An Interview with Javier Ignacio

Meet Javier Ignacio.

He is in the upcoming – and postponed – Broadway production of Company.

Javier and I worked together in what was practically our first restaurant gigs in the city, he a waiter and I; a bartender who had said stuff to convince them that I knew how to tend bar. That was ten years ago, which we both found hard to believe. We exchanged stories recently about what a stressful cesspool that place was to work in, and he told me the story of how on his last night, the manager bought him dinner and another manager tried to charge him for it because that was not company policy.

Ah, the restaurant business.

I don’t remember why they fired me; I was in a blackout.

Some years later, I heard that this very dude I knew as a waiter was in the Broadway revival of Side Show! He had been cast in the La Jolla Playhouse production which moved to the Kennedy Center then was eventually transferred to the St. James Theatre in October of 2014.

Having worked in and around theatre and film for years I can count on one hand, the people I know personally who have made it anywhere close to such heights.

A little more than a year ago, I saw on social media that he was in the cast of the highly anticipated revival of the Stephen Sondheim favorite, Company.

Then of course, came the pandemic and they shut down Broadway which had never happened. Javier, the cast of Company and everyone else on and off Broadway have spent the past year wondering if they should keep going over their lines, or what.

Javier is understudying no less than three “tracks” or roles in the show, and even though I was there to interview him – I immediately started talking about my book, and how it’ s about an actress who has to go back to her restaurant job when her on Broadway closes.

“Well, that happened to me!” he said.
(we’ll get to that.)

ME: “Was there a moment after you booked Side Show when you thought that this was the last table you would probably ever wait on? And were you like, “would you like to see the dessert menu, or maybe you would like to go fuck yourself?”
JAVIER: “I think I was very much of that mindset! I think I always knew that I would return from Side Show after La Jolla Playhouse and there was no guarantee. It was specified that some people might not be going onto the Kennedy Center. And Broadway wasn’t in the cards at that point, either. So, after La Jolla I went back to serving.”

ME: “Was it nerve wracking, not knowing about Kennedy Center?”

JAVIER: “Oh, one hundred percent. I hadn’t performed in years at that point. It was all such a dream come true, it brought up a lot of emotions. I remember calling my mother in tears after the first meet and greet at La Jolla when they presented all of the tech designs and everything…”

ME: “Is that when you realized you were in the majors?”
JAVIER: “Yes! I hadn’t even been auditioning for a while before that. I had an issue with my vocal cords, called vocal paresis which is like nerve damage which manifested into an inconsistency in my auditions. The doctor said, treat it like a muscle injury and start getting it back in shape. So, I did and because of that, I had stopped auditioning. I went back to lessons and so on. But then my agent called me and said, they want to see you for the role of Houdini at the La Jolla playhouse. I said, send me the material!”

ME: “When did you find out you got it?”
JAVIER: “Same day as the call back. They had brought some of the men in to dance and then when I started to leave then they ran out into the hallway and said, wait they might want you to sing again. I waited in the hallway for a while – but no one ever came out, so after a while I just left. Then my agent called me and said they are sending over an offer. You booked it.”

ME: “What did you do?”
JAVIER: “I cried. On the streets of New York.”

ME: “I do that a lot too.”
JAVIER: “I hadn’t performed in four years, and with the vocal issue – I was starting to think that this… theatre thing just isn’t gonna work out for me.

ME: “When did you find out the show was going to Broadway?”
JAVIER: “After we closed at Kennedy Center, no one knew if the show was going to continue. There was good buzz, but no one knew. Then we were back in the city like two months later and a few of us from the show happened to all be out for lunch and drinks and all of a sudden, the calls started coming in – one person got the call that they were being offered a contract for the Broadway production, and then another and another and we were holding out phones like, ‘am I going to get the call?’”

ME: “What bar were you at?”
JAVIER: “I don’t even remember, we got so drunk once we all got the call that we were going to Broadway.”

ME: “What have you been doing since Side Show closed?”
JAVIER: “I had to go back to my old restaurant job.”

ME: “Just like in my book!”
There I go again.

ME: “What was it like for you to be back to that?”
JAVIER: “I will say, as far as my journey, with waiting tables, you get to a point where you look at it differently. There was a moment prior to Side Show where the job was so tied to the struggling actor mentality, that I felt like a failure because I was in the restaurant industry.”

ME: “And that negativity can suck you in.”
JAVIER: “Oh, it sucks you in and you’re in survival mode and then you become this miserable person who just hates people.”

ME: “We call them waiters.”
JAVIER: “But when I came back it was different. Understanding that I had something to offer and to bring – a different passion, then you can take pride in what you do. Especially if you’re working with good people.”

ME: “So it wasn’t the worst moment of your life when you went back into the restaurant and picked up that tray…”
JAVIER: “It started like that. But I began to realize that this job was something that I needed, and I was grateful for the company I was working with. I was there for ten years. They were that great.”

ME: So now, here you are understudying three principals in Company. I know you also covered roles at The Public’s Twelfth Night. What is your process like? Understudies know the show better than anybody. But the task of learning not one, but two or three roles and almost never walking through the part… Wanting to go on – terrified of having to go on…

JAVIER: “The thing with being an understudy is you are doing all the work on your own, you aren’t being rehearsed. You are watching other people rehearse, then you spend all your time walking around your imaginary set in your room going over and over your lines.”

ME: “Aren’t there understudy rehearsals?”
JAVIER: “Understudy rehearsals usually don’t start until after the show opens.”

ME: “Do you get to rehearse on the stage in the actual space?”
JAVIER: “It depends – funny side-story about another understudy gig. I was touring with the Fiasco Theatre Company production of Into The Woods. We were in Jacksonville Florida for tech and we were going to open the show in Tampa. And our first official understudy rehearsal happened the day after opening. We had a music rehearsal, the two guys and two women – we sang through all the songs and played all the instruments. Week later, we moved to the Kennedy Center, we had just opened.”

ME: “Look at you at the Kennedy Center again.”
JAVIER: “Right? I think the night after opening, the stage manager said to me – ask whatever you need from this particular track. So-and So is not feeling well and they may not be on tomorrow. I had had one understudy rehearsal. Everything else I had done on my own. And he was like, “If you need to take extra notes tonight – if you need to follow him around backstage – whatever you need. Make sure you do that. Next thing you know, sure enough we were at the second understudy rehearsal – we were finally in the space rehearsing on the stage. We spent an hour, and the stage manager got the text and said, ‘okay our rehearsal is now a put-in for Javier. He’s on tonight.’ ”

ME: “What was that like? Were you psyched or more nervous?”
JAVIER: “It was very much like when you’re in the weeds at a restaurant. My mentality is to suddenly become very quiet and calm like a ninja. I was surprisingly calm. Inside I may have been dying but on the outside I was calm.”

ME: “Was it a big part?”
JAVIER: “I went on for The Mysterious Man. He is the Baker’s father. He is like the narrator, and it helped to hide a lot of the music that he plays – I played the viola – and if I could make it to my chair, for a good portion of the act I could make it. But then I had my scenes to get through as well.”

ME: “How did it go?”
JAVIER: “Amazing!”

ME: “Is the cast supportive and excited for you?”
JAVIER: “That is one of my favorite parts of being an understudy. Actors are – usually I think – excited to have a new scene partner to try new things with. There’s that little bit of excitement that comes with not knowing what could happen. And they’re ready to go with it and as the understudy. You have to trust that people will help you through it. And to see how much love there was for me in that moment. It’s like that moment in the restaurant industry when you have gotten your whole section under control and you…”

ME: “No. It’s way cooler than that.”
JAVIER: “You don’t think there’s a parallel?”

ME: “I do not.”
JAVIER: “Yeah, you’re right.”

ME: “Which brings us to Company on Broadway. I know some of the genders are swapped – who do you cover? Do you get to do sing, “I’m not getting married today?”
JAVIER: “I am!”

ME: “No way!
JAVIER: “Listen, I think this production is genius. If you know Company, you know that the show is centered in the seventies, and it centers around a male protagonist who is struggling with committing to relationships. At that time, it was sort of controversial for a man to be not married. These days, it’s like who cares? He’s handsome, he’s got great friends, a great apartment. He has all these girlfriends…”

ME: “Why would you get married?”
JAVIER: “But those standards have not gone away for women. So, they replaced him with a female protagonist and also brought in a gay couple. I cover Jamie who used to be Amy, and Andy and Peter.”

ME: “The show hadn’t even opened yet, right?”
JAVIER: “No we were ten days away from opening.”

ME: “There had been rumors, right? Of Broadway having to close?”
JAVIER: “Yeah if you remember, there was a lot of uncertainty. And we didn’t feel safe. The night before, one of the ushers at another show had gotten Corona. And that was a block away. All of a sudden, the pressure of facing fans outside was stressful – and they were trying to sanitize backstage as much as they could, but we just didn’t know.”

ME: “Back then we didn’t quite understand what we were dealing with.”
JAVIER: “Yeah and people have families and so on. Even when we did shut down, they told us it would probably be for two weeks. That day, I was at the gym with a buddy of mine from the show, working out before we went into the theatre and his manager called him and said, they cancelled the show tonight. And there’s a meeting in a couple of hours. And he said, ‘I think I’m going to go home.’ And we kind of hugged and I called my family who were doing errands in the city and had just dropped me off and they picked me up and we went home to New Jersey. And later in the meeting they said, Broadway is shutting down, possibly for two weeks, maybe a little more, we don’t know much.”

ME: “Did the cast keep in touch – were there informal rehearsals? It will be a year and a half by the time you guys are back in rehearsal, right?”
JAVIER: “We thought we would be back in a month and tried to do zoom rehearsals. There were maybe two zoom rehearsals – rehearsing musical numbers on zoom – it was crazy. Those eventually became support sessions for each other. I mean, I had left my contacts in my dressing room. I had to get the union to get someone to let me in. My dressing room mate’s toothbrush was sitting there on the sink. It was like a ghost town.”

ME: “Congratulations on the announcement of the reopening. When do rehearsals start?”
JAVIER: “I believe in the beginning of November.”

ME: “So you have the summer to just chill.”
JAVIER: “I am very fortunate that I have a gig this summer. I am returning to the Music Theatre Wichita in my hometown in Kansas. They’re bringing me back for a concert. That was my dream, growing up working there as a kid, because I looked up to all the Broadway stars coming back to perform.”

ME: “In Company, you’re also in the show? You’re on stage.”
JAVIER: “Yes, we play ‘New Yorkers.’ We’re in two scenes. I also play a waiter! So, I get a nice moment with Patti Lupone. She’s amazing. We get a laugh.”

ME: “Speaking of living legends, have you met Sondheim?”
JAVIER: “Yes, he’s come in several times. I’ve yet to work up the courage to say anything to him. He’s funny. Our opening night was scheduled to be on his Ninetieth birthday.”

ME: “Is there a role in any particular show you really hope to play at some point?”
JAVIER: “No, I’ve never been one to be like, I have to like play this part or whatever. But my favorite musical is Ragtime. I would do anything in that show. Maybe I will age into a role eventually.”

ME: “Do you remember the first time you walked through the stage door of Broadway theatre because it was your job, because you actually belonged there?”
JAVIER: “Oh I definitely do! You know, back in La Jolla once, when I was having this emotional moment after my first fitting – just feeling so grateful – my friend Keala who was in that production, hugged me and said, ‘Never forget your first.’” And you never do.

All photos courtesy: Javier Ignacio