Today we’d like to introduce you to Meghan Faddis
Hi Meghan, please kick things off for us with an introduction to yourself and your story.
I started dancing at the young age of 3 years old at St. Louis Academy of Dance. As a true St. Louis’n does, my mom took me to the Muny one summer and after the show I looked at her with stars in my eyes and said “I want to do that”. So the next year, I went to the children’s chorus call and at the age of 6 I performed in my first musical – Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dream Coat at the Muny. I was hooked. Each year after, I performed in multiple shows on the MainStage each summer. In my high school years, I attended Visitation Academy. I performed in all of the Viz musical productions and even performed in several SLUH and CBC high school musical productions. All while juggling nightly dance lessons, competitive dance rehearsals, and even soccer practices.
After graduating high school, I attended Indiana University. The summer of my freshman year, I was offered to sign my first official professional contract as an ensemble member in Joseph…Dream Coat (pretty full circle!!) and thus began my career as a professional performer. I graduated in 4 years with a BFA in Musical Theatre and a minor in Contemporary Dance. As badly as I wanted to build my performance career in New York, I knew that dream might not be as linear as I wanted it to be, so I spent a year interning at the St. Louis Symphony under the social media manager to broaden my resume and my skillset.
I moved to New York and immediately hit the ground running – I went to every audition I could find. I began booking various summer stock gigs around the country (MUNY, Kansas City Starlight, and Sacramento Music Circus). While I was not performing, I temped as an Executive Assistant at a finance firm and was also a head fitness trainer at a boutique fitness center. About two years after moving to New York and countless auditions later… I booked the show that would change my life – Hamilton. I went through five different rounds of auditions that lasted several months and at the end of it all, I heard nothing… months of silence followed, so I continued to audition and work as I normally would. About three months after my final audition, I got a call from my agent announcing that I had booked the job and they wanted me to start the very next day. one day I was working three jobs to support my performance dreams, the next, I was walking through the Broadway stage door at Hamilton as a member of the cast.
I was cast as a female ensemble swing. As a swing, I would not be on stage every night – instead I was tasked with learning all five female ensemble tracks (parts) and whenever an ensemble member was not able to be in the show that night (sick/hurt/vacation/etc…), I would do that part that night. After learning my first track (the theatre term for ‘part’ or ‘role’), I was flown out to Chicago to perform with the company of Hamilton that was sat down at the CIBC Theatre in downtown Chicago. I spent the next year and some change in Chicago learning the rest of the five tracks and performing. About a year into my contract, we received notice that our company would be closing and I performed my last show with the Chicago company in January of 2020.
Shortly after returning back to NY, the pandemic hit, shutting down the entire broadway/theatre industry as a whole. I ended up returning to STL and living with my parents for a bit while I figured out what my next step would be. While the theatre industry was at a total standstill, I channelled another passion of mine, and studied to become a certified personal trainer and nutrition coach. Since theatre and dance is such a physically demanding job, it is fairly common for performers to also work part time in the fitness industry – which also was heavily suffering during the pandemic. With such a specifically niche background and clientele, I decided to start my own company – Inside Out Performance. Inside Out Performance offered virtual personal training sessions and nutrition guidance specifically curated to the needs of a performer. While I found success in this offering, I felt I wasn’t using the niche of not just MY performance/fitness background, but also the hundreds of other unemployed artists backgrounds to the fullest potential.
While still offering individual training sessions, I expanded Inside Out Performance’s offerings. I created a virtual fitness platform for artists, by artists. Inside Out Performance served as a virtual boutique fitness studio offering a wide variety of live, drop-in style group classes led by highly qualified instructors with experience in both performing arts and exercise science. This is a blurb from the website: “The Broadway shutdown has caused many performing artists to rely on their secondary job in the fitness/wellness industry, but it too has been severely impacted by the virus; furloughs, studio closures, and limited in person teaching positions left many out of yet another job. Nonetheless, we adapted. Individually, we transitioned to virtual teaching, acquired new certifications, developed our own classes, and hustled to build and maintain clientele in the middle of a pandemic. Inside Out Performance’s virtual class platform was conceived in an effort to provide a supplemental teaching opportunity for performers who found themselves in this position as well, and to share the gift of healing through movement with other artists during these unprecedented times.”
While in the midst of operating my own small business in the middle of a pandemic, the theatre industry was slowly starting to find its feet again and I was offered to re-join Hamilton. This go around, I was offered to join the Angelica touring company – once again as an ensemble swing. I gladly accepted and began a new chapter with Hamilton traveling and performing across North America.
While traveling, I often made time outside of my hefty rehearsal/performing schedule to teach various masterclasses in schools and dance studios in whatever city I traveled to with Hamilton. While in North Carolina, I taught a masterclass as part of a regional dance competition’s convention. While there, I connected with the director of the competition and was offered the opportunity to be on the judging panel of one of their upcoming dance competitions. I spent a weekend judging the competition and absolutely fell in love!
As my contract with Hamilton was nearing its end, I was offered a more permanent position judging and teaching on staff with the dance competition. I quickly expanded my network in the dance competition world and I now sit on the judging panel for three different dance competitions where I travel across the country to both judge and teach classes in a variety of different dance styles (mostly musical theatre and contemporary).
I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
The entertainment industry is not an easy industry to build a sustainable, consistent career in. The audition process of even potentially being considered for a job as a dancer is hard – not just physically, but also mentally. You get told no a lot. A lot, A LOT. For every job I did end up booking there were easily 15-20 no’s before that. As if receiving rejection over and over again isn’t hard enough, often the reasons for being told no were “you’re too short”, “your hair is too blonde”, “we already made the costumes and you are not the right measurements”… things completely out of my control.
I was extremely fortunate to be offered a long term gig like Hamilton that has kept me employed for several years at a time. However, a lot of theatre contracts are much shorter – most lasting only a few weeks and some just a few months. So often times, even while employed, you are still auditioning and looking for your next gig. This is why so many performers have part time jobs/side hustles and why I have such a diverse employment history!
a blurb from a social media post of mine while touring as a swing on Hamilton:
“four-ish years of swinging this show has taught me… a lot. There is A LOT of unpredictability that comes with the job – the thing that scares me the most (lol cool, cool). You get one shot to go on stage in front of thousands to play a role that you do not get to person every night as though you DO perform it every night. Sometimes you feel really proud of yourself and sometimes you cry after because you felt you made a million mistakes and ruined the show 🤷🏼♀️
The inconsistencies of the job I have been doing for the past three years have manifested themselves into life altering lessons. Not always easy ones, but ones that I have learned so much from. I have had my ego checked SEVERAL times, I have learned how to receive criticism graciously (most of the time), I have learned I am not always right, I have learned how to voice my opinion (and when it is best not to), I have learned that hard work behind the scenes does not go unnoticed (and not to take it personally when I don’t get validation for the work), I have learned to trust myself and my instincts, and I have learned that I am stronger than I give myself credit for.
What do you like best about our city? What do you like least?
I love how accessible art, especially musical theatre and dance, is to young aspiring artists. There are so many credible performance opportunities and so much rich arts education offered to young artists in St. Louis.
The thing I like least about St. Louis is that it is a plane ride away from NY, so I cannot be in two places at once!
Contact Info:
