Executives reflect on business life vs. stage life

“Each one requires, in some way, 100% of your focus and your energy, which can feel very draining, especially if you’re doing both,” said Maggie Tisdale, a professional performer and freelance instructor. “It can be draining, but empowering and exciting because you look at two different things you created and feel like you’re 100% proud of both.”

Tisdale, a northeast Denver resident, has been performing throughout the Front Range since 2006 with various companies, including The Catamounts in Boulder that provides outdoor, immersive shows. She focuses on children’s, musical and straight, or traditional, theater and teaches drama classes, summer camps and after-school enrichment programs. 

Oftentimes, Tisdale is performing at the same time she has a teaching gig, and switching between the two can be tiring, though performing is both an escape and a way for her to be her best self. 

“When I get to perform, it’s the time I feel most alive and most purposeful,” Tisdale said.

Tisdale focuses on character work and takes on a large number of supporting roles, but has to be able to identify with the characters she plays. If the characters are greatly different from her, she finds “it can be a really fun way to escape even more,” while with similar characters, she has to dig down to find the nuances, she said.

“It has to feel like it’s part of me, so I can step into and understand what that character is feeling,” Tisdale said. 

Tisdale often takes on several roles within the same show, but after a rehearsal or show, she sometimes finds it hard to decompress, while at other times, she can leave behind those characters.

“It can be hard to separate that from real-life Maggie because I’m already larger than life,” Tisdale said. “I tend to pull so many parts of my personality and put them in my characters, it can be hard to step out of character because I always feel like I’m inhabiting the character I play.”

Fort Collins resident Amy Madden, a professional performer and business owner, works hard to live a fully creative life both in her career and on stage. She previously owned eSQUARED (Exceptional Events), an event planning and marketing company she closed after 10 years in 2020 as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. That spring, she co-founded Cocoa Carrot, an online clothing and accessories boutique centered on animal-themed fashions, and she owns Canvas Underground, a custom subway sign company she started in 2013. She’s been a professional performer since she was in college in the early 1990s, working primarily as a singer and actress in musical theater.

“Just going on stage and singing your heart out and becoming another character is very cleansing of any career-oriented stress,” Madden said.

For Madden, the stage can be an escape from the business world of deadlines and client meetings into a fantasy world, where she is collaborating with other actors and creating an audience experience. Both require hard work — with acting, she has to research her characters to be able to make them believable, rehearse her lines and spend hours practicing.

“I enjoy the challenge of it, and I really enjoy finding the things with my voice and personality that mix well with the character I’m portraying,” Madden said.

Tech week requires the most work, and it’s the time period when there is a fuzzy line between real life and stage life with actors staying as late as possible to finalize all the details, Madden said. The same goes with her businesses, where Madden gives her all, but she can go home to her family at the end of the day, she said.

There are other similarities between theater and business, including collaboration with a group of people working toward a common goal, either a successful opening night and long run or a successful product launch, service or deliverable, Madden said. The director or chief executive officer is the leader, and the staff and supporting cast work toward the overall vision.

“Even in work versus theater, everybody is bringing their game, unique skills and talents to a project,” Madden said.

Rick Padden of Loveland, now retired, went into theater in 2000 when he was corporate systems manager for Lehman Communications Corp., later working as a grant writer and editor before helping start the Berthoud Weekly Surveyor. He also worked as a real estate broker for eight years. 

A produced playwright and actor, Padden has acted on stages, on radio and in films throughout Northern Colorado, performing for multiple theater companies. He finds the stage allows expression of parts of the ego normally suppressed in the working world, he said.

“I don’t think actors really play people that they are not, so much as release the people inside that they are — or could be if given the chance,” Padden said. “Actors tap their emotions to portray characters who are believable on stage. We may not have first-hand knowledge of a character’s experiences, but we, hopefully, are good at interpreting what emotions might fit those experiences — what feelings might best be applied to a given circumstance.”

Theater appeals to executive types for several reasons, including the ability to express emotions, Padden said.

“The business world cannot abide emotional behavior, but theater people toy with emotions at a very high, very visible level on a regular basis, and this soulful dabbling creates bonds that, while temporary, are very satisfying,” Padden said.

Likewise, both the business and theater worlds face deadline pressure, Padden said.

“No matter what is going on in your life, you must retain your control for the stage — get your lines down, satisfy a schedule, be ready to adjust on the fly and make it happen no matter what,” Padden said. “The stage provides an extreme pressure that must be met head-on, and businesspeople tend to savor that pressure. And then there’s that immediate gratification thing. Applause is far more effective feedback than an annual performance review, and thus we crave it.”

Business professionals also may be drawn to the stage because they can experience “immediately manifested power,” Padden said. 

“I may have managed only small staffs during my newspaper career, but even large company executives rarely get to see their influence so quickly realized as stage actors,” Padden said. “With a strong, heartfelt performance, an actor can enjoy deeply impacting 400 people in a two-and-a-half hour period of time, and that is just plain magical.”

John Sosna of Greeley has been performing along the Front Range for 30 years and is a Realtor with United Country Foothills Premier Properties in Berthoud, where he owns his own LLC. Originally, Sosna wanted to act full time but realized it took the fun out of it and that he wanted to be able to relax and enjoy what he’s doing, he said.

With each character he plays, Sosna tries to associate his life experiences with those of the character or uses other experiences to fill the void, he said. 

“It really helps you channel the emotions to make them realistic,” Sosna said, adding that roles with a darker side can take a toll. “There are times you have to access dark areas of the mind, but coming out of it, it’s not always easy … I enjoy darker characters because I enjoy disassociating from reality for a while and coming back to it.”

Sosna notes many similarities between his work as a Realtor and what he does on stage. For instance, both require confidence, which can be shown through body language and tone of voice. When he started his business, he lacked confidence and did not become successful until he felt like he knew what he was doing, he said. 

“If you’re going to be successful, you have to have confidence,” Sosna said.

When he’s on stage, Sosna has to get his lines down and is, obviously, acting, and when he is showing a house, he has a presentation he follows but also improvises as he reads the reactions of his clients. What he puts into learning his lines and into his presentations is what he will get out of them, he said.

“The more you can talk about it with regularity where you’re not reading a script, the more successful you will be with it,” Sosna said. “The more you practice, the better you get regardless of what you’re doing, whether it’s the stage or a small business.”

Longtime performer and business owner Jalyn Webb of Fort Collins finds that her teaching informs her performing and that her performing informs her teaching, helping her get ideas for both. Webb is owner of the Academy of Divabee, a performing arts school with private lessons, after-school classes and summer camps. She’s been a professional performer for more than 30 years and primarily performs at dinner theaters in Northern Colorado, including the Candelight Dinner Playhouse in Johnstown. 

“I want to be able to teach things I myself am experiencing,” Webb said. “It helps keep me sharp, laser-focused on what I’m doing as a performer because I know I want to share it with my students.” 

Webb finds that performing goes at a faster pace than owning a business, since with a dinner theater performance, there’s typically three weeks of rehearsal, one week for tech week and eight to 10 weeks for the show, she said.

“You perform the final product, the exact thing over and over again. You want to have the same performance every single night,” Webb said, adding that business is the opposite with the need to pivot in new directions in response to market demands and changes.

“Having integrity and consistency in what you’re doing are similar in both fields. Having a goal that you accomplish at the end, that’s similar,” Webb said.

Webb has to separate the business world from her performances. She has a physical separation when she leaves work and walks backstage to put on her make-up, costume and wig.

“There are physical steps that take you out of a real person and allow you to become a character,” Webb said. “Doing a show is totally fun because it allows me to be somebody totally different. … It’s always fun to be on stage to do something crazy you would never do in real life.”

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