LaChanze, a 19-time Broadway veteran. has won five Tony Awards,  one of them for her starring role in the original 2005 Broadway production of “The Color Purple,” the other four as a Broadway producer – a career she started in 2022, after four decades as a performer. In an opening-day address yesterday at the annual conference of APAP (the Association of Performing Arts Professionals), she talked about her journey in the arts as a testament to the power of community and  to“the abundance mindset.”  Below are excerpts, focusing on her early years,  and then her recent transition to the role of producer. She ended her talk with a song, “Be a Lion,” from the musical The Wiz, the video of which is below.

LaChanze, in the dressing room of her first Broadway show in 1986 (when she was known as R. LaChanze Sapp), mid-career, and this weekend, addressing the APAP conference (during which she presented photographs like these from her past)

I am so honored to be here with APAP, a community that lives at the intersection where art meets audience, where dreams meet logistics, where imagination meets budget spreadsheets, and still, somehow, magic happens. This evening, we’re talking about scarcity and abundance, and I want to start with a truth that changed my life. Scarcity is a mindset. Abundance is a mindset, and abundance is already here. The work is not to chase abundance. The work is to recognize it, to choose it, and to live as if you deserve it. [But] artists cannot experience abundance alone. We don’t do this by ourselves. A path exists because art is communal. The abundance in my life, the opportunities, the rooms, the audiences reached, happen because of people like you…

I grew up in a family where I was the oldest of seven children. My mom was 15 when I was born, and my dad was 17…We were considered, by every rubric of this country, poor…[but] my parents instilled in me the belief that I could do anything and be anything I could imagine… Now this didn’t stop me from feeling insecure at times. The outside of my home didn’t support the loving environment inside of it. It’s hard to find your strength and confidence as a young Black child in the 60s and 70s who rarely stayed in one city for more than a year, and we desperately needed community. So my parents joined the Black Panther Party, an organization dedicated to protecting, supporting and teaching Black people and children that we are valued…

Whenever we got to a new city, my mother would put us in an arts program, any arts program she could find, whether it was dance, Drum and Bugle Corps, step team, any place artists were, my mother knew creative spaces were safe and welcoming….

While growing up in Connecticut, I had the great fortune of discovering Broadway commercials while eating breakfast in the morning before school. You remember those commercials? Oh, my God, I used to love the commercials for Evita. Chicago, The Wiz,  For Colored Girls …That’s how I was introduced to the world of Broadway. That’s how I found my tribe. I thought: ‘wait, wait, wait, I can do this for a living?’

…. While at the University of the Arts [in Philadelphia], there was a notice posted for a summer job at the Tropicana hotel [in Atlantic City] for a musical called “Uptown….It’s Hot.”  I auditioned for a dance role in the ensemble for the late great Maurice Hines. That was my very first audition, and I will never forget it, because that show, in a surprising turn of events, went to Broadway. I left college for a Broadway show that I thought was going to run forever and make me a big old star….We got our closing notice in the first month.

So there I was, an unemployed actor with nowhere else to go…The doubt started to creep in: I have to prove myself; if I don’t take this, nothing else will come; there’s room for only one of us. And similarly, our industry can fall into the same mindset, not enough seats sold, not enough funding, not enough audiences, not enough time. When artists and presenters both operate in scarcity mindset, everybody shrinks. Seasons shrink. Vision shrinks, imaginations shrink. Communities shrink. When we operate from an abundance mindset, we expand each other, because the arts don’t actually live in scarcity. The arts live in infinite possibility.

Now, even though I was surrounded by tangible scarcity, sleeping on my ex boyfriend’s aunt’s couch on the Upper West Side (that’s a longer story), I never felt like I didn’t deserve to be in this great place, or that my future was finite. Some may call that a character flaw. Naive. I call it my superpower. I was determined to be grateful for absolutely everything – I had a roof over my head, the potential to do what I love, a community that supported me every step of the way. So after about a month, I was lucky enough to audition for the late great Michael Bennet t for the national tour of Dream Girls, which ultimately came back to Broadway in 1988. The audition said you had to be at least 5’6. My resume said 5’4. I made myself taller by adding two pairs of shoulder pads. I put my hair up in that big Janet Jackson tall top ponytail. My heels were so high that when I walked in the door I couldn’t even stand straight up. After I sang, Michael Bennett said ‘young lady, how tall are you?’ I said 5’6. They burst out laughing, but I guess my audacity impressed them, because I got the part…

[After decades as a professional performer], I was thriving. I felt complete support and abundance most of the time. While there were some lean years, ramen noodle lean years, I always knew I was destined for more than what was in front of me. So while I may have been frustrated about the roles I wasn’t getting or the salary I thought I deserved. I never let that scarcity mindset sink in. It was a constant battle to stay focused on my goal…but as my grandmother would say, whatever you water, grows. So I tried hard not to water seeds of envy and competition. The only person I competed with was, in my mind, that naysayer. That was one of the best lessons I’ve ever learned as an artist, to shut that voice up so that I can speak from my heart….

Then Covid hit. The world stopped. Broadway shut down for the second time in history. These were dark days. We were living in anxious times, not knowing what the future would hold, and people were dying daily. Then we all watched the tragic murder of George Floyd. It was undeniable, because we were all home, glued to our phones, the anger poured into the streets in the form of protests. 

My particular protest was a tweet that I put out calling for support from the theater community. My dear friend Audra McDonald saw my tweet, retweeted it, called me and said, We must do something. We decided to call 19 of our friends that night to brainstorm of how we can collectively support our community and the young artists that needed to feel seen and valued And Black Theater United was born. 

 Five years later, we are still standing and much like APAP. we are doing the work to build a more equitable and inclusive theater community on stage. Our most significant contribution is the creation of A New Deal for Broadway, a list of commitments to shift the mindset of exclusion and limited opportunity. We gathered all the leaders in every section of our industry, theater owners, producers, writers, actors, directors, casting directors, general managers, unions, everyone. And we held a summit to create this document, and it lives on our website with over 200 signatories by leaders in our industry committed to this movement. I am the current president of Black Theater United and very proud of the work we’ve done…

 But even with all of the excitement of BTU, I was still bored during the pandemic, and tired of waiting for my phone to ring, tired of waiting for someone to pick me. So I picked myself. I met with David Stone [a producer whose shows had included one in which LaChanze had co-starred, “If/Then,”] Throughout Covid, I would drive to his house, sit outside and learn producing one on one. After nine months, I graduated from Stone University. He said ‘you’re ready to produce. I want you to partner on two of my upcoming shows, Top Dog/Underdog and Kimberly Akimbo.’

 And I caught the bug. It was a perfect blend of my artistry, my advocacy and my business mind.

I have learned that I know more than I think I know…. Being a theater professional for 40 years, I had read hundreds of scripts, worked with countless directors and crews, and learned how to read an audience. I’ve been in the center of the theater ecosystem. All of that accumulated knowledge guides me when I choose what stories I want to tell, who I want to work with, how I want audiences to feel. This has been my mission as a producer, to trust my gut first, to listen to my instincts, make the decision and don’t question it,

And I’ve been having a good time producing shows like Jaja’s African Hair Braiding, Buena Vista Social Club, The Outsiders, and many other great shows that are upcoming. It’s really fulfilled my desire to be a leader…and to give back to this community that has given me so much. I have the great fortune of sitting at the helm…watching these young artists give their all….crew members who ensure everything runs as it should…..directors that are so artistically driven…

An abundance mindset says we give platforms to new voices and stories. We welcome new audiences….We have everything we need to succeed and proceed.