Interview: Cate Hayman of CHESS IN CONCERT at 42nd Street Moon Aims to Be an Old-School Diva for Our Times

In exceedingly welcome news, San Francisco's 42nd Street Moon returns to live, in-person performances with its presentation of CHESS in Concert, the 1980's musical with a much-loved score by ABBA's Björn Ulvaeus and Benny Andersson and renowned lyricist Tim Rice. It remains the only musical of the modern era to generate multiple, massive hits on the pop charts, including the delightfully seamy dance number "One Night in Bangkok" and the heart-rending ballad "I Know Him So Well." Co-Director Daren A.C. Carollo promises "This production will be unlike any other CHESS in Concert you have ever seen. We used six versions of the script to create 95 minutes of non-stop rock! We have 17 of the strongest voices in the Bay Area and 20 talented musicians who will be jamming through the most "80s" music you have ever heard." Performances of CHESS in Concert run Friday, September 24 through Sunday, September 26. For tickets and additional information, visit 42ndstmoon.org/chess.

Bay Area native Cate Hayman leads the large cast in the central role of Florence, a woman of torn allegiance between East and West. I caught up with Heyman by phone last week while she was between rehearsals. A recent graduate of the prestigious musical theater program at Carnegie-Mellon University, she is definitely a performer to watch. Still in her early 20's, Hayman already has a lot of irons on the fire - including stage, film and TV work, plus a little modeling on the side (as Bells Are Ringing's Ella Peterson would say). Bay Area theater audiences know her for her award-winning performance as Sally Bowles in Cabaret at SF Playhouse and her rapturously-received turn as Diana in Next to Normal at the Victoria Theatre. She is a fascinating person to talk to as most of her cultural references are performers and music that were popular well before she was born, but at the same time there is nothing precocious or world-weary-before-her-time about her. She fairly bubbles over with enthusiasm for the career ahead of her and exhibits a self-effacing sense of humor about any bumps in the road she's encountered. The following conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

You seem to be working everywhere these days. Are you still based in the Bay Area?

Yeah, well - kind of. I actually moved to New York 3 weeks ago, which is funny cause I'm already back! But I'm here to do Chess and then I move officially on the 28th. So I'm kind of based here, this is where my family is, but as of very recently I'm technically "based" out of New York.

Is Chess your first show with 42nd Street Moon?

It's my first show in person. During the pandemic I've done a couple virtual events for them.

How did you originally connect with Moon?

I connected with them years ago actually because my neighbor Pete Sorensen is on the board for 42nd Street Moon. When I was in high school, I think, he was like "You should go in and sing for them, and maybe they'll hire you for summer work." So I went in when I was not castable, I was too young, and I sang for them and they were very sweet. But that's kind of how I got on their radar.

And then the summer of 2019 I did a production at SF Playhouse of Cabaret where I played Sally Bowles, and I don't know if this is how I seriously got on their radar, but I won a couple of awards for that. When COVID hit they started asking me to do virtual things, and then for this they were just like "Do you wanna be Florence?" and I said "Sure!" ... and then I had to send them a tape because the director actually didn't know who I was. [laughs]

Chess is one of those shows with a killer score and a somewhat problematic book, which makes it perfect for a concert presentation. How familiar were you with the show before you were cast in it?

Not at all! I knew the two main Florence songs, "Heaven Help My Heart" and "Someone Else's Story." I sang them a long time ago in my singing lessons, but never really did anything with them. I actually was surprised I still remembered the lyrics, but other than that I barely knew it at all. I didn't know what the story was, that it was written by Björn and Benny from ABBA, I didn't know anything. When I was in New York a couple of weeks ago, kind of moving in and sitting on my butt all day, it was great cause it gave me this opportunity to really familiarize myself with it. So for the most part learned all of it while I was in New York and then just came here and now I'm fine-tuning.

Currently, what is your own personal favorite song in the show?

I have to say "Nobody's Side." I love that song. It is so fun!

As a singing actor that song gives you a lot to play with because it really is written as a dramatic scene set to music.

Yeah, totally. Well, all of the songs are like scenes. An amazing thing about Chess is that even though it's written by pop icons, it's almost an opera. In all musicals, the songs are extensions of the drama that's happening in the scenes, but here especially cause there's very little dialog in this production, it feels like every single song is its own plot line, its own very important scene.

I have to ask what it was like playing Diana in Next to Normal. I just can't imagine taking on a role that challenging, both technically and emotionally, not to mention that it was written for an actor at least 20 years older than you were at the time!

Yeah, to this day that was my favorite production I've ever done. The theater company is called The Refuge and it's run by Dan Shaindlin who's a San Mateo local. His son Atticus was in my class at Carnegie Mellon and he was also in Cabaret with me, so we've done a lot of things together. Dan was like "Atticus, I want to start a summer stock company with students in San Francisco." So Atticus just asked some of his friends in our Carnegie Mellon class if they would be interested, like who he thought would be right for the parts, and so the cast was primarily made up of our classmates. And it was so amazing because it was after our freshman year so we were all hungry to perform.

But the role itself was extremely challenging. Vocally, it's quite a trip cause it's rock basically, and so singing a couple hours of like screlty rock is really hard, especially on a young voice. But it was so fun, because it was a cast full of people that I knew already and loved to work with. It was easy to really just take risks and throw my whole self into it, and it was a short rehearsal process so there wasn't too much time to overthink anything. I had the best time!

You're also great at singing jazz standards. [Check out Hayman's rendition of "Hit Me With a Hot Note" here]. That requires such a different vocal technique than singing something like Chess or Next to Normal. How do you manage such a wide range of styles?

Um... good vocal training? [laughs] I don't know! My favorite genre to sing is jazz standards. Like it's easy, it sounds nice, it fits really nicely in my tone, my range, so that's kind of where I feel at home singing. But I also love singing other things, too. I guess I've just been working on my voice long enough where it's still difficult to switch between genres, but it's something you have to do if you want to do this professionally. You can't limit yourself to one type of music. I always have a really great time singing more rock and pop things, especially with a live band. It feels so powerful and exciting to have all these big, loud musicians behind you kind of pushing you forward. So I'm really excited to do this show with an orchestra.

You graduated from Carnegie Mellon in the Spring of 2020 and then - boom! - you were launched into a world where suddenly live theater didn't really exist. What was that like?

It was definitely an adjustment; it was very strange. I went into the pandemic thinking "Oh, this will last a month." So I left all my things in the basement of my old apartment in Pittsburgh, expecting to come home [to California] for a second, and pick them up on my way to New York. And I just picked them up a couple weeks ago - they'd been there for a year and a half. [laughs] So I came home for what I thought would be a month without theater, and that was great cause it was also just basically, even though I was graduated, like my summer vacation.

And then as it kept going, it forced me to kind of take a step back and experiment with finding something else that gave me artistic fulfillment and let me talk to other creative people, which was the thing that I was missing the most. I missed theater, but I missed more than anything being with theater people and working with creatives. So the first semester after I graduated, I was tutoring kids doing Zoom school, and [laughs] I was a very bad Algebra II tutor for some high-schoolers. So I did a couple things and I was just like "This sucks, and COVID still doesn't seem like it's slowing down."

Then come January, I was semi-recruited by a modeling agency in San Francisco. I was a little bit negative about getting into that world, cause I was like "Ugh, modeling is so egotistical and everyone is mean." But as I did it, I realized that it is just rooms of creative people, and it gave me a lot to look forward to. I was really excited to go to jobs because I was talking to stylists and photographers and people who were really passionate about the arts, and some of them were musicians and DJ's that did this as their side job. So once I discovered that, being without live theater became a little easier in a way.

The pandemic has also given me the opportunity to try film and television. I have a manager in LA and he's been sending me in for film and TV stuff. I managed to pick up an indie film [Before It Ends] that shot for a couple weeks in Los Angeles, and then I also was a guest star on the CBS show Evil. I'm on Episode 8, "B is for Brain." That was fun and it shot in New York. So I've just been sending in auditions and trying to fine-tune those skills as well because ideally I want to make a career of doing both live theater and also film and television.

And I also did a production of Songs for a New World at SF Playhouse. It was pre-recorded so we were all lip-synching and had to get tested every day and you know keep six feet apart from each other onstage, so it was bizarre, but I also was able to do that. So even though live theater didn't exist, I still found little pockets in which I could do some creative things, whether it was theater or film or just being with creative people. So I figured it out, but it was definitely an adjustment to begin with.

As somebody who's still early in their performing career, do you have any personal heroes or role models, performers you look at and think, "I want a career like that!"?

Oh, gosh. I'm not sure if there's someone who I'm like "I want that career," but there are definitely performers I idolize and want to be like. All the classic divas, like Ethel Merman, Barbra Streisand, Judy Garland, Liza Minnelli, all of those like old-timey Broadway divas. And in a way I want to have a similar career, cause they all made their impact onstage, but then also did movies. So, yeah, they are what I want to be.

I'm fascinated that your main cultural references are these women whose heydays were long before you were even born. What music did you listen to growing up?

Growing up I listened to a lot of jazz standards. My dad had a Nina Simone CD in his car that I would play whenever I went anywhere with him as a kid. I was obsessed with Nina Simone. I'm obsessed with all of those jazz women - Nina Simone, Ella Fitzgerald, Eydie Gormé. That's kind of the beginning of me being like "I love this kind of music and I love their voices. They're so rich and warm and delicious and I want to sound like that."

Do you have any musical theater dream roles you hope to age into one day?

That is such a loaded question! I want to do so many things. Funny Girl is coming back to Broadway, and I would go crazy to play Fanny Brice. Any role portraying Marilyn Monroe, even though I'm about a foot too tall, I would die to do.

So if that "Smash" musical ever actually happens...?

Oh, yeah, count me in! That's my cuppa tea! And if like when I am actually of an appropriate age to play Diana, if Next to Normal has a revival, I would be so thrilled to be in that. But also, at this point in my career, I will take anything! [laughs]

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