#210 Intermission Is Not the End: Building a Bigger Life Beyond Broadway

This week on The Salisha Show, Salisha Thomas reflects on a season of pause that ultimately expanded her understanding of what was possible for her life and career. After years of performing in Beautiful on tour and on Broadway, followed by preparing for a new show, the world slowed down and so did the industry she had built her identity around.

Rather than seeing that moment as something being taken away, Salisha shares how it became an invitation to look beyond a single dream and recognize new ways of creating stability, fulfillment, and creative expression. From building a sound studio in her apartment to exploring voiceover work and creating a podcast rooted in connection and storytelling, she walks through how this chapter allowed her to redefine success on her own terms.

In this solo episode, she reflects on
• How a pause can reveal opportunities you may not have seen otherwise
• The importance of building a life that supports your whole self
• Why diversifying your skills and income creates freedom rather than limitation
• How creativity can evolve without losing its core
• What it means to build a life that feels aligned, sustainable, and expansive

This episode is an honest reminder that sometimes life does not take something away. Sometimes it simply widens the path.

CHAPTERS

01:12 Life on Broadway and preparing for the next chapter
02:24 When everything slowed down and perspective shifted
04:14 Discovering new creative outlets and building a home studio
06:21 Expanding income, skills, and possibilities
09:27 Redefining success and building a fuller life

@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_01 0:22

Hey, what's up? It's me, Salish, and this is the Salisha show. I am your host, Salisha Thomas, and I'm so excited to be coming to you from Midtown Manhattan at Gotham Production Studios on the Gotham Network. And you know, I was thinking, like, how do we get here? Like, I went to school at Cal State Fullerton to become a Broadway actress. I worked at Disney, I moved to New York City, I got to do two Broadway shows. Um, and before I did my second show, the Britney Spears musical, we had a pandemic. So I was in Beautiful for like five years between tour and Broadway, and then closed, I mounted the national tour and I closed the Broadway show. And I was like, oh my God, I gotta get my next show. What's it gonna be? Will I ever work again? I got the next show. It was once upon a one more time. Uh, but then everything went away. We were like nine, 10 days into rehearsal, something like that, before the world shut down March of 2020. So then I find myself at home in my 500 square foot apartment alone, single, before I met Andrew, uh, no roommates, just by myself, twiddling my thumbs, having no idea when we're gonna come back from this pandemic. What that looks like, when that's gonna be, what do I do in the meantime? I just had no idea. And, you know, obviously, obviously, especially coming from the epicenter, like the pandemic was a freaking awful mess. It was just awful. It was a mess. I knew people who were dying. I had friends who were losing loved ones. New York City was a disaster. It was so bad, you guys. And like my friend, I remember somebody called me from California and they were like, Do you know someone with COVID? And I was like, For real? I'm trying to count the people I know without it. And we're talking season one COVID here. That's not what this episode is about, but I'm just saying, like, this period of my life, even though it was terrible, it was so bad. It actually was also a gift. It's easier for me to say that because I survived it. But during that time, I had no choice but to stay at home and get bored and come up with something else to do. I felt so disconnected from my friends, from the industry, from my community. And I was just, I just felt purposeless. You know, I was the girl in the building who was the Broadway neighbor, and now Broadway had been stripped from me. Who am I now? And I thought to myself, what is it that I need? I need connection. How can I get it and still feel safe? Well, I had set up a sound studio in my closet at my apartment because there was a man who said, Love your voice. The sound studio, your sound setup really sucks. So once you get your quality better, I can sign you. So I spent like a thousand bucks setting up this awesome sound studio, and then I wrote back out to him and he was like, Yeah, the quality is great, but I think you need some more classes. And so he didn't sign me. I was like, What the heck, man? Which is a a hilarious gotcha. It's a gotcha because that was the biggest gift. It was just such a gift because there was an agency who did sign me and they did book me work. Work that paid the bills once my second Broadway show closed. It paid the bills for not one year, but uh almost two years, and gave me the insurance, the good SAG insurance, that I needed to get pregnant and have a baby and be able to afford it. So to that person who decided to not sign me because he didn't think I was good enough. That money went to another agency. So whatever. But in that process of like, what do I do? That's when I started Black Hair in the Big Leagues. I was like, I'm going to interview my friends as if we're in the dressing room. They're in their closet, I'm in my closet. Let's talk about hair. And that is how like my show was born. I was born in a closet in the pandemic with a need for connection and to feel like I wasn't alone and also to embrace my curls. Because I was so I did not like my hair. I did not like what was growing out of my scalp. I was embarrassed of it and I didn't know what to do with it, really. And so I went on a quest asking all the people whose hair I loved, what are you doing? How are you doing it? Where does your confidence come from? And it morphed. The show morphed into a journey to confidence and where inspiration comes from, where people's con like, I'm surrounded by some of the most confident, successful, talented individuals in the world right here in New York City, who are working at a very high level. So I'm like, for those of you starring on Broadway, where does your mojo come from? And it's been so exciting to like talk to my friends and ask them all the questions I've always wanted to ask them. So if you're just tuning in now for this season, I would love to encourage you to go back to the beginning of my like my first episodes and listen to those because there was really a quest for something very specific there with hair, with confidence, with identity. And it was a time when no one had anything to lose we all have lost everything. Like we've lost our jobs, we don't answer to anybody. And so everyone was just very candid and honest. Everyone was just really honest because they had no reason to not be. That is what this show is built on. That is the backbones of the Silicia show today. It's called something different, but that is always our core, like who we are here. And so I'm proud to have a team that supports that and to bring guests on that implore that. So, with that said, between shows, how have I paid the bills? I mean, here we are. We're here, right? Voiceovers, commercials. My voiceover agent also does commercials. My freelance agent who I work with, she does commercials and some voiceovers. It's very like, they didn't talk about this in school. It was get on Broadway, stay on Broadway, be on Broadway until you die. Like that was the hamster wheel. And it's a it's a fun wheel. It's just a grind. And I never really thought about the sustainability of it all until beautiful closed. I'm like, oh, you mean I have to start from scratch and find another show? Booking the Broadway show is not easy. It is hard, even if you've already done it. It's it's a very special thing that happens. Like you just all of the pieces have to align and you just can't take anything for granted. And so it it's there is a a sense of starting over between each show sometimes. And some people can like do it quickly, and others it's like, well, what kind of roles do you want? What are you waiting for? Like there might be a few years in between this. But while I had that break away from the stage, I discovered that voiceovers are a great source of income, that recording commercials, whether your face is in them or not, is a great source of income. That audiobooks, anybody, if you know how to read, can record an audiobook. All you need is the setup. Oh, and I do have, I have a free guide to how I set up my sound studio. Like obviously, I'm at Gotham Production Studios right now and they're the bomb. And like they hook it up with all the things that I need. I got my cameras, I got my this looks like a sure, yeah, it's a short SM MV7 or this short SM7B. It's one of the ones that I, it's like, I love this microphone. They hook it up here, but you can set up your own studio at home, work from home. I've been trying to figure out, like, well, if I'm not jumping from show to show to show, how can I create a life with flexibility that allows me to start a family, to grow a family, and to nurture and give my family attention, the attention they deserve while being able to travel and do what I want. I'm gonna need some more like autonomy. I and also being on Broadway, dream come true. I love it so much. But an eight-show week with four personal days a year, there's not a lot of flexibility in there. There's really, there's really not a lot of flexibility in there. Like, yes, there's vacations and sick days, but like I missed a lot of things. I missed a lot of things. And so now we're on a journey to create a life where I've always said, after a few years, of course, I want to be able to do Broadway for fun. So what is that gonna take? What life do I need to build to where when I take a stage show, it's because I really want to be there, not because I have to be there, not because I have to pay the bills. And so, you know, the time that we live in, a lot of people have like more than one job. It's kind of imperative to have your eggs in different baskets and for your finances to be diversified so that you can have freedom. So you can say no to that project that you really don't want to do, that really does not speak to your heart. Like, what is that for you? And so I just gave you a couple ideas. There's so many more than just commercials, voiceovers, audiobooks. There's so many more things out there than that. But get creative. What is what is it that you love? Think about what you loved when you were a kid, maybe before cell phones. I don't know. People might be listening to this who were born with a phone and or a screen in their hand, but um, like, what did you do when you were bored for fun? Whatever that is, somebody is literally getting paid big bucks to do that today. Like, you can get paid for any passion ever. People get paid for farting in a jar. I'm sure there is a passion that you have out there that you're like, there's no way I could do this professionally. And I'm here to tell you, yeah, I bet you there is. When I was in the third grade, I used to like my favorite thing was to read out loud in the class. I was like, I'm the best reader in the class. That's what I would tell myself. I love reading out loud in the class. It's my favorite thing to do. Or was it the first grade? I, oh yeah, it was the first grade. I loved reading out loud. And now I get paid to speak into a microphone, reading scripts with the camera turned off. I'm like, this is so fun. It's fun and it keeps the bills paid. So that's all I got for this episode of the Silicia Show. I'm excited to see your vision for it and see what you got, cooking up.

SPEAKER_00 11:36

And thanks for tuning in. I'll check in with you next week. See you later.