Chicago thespian lights up Broadway in “Mamma Mia”

Courtney Reed, a 23-year-old actress-dancer from Chicago, stands below the marquee for the hit Broadway show “Mamma Mia,” in which she is an ensemble cast member and understudy for the lead character “Ali.”

By Yvonne Villarreal

As Courtney Reed ascended the subway stairs into the heart of Times Square during her first trip to New York City in December 2006, she marveled at the bustling streets, with taxis swerving in and out of lanes, the densely packed tourists shuffling along the sidewalks and towering billboards clustered along the sides of buildings.

But it wasn’t until the doe-eyed Chicagoan saw the massive “Mamma Mia” sign atop the Winter Garden Theater that she brought out her camera.

“I thought to myself, I’m in that!” Reed recalled. “It was totally unreal. I got chills.”

On Dec. 19, Reed celebrated her one-year anniversary as part of the ensemble cast of the hit Broadway musical “Mamma Mia.” Now in its sixth year, the musical became the 18th-longest running production in Broadway history on Oct. 21, with just over 2,500 performances. Reed’s slender legs have strutted, shimmied and sashayed in a chunk of those shows, leaving little time for the 23-year-old to enjoy a social life.

To keep her sylph-like body active, Reed travels from her apartment in Astoria, Queens, to the Broadway Dance Center on 45th Street at Eighth Avenue, where she takes up to 12 hip-hop dancing classes a week, including on performance days.

“I have to keep moving,” Reed said. “I can’t be losing my breath when I’m onstage, so my body has to be conditioned to be used to the movement.”

Back-to-back sessions of fluid hip-hop choreography usually fill Mondays and Tuesdays, when there are no scheduled performances. On show days, she tries attending at least one session to “get the adrenaline going.”

On a recent Tuesday afternoon, Reed crammed in three 90-minute dancing sessions. She wore loose-fitting indigo sweat pants—cut just below the knee, revealing a dime-sized bruise on her right calf—a black shirt that hung off her left shoulder, Nike high-tops with the tongue popped out, and silver earrings of concentric circles that occasionally trapped strands of her wavy black hair.

At 5-foot-5, Reed’s petite presence is grand. Her mother is from Thailand and her father is part French and English, making her ethnicity complex, but her beauty lucid. When she smiles, the corner on the right side of her full mouth lifts slightly higher than the left. The smiles come easily, especially when she is having fun dancing.

“Five, six, seven, eight…boom…boom…and BOOM!” said the instructor.

Reed applies makeup before a show recently in her dressing room.

So much for a normal life

The discipline required to learn intricate choreography is nothing new for Reed. Envious of her older sister Tiffany because she took dance classes, Reed begged her mother to enroll her in similar classes so she, too, could whirl around on the tips of her tiny toes. At age 6, she was pounding the metal plates beneath her shoes in tap-dancing class.

Tiffany never pursued dancing much further, but Reed continued to pursue her passion for performing. Her mother had reservations about watching her daughter enter such a competitive industry.

“The industry is a very, very tough,” said Courtney’s mother, Tipawan Reed. “Too many have to struggle to be successful, and I just wanted her to be in a standard academic environment.”

Porter Reed, Courtney’s 60-year-old father, is now retired and was formerly on the Illinois State Board of Education. Tipawan, 57, is president and founder of the Office of Applied Innovations, a non-profit organization that provides individuals with educational, employment and training opportunities. Their jobs had provided the household with a steady income. They feared Courtney would not have that same stability in pursuing the arts.

But the younger Reed was willing to take a chance—and perhaps struggle.

She felt the first tingling of goose bumps when she performed in community theater productions, debuting at The Hemmens Cultural Center in Elgin, Ill., as a mouse in “Cinderella.” She was cast as the Wicked Witch in “The Wizard of Oz.” But it was when she played the lead role in “Annie” that it all clicked.

“Once I sang ‘Tomorrow,’ that was it for me,” Reed said. “It was an indescribable feeling. I just knew it was something I wanted to do for the rest of my life.”

It was that same lead-role performance that convinced Tipawan that performing could never be just a hobby for her daughter.

“Seeing the passion in her eyes when she was up on that stage as Annie,” Tipawan said. “I thought, hmm, maybe this is for real.”

Reed attended Larkin Performing Arts High School, where she focused in drama and played Diana in “A Chorus Line” and Rizzo in “Grease.”

“Courtney has a vivacity about her that is so intriguing,” said Holly McNeil, who taught Courtney at Larkin. “It’s very exciting, as a teacher, to see someone make it in a business that is so competitive and vicious.

While in college, Reed did film work with the help of agents who represented her since she was a sophomore. She was cast in nationwide DeVry and U.S. Army recruiting commercials, and appeared in a few industrial shorts and independent films, giving her a taste of the film industry she hopes to one day pursue.

“I didn’t get the ‘real’ college experience,” Reed said. “I pretty much had classes with the same 15 people all four years of college. We didn’t have a typical campus, and there were no college football games. But if that is the best I can come up with for sacrifices, I think I can live with that.”

Reed was one of the few who secured an agent while in college, forking over 10 percent of whatever income she made in film and theater and 20 percent for print work.

After graduation, Reed appeared in three stage productions in Chicago. She had planned to move to Los Angeles in January 2007 to pursue a film career but switched course when her agent told her about a “Mamma Mia!” audition at Lou Cante Dance Studio in Chicago.

Reed had auditioned for the production as a college sophomore but didn’t get a part. She would try out again, only this time not caring as much. It was just another audition. Besides, she thought the parts they were seeking to fill were for the tour in Las Vegas, not Broadway. She was expecting to move to Los Angeles anyway. There was nothing to lose.

Her agent called a few days after the audition and said, “How would you like to be on Broadway?”

Reed would like it. She would like it a lot.

Living the Broadway life

Reed earns $1,500 a week as an ensemble cast member and understudy for the Ali character, a lead part that she recently played onstage. The hefty amount quickly slims down as expenditures add up. She pays $850 a month for her share of two-bedroom apartment in Astoria, Queens; $90 for gym fees; $60 in quarterly dues for membership in the Actors’ Equity Association, a union representing more than 45,000 actors and stage managers in the U.S.; $150 a week in agent fees; about $140 a week on dancing classes; and $100 on cell phone charges. Add to that clothing for dance or auditions, which can cost up to $300 a month.

Reed admitted that the seemingly glamorous life of a Broadway dancer is anything but. In fact, she said, a typical 23-year-old would consider her social life a little pathetic.

And while some young actors can be seen stumbling down out of nightclubs every weekend, Reed is more subdued. After some performance nights, she and a few cast members might walk a few blocks down the gum-stained sidewalks from the theater to Harmony View Bar & Grill on West 50th Street and Broadway, where they’ll sip red wine at the bar and laugh boisterously.

“It’s fun because sometimes people in the bars will just stare at you because they have a feeling that you’re a performer,” Reed said. “They’ll recognize one of the lead actors and just watch us all night.”

Other times, if they’re not feeling lazy, they might go to The Snug or Vintage bars along Ninth Avenue.

After Thursday night performances, Reed and other cast members stroll down to the nearby Port Authority Bus Terminal, where they participate in the Broadway Show Bowling League from 11:30 p.m. to 2 a.m. at Leisure Time Bowling Alley, located on the second floor. Money raised from the league is donated to Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS.

Performance night

Reed arrived at the women’s dressing room through a side door 33 minutes before show time on a recent Thursday night, while people clad in their finest garments waited for the gold-painted double doors to open beneath the massive “Mamma Mia” sign that first had Reed in awe.

Nearly a year into her “Mamma Mia” tenure, Reed said she is more relaxed and feels part of a family, especially after her indoctrination into the Broadway world.

Reed, nicknamed “Chort” by the “Mamma Mia” cast, recalled her first “solo”—when everyone onstage does the same choreography, but one person is out of step, having forgotten the moves.

“I was mortified and laughing in my head at the same time,” Reed said. “But the cast assured me that everyone has done it at least once.”

It’s 8:12 p.m. Showtime.

Minutes into Act 1, Reed was onstage in a gypsy-like outfit dancing and singing to “Money, Money, Money.” She strutted on the faux cobble-stone stage during “Gimme! Gimme! Gimme!, donned a sherbet dress of orange and pink hues during the show’s finale, and emerged during the encore mini-concert, twirling, gliding and prancing.

“She is probably the most caring, fun and playful person I know,” said Andy Kelso, who plays Sky in the hit production.

Reed has an open-ended contract with “Mamma Mia.” If she ever wants to leave to pursue other opportunities, she need only give four weeks’ notice. The latest auditions are listed in the actor trade publication “Backstage,” through www.actorsequity.org, and even backstage in the dressing room.

“I really want to pursue film here,” Reed said. “That is my next project, unless I get a lead part in a Broadway show. But I’m going to focus on getting a film agent.”

Films were not her main concern at this moment, however. It was Thursday night, and the show was over. It was time to let her hair down and go bowling.