Featured Image is Emily Cramer
I wonder if you are like me. No matter how old I get, the first morning that you wake up feeling a little chilly, you get sad and think…summer’s over…gotta get back to homework! Well…that happened to “Un-Block The Music” over the weekend. While I usually like Autumn once it gets going, I’m a little sadder this year as we approach yet another season with Coronavirus hanging over our heads. HOWEVER, I have the great opportunity to speak to Dr. Jeff and Jacob Foy about Emergency The Musical every week on Dan McCaughan’s WYFL 1180AM’s radio broadcast of From Bullets To Broadway, Anatomy of A Broadway Show. This is even more important now, as we realize full on…that theater professionals are working hard, and we will have amazing shows when it all returns!!!
That said. This week, Dan played the song “P.U.L.S.E.” from the show and we both had the opportunity to speak with guest star, Emily Cramer who played Dr. Sharp on stage last year, and recently on a ZOOM reading of the show earlier this month. (Check out Emily’s impressive resume at EmilyCramer.com. I have yet another personal note…Emily was in the last Broadway production of Les Miserables which featured Stranger Things’ Gaten Matarazzo. Once, again, “Un-Block The Music” likes to point out the puzzle pieces that create the whole picture of theater. I have written about the Ken Davenport/ Holly Block/ Gaten Matarazzo before in the story about Be More Chill’s Jennifer Ashley Tepper. Check it out” https://unblockthemusic.blog/2018/05/03/jennifer-ashley-tepper-do-what-you-love-and-do-it-very-loudly/.) Gotta love theater!
I asked Emily and the Foys what they have been doing to get through Coronavirus, how it has affected their work and, what, if anything, good has come about as a result of the downtime.
Emily first. “When all of this went down, I was doing a show in Florida which was scheduled to close March 15. My boyfriend is a pit band musician on Broadway. He wasn’t initially nervous about the virus. Then, we talked one morning and he said ‘get a flight home soon!’ The show pushed through the rest of the week…finished two shows on the 14th and cancelled the last one. We abruptly left Florida. I was white knuckling it until I got to LaGuardia Airport, and I was grateful.”
The key to surviving this pandemic is to focus on things that make you happy, and Emily said. For her, that is working on voice overs! She is the voice of several Pokémon characters. Before the shutdown, “I had an okay recording set up at home. It didn’t work for everything. My boyfriend and I thought, ‘we don’t know when all of this is going to end,’ so we built this amazing booth at home. I am doing sessions all of the time. And, having that work keeps me focused and motivated.”
For Jeff, who is an Emergency Room doctor in Indiana, “My work has increased, and I have had more stress not wanting to bring the virus home. We are still busy at the hospital. While we are not seeing as much CO-VID 19 now as we were, our guards still need to be up. At first, maybe 8 out of 10 patients tested positive, now it might only be 1 out of the 10, but you have to be cautious of the other 9 people. There are many different presentations of the virus.”
Jacob, who is now back at college for his senior year, said, “I am pretty good at focusing on what is in front of me, so I focused on both musicals (Emergency & One Night Only https://www.onenightonlythemusical.com/).” Aside from that, he said it was a gift being able to spend a lot of time with his three younger siblings.
Jeff agrees that the musicals have gotten him through these past months. After a ZOOM reading of Emergency a few weeks ago, the show has been restructured again. Jacob said, “work never stops.” They have written two new songs. One of the songs is for the nurse Kathryn. We haven’t talked about Kathryn on the show yet, but she is the guardian of her little sister Elle, and the love interest of Justin. The song is a slightly up-tempo ballad called “When You Call Me.” It’s about her desire to spend more time with Elle. She is missing her growing up because she works so much. (Something tells me Jacob was inspired by his own life!)
The other new song is for Harold and Betty. You may remember the song associated with this couple that was played on the show a few weeks ago, “Forever In Your Eyes.” ( https://unblockthemusic.blog/2020/06/22/emergencys-song-placement-essentials-discussed-on-from-bullets-to-broadway-rebroadcast-june-27-at-noon/ ). That song is heartbreaking. This one is a “cutesy” upbeat big band song, Jacob says. Without giving away too much, here we learn the reason Harold doesn’t want to go to the ER when he is sick.
Hopefully this all whets your appetite, and you will be waiting anxiously to hear the next episode of From Bullets to Broadway, cause I certainly can’t wait. If you missed last week, the show will be rebroadcast this Saturday, September 5 at noon!
For archived shows, go to https://www.1180wfyl.com/ and hit “podcasts.”
If you want to hear all of Emergency’s music you can go to https://www.emergencymusical.com/.
Un-Block The Music 
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