The reality of working at a Broadway Musical

Image Credit: Phillip Attmore

Rejoice Mawire, 4th May 2019
Tags: Life Interview Ambition Musical

Phillip Attmore is an artist, catalyst and visionary who has been dancing, singing, and acting since the age of three. He has worked in multiple Broadway shows, film, television and commercials. I had the opportunity to speak to him over a video call.

How did you get into performing?

Phillip: I grew up in Los Angeles, I'm from Pasadena originally, and my parents put me in dance classes when I was three. I started taking vocal lessons, doing other styles of dance, and I grew up doing dance competitions, and then went to Los Angeles County High School for the Arts. When I graduated from there, I was working in Moscow for four months doing a musical and on tour. Then I joined a tour of ‘Fossey’ and booked my first job. I’m a ‘So You Think You Can Dance’ alumni as well. I love writing, acting, I just like storytelling.

Did you always know this is what you wanted to do?

Phillip: A passion and a call are kind of two different things. For me, I think you don't know that you're meant to be on stage until you step on the stage and then something happens. They call it stage presence, or whatever it is. So for me, when I stepped on the stage, I just knew I wanted to be there. And it’s not about wanting attention, it's just more of the art of storytelling, heightened storytelling on a stage was just for me. There's kind of a sense of instinct, when you step into an area where you belong.

All the world's a stage.

At what point of your life is it that you felt like you grew the most to be the performer that you are today?

Phillip: One of my favourite quotes is from William Shakespeare, he says, “All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players: they have their exits and their entrances; and one man in his time plays many parts…” Essentially what he is saying is that, as much as we like to think that we can compartmentalise our lives, most times we can’t.

While I was on ‘So You Think You Can Dance’, my father passed away. It was a crazy time, I would be in a moment where cameras were kind of shoved in my face and I was learning choreography, and then the next minute I was in a car on my way over to the hospital where my father was laying in bed. I remember seeing him for the last time and sitting next to his bedside.

That was a powerful, full experience for me. We never have an excuse not to be present. It forced me to be honest, making sure I’m the same person on and off stage, not compartmentalising my life.

What helped you in that time?

Phillip: During that period of walking through, having to perform when I was weak, tired and grieving, and then having to be present for my father as he was getting ready to leave the Earth, I had to lean on Jesus. Learning to understand that I was not alone as my father was passing away, and that God was with me. That God has adopted me into his family.

I am loved by God, I am his son.

I think that that's something we don't have to wait until our earthly father or any of our parents pass away to understand that, but it is really powerful when you can understand that at the heart of God is his desire to be with us. He is our heavenly father, and he is desperate for us to be in a relationship with him. And so, for me, that that moment kind of pulled me deeper into this understanding that I am loved by God, I am his son.

So who is God to you then?

Phillip: God has been lots of things to me. And I would say, as I've walked with him, it’s really powerful when you recognise who God is to other people, because it reminds you know who he was for you.