While most college seniors spend the weeks before graduation worrying about final exams and post-grad life, Alyssa McAnany was auditioning for a spot on Broadway.
The 2011 Robbinsville High School alum was amazed and ecstatic. She says she was able to keep her composure during the process thanks in large part to her supportive family, who encouraged her to focus on the present and enjoy the experience rather than worry about rejection.
“As exciting as it was,” she said, “I just wanted to live each moment in the moment and not get ahead of myself. When the call came, I screamed on the phone. I was so grateful. I was like, ‘This is what I’m supposed to do.’”
McAnany was chosen for a “swing” role in addition to being an understudy for all of the female leads in the musical including the narrator, Reuben’s wife and Potiphar’s wife. As the swing, she practices all of the parts in the production so that she can “swing” on stage at any moment during the show in case she needs to cover for someone.
McAnany and the other performers began rehearsing for Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat on Aug. 20, 2015 before launching the national tour at the end of September. They have since put on more than 100 shows all across the U.S.
Directed and choreographed by Tony Award winner Andy Blankenbuehler, McAnany says the show is a unique adaptation of the well-known musical.
“A lot of people have seen Joseph or the movie but this production is special and has its own perspective,” she said. “Our director is incredible and has really made it his own. It’s eye-opening for people, and it’s not what they’re necessarily expecting.”
As a singer, songwriter, dancer and actress McAnany does it all—not to mention her work in photography which has been featured in galleries across the East Coast. In high school, McAnany’s goals were a little different however.
Alyssa was involved in team sports from a young age, along with many of her Robbinsville peers. During her years at RHS, McAnany was a member of the girls’ varsity basketball and track and field teams, as well as varsity captain of the girls’ soccer team, which won the state championship two years in a row. On top of all that, McAnany trained for many years as a dancer at Stuart Johnson Dance Academy in Hamilton.
Despite her consistently full sports schedule, McAnany always managed to balance her love of music and theatre. As a freshman, she was chosen to play the lead in the RHS musical “Back to the 80s” and she went on to perform in the role of Miss Adelaide in “Guys and Dolls” her junior year. The role allowed McAnany’s talent to shine through, and she was awarded “outstanding performance by an actress in a supporting role” by the Paper Mill Playhouse. Along with the award, McAnany received a scholarship to Paper Mill’s summer conservatory program.
At the conservatory, McAnany joined her peers in daily classes and rehearsal for the New Voices concert, held at the end of the program. For the first time, McAnany says she was able to connected with other high school students with the same passion for both varsity sports and musical theatre.
“That was kind of the pivotal moment of my life where I found peers that were just like me,” McAnany said. “They were passionate about it all. They were just really excited about life and storytelling.”
It was during the New Voices showcase, while McAnany was standing on stage during the opening number that she realized she wanted to pursue a career in theater.
McAnany was offered several college scholarships for sports, but she ultimately chose to attend Elon University in North Carolina, where she participated in the acting program and received her bachelor’s in musical theater.
During her senior year, she met the casting director for Joseph and the Amazing Techincolor Dreamcoat, after her department decided to fundraise and bring talent agents to campus for students to participate in auditions. A few weeks after auditioning at Elon, McAnany received a call requesting her to come to NYC to try out for a part in Joseph.
McAnany says that rehearsing as the swing and understudy has been a tremendous amount of work, but she couldn’t be happier in what she’s doing.
She says she’s very blessed to have her family’s support in her artistic career and many of her relatives have been artists themselves. McAnany’s father, Tony McAnany, is an award-winning musical composer who’s worked in the Broadway circuit, her grandfather is a jazz composer and her grandmother had a career as a professional dancer. McAnany said with their artistic roots, her family helps provide her with advice for her career in theater.
“They know how challenging the arts are,” McAnany said. “It’s been said it’s like a 2 percent employment rate with actors in New York. You have to be able to handle rejection and not take things personally if they don’t work out the way you want.”
According to McAnany, their advice has helped her get where she is today. When the national tour of Joseph came to perform in Philadelphia, a large group of her family attended the show to see her on stage. She said it was rewarding for her to be able to share what she’s doing with her loved ones.
“For my family, their eyes were also opened when the saw me on the national tour,” McAnany said. “For most of them, I think, they hadn’t realized just how much work goes into the show. As a theater-goer you just go and see a production and the entertainment value is there, but then you think about what’s happening backstage and how they learned it and that they’re traveling every day.”
The tour for Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat will continue through Iowa, Texas, California and Nevada during the month of April. U.S. Tour dates are scheduled through May and can be viewed at josephthemusical.com/ustour/tour-dates. As for McAnany, she’s also in the process of recording her first solo album, “Color & Light.”
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