#209 When Everything Goes Wrong on Stage and What It Taught Me

In this episode, Salisha shares a story from her time in Beautiful: The Carole King Musical that still makes her heart race! A costume pin in the wrong place. A set malfunction. A forgotten line. A voice that suddenly refuses to phonate. And thousands of people in the audience watching everything happen in real time.

In this solo episode, Salisha reflects on
• Why performers often have to smile through chaos to keep the show alive
• How unexpected moments reveal a performer’s strength and presence
• What losing her voice onstage taught her about recovery and resilience
• The power of slowing down before burnout takes over
• Why giving yourself grace is essential in any high-pressure environment

Her story offers an honest look at what it means to be a working performer and how even the roughest nights can become the moments that teach you the most about who you are and what you are capable of handling.

CHAPTERS

00:22 A minor accident turns into a major moment
00:50 When the set breaks and the show goes off script
02:24 Improvising onstage in front of thousands
03:48 Losing her voice and finding a way through
07:00 Lessons on burnout, healing, and slowing down

@salishathomas @thesalishashow, www.thesalishashow.com

Many thanks to Gotham Network in NYC, TyNia Brandon for writing and laying vocals down for the updated theme song and Big Red Studios for the intro video wherever you watch the latest season of The Salisha Show!

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Broadly news that you wanna know on the starring you and your favorite rose on cousin staying true. Go in with a blow on Salih. So come on through. Everybody blows on the Silicia show.

SPEAKER_01 0:22

Hey, what's up? It's me, Salish. Welcome to the Silicia Show. I'm your host, Salisha Thomas, and I am so grateful for the Gotham Network, and I'm so happy to be recording at the Gotham Production Studios here in Midtown Manhattan. I love it here. What a dream come true. I wanted to share one of my worst onstage moments. We've talked about a few things, like some awful auditions, some crazy things that have happened in New York City. But there have been a few things that have happened, like once I actually booked the job, that it's like, oh my goodness, did that really just happen on stage? Like I have had a few. Like I've sat on a straight pin on stage. Like I sat on the actual needle going into my butt. I've been on stage when the set broke and we like have to keep going. I remember looking into Abby Mueller's eyes on tour, who was playing our Carol King, who's the sister of Jesse Mueller, who got the Tony Award for the same role on Broadway in Beautiful the Carol King musical. We're on stage and our set is completely flipped because it just freaked out that one show, and she's looking at me, and I'm looking at her like, what do we do? And we just reversed all of our like blocking in the moment. There's so many times when the set would break, and I was the only one on stage. I think is it St. Louis, Missouri with the Fox theater? I might be mixing up my cities, but we were on tour and it was a 4,000-seat theater. And my role was to just come on and say something on the phone. Literally, the whole point of my character being on stage was to give the lead actor enough time to change her costume. That was it. Like it's a very filler line. And I'm supposed to be cut off within like two sentences. And so I'm on the phone, rolling out on stage. The set breaks, no one tells me that, but they don't let the other actor come on stage to cut me off. And so now it's just me on stage by myself, making up a monologue in front of 4,000 people. I'm like, oh my gosh, where is everybody? And I'm just like, yes, we love Carol too. Like there was like such a and the whole cast was in the wings watching it happen. I'm like, why is no one saving me? And eventually there's an announcement, ladies and gentlemen, we are having technical difficulties. And then they were like, you can walk off stage. I'm like, you could have done that two and a half minutes ago. Hello.

unknown 3:00

Oh my gosh.

SPEAKER_01 3:00

There's been a lot of moments. Oh, I've forgotten lines on stage. We call that going into the white room. And like looking out to the audience, like, oh, I don't know what's next, but I can't call for line. But the one that takes the cake for me is it was on Broadway in the winter. I had just had my heart broken and I had this thing where I never got sick. This was pre-COVID. I never got sick unless I was low vibe, unless my heart was broken, unless I was really sad. Those are the only times I ever got sick. I would say, you can sneeze or cough in my mouth. I will not catch what you have. I truly believed that. And I, and it was true, I would not get sick unless my heart was broken. And this particular week it was my immune system had completely crashed and I was sick. But when I my solo or like my feature song in Beautiful was a song that I could sing on my worst day. I had sung it over a thousand times, truly over a thousand times by that point. I'd sung it sick many times, like on the road, or like when I I say sick, like when my voice was gone, I could still sing it. But this particular day, I had less to work with than I realized. And I didn't know it. And I went to work and I was starting to get worried as each scene was progressing. And it was time for like me to sing the song. And I opened up my mouth and I remember Stevie Nicks was there that night because she was the godmother of Vanessa Carlton, who was our current Carol King. And Vanessa Carlton is the girl who sang Megamo at downtown, walking fast faces, passing homedown. So that's that was Vanessa Carlton. She was playing our Carol King. And I think the director was there that night. It was a full house, and I opened my mouth, and nothing came out. It was like I was like, tonight you might. Like it was like so quiet. I was able to phonate a little bit, but it was so quiet. I'm like, ooh, I'm gonna have to decide when I get to a little bit of the higher notes. Do I push, push, push, or do I back off and potentially crack? Because back in the day before I became a professional, I had pre-nodules, which is like cancer almost for like a singer, basically. You you can't sing. It's like you're you're at laryngitis every day. That is not a good place to be in. And I did that because I would push, push, push. When my voice was gone, I would push harder. And then once I learned what that was, how to heal myself. Thank you, Eric Futerer, my voice teacher out in Southern California. He brought me back from the dead, really, and taught me what not to do so that would never happen again. And now I'm on stage and I'm like, do I push or do I hold back? It was a disaster. I was a disaster. And by the second verse, I was like, I cannot believe this song is not over. By the bridge, I'm like, I'm about to lose my job. And by the last verse, I'm like, I feel terrible. Not because I suck, but because I have compromised the integrity of my favorite show on Broadway. I should have called out, How did I not know that I had nothing to give today? How did I not know? And after the song ended, I remember going off stage into the wings and just being frozen. I could not move. I could not believe that I had just left that on a Broadway stage. And it wasn't until my coworker, one of the other Sherelles, she pulled me. She's like, Selicia, we have to go to the next costume change or else you're gonna miss the next song. She pulled me, like I was so out of it. She had to pull me all the way to the next costume change. And I remember just standing there and then letting them dress me and being like, I can't, I can't talk. I can't sing. I'm about to lose my job. That's what I thought. And I walked at intermission, I walked into the stage management office and I just had tears streaming down my face. And I wasn't sure if they were gonna fire me right then and there or what, but I just said, I have to go home. And they looked at me and they said, please don't. Please don't go home. I was like, I don't have anything else to give. I'm completely, I have nothing. And they said, Okay. I was like, if I stay, you gotta turn my mic off. I cannot, I cannot, I have to be on vocal rest immediately because it's not worth like, it's one thing to lose your voice. It's another thing to cause damage, like long-term damage, just not worth it. And so I did not get fired. They did not penalize me, they sympathized with me and for me, and they said, please stay. Well, turn your mic off. You got like two lines in the second act. If you can say those two lines and then nothing else, and I was like, fine, deal. And that is how that went. And I was so humiliated and I called out. I never called out. I was the girl who took pride in never calling out. I did not like to take vacation. I didn't I never used my sick days ever. I would go on stage limping. I don't care if I broke a toe or I don't think I broke a toe, but I definitely got injured after running a marathon without training. Like I did not call out. I just never called out ever. I called out for a full week after that day. And I had to. The next time I could have possibly gone into work, I was on my way to the shower and I collapsed behind the couch. Like I was on the ground, and thank God my phone was in my hand. So I was able to call stage management and say, I cannot come in. So I took that week and I healed and I worked on a thousand-piece puzzle and I did, I fully healed. I came back, and when I came back, I came back so much stronger and and I I learned a lot about myself. But my takeaway from that situation was sometimes we have to slow down. Sometimes we're so in the practice of go, go, go, be busy, busy, busy, do everything, be everything that we think people want of us. And it's actually time to take it slow. And I'm really, really preaching to myself right now because I'm pregnant and still trying to do a million things in my body. My baby is trying to say, Salish, slow down, or I will make you slow down. Like I can barely walk. And sometimes I have so much energy and I can see my destination, but I cannot walk any faster than what I'm going. I physically just can't. Even though I have the energy to do it, if I walk any faster, I will feel pain. So I'm gonna take this as a sign that when our body slows us down, it's for a reason. And instead of kicking and screaming about it, take it as a gift. Take it as this is your permission slip. You cannot force your body to go past what it can actually do if you're sick, if you're in labor, if whatever. So, and also, and I think I've said this before in a previous episode, everyone has an off day. So give ourselves some grace. Let's give others some grace too when they're having an off day. And know that we are all in this human thing together. So that's all I got for us today. That's all I got for you today. Thank you for tuning in. I'm Selisha Thomas. If you haven't already, subscribe on YouTube and subscribe to the podcast wherever you listen to podcasts, Apple Spotify, iHeart, etc. etc. Come by the website, leave me a message, and uh follow me on Instagram and tell a friend, thank you so much for tuning in. Thank you, Gotham Production Studios and Gotham Network for having me. Thank you, Tinya Brandon, for laying down the tracks for the theme song, and thank you for listening. Thank you so much, and I'll see you same place, same time next week. Bye.