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April 14, 2024 • 14 mins
Original Air Date: April 14, 2024

Tony Award nominee Anika Larsen details the 3rd annual Broadway Celebrates Earth Day with a free performance in the heart of Times Square 4/20 from 11am-3pm.
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(00:00):
Welcome to Sunstein Sessions on iHeartRadio,conversations about issues that matter. Here's your
host, three time Grasie Award winner, Shelley Sunstein. We are in full
swing for Earth Day. And Idon't know if you're aware, but Broadway
celebrates Earth Day and that's actually thename of the event. For the third

(00:22):
straight year. It's happening this comingSaturday for twenty. Yes on that for
twenty, not at four twenty.It's happening between eleven and three, and
it is organized by the Broadway GreenAlliance. And I didn't even know there
was a Broadway Green Alliance. Buton the board is Anika Larson, who,

(00:43):
by the way, was a TonyAward nominee for portraying Cynthia Wilde,
who I got to meet and interview, and that was like, yes,
I know I was in anyway,Yes, in Beautiful, the Carol King
Musical, and I love that musical. And Anica made her Broadway day.

(01:03):
I'm spicy like Paprika. Okay,I'm sorry. Anika made her Broadway debut
in rent in two thousand. Sobefore we get to the Broadway event,
what was I like with Renton?What did you have to do to audition
and what was the whole experience?Like it was bunkers Because I, when

(01:23):
I was in college, went tosee it because for anyone who doesn't know,
like Rent was the Hamilton of thenineties, right like it was the
hot young musical. Everybody was sotalented. And I went to see it
and I thought, they are soyoung and so good at this, How
will I ever be as good asthem? And it almost made me give
up, And then I thought,nope, still got an audition, went

(01:44):
and waited seven hours in a longlike a cattle call audition. It went
nowhere. Then a few months laterthere was another audition. I went.
Rent was famous for having lots andlots of callbacks, so I had a
bunch of callbacks and then one daythey called me on a Tuesday and said,
can you be in La on Fridayto be on stage the following Friday
in the La company of Rent.Yeah. So I had a week to

(02:06):
learn it, which I was obsessed. I had memorized the double cassette tape
because that's what happened in the nineties, and so I did. I was
just sort of thrown into it.If I'd had more time to think I
might have psyched myself out. Andthen that turned into the second National Tour,
and then after I left the tour, I came and I did Broadway,
and yeah, it was. Itwas amazing, It was stunning.

(02:27):
It was I think if I hadn'tstarted and gotten so comfortable in the show
on tour, it would have beenmuch more intimidating to do it on Broadway.
But I was so used to itand I knew it so well by
the time I got to make myBroadway debut that it actually was just really
only fun. When in your lifedid you know that this was what you
wanted to do? I knew Iwanted to I didn't believe I could,

(02:50):
Like, how do you win thelottery and get to do the thing you
dreamed of when you were eight?I still can't quite believe I get to
do it. But I'm one often children, and I learned very early
on ten children. Yes, andI realized if I sing, people will
pay attention to me and learn myname, which when there's ten kids,
nobody learns your names, which iswhy I honestly I have a chip on
my shoulder about it, Like saymy name, say right? But yeah,

(03:13):
so so yeah, sort of singingmy whole life, getting more and
more attention for it as time wentby. My parents used to have a
Christmas like the vant. They thoughtwe were the von Trapp family, the
multicultural vank Trapp family, because sixof my brothers and sisters are adopted from
different races and countries. So mymom would make us perform at our Christmas
parties and people clapped, and Ithought, Oh, I like that feeling,

(03:34):
and I've been chasing it ever sincethe rest of my life. Did
you do community theater? It soundslike your parents would have been too busy
to have you do community the becausemy middle one did that, And what
a commitment between the traveling soccer withthe other two, but then with the
with the rehearsals and the oh mygod. Yeah no. My mom's carpooling
chart was like a snut like,like it was NASA worthy. It was

(03:58):
astonishing. I did high school theater. I did. My high school drama
department was crazy. Matt Damon andBen Affleck were in my high school.
Yeah, Cambridge, Massachusetts, theywere. So that was the level of
talent in my high school, whichI still look back and I didn't get
big parts in high school because therewas so much talent in my high school.
And I just keep thinking, howdid they have the audacity to think

(04:18):
I could then go on and dothis, And it, really, I
think was just there was nothing elseI was good at. I would have
chosen something. It's a hard life. It's not a way to live.
And if there was any if Icould have figured out an exit strategy before
now, I probably would have.It is I mean, people think it's
glamor, its showbiz, but it'sworrying about the next job, and it's

(04:39):
what do you do in big jobs? Jobs? Yeah, every job is
finance, So you're always even whenyou're in a job, you're hustling and
auditioning for the next job, andyou always know there's going to be periods
of drought. It's feast or famine. It just is. That's just the
way it is. And you've justgot to find a very particular kind of
zen to be able to have thesort of emotional constitution for it. It's
just it's hard. But then whenI am working people, I get to

(05:02):
do the thing I love, andpeople clap for me at the end of
my work day, and so honestly, like cosmically, it shouldn't. It
should be hard, right, itshouldn't. If it wasn't hard, that
wouldn't be fair. So we've allmade our peace with that. I'm speaking
with Anika Larson. She's a TonyAward nominee. She is also on the
board of the Broadway Green Alliance.So tell us about Broadway celebrates Earth Day,

(05:27):
which is coming up Saturday from elevento three. Well, first of
all, where exactly in the heartof Times Square Baby where else on Broadway
appropriately between forty fifth and forty six, Yes, April twentieth, Saturday,
from eleven to three, And itis going to be just we So what
we do at the Broadway Green Allianceis we are singing and dancing at the

(05:49):
intersection of theater and the environment,and we're basically spreading the world to the
word, to ourselves not just onBroadway, but the entire theater industry and
to our audiences about how we cancan be greener. And so that's what
the day is going to be,is going to be people singing their faces
off and really really smart people whoknow about sustainability giving you just like actionable
items that you can do, becauseI think we all feel so overwhelmed,

(06:13):
we feel helpless and hopeless when wethink about this stuff. And the more
I've learned and the more I've donein this world, the more I know
we all can feel. If weall in our lane do what it makes
sense for us and what is manageablefor us to do, we can solve
this problem. We can really wecan win this fight. And so but
often we just don't know what literallywhat are those things to do? So

(06:33):
you'll find that out on Saturday.Ooh, and also this is important.
If you can't show up at TimesSquare, it's going to be live streamed
on Stars in the House, soyou can find it on Stars in the
House and then it will live onso if you have to miss it that
day, you can watch it onYouTube. So yeah, so anyone anywhere
in the world can see this concert. How did you get involved? You

(06:55):
know? A couple of years ago, I read yet another terrifying article about
the environment, and I did whatI think we all do, which is
I panicked. And then I thought, but I drive a Prius, and
I take short showers, and Irecycle, and I literally don't know what
else to do. I vote forpeople who would pass green legislation. I
simply I feel powerless and I don'tknow what else to do. And then
usually it fades into the rest ofyour day and life takes over right,

(07:16):
And this time, I think thedifference was I have kids now, and
I just thought, I can't.I can't, that isn't good enough.
I have to roll up my sleevesand I have to be part of the
of the fighting, the good fight. And so then I realized my local,
because all we can really do iswhat we can do locally, and
my local is Broadway, and Broadwaygets attention, and that felt powerful.

(07:39):
So I reached out to Molly,the director at the BGA, and I
said, put me in coach,what can I do? And ever since
then, it's been about, youknow, stuff like this where we you
know, we always say it's impossibleto be one hundred percent green, but
we can all be doing better andthat hashtag it all adds up is sort
of our mantra. And are delightful. Bobby and Kristin Lope, who are

(08:00):
Broadways adored songwriters. They wrote Frozenand they also wrote Frozen two. And
in Frozen two there's a character Annawho's devastated. She's got this massive problem
she doesn't know how to solve,and she sings this gorgeous song that I
now sing sort of anywhere I gowhen I speak about the innern sustainability.
But she sings this song do thenext right thing, because she doesn't know

(08:22):
how to solve it, how toget there. But if we all just
do the next right thing, andthe next and the next and the next,
we will get there. We justgot to all be doing it.
What sort of changes have you actuallymade in your life? Here's one of
the in my personal life. Yeah, yeah, you know what I think
of it, Because there we saydiets don't work, and if you try

(08:43):
to figure out sort of hard,sort of unmanageable things you can't fit in
your day, it's never gonna last. That's not sustainable. So I reframe
it as just anka consumeless and whateverthat is, consume less gas, less
electricity less plastics, particularly less singlewaste, single use plastics that are just
going to end up in landfills.And then and then I do it in
the ways that actually are manageable.And you know, I was, I

(09:05):
was a few months ago. Iwas washing my dishes with a plastic scrub
brush, and I thought, Ibought this a couple of years ago when
I wasn't thinking about this, andI'm sure there is a comparably priced wooden
scrub brush that I can buy whenI need to replace this one, And
sure enough there is. And everyday when I go to wash my dishes
and I hold that wood it justfeels better than plastic. But it's that

(09:26):
stuff. It's it's the if youflip the switch and just think about it,
think about the consuming less of thethings that are harming us, then
then really it is easy every dayto be sort of slightly doing better and
better and better. Do you feelhopeful, because, like you said,
I mean, you could do thewhole doom scrolling thing. For example,

(09:48):
today reading the New York Times,so I put a story on the air
that the EPA did water sampling aroundthe world and found forever chemical in Yeah,
thirty percent of the water supplies aroundthe world. And these are thirty
percent of the water supplies that arenot near contaminated sources. So I just

(10:11):
thought to myself, well, we'rerude, yeah, but no, but
here's the thing. So many wedon't hear enough of the stories of all
the very very very smart people,very very very people who are innovating and
making good trouble around the world toactually solve these problems. So we've got
to support them and lift them up. And actually our theme this year of

(10:33):
the concert because one of the waysthat we can do the next right thing
all of us who are a votingage is to vote for people who want
to pass green legislation. This isa really critical year, both in America
and around the world, and sowe're going to be talking all day long
about hashtag vote Earth bibit. Thebibit is not part of the hashtag.
I just threw that in there.Yeah, but that's really that's that is

(10:56):
a huge way we wield power becausewe all feel like, yeah, but
what is it matter any day whenwhat I'm doing, when corporations and governments
if they're not on board, Butlet's force them to be on board.
Let's vote for people who are goingto help save our planet. That's not
partisan. That's all of us.It's all of our children's world that we're
trying to protect. Anika, howold are your children. They're seven and

(11:18):
eight, and they are relentless,relentless in what way you mean in terms
of the environment or just no,just the energy. If we could channel
my children's energy like we can channelstolen power. Really, honestly, we
would not need fossil fuels if wecould somehow figure out these children do not
stop from about six thirty in themorning till about eight thirty at night.

(11:41):
I don't know how we harness that. How do they feel about climate change?
What's their perspective? Yeah, they'vebeen raised in a very particular household
right where I talk about it allthe time. They're sort of astonished at
how many people make bad choices andget in the way the powers that be
that are getting in the way.And it's very hard to actually explain to

(12:01):
them why, because it really is, at the end of the day,
harming yourself. And so it's interestingbecause it forces me to break it down
into its essence to explain it tochildren. But also they're raised by a
person who feels hopeful, and theyvery much want to get you know,
when we go to the local diner, we always say, please don't bring
us straws. It's such a smallthing, but it's a big thing because

(12:22):
again, it all adds up,and so they're very aware and they One
of my sons saw my other sonwith a plastic water bottle and he said,
where did you get that? Andthe horror in his voice, I
didn't realize the degree to which hereally has. We bring our reusable water
bottles everywhere we go. But theydon't feel hopeless because they have a mom

(12:43):
who doesn't feel hopeless and who ishelping them to every day implement more green
practices. And are they going todo they show any inclination to follow in
your career footsteps? Oh my goodness. My youngest kept saying, Mama,
is their little league Broadway? AndI said, there is? And I

(13:03):
have so no desire to be astage mother, and I really like there.
I'm not taking my children to auditions. I don't. I don't want
that life for them. Of course, if they insisted, I wouldn't deny
it to them. But yes,So we have found a little local youth
theater that that is doing Annie rightnow, and they are in Annie.
And I'm telling you, Annie,I cannot listen to the music of Annie

(13:26):
anymore. Why about tomorrow? Ohmy god? Oh? She was in
like three different versions of Anna.Oh. I got to tell you,
my girls are so jealous of mychildren because if I could have been in
Annie. I mean, I wasthe Annie generation. Like that's the reason
I belt is because Annie belted.If I could have been in that,

(13:48):
I'm so jealous of my children.Right now they're Rooster and Sandy the dog,
and it's going to be epic andI'm going to cry the whole time.
Okay, and thank you Anika Larson, a Tony Award nominee. And
again Broadways celebrates Earthday. It's comingup this Saturday in the Heart of Times

(14:09):
Square from eleven to three. Andagain, how can they stream it?
They can stream it on Stars inthe House. Okay, look that.
Thank you so much. Thank you. This has been so fun. It
is and we'll have to do itagain next year. You've been listening to
Sunstein sessions on iHeartRadio, the productionof New York's classic rock Q one O
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