah, it's a different kind of challenge for sure.
Hayley: Rae, do you have something that guides you forward as a creative mission, or something that makes you excited to tell stories?
Rachel: Yeah. I think that we live in a time of absolutes right now, in every single part of society and every minute of our waking lives. But I think there's something really interesting about these states of in-between that we don't talk about as much. There's a moral gray, and there's this emotional place that healing takes you, and we don't always have a language for it. So I think a lot of my stories dwell in that sort of in-between place.
Amy: I love that so much. That's really cool. That feels to me like a mission that truly could last you a lifetime. You could build a whole career talking about the in-between areas, and it would be really cool.
Rachel: Thank you so much. I appreciate that.
Amy: Awesome.
(Music)
Amy: Let's talk a bit about womanhood. I'd love to hear about what womanhood means to you and how you see it fitting into your identity.
Rachel: I hate that we sort of define genders as their opposites, or as binary in a gross way. There's so much I hate about the way women specifically are socialized. But I'm thinking a lot lately about - I'm glad that I was never shamed about having feelings, because I think you have to be a sensitive person in order to be moved enough by the world to tell stories that are gonna move people, and to let a story affect you. There's so much coming at us all the time. The world is trying to harden us away from those feelings already. I am grateful that it's accepted and maybe even a little bit expected that I can like, sit in my feelings.
Hayley: That's a really beautiful way to look at it. I often find myself resenting that, because as someone who wants to pursue creative leadership in this business, there’s a lot of pressure to sort of conform to this masculine idea of leadership. I love that you see it as a benefit, and so do I in my ideal, but in my practice, I don't always fall into that.
Rachel: I feel like everything to do with being a woman is [considered to be] so pejorative. Like, we think of it as being worse and weak. And I don't think feelings are, like, a “women” type of experience.
Hayley: No, no.
Rachel: Women are not allowed to have, you know, equal pay. We are at least allowed…
Hayley: …to have feelings.
Amy: Yeah, absolutely.
Rachel: I don't know how you do theatre without those.
Hayley: Yeah.
Amy: Or life, right?
Hayley: Yeah. How do you have deep connections with people? At this point in your career - how have you found your gender to be a benefit to you versus limiting to you?
Rachel: It's hard. I mean, this industry was designed to be a boys' club, and it's really unfortunate that, until any of us has enough power to change the bones of the industry, you almost sort of have to play by those rules, which is inviting your friends in. And so mentorship from other women has really been everything: being invited into the room.
Hayley: Mm-hmm.
Rachel: And then in that vein, I've been the only woman on a team so many times that it's really easy to see other women in this field as competition for that one slot. Experiences I've had where we take up more than one slot – maybe half, maybe all [of a team] – and working with gender-expansive team members – you know, those are the best experiences I've had. Unlearning that has the biggest payoff, because you get to experience a more equitable room.
Hayley: Yeah. Amy and I talk about scarcity mindset all the time. I wish that we could carry abundance with us, and that's something that I wanna like, give to the next generation of people coming up behind us all.
Rachel: It's hard; even the phrase, “scarcity mindset.” I'm like, “Change your mindset!” But it’s not your fault.
Amy: No, it's ingrained in you. And it serves the patriarchy to have us competing with each other instead of breaking down the system. So like, choosing an abundance mindset and cultivating that in yourself is a radical act that really can change the world, the industry and the world.
Hayley: Yeah, and also to your point, the bones are what needs to shift in order for the abundance mindset to be something that is easier to take on, and also just like, until fundamentally things will shift for us as women.
Rachel: If you don't see women and gender-expansive folks in those roles, you're just not gonna have that modeled for you. Like, “Can I wear a dress in the pit? What would that even look like? It's ridiculous!” No. Now that I've seen it, I know it's not crazy. So the more we can get there and then show it, the easier it's gonna be to reflect that.
Hayley: Right. Like, if we embody it, then other folks will be able to achieve it more easily. For sure.
Amy: Right, and reaching back to the people who are behind us and showing them what's possible. Absolutely. Rae, you mentioned that you've had some wonderful mentors. Would you like to talk about any of those mentorship experiences and what you've gotten out of them?
Rachel: The most obvious one that comes to mind is - I was really fortunate to participate in the first round of the mentorship program through Maestra. That was so cool, and Georgia Stitt was my mentor. So many people have been generous enough to have coffee with me once, but to have a sustained, every-couple-weeks thing, we could really get into the nitty gritty of like, “My job is not allowing me to have the emotional energy at the end of the day to do the writing. How do we deal with that?”
[There’s also] Marcy Heisler - she really shows me, not only an example of how to do beautiful work, but also how to live a life that's compatible with it. And coming out of this rehearsal process, Jess Slaght, the director of Noise who I just worked with, she really showed me a beautiful example of how to lead a room. I'm such a control freak, and part of it comes from how scary it is to be a writer and [knowing], like, the actors could do anything and people will think that's what you wrote! It was really refreshing to see her at the helm and trusting our team so much, reminding me that we gathered a team of people that we can trust with our lives.
Hayley: Cool. Any words of wisdom or specific, like, nuggets that you would like to pass along to our listeners?
Rachel: Hmm. Marcy said to me recently that there's really no secret, you just have to do the work. And that sounds really silly, but she's like, “I know people who talk about it. I know people who make these impeccable plans down to the minute of what they're gonna do when and how they're gonna finance what. But until you sit down and like, finish your piece, it's just not gonna happen.”
Amy: Yeah, it's the hardest thing to hear. It like, goes right to the pit of your stomach, but it's - I mean, it's true!
Rachel: Yeah. It's refreshingly simple, too. Like, I really just have to finish it, and then the rest will come or it won't. But this I have control over, I can do.
Hayley: Right.
Amy: Yeah! Which is actually kind of empowering, right? There is no magic potion. There is no magic key. Just do your work.
Rachel: Yeah. Yeah.
(Music)
Hayley: If you could make one change to this industry, what would it be? Or two or three, whatever you want.
Rachel: Again, this is fresh in my mind because of the last four weeks I've had. But it's a miracle that new work happens at all.
Hayley: Oh my god.
Amy: Absolutely.
Rachel: It's not sustainable. And this is Georgia Stitt’s advice to me, too. She's like, “It's really messed up. It's sort of like a pay-to-play thing at the beginning. You invest in your work and pay some people to read your thing because no one's gonna do it for you before you have a name for yourself.” And that really systemically only brings up the work by people with jobs and funds that can allow them to do that. I was like, “This is broken!” And she said, “No, this is how it was designed.” So I would love some more support and pipelines.
Also, I did my whole term paper in college about how the Public Theater’s model is fully funded by donors, so they don't have pressure to recoup for investors. And so they can take a risk on something like Hamilton, like Fun Home, that's, you know, not necessarily gonna fill the seats because no one's heard of the movie it's based on. And that's where creative risks can happen.
Hayley: So long as we're dependent on the dollars of people who do not understand what we do or who are just interested in making a return on an investment, rather than seeing that contributing to theatre is an investment in the future of the world, I think that we're going to be stuck in a little bit of a vicious cycle of trying to produce hits. And also, we're not gonna get more stories from voices that have not been heard yet, because people are too scared to take a risk on things that are seen as unproduceable.
Amy: It's a good point that Georgia made to you that, yeah, it's not broken, it's working exactly how it was designed to work. And I think that's important to keep in mind as well, that there are people who benefit from the system as it is. And so we've gotta work on breaking down some of that exclusionist thinking. I'd love to hear a bit about how you think about balancing your creative work with the rest of your life.
Rachel: Yeah, it's so hard. I would give anything to beam myself back to my college self and be like, “What is your plan? Do you have one?” Because I don't know what I thought I was gonna do when I graduated. But it's sort of this impossible thing of like, you want a job that you care enough about that you don't hate it, but doesn't take all your emotional energy [so] that you have nothing left at the end of the day. Something that's flexible but reliable.
I was picking up baby music classes, I was playing piano in Central Park for a bunch of moms, but I was like, “My back is falling apart from carrying my keyboard around Manhattan, and I come back at the end of the day and I just wanna go to sleep.”
Hayley: Yeah, that's real.
Rachel: Right now, I'm actually the studio manager for [voice teacher] Liz Caplan.
Hayley: Oh, cool!
Rachel: That's sort of my unicorn at the moment.
Amy: That's a cool side gig.
Rachel: Yeah, but it’s really unfortunate that there's not a lane that I can point other people in my shoes, like, “Oh, just go into this, go into that.”
Hayley: Yeah, that's so real. Everyone does it differently, working with these additional skills that you have and figuring out how to turn that hodgepodge of things into something that can make you enough money to live and, like you said, not drain your creative energy.
Amy: I like to ask people who I meet in the theatre industry, like, “What do you do to financially support yourself?” Cause it's just a thing that's not talked about. And I'm so curious about what people do because it's so varied. And literally every person I talk to, it's this weird, like, roundabout story about this random skill that I have or this random connection I made and like, this specific thing that only I really can do. Which is both really fascinating to hear about all that, and also like, that's not a helpful blueprint for people just getting started.
Hayley: There is no blueprint, and I think that's the thing that we need to keep making more public knowledge for everybody is that it's different for everyone, and that it's okay.
Amy: Rae, what are some things that you wish you had known, like, a few years ago when you were first getting started?
Rachel: Something I'm still learning – [but] I'm gonna say it as if I've learned it – the work isn't and shouldn't be tied to your self-worth as an artist.
Hayley: Say it again!
Amy: That's a big one.
Rachel: And people say it comes in waves, it comes in cycles. One month, you're gonna write stuff and feel like, “I am the generator, I am the spring,” and then the next month you're gonna hate what you write. And it's not because you've gotten dumber. And everyone doesn't have to “get” your work for it to be the right thing for you to be saying.
Amy: That's a big one, too.
Rachel: My first musical, Painting Faye Salvez, and Noise - neither of them have, like, big tap numbers. They're sort of contemplative. I get the note a lot that they feel like plays. I think what people are getting at is that they take place in real time. That's not for everyone. And I don't think it's superior or inferior. It's just you write what you wanna see, and that’s what I'm drawn to.
Hayley: Yeah. Someone once told me that if you feel called to make something, that you're supposed to be making it and you will find your audience eventually. That's the thing that you need to keep doing if you feel called to write something in a particular way. Keep honing that skill because that's the thing that's gonna set you apart from everybody else. That's your thing that no one else can do.
Amy: Absolutely. If there's like, a little niche thing that you care passionately about, you're never the only person. It might take some digging to find the other people who care passionately and wanna come see a show about it, but they exist, and when they find your piece, they're gonna be so happy and feel so seen.
Rachel: In line with the adage that, like, the more specific something is, actually the more generalizable it is.
Amy: Yeah, 100%. I have a question for you, Rae. What is your ideal theatrical space? What is being created in it? Who's in it? What does it look like? What does it feel like?
Hayley: Are there cookies?
Amy: What kind of cookies are there?
Rachel: We need some mint Oreos, I can't find them anywhere.
I think that there is no room to fail right now. And part of it is like, “I paid $17 an hour for this rehearsal space, and we're spending it on this song, and I hear it and I know it's not right.” It makes sense that this doesn't feel like there's room to fail. But again, if there was a more sustainable way to produce new work, I think there would be more room to, like, take a creative risk and let it be bad. Because that's always, you know, a stepping stone towards the right thing.
Hayley: You learn from the bad, yeah.
Rachel: So I don't know what this magical place is. I hope it's walking distance from my apartment.
Hayley: Yeah.
Amy: That's magical.
Rachel: And I hope that there's room to fail.
Amy: Amazing. Rae, what are you most proud of in your life and in your work?
Rachel: Lately, I'm proud of the way I've learned to balance strength and sensitivity. It's been on my mind lately, I think, because I've surprised myself recently with being stronger than I thought I was. We're used to thinking of these things as negating each other, and that to be strong is to not be affected by things. But I think it takes strength to grieve something, and also to grieve the everyday pains of living through this really complicated time. I think you need to allow yourself to be soft in order to tell a story that's gonna move people and in order to be moved by this wacky world that we're in.
Amy: I love that. That we are strong in our sensitivities. I love that you surprise yourself. What a joy.
Rachel: Oh, well, thank you.
Amy: I hope for all of us that we're always able to surprise ourselves with things we didn't know we had in us.
Rachel: And tying it back to like, the weirdest patchwork of jobs that all of us artists have… For almost two years out of the pandemic, when I graduated with my fresh theatre degree in 2020, a family friend of a friend connected me with this woman who'd lost her vision at the start of COVID.
Hayley: Oh, wow.
Rachel: She wasn't blind all her life, she was adjusting now to this huge loss. She just needed some help reading her mail and paying bills and answering emails. And then we'd take walks in Central Park for like two hours - and every day for two years, Penny and I would hang out.
When I met her, she was going through a really hard time. She was pretty low. And then she decided to write a book, and I took dictation for her memoir on her iPhone every day, six days a week. And it was something that she talked a lot about – she surprised herself with finding purpose in her life where she didn’t think she'd ever be able to again. And that was mentorship in a completely unexpected place and something I'll always really admire.
Hayley: Yeah, I feel like crying. That was beautiful.
Amy: That's really beautiful, yeah.
Rachel: Yeah. Of course, when it was like 90 degrees and she's like, “Walk faster!” I was not…
Amy: Right. Beautiful in the broad strokes, maybe not every day.
Hayley: Yeah.
Rachel: So I got this book, and I'm holding it in my hands and I'm like, “Oh my god, Penny!” We’re all stronger than we think we are, and we can almost always handle the thing that we think we could not survive.
Hayley: Yeah, what else is there to say? Like, that's beautiful. Wow. Oh my gosh.
Amy: That's a beautiful note to end on. Thank you so much for being with us, Rae. It's such a joy to talk with you.
Rachel: Oh my gosh, my cheeks hurt from smiling.
Hayley: Aww.
Amy: Can you please tell our listeners where they can find you on the internet?
Rachel: Yes. My website is rachelcovey.com, and then my Instagram is @rcoveymusic. And that's where you can keep up with my projects and we can be friends.
Hayley: Thank you again. This was so delightful.
Rachel: Thank you so much.
(Music)
Hayley: Thank you for listening to the Women & Theatre Podcast. We’re your hosts, Hayley Goldenberg…
Amy: And Amy Andrews. If you like what you heard, subscribe and give us a 5-star review wherever you listen.
Hayley: You can also follow us on social @womenandtheatreproject to make sure you never miss an episode.
Amy: The music for this show is written by talented Women & Theatre community member Chloe Geller.
Hayley: Thanks for listening, everyone. See you next time!
Amy: Bye!
