S3E8: Nicolette Blount
In this episode, Hayley and Amy talk with Chickasaw playwright, producer, and performer Nicolette Blount about her musical Savage, lifting up authentic female voices and stories, increasing accessibility and opportunity for writers of new musicals, parenting as a spiritual practice, and more. Scroll down for episode notes and transcript!
Episode Notes
Hosts: Hayley Goldenberg and Amy Andrews
Guest: Nicolette Blount
Music: Chloe Geller
Episode Resources:
Oklahoma Native Alliance Against Violence
Learn more about the Chickasaw Nation
Guest Bio:
Nicolette Blount (she/her) is a member of the Chickasaw tribe, a playwright, producer, and performer who is currently a fellow for the Dramatist Guild Foundation’s National Musical Theatre Fellowship. She is the co-writer, composer and lyricist for Savage: The Unconquerable Wanda Savage. Savage is currently a semifinalist for NMTC O’Neil 2024. Savage received Honorable Mention in the 2022 American Playwriting Foundation's Relentless Award. Nicolette produced an EP and singles for Savage (Savage the Musical Original Cast) that have garnered 43K streams. Through her LLC, Take My Shot Productions, Nicolette co-produced Off Broadway's A Commercial Jingle for Regina Comet and is currently co-producing In Pieces (in development). Nicolette started nativetheatreartists.com to help highlight Natives in the Broadway industry. Nicolette’s music has been featured at Laurie Beechman Theatre (NYMF 2019), 54 Below at Women of the Wings, and at the Ring of Keys Gala at Joe’s Pub. She is a member of the Dramatists Guild, ASCAP, Society of Composers and Lyricists, Songwriters Guild of America, TRU, MUSE, RISE, and Maestra.
Find Nicolette Online:
Website: nicoletteblount.com
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Episode Transcript
(Music)
Hayley: Hello, beautiful people, and welcome to the Women & Theatre Podcast! We're your hosts, Hayley Goldenberg…
Amy: …and Amy Andrews. Grab a cup of coffee and join us as we talk to people in the theatre industry about their experiences with womanhood.
Hayley: On the pod, we interview people with different gender identities, from different backgrounds, with varying levels of industry experience and professional roles.
Amy: Our goal is to build community and pool our collective wisdom to break down the barriers we continue to face.
(Music)
Amy: In this episode, we speak with Nicolette Blount. Nicolette is a member of the Chickasaw tribe, a playwright, producer, and performer who is currently a fellow for the Dramatist Guild Foundation’s National Musical Theatre Fellowship. She is the co-writer, composer, and lyricist for Savage: The Unconquerable Wanda Savage. Savage is currently an O’Neill semifinalist for the National Music Theater Conference 2024. Savage received an Honorable Mention for the 2022 American Playwriting Foundation's Relentless Award. Nicolette has produced an EP and singles for Savage that have garnered 43K streams. Through her company Take My Shot Productions, Nicolette co-produced Off Broadway's A Commercial Jingle for Regina Comet and is currently co-producing In Pieces (in development). Nicolette started nativetheatreartists.com to help highlight Natives in the Broadway industry. Nicolette’s music has been featured at the Laurie Beechman Theatre in the New York Musical Theater Festival 2019, 54 Below in Women of the Wings, and Joe’s Pub in the Ring of Keys gala. She is a member of the Dramatists Guild, ASCAP, the Society of Composers and Lyricists, Songwriters Guild of America, Theater Resources Unlimited, MUSE, RISE, and Maestra.
Amy: Hello, listeners. We are here with the fabulous Nicolette Blount, who is a writer, a producer, a mom, and a theatre artist. Nicolette, could you please start us off by introducing yourself, sharing your pronouns, and telling us a bit about what you do in theatre?
Nicolette: Okay. Soho Chafoat Nicolette Blount - that is Chickasaw for “My name is Nicolette Blount. Chokmah, hello. I am she/her. I am a mom, as you mentioned, and a wife, and I am a producer, and I'm a performer, and I'm a composer, lyricist, and playwright. Currently the co-writer, composer, and lyricist for Savage the Musical.
Hayley: Nicolette, you do so many cool things. Can you talk to us a little bit about how you came to theatre in the first place?
Nicolette: Oh boy. Many, many moons ago… (laughter) I grew up in Southern California, and I was always into singing and performing, and my parents were both teachers, and I guess I always felt like an outsider. Which I think is a very common denominator in the arts. A lot of us feel like we're outsiders, hence why we find theatre.
My parents didn't know what to do with me, so they put me in an all-girls choir, and I was in two operas when I was younger. And then I went to college for theatre and voice.
And then I met my husband, and I decided to put that on the back burner so that I could put him through school. And then, after I put him through medical school, then it was my turn to go back to school to pursue theatre and voice. And then I kept getting pregnant, and so I raised my children all the while I've been writing.
We lived in Hawaii for six years and I sang in a lot of different places in Hawaii and started a nonprofit for the arts that had festivals. I wrote and recorded an album called Conversations. And then we moved out here to the East Coast, and my journey came more toward the Broadway area, which is where I've always wanted to be.
Amy: That's amazing. You have lived so many lives.
Nicolette: Too many!
Amy: It's great! Hayley and I, we're both kind of living that path too. So we appreciate it. Like-minded spirits, for sure. Nicolette, can you tell us a bit about what is exciting you right now creatively that you’re working on?
Nicolette: My husband and I, Christopher, we were just investors on the Museum of Broadway, which is very, very cool. If you have not seen it, you should go see it.
Amy: Congratulations, it's such a cool project!
Hayley: It is such a cool project, yeah.
Nicolette: Yeah, and it's really cool that these girl bosses started it. When I was approached with the idea by Robin Gorman Newman, I thought, “Wow, this is such a great idea and such a great way to be part of this legacy going forward.” At the first part, it was just like this concept - these are the ideas and we're investing in this. We're not sure exactly how it's going to be, but we trust everybody at the helm of it. And then once they started showing us workups on what it's going to look like, and then it was nothing compared to once we went there,
The coolest thing about the Museum of Broadway, I think, is, from a writer's point of view, seeing all the letters of theatres who turned down Jonathan Larson, all the writings of Sondheim and him crossing out lyrics, and all the great writers, composers, seeing their process on paper. So that's been very exciting.
And then also my main project is Savage the Musical, and I've been working on that for six years.
Amy: Cool. Can you tell us a bit about Savage?
Nicolette: Yeah. Savage the Musical… So I'm Chickasaw Native American, and my great-grandmother was also Chickasaw Native American, and she was a star in the 1920s and she was a sharpshooter. And she started in circuses, went through vaudeville, went through silent films, worked with some of the greats, and then she was an actress and a stunt double. And then she ended up in a brothel. And she had about six husbands.
I grew up with all these stories of her and pictures. And then my cousin wrote a documentary about her that you can find on Amazon. And her life is just so inspiring, all the things she went through. So the show, it's kind of the story of her and my grandfather, but it's mostly a story of a modern woman trying to make a career for herself in the 1920s and all the pushback that she got.
She happens to be Native American and yes, we deal with some of that. And my tribe's language is endangered. So we have tried to put some of the language in the show. But it's mostly a story of a modern woman and her quest to overcome all these things she was faced with.
In the 1920s, women were just starting to have choices. When women were given the right to vote, the Native American women were not. In fact, Native American women did not have a right to vote in all of the states until, I want to say early 1970s.
So I have these pictures of her where… Once she got to Hollywood, they lightened her hair. They literally lightened her skin. I have pictures of her where her face is really light. And she wasn't that dark. If you go to Oklahoma and you go to the Chickasaw tribe, we're so mixed. Some are lighter, some are darker. So we follow her story in the show of trying to be a mother. Her son gets taken away from her. She faces misogyny and abuse and some racism.
There's another character named Vivian. And her walk as a woman is a little bit different. She's playing the game of the men, which is trying to sleep her way to the top. Trying to play that game to get your way up in the world. And so we show that in the show. And we also show not only how Hollywood tried to make people of different backgrounds appear white, but also how they covered up people's sexuality. And it's really quite sad.
Hayley: Yeah. Nicolette, do you feel like you have a creative mission that guides all the work that you do?
Nicolette: I would say that I'm really pro getting female voices heard, female stories heard. Mothers, all ethnicities. I think it's really important. I think there's been so many people who have been marginalized - not just in theatre, in life in general, right? In society. But specifically theatre. And being that I'm part Native American and I'm also a woman, those voices are especially important to me.
I am just so tired of these stories coming out about females that men have written. Let us tell our story! We're already marginalized, our voices aren't heard. Even with Savage, I've had several men approach us who want to produce our show, and I want a female lead producer.
Amy: Good for you!
Nicolette: This show is about a badass female, it needs to be a female lead producer.
And I'll also say that Broadway in general, there is so much gatekeeping, and it's so much of a good old boys club. It is really hard for any new writers to get their foot in the door, much less if you're a woman, BIPOC, whatever it may be. There's a lot of gatekeeping, and sadly, I feel like a lot of the people that I know, it started happening once I invested some money in something. And there's a lot of really good writers out there with a lot of talent that don't have that kind of money to do that kind of stuff. And it's sad that you have to play that game.
Amy: Yeah.
(Musical transition)
Amy: In your ideal theatrical world, if you had a magic wand and were the queen of Broadway, what changes would you make to make things better?
Nicolette: Oh gosh. If I was queen of Broadway.... Okay, I know what I would do.
(laughter)
Amy: Tell us!
Nicolette: So the name of the game right now seems to be… I understand that producers need to make money. That's their income. That's their bread and butter. I understand that everyone struggled during COVID. But another thing I'm really sick of is the revivals, the jukebox musicals, and the film-to-musicals. When you have all this new work out there, and some really good work, and no one's tapping into that at all.
And I don't think they know how, or maybe they're just worried… like, who's going to go to a show of an unknown writer? But if you get a good actor in there, people will show up. And if the show is good, it's good, you know?
And it doesn't seem like there's a lot of producers willing to take chances on young unknown writers. And in my case, old unknown writers.
Amy: Absolutely!
Nicolette: I mean, I came to this game so late because I had to put my family first, and I have a special-needs kid, and that was important to me. I guess if I was the queen of Broadway, I would stop all of the movie-to-musicals and the jukebox musicals...
Hayley: All of them! Goodbye!
Nicolette: All of them - stop!
(laughter)
Nicolette: How many theatres do we have available right now? It's like 10 or 15, right? Empty theatres.
Hayley: Yeah, true. There are a lot, yeah. And all these shows just waiting to be picked up.
Nicolette: And I also think that the cost of everything's gotten insane. And I don't know how to solve that either. I mean, I think that starts with New York City itself. Taxes and how much everything costs, it kind of starts there. I would make things more accessible.
I would also have more new musicals, new opportunities for new musicals. ‘Cause the other problem is you go to theatres and you look at their website, and then it says, “We only take submissions from people who have agents.” Well, you can't have an agent unless you have your show up, but you need an agent.
Hayley: Mm-hmm, it's like a vicious cycle.
Nicolette: Yeah! And that's not fair either.
Hayley: Yeah. It's the same thing with the resume thing. How do you get experience without experience?
Amy: And nobody will give you experience, right.
Hayley: Exactly, yeah.
Nicolette: Yeah, and gatekeeping and… I understand it's about relationships and stuff, but having those opportunities to have those relationships, how we go about doing that…
Amy: Well, and it's tricky, as you said, because it's an old boys club and because people want to network with people who are similar to them, it makes it harder for women to get a foot in the door, for people of diverse backgrounds to get a foot in the door, for immigrants… Anyone who isn't a straight white man, right?
Hayley: Totally. There's that adage about people wanting to put their money with people and not so much caring about ideas. And so it's harder for people too who don't have the skillset of going out and making those relationships. I know a lot of writers who are great people, great writers, but they're not necessarily outgoing in that way. You have to be a multi-hyphenate in the way that you…
Nicolette: Yeah. And I think for me, I'm really outgoing…
Hayley: Totally!
Nicolette: But I think my downfall is… I really enjoy people. And so when I do have these opportunities to go and speak to these producers, I don't ever mention my show unless someone else brings it up. Because I don't want to be that person, I want to get to know the people. So there's some sort of fine art of that that I haven't mastered yet. And I'm not sure…
Amy: Or that you are in the process of mastering.
Nicolette: I do like getting to know people, and I just never want to be that person - “Oh, I'm getting to know you just ‘cause I want you to produce my show.”
Hayley: For sure.
(Musical transition)
Hayley: Nicolette, I wanted to ask you about what womanhood means to you?
Nicolette: I think women are so highly intuitive and so self-reflecting - a lot of us are. Women tend to be more introspective and things like that, for whatever reason. Maybe our hormones, I don't know, but…
Hayley: I feel like it has to do with societal conditioning too, right?
Nicolette: Yeah. I think that's part of it too. But I think that being a woman is - I mean, to me as Nicolette, it's being a mother, it's being a wife. It's listening to others, seeing the hurts of others, trying to help others. All those things.
Hayley: That's beautiful.
Nicolette: Getting back to the gatekeeping and stuff like that… I have had to recently take my picture off my resume, because I am Chickasaw - a lot of people don't think I look Chickasaw. Now if I went to Oklahoma, they might, but out here, people assume that Native Americans look a certain way. We're all so mixed. If you went to my tribe, you would find all different hair colors, eye colors, skin colors, like, it runs the gamut. So there's a whole thing there too.
We've gone back and rewritten Savage, cause originally we had Wanda as full Chickasaw, but she wasn't, she was part. So now we're going back and rewriting her being part and dealing with the feeling of having a foot in each world. And I think a lot of people might feel that way.
And myself, I still feel that in the sense of, “Oh, you can't call yourself Chickasaw. You're white. You have blonde hair, blue eyes. You're a white girl. You can't call yourself Chickasaw.” My mother taught for a Native American school called Sherman Indian school in California. I grew up with all kinds of tribes. When my mom passed away, my mom's Hopi friends came and did a Hopi prayer and put blankets over the casket and then gave it to all the grandkids.
The Native American culture is part of me. But for someone to look at me and be like, “You're not Native American…” It's just really sad. And part of what I hope that Savage says is: You cannot judge people by their - you can't judge a book by the cover. A lot of us have a lot of different experiences. I just feel like we need to all stop being so judgmental on everything. It just all needs to stop. I'm so sick of all of it.
Amy: Yeah.
Hayley: That makes total sense, yeah.
Nicolette: It's one of the things that needs to be changed or reformed.
Hayley/Amy: Absolutely.
Amy: As a mom myself, I'd love to hear more about how motherhood has influenced your work.
Nicolette: Oh my gosh. I mean, being a mom - wow! That like, totally changes you.
Amy: It's a whole thing!
Nicolette: Yeah. It humbles you. One time, I heard that being a parent is a spiritual discipline, because you have to be selfless all of a sudden. And it's not like, “Oh, we'll learn this in a few years.” No, like the minute you're a parent - boom, selflessness! All of a sudden. And part of it is cause you want to, right?
But I would say that being a mom changed me. It's humbled me a lot. I think having a child with special needs - that was, wow, that was really difficult. ‘Cause when she was born - she has a really rare form of spina bifida - we were told that she was never going to walk. That was when she was in utero. Her form of spina bifida is 1% of the spina bifida cases. It's so rare.
And she walks and runs and jumps. She dances, actually. She can't tiptoe with one of her feet, but she can run and everything else. And to this day, they don't know how she's walking. She doesn't have the pushdown reflex with one of her feet. So she's this little walking miracle.
Amy: That's amazing!
Nicolette: Yeah! Going through all of that as a parent, it makes you this warrior. It makes you this stronger person. A lot of people take having a healthy baby for granted. Having a healthy baby is a miracle in itself. Like, that is amazing, you know?
Motherhood has also - you have this mom guilt that comes on that you didn't expect.
Amy: All the mom guilt, always!
Nicolette: Yeah, like, “Oh my gosh, I yelled at them too much. They're damaged for the rest of their life.”
Amy: Right, exactly. You feel like you have so much power, and not always in a good way.
Nicolette: And we're human, right? We're not perfect. Like, sometimes we make mistakes. And then giving yourself grace in that, and giving your children grace. That's part of why I started pursuing Savage later in life, ‘cause then my kids were older and it's like, okay, I can do more now and start pursuing this career of mine.
Hayley: With being a mom and with all of the hats that you wear in the industry and everything, Nicolette, how do you think about balancing all of that? What are your strategies?
Nicolette: I don't get very much sleep and I live on Starbucks. (laughter) And sometimes I'll have a venti in the morning and a grande in the afternoon.
Hayley: Do what you gotta do.
Nicolette: Oh my gosh. When my kids were little, I remember hearing Oprah saying something really profound about moms not losing themselves, ‘cause it is very easy to do.
I mean, being a mom to this little baby is like, the most honorable job you can do. And we all know it's equal to two full-time jobs. They've done studies, and that's just a known fact. But there is a thing that a lot of moms do, especially if you're a stay-at-home mom, where you can lose yourself. And then your kid finally moves out of the house and goes to college and you're like, “Now what do I do?”
Amy: Who am I? Right.
Nicolette: Yeah, and I'm such a fiercely independent person. I don't want that to happen to me.
So when the kids were little, I was always doing something. I went back to school for fashion design online through the Academy of Arts University.
Hayley: Cool!
Nicolette: So I was doing that. And then I would be staying up till like, 3 AM and people were like, “How do you do that? And then what time do your kids wake up?” “Oh, about 6.” Like, aren't you going to crash at some point? You know, you take naps when they take naps. But I think that you just find time.
There's like, these big points of change. When both of my kids went to preschool, I was like, “Oh my gosh!”
Amy: That regular schedule, it’s amazing.
Nicolette: I can take a shower. I can go sit at Starbucks and do nothing. What am I going to do with all this time I have now? I think you have to be part crazy to have a career and be a mom. In general. All these working moms - my hat goes off to you, man. It is hard. It is hard.
Amy: Yeah. But it's good. I like what you say about moms being warriors. When you meet another mom, especially in the arts and creative spaces, it's just this recognition - hey, what we're doing is really hard. That's nice.
Nicolette: Yeah. In Savage, we have this interaction between Wanda and her mom, Homa Hota, her encouraging her to be a warrior. A lot of people think that the word warrior - at least a Native American warrior - it's just like, someone who's scalping people and killing people.
Actually, warriors within the Native American society - or at least my tribe - they took part in government, they protected women and children, they were part of creating laws. There was integrity that went with this. They didn't just go out there to kill people. It wasn't the intent to just be these vicious people. Some warriors in my tribe fought alongside George Washington. So you know, I kind of wanted to show what warriors in the Chickasaw culture really are.
Amy: If you could speak to younger Nicolette just getting started in theatre, what advice would you give to people who are coming up behind you?
Nicolette: I have young people who reach out to me all the time and I always will talk to them. I always tell people you have to go for your dreams. You can't be an 80, 90-year old person saying “Oh, what if?” That is the worst thing. My fear is that I'll be sitting there going, “What if I did this?”
My favorite quote is where there is fear, there is no creativity. No one's going to believe in you except for you. So you have to try. You know, what's the worst thing that's going to happen? You're going to fail? So what?
Hayley: Everyone fails sometimes.
Amy: At least you tried.
Nicolette: Yeah! Then try something else. To my younger self, I would tell myself, first of all, it's okay to be different. It's okay to not fit in. It's okay. There's a reason why there's all different kinds of people and colors and hair colors and skin colors. You know, variety is the spice of life. It'd be really boring if everyone looked like me. And I think that I would have told myself to embrace my differences and feeling like I don't fit in. I would have probably given myself a hug and told myself that it's going to get better.
If someone would have told me that I would be doing what I'm doing now, having my show seen by Broadway people… We just had a community production of my show here out here in Massachusetts. If someone would have told me that when I was younger, I'd be like, “What? What are you talking about?”
But yeah, I think just like - embrace who you are and never give up, and bad days will always become good eventually.
Hayley: I love that.
Nicolette: Yeah.
Hayley: What are you most proud of in your life and in your work?
Nicolette: I'm proud of being a mom. My kids are good kids. They get good grades. They're very creative. I'm just really proud of being a mom.
And as far as my work, no matter what happens with Savage, I am really proud. It's, you know, six years of work. I'm proud that I was able to do what I've done. That I was able to write the music and the lyrics and co-write the book with my co-writer, Lindel [Hart]. I'm proud of the work we've done.
And I'm proud that I produced this EP that's out there. And if you go to Savagethemusical.com or Spotify or iTunes, you can stream our EP and some of our music from Savage the Musical. Every single stream, the money goes back to Oklahoma Native Alliance against Violence, who works with MMIW to help violence within tribes. They work with over 25 tribes in Oklahoma. We take the money, we give them 100% of the streams and then we triple it. So if you stream the songs, you also help make a difference.
Hayley: Well, Nicolette, thank you so much for sharing all of this with us. We really appreciate you being here. Where can our listeners find you on the internet?
Nicolette: Nicoletteblount.com, savagethemusical.com, SavagetheMusical on Instagram, TikTok, Facebook.
Amy: Great. Awesome. Thank you so much for being with us. It's been such a pleasure.
(Music)
Hayley: Thank you for listening to the Women & Theatre Podcast. We’re your hosts, Hayley Goldenberg…
Amy: And Amy Andrews. If you like what you heard, subscribe and give us a 5-star review wherever you listen.
Hayley: You can also follow us on social @womenandtheatreproject to make sure you never miss an episode.
Amy: The music for this show is written by talented Women & Theatre community member Chloe Geller.
Hayley: Thanks for listening, everyone. See you next time!
Amy: Bye!
