You might think that Ariana DeBose would be too busy the night before her hosting duties at the Tony Awards to go to a movie. But the world premiere of “Satisfied,” a documentary about Renée Elise Goldsberry as performer and mother, brought DeBose to the stage of the Beacon to introduce the film “on behalf of Renée, the Hamilton family, the Tony Awards family, and the Broadway community at large…. You are going to fall even more in love with Renée than you already are.”
And then after the 84-minute film, Leslie Odom Jr. and Kelli O’Hara, who both also have Tony duties (as nominees this year), joined Goldsberry for an hour-long concert, along with Sara Bareilles and Billy Porter, who is himself receiving the 2024 Isabelle Stevenson Tony Award.
All these Broadway heavy hitters felt like a preview of the Tony Awards at its most glamorous – and served as something as a counterpoint to “Satisfied,” which is named after the song that Goldsberry sung to great acclaim as an original cast member of “Hamilton.” While revisiting the juggernaut success of that eleven-time Tony winning musical (one of which was given to Goldsberry), the documentary also offers a look at the private side of the public performer, employing copious candid video diaries Goldsberry took of herself over the years with a smart phone.
“Satisfied” tells the story of a woman who wanted to be a performer from an early age (we see clips of her performing in camp and in high school, and testimony from both her mother and her high school drama teacher.) But she also wanted to be a mother. By the age of 43, having struggled through traumatic miscarriages, she and her husband Alexis Johnson, a lawyer, were finally the parents of two small children, and, she tells us, she had decided to take time out from her career for her family.
This was in 2014, and it was then that she was asked to audition for a workshop production of a new musical by Lin-Manuel Miranda called “The Hamilton Mixtape.” She turned it down. Why should she audition for a mere workshop, which she was probably too old to get anyway?
But then she listened to a demo of the music. “This is the greatest thing I’ve ever heard in my life. I’ve got to go to the audition tomorrow”. She listened to it again and again, slowing it down, “trying to figure out what he was saying.”
Miranda was floored by her audition – it was the first time, he says in the documentary, that the song conveyed “the evolution of a thought process,” rather than just some tricky music.
During the concert, Kelli O’Hara, who is an executive producer of the documentary, said the movie is “for any of you who are mothered by someone who is trying to work as well.”
“Satisfied” offers snippets of her home life that make you yearn for more of them. At one point, she describes the dilemma of a performer looking for a life partner; the partner has to put up with “either somebody with no job and no prospects, or somebody who says ‘Could you hold my purse?’ “ She says this in her kitchen as her husband listens quietly with a look of amusement.
As Goldsberry tells us, she was the only Mom in the cast. There are times when she looks extremely tired and stressed out, and confesses that the juggling of family and career makes her feel like she’s letting people down. One assumes she means primarily her family: “I feel guilty, and more than that, I feel like I’m missing out.”
Perhaps we should be thankful there is no talking head to put her struggles in a larger context, or to compare her navigation between family and work to that of Angelica Schuyler, the 18th century character she portrayed in the musical that both brought her unprecedented attention and crystallized her dilemma.
But for all the filmmakers’ evident interest in having us view “Satisfied” as primarily a vivid example of a woman seeking work-life balance, the documentary surely could not have been made but for the on-stage and behind-the-scenes footage in it that chronicles the early, electric excitement of “Hamilton” – which, you may be startled to realize, occurred a decade ago.
“Satisfied” at the Tribeca Festival has one more screening, today at 2
