Interview: Keri Rene Fuller Balances the RBC Brooklyn Half and WICKED in One Marathon Day
Keri discusses conquering fear and self-doubt, and how running mirrors the feat of performing Elphaba on Broadway.
This weekend, Keri Rene Fuller is both flying high as Elphaba, and flying across the finish line as she runs the RBC Brooklyn Half and performs in Wicked on Broadway all in the same day!
BroadwayWorld spoke with Keri ahead of the half marathon to discuss her mindset going into the run, conquering fear and self-doubt, and how running mirrors the feat of performing Elphaba on Broadway.
You’re running the Brooklyn Half Marathon and performing as Elphaba on Broadway all in the same day—when did you realize you actually wanted to take on both of those challenges at once?
I never really ever had an intention of running a race, ever. I used to run track when I was in middle school and high school, but it was extracurricular, it was nothing I was ever wanting to pursue. And then in 2019, I was on tour with Cats, and I don’t know why, I think I like to pack the busiest times of my life with more things. I don’t know what it is, a glutton for punishment, not sure! But, my friend, who was also in the cast, we decided to run the Houston Half while we were on tour. We had a stop in Houston, and it just made sense, “Let’s just do the Houston Half, we’ll go do Cats, and it’ll just be a really cool, physical feat.” And I ended up not actually doing that because I was in final callbacks for a musical that I had to come back to New York for. So, I think since then it’s been in the back of my mind, ‘I’ve got to come back, and I really want to run again, just to see what the body is capable of.’
I think a lot of us in the industry are aware of how difficult our jobs are. Not even physically, it’s such a mental and emotional game you have to play with yourself to do the work. And why not add a half marathon? [laughs]. Why not run the RBC Brooklyn Half right before two shows of Wicked, why not?
I do understand the impulse to see what your own body is capable of!
You hear all these stories of these people that overcome crazy odds, and really push through self-doubt, other people doubting them, and fear of failure. That’s the thing I’m really having to grapple with. This contract, the fear of failure, and the pressure that not only is put on you, but that you put on yourself because it’s so important to you.
The two witches, we know that we’re going to be doing this for a year, so you really want to make that year worth it, but it’s really easy to make your entire life, your entire orbit about Wicked, and about Elphaba, and about Glinda, and about doing this show. But it’s really the stuff outside of the show—your life, your friends, your love, your family, that make what happens on stage in the show all the more hard-hitting. That’s what people recognize, because it’s happening to them too, whether they understand it or not. Whether they see themselves in Elphaba or Glinda’s shoes, that’s what they recognize.
We all have these universal feelings. We have this universal fear of failure, we all put pressure on ourselves in many different ways. And so, it’s really important to me to allow my life to move around Wicked, and not just my life be Wicked. And I think that’s a big reason why I was like, ‘I really want to challenge myself.’ Not to prove anything. I’m not trying to prove myself, I’m not trying to run this half marathon and then do two shows of Wicked as a crown of achievement. I really am doing it as a personal challenge to myself.
This upcoming Monday after the race is the one-year anniversary of my dad dying, so there’s also a reason that I need to run. Because I have to get out of my head, and going on a 13.1 mile jog is a really good way to do that. There’s a lot of reasons why I think people run, and these are just a couple of mine.
Knowing all that, has running changed your mindset while performing the show?
I’ve typically placed a couple of my longer runs around shows. So far in my training I have not run 13.1 miles, I think my longest run in my training was 10 miles. And I strategically placed that only on a one-show day. I wanted to feel how my body reacted to it, to do the show that night. And it actually did quite well! It was mostly my toes! My toes were the most painful part of doing the show.
It's not so much the act of running—in my experience so far—that has changed how I approached the show, but it absolutely changes how I navigate my self-doubt. Running and doing Wicked are very similar in that around mile eight you can see the end, but you’re like, ‘There’s no possible way I can do this. There’s no possible way I can do this superhuman thing and push my body to these limits. My body, my mind, my spirit, my emotions. There’s no possible way that I can do this.’ And then you finish your mile 10 and you’re like, ‘Oh my gosh!’ And then you get to the end of the show, and you take your final bow, and you’re like, ‘Oh my gosh, I did it!’
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been on stage right before ‘Defying Gravity,’ which is still such a mental game for me, and I’m like, ‘There’s no way I can sing this. I can’t sing it, I should call out right now in the middle of the song! I should leave stage and never do this again.’ But it’s about our relationship with fear, and I think that mirrors running, and doing the show. I think that mirrors each other very similarly.
It's such a feat, both Wicked and the half marathon. What do you think you’re going to be feeling at the end of this day, when you take that bow after the marathon and two shows?
I think I’m going to be really, really grateful. I think that I’m going to not even look at it as a personal achievement, because the way that I cold not survive my life without my husband, without my castmates, without our directors… I’ve had a particularly difficult week, as you can imagine, and the way that I have felt supported, it's unlike anything I’ve ever experienced. So, at the end of that day, whether I do two shows, whether I do one show, I have no idea, I’m going to take it step by step, just like the marathon, step by step, and we’ll make it across that 13.1 miles somehow, I am going to feel so grateful to those people. I’m going to, of course, feel proud of myself because, sure, it’s a lot, but gratitude is going to be a big one for me. And also, it’s going to be a decent amount of relief!
The RBC Brooklyn Half is produced by New York Road Runners (NYRR), NYC’s preeminent running nonprofit.
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