Interview: Linedy Genao of SONGS FROM MY SALA at Westport Country Playhouse

If you saw Native Gardens at the Westport Country Playhouse earlier this year you will remember Linedy Genao’s dynamic performance as a new homeowner of a suburban fixer upper.

On Tuesday, August 12, Genao returns to the Playhouse for one evening only in her show, Songs From My Sala. This is not just an evening of singing, but an invitation into Genao’s journey as a performer from her childhood days in her family’s living room in Brooklyn and Hamden to becoming Andrew Lloyd Webber’s first Latina leading lady to originate a role on Broadway.

Genao was born in Brooklyn, New York to Dominican parents, but moved to Hamden when she was 10 years old. She always loved singing and performing in her family’s living room, where she would also hand out paper tickets to her audience. At Hamden High School, she took a course in theater which exposed her to every department and the important roles of the backstage heroes because “without them, the show would not happen,” she said. She worked in costuming and was the assistant director of Hamden High School’s production of To Kill a Mockingbird. She applied to colleges with the intention of getting into a musical theater program, but she was rejected. She studied business at the University of Connecticut, but she continued to perform with the Whitney Players community theater in Hamden and sang with the Greater New Haven Community Chorus.

While she was working at a bank, a friend’s mother contacted her on Facebook and told her about a casting notice for a new Gloria Estefan jukebox musical, On Your Feet. “I grew up on her music. Why not?” she thought. Her boss was a huge theatre fan, and he gave her permission to take a day off to go to an open call audition. She didn’t have a headshot, she took a selfie with her iPhone 4 and had it printed at Walgreens. It was good enough. The audition was “like American Idol,” she explained. “Everyone has a shot.” The other actors who were auditioning were both union and non-union performers. She had multiple callbacks and suddenly, “I made my Broadway debut.” The value was not just getting a break, but as a one-month lab, she and the cast and crew were creating the show from the script including the movements and blocking. She was cast as Rachel and was the understudy for Gloria. They performed out of town in Chicago and the cast was given the offer to go to Broadway 6 weeks later.

Genao landed the role in On Your Feet without an agent. After about a year or more of being on Broadway, friends told her that with new auditions starting, she needed to get an agent. She reached out to four agents, but only two would see me. At “the first one I went to, the meeting went great, but it didn’t go my way.” They said, “Come back when you have more experience.” The second one signed her on the spot, and she was with them for eight years. “They believed in me when no one else did. They took a leap of faith with me. I owe a lot to them.”

That leap of faith turned out to be a total win situation – for her, for her agent, for other Latino performers and theater lovers, and for everyone who appreciates theater talent. Genao can portray people of any background, but she appreciates the opportunity to play roles that are authentic to her and represent her and her heritage. She wants to show versatility, “not fit into a box,” and to break barriers that allow for more representation.

After On Your Feet, she played Vanessa in In the Heights at the Olney Theatre Center in Maryland and Rosalia in West Side Story at the Barrington Stage Company and Lyric Opera of Chicago. “I was one of the first Latinas to play Zoe Murphy in the national tour of Dear Evan Hansen. It’s typically a white role. When I got to Broadway, I was honored to once again be one of the Latinas to play that role.” She was back in On Your Feet at the Papermill Playhouse, this time playing Gloria. Then came the legendary Andrew Lloyd Webber who personally asked her to star in Bad Cinderella. Genao is the first Latina to originate a leading role in an Andrew Lloyd Webber musical on Broadway, this time, playing the rebranded French Cinderella character and story, proving that ethnicity doesn’t always matter in a role.

Currently, Genao is playing Myrtle Wilson in The Great Gatsby, and is again the first Latina to play this character. She feels this is a big deal because the show is based on a perennial favorite American novel. She laughs that her Brooklyn accent came in handy for the role because Myrtle is from the outer boroughs. “I’m having fun, confident in what I’m doing, feeling grounded,” she says. “As Myrtle, all eyes are not on me, so I don’t feel as much pressure as I did with Bad Cinderella.”

We very much doubt that. While Bad Cinderella wasn’t interested in her appearance, Genao is stunningly naturally beautiful. As Myrtle, Genao wears a curly blonde wig, but her intelligence, vibrant personality, beautiful features, and fine bone structure shine through in every role she plays. Westport Country Playhouse playgoers saw that in Native Gardens.

On August 12th, Genao returns to Westport with her solo show, Songs From My Sala, which she premiered earlier this year in Joe’s Pub in New York. Genao admits that sometimes she must battle the imposter syndrome when she starts to doubt herself. She learned to “turn down the volume” on self-doubt when it happens so that she can move forward with what she wants to accomplish. “I kept thinking I want to sing songs that mean something to me, that I grew up with … where my first stage was – the living room [sala] in front of my family,” she said. “Most of the memories are created [in the] kitchen and living room [where you] sit and talk and watch TV. It’s where my love of singing and performing began.

What roles would she still love to play? “After seeing Sunset Boulevard, I am obsessed. I would love to play Norma Desmond one day or Betty Schaefer. I love Hadestown. I would love to play Eurydice.” She would also love to do Shakespeare, even though she admits she’s a bit intimidated by the language.

We have no doubt all these things are in Genao’s future. She has talent, charisma, stamina, charm, and determination to overcome obstacles. She says, “There’s no right path to do what you love, specifically to perform. Some people go to school for this. Some people don’t. There are so many pathways and none of them are wrong and all of them are right…. Everything I’ve learned is from other people, from watching, from generosity, from not being afraid to fail. It’s a super cliché but never give up on your dreams. What’s meant for you is meant for you and will never pass you.”