Meet BVC: Chelsea Wilson!

Written By: Chelsea & Cynthia 

We're back for part two of our "Meet The Coaches" series! This time we're discussing Chelsea's experience as a performer turned voice teacher, the surprising turns her career has taken, and what her favorite musical is (and why it's Cats!)

Lets dive right in! 

Q: To get things started - tell us about young Chelsea. Did you always love musical theater?

A: There is a home video on VHS of me at two years old walking into the living room and reciting with my mom word-for-word all of Belle's opening speech from the Beauty and the Beast movie, and  I think that was an early sign to my parents that I really had a flare for the dramatic.

I'm the oldest child, so I was always putting on shows for the adults and with my three younger brothers as my cast. The shows consisted of us putting on whatever CD (favorites being Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, and Thumbelina) and we would gather up costumes at home and perform.

From there my parents put me into drama camps and then when I was around 13 I auditioned for my middle school production of Annie. I feel like the director saw my curly red hair and said, "Yes, we will make you Annie." But that was really the first clue for my parents that I was good at singing and so that's when I was put into voice lessons, where I got a taste of the musical theater bug and I was hooked.

I should mention here, this is also when I got my first taste of Cats The Musical. One of my friends in middle school had the VHS PBS taping of Cats and I would go over to her house after school and just beg her to put it on. Long story short, I never turned into a good enough dancer to be in Cats, but gosh, it just really had a special place in my heart. 

I always loved musical theater and very quickly developed a big passion for it, and thankfully got the opportunity to do a lot of community theater, school theater and had the support of my parents to be able to pursue those things.

Q: At what point did you realize you wanted to pursue this as a career and was Broadway always on your radar? 

A: I grew up in Atlanta, Georgia, and we took an eighth grade choir trip to New York City, where I saw my first Broadway show, the original company of Aida - such an epic production. That was my first Broadway experience and I didn't go back to New York until I was in college, but I got to see that this was a real thing.

When I was 15, my family moved to Southern Utah from Atlanta and I ended up taking voice lessons from an amazing mentor Jeffrey Skousen in Las Vegas. He saw something in me, as he'd worked with professional singers, Broadway performers, famous recording artists, and he had this wealth of expertise, so he was not shy to tell me or my parents that I had something special. I was just so fortunate to be able to have a mentor who recognized something in me and encouraged me to pursue this path.

I recognize that I had so much privilege in this as A) my parents were supportive of this path, and B) they could afford to send me to lessons with this phenomenal teacher. There were a lot of things that were completely outside of my control and are still very much a blessing.

In high school I decided that my ultimate goal was to perform on Broadway, and I noticed that most performers go to school to study musical theatre. So again, with the support of my family and teachers, I was able to get into the University of Michigan. (Which is where Cynthia and I met, with Cynthia being my professor.)

Getting into the program with a merit-based talent scholarship was a huge validation for me and my family and I would say starting out on that path has paid off and turned into a career that I love. A little different than how I thought it would be, but 100% was the right step for me to take.

Q: Can you talk a little about what it was like to move to New York after graduation and if things went as expected? 

A: I just remember how that first year after graduation felt simultaneously difficult, exciting, scary and a learning curve it was. My whole world was upended - I left this fairly safe bubble of college to being completely on my own.

You know, college had disappointments for me as well, from being a big fish in a little pond at my high school in southern Utah, to then showing up in Michigan where everyone was talented, competing for the same parts and roles.

But then came Showcase, which a lot of musical theater programs have at the end of your senior year where you go to New York and perform for industry professionals, agents, managers, and casting directors. You go through this whole process hoping for the best to start your career off with a bang a nd I just did not have that experience. I didn't sign with a manager after showcase, and I was starting to audition, but it was slow going and it was a real hit to my confidence.

Q: So showcase didn't go quite as expected, but you did start auditioning and stayed on that path for a while. Did you do this all the while pursuing teacher training and cultivating your own studio?

A: Yes, while I was getting my BFA at school, I was pursuing a private certification as a voice teacher through what was then an organization called Speech Level Singing (I'm now with an organization called Institute for Vocal Advancement)

When I moved to New York I was auditioning for Broadway shows, getting  callbacks and amazing audition experiences - while also trying to build up a private voice studio. My plan all along had been I would move to New York and I'd support myself by teaching voice lessons. But wow, what a challenge. I was so young, I didn't have a lot of practical experience and I'd been teaching a little bit here and there throughout my college time, but New York is an oversaturated market for actors and voice teachers. So I was climbing uphill for a while trying to start these two careers simultaneously.

During these couple of years I auditioned a lot, I performed in some regional things, did some concert work. But a couple years into New York, I was burnt out and I decided I was ready to pivot. I certainly was not ready emotionally to make that switch, but I felt very strongly that I wanted to create a career that I was in control of and make money how I wanted. And so at about that time, I decided to switch my focus and start teaching full-time.

Q: How did it feel to make that switch?

A: Making that shift felt simultaneously hard, liberating and embarrassing. I'll illustrate that experience with this story, where in 2016, U of M had a big concert in NYC celebrating the then head of our department, Brent Wagner. It was with a 30 piece union orchestra and there were about 200 performers, including former graduates who had gone on to have careers. 

I remember feeling so vividly, nervous, scared, sad, excited and I pulled out my journal entry from this time to properly paint the head space I was in and where I was at at this time. It reads, "I am sad not to be important enough to be in the Maize and Blue concert. Not to not be in it, but to be of so little consequence in this field. I'm useless. I'm afraid to feel fat, unimportant, untalented by my friends and colleagues at the concert tomorrow. I feel like nothing I've accomplished matters, especially in the Michigan MT context."

That still gets me now. I think I feel so emotional reading it because of Cynthia, who was so supportive of me and still is, and has come back into my life in this really beautiful way. But it felt at the time like I didn't want to let her, or my other professors or my parents down and this moment in time just felt like the epitome of what I didn't accomplish. I felt like a disappointment to myself and all these people who mentored, supported, and believed in me. 

At the time I didn't have the tools, perspective or the self-confidence yet to see my story as its own journey and to stop looking sideways and comparing myself to others. I felt simultaneously thrilled for my friends who were making Broadway debuts and performing in the Maize and Blue concert - yet also disappointed in myself.

What I've learned since then is that my path is not the same as yours, and yours is different from the next person's. When in my life and career, I let success be defined as just one narrow outcome in a world full of possibilities, I become miserable.

Q: Tell us, how did you eventually get to be a vocal coach on Broadway shows?

A: Like I said, it was, it was tough getting my teaching business off the ground. Several years in my clientele was growing and what was crucial for that growth was the network of voice teachers that I got to work with through the Institute for Vocal Advancement.

At the end of 2016 an IVA teacher in Japan sent me an email and was like, 'Hey, I have this Japanese boy band that's coming to New York. Can you give them voice lessons?' Which there was this record label out of Japan that was sending a group of 15 young teenage boys to New York to train in singing and dancing for two years, and they needed someone to give them voice lessons. So I started training this Japanese boy band.

Another thing that happened around this time is that I was teaching musical theater elective courses for other voice teachers so they could learn a little bit more about how to teach musical theater. A fellow voice teacher named Fiona McDougal took my class (she lived in London) and it turned out that she was Andrew Lloyd Webber's right hand gal and coached on all of his productions. At the time, in 2017, Andrew Lloyd Webber had three shows running on Broadway, one of them being School of Rock. They needed someone who could work with their lead actors weekly and also help the creative team vet performers for the show.

To my surprise, I got a call from the producer and it turned out that Fiona had gotten me connected. From there I started working on School of Rock and I have that first paycheck framed - it was unbelievable.

I started coaching the singers each week in private lessons, attending rehearsals, attending shows, taking notes through it all, and helping vet folks who were going in through the casting process.

In 2018, I saw my name in the back of that Playbill, and it was a real "I can't believe it" moment. I was making my Broadway debut and I was employed by a Broadway production in a way I never could have imagined, but was so satisfying and fulfilling for me.

That then turned into doing a very similar thing on The Phantom of the Opera in 2018, working with the Christine's and Megs in that production, and then working with the Christine's on the international tour as well.

It was an incredible opportunity to be able to coach on these productions and that led to some really cool gigs on other touring shows and off Broadway shows.

I really love that the position is such a unique role on a production. You can almost think of it like a physical therapist. These are elite singers, elite athletes, who essentially just need some support. It's not like, the Christine on Broadway doesn't know how to sing the part. They've cast the best singers and they just need support. They need vocalizing or need to use their voice in some different ways. A vocal coach on a Broadway show is often the go between the music director or the music team who says, we need this certain sound, or a quality on these measures. Then I'm tasked with helping to implement those changes, or just give the singers an opportunity to come in and do vocal rehab. It's a cool role, I loved doing that and can't wait to do more of that in the future.

Q: If the Chelsea who saw her name in the Broadway Playbills of these shows could talk to the Chelsea who wrote that journal entry - what might you say, or what would Journal Entry Chelsea have thought? 

A: I think I really would've benefited from a little sneak peek, but I'll say too: it's easy to say, 'well, look how great your career has turned out. So of course that that healed that part of you.' But there's so much healing to be done and learning and self love that really has to happen before the "happy ending" good things. I feel like I had the opportunity for several years to sit in that discomfort and learn to love where I was and create a life that I was really passionate about even before those big jobs came along. The big job doesn't fix all your problems. It's amazing validation and I can't understate what those things have done for my career. But I would hope that I still would've found a lot of satisfaction and peace even if those things had not come along.

Q: What do you want other performers to know? What advice do you have for them?

A: I would say a couple things.

1. Don't be afraid to pivot. For me, that was leaning 100% into my teaching business, and that might look completely different for you. But don't be embarrassed to pivot. You'll might feel that way because I certainly did, but just know from me, from someone who's been there, that you can create something wonderful and sustainable for yourself on the other side of that feeling.
2. If performing is your dream, and whether that takes you to New York, to the West End, to Kentucky, wherever it is: do it with all of your heart, mind, and strength. If it's taking longer than you expected, that's okay. I want you to breathe. I want you to relax. I want you to keep working. If it turns out that the performance aspect in show business isn't where your heart lies, give yourself permission to follow your heart elsewhere. Your dream does not have to look one certain way.

And that's the advice I always give to folks. Work hard. Pursue your dreams wholeheartedly, and don't be afraid to listen to that voice or that feeling that says, let's try something different or let's try this dream in a new way. You always have permission to try something new, to change your mind and to get support and help on your journey wherever you are.

We hope you enjoyed this opportunity to get to know Chelsea and her experience in shifting her career focus from performing to coaching on Broadway! 

If you're interested in exploring other interesting musical theatre conversations - check out the Broadway Vocal Coach podcast! Or check us out on Instagram, and get involved in the conversation! 

And if you’re ready to get expert mentorship and ongoing training, then you’re invited to join us inside the BVC membership. Book a free consult with us - we can’t wait to hear your story and help you take the next step in your career.