Idina Menzel has adopted a lot of identities during her nearly two decades on Broadway and beyond.<\/p>\n
She originated the roles of Maureen Johnson in \u201cRent\u201d and Dorothy in \u201cSummer of \u201942,\u201d Amneris in \u201cAida,\u201d Elphaba in \u201cWicked\u201d and Elizabeth Vaughan in \u201cIf\/Then.\u201d She\u2019s been Shelby Corcoran in \u201cGlee\u201d and the voice of Elsa in \u201cFrozen,\u201d singing the massive, five-times platinum hit \u201cLet It Go.\u201d<\/p>\n
Along the way she\u2019s won a Tony, Drama Desk and Grammy awards, among others.<\/p>\n
So when Menzel steps onstage to perform as herself \u2014 as she\u2019s doing during her current world tour \u2014 she faces the challenge of separating the performer from the characters.<\/p>\n
\u201cI really feel that there\u2019s a common denominator, and that is me,\u201d Menzel, 44, explains by phone from her home in the New York area. \u201cWhether I\u2019m in green makeup as a witch (in \u2018Wicked\u2019) or I\u2019m just standing up there in my jeans and bare feet, singing my songs, as an artist I still have to take a risk and make myself really vulnerable in front of a live audience and allow myself to be seen, if you will.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd I feel that way whether I have the green makeup on or I don\u2019t, or I\u2019m hiding behind a character or singing the character\u2019s words. It\u2019s still the soul of who I am that connects it all.\u201d<\/p>\n
Menzel \u2014 whose name was famously mispronounced by John Travolta during the 2014 Academy Awards \u2014 began that journey of finding her voice as a teenager growing up in Syosset, N.Y., where she was born Idina Mentzel and sang at weddings and other social affairs. She attended New York University\u2019s Tisch School of the Arts and successfully auditioned for \u201cRent\u201d in 1995, an auspicious career start for which she won her Tony Award for Best Actress in a Musical.<\/p>\n
Since then, Menzel explains, she\u2019s learned how to sing and perform spontaneously, even in scripted roles.<\/p>\n
\u201cEvery song, every show, every character, project whatever it is, it\u2019s a different part of the chronology and time in your life, and so it changes,\u201d she says. \u201cA certain song can hit me in a different way on a different night or a different time in my life, so I leave myself open in that way and a lot of times I discover things in front of thousands of people.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn the beginning, when I was younger that was frightening to do that. But I learned that\u2019s the only way you can be, that you really can connect with people if you allow yourself to be vulnerable in that way. I think that\u2019s what\u2019s so beautiful about what I do.\u201d<\/p>\n
Performing the moment can have its own, well, moments too, however.<\/p>\n
\u201cOh, things go wrong all the time,\u201d Menzel acknowledges, \u201ceverything from my boobs coming out of my bra in front of people at Radio City Music Hall to forgetting the words, or somebody yelling something from the audience that strikes me in a funny way and we have a conversation.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think being a creature of the theater and doing eight shows a week, you embrace those things that make you fresh, that keep you on your toes. I enjoy that.\u201d<\/p>\n
Not surprisingly, Menzel keeps her concerts a bit loose. \u201cI don\u2019t want to do the same exact thing every night,\u201d she notes. That said, however, there are things that do have to happen at each show \u2014 especially \u201cLet It Go,\u201d which elevated Menzel\u2019s stature well beyond the theater realm.<\/p>\n
\u201cI knew it was a beautiful song when they sent it to me to learn, but I had no idea it would have this effect and become the kind of phenomenon that it\u2019s become,\u201d Menzel says. \u201cIt\u2019s wonderful to have a song that\u2019s obviously heightened my profile and helps people get to know me better and on a deeper level and give some more opportunities and all of that.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut the beautiful thing about it is that as much as it speaks to young people it also speaks to me as a woman and as a reminder for myself of the things that I think are important and the things I need to learn \u2014 for instance, the idea of really not hiding those things that make us really wonderful and extraordinary and that set us apart in the world just because we\u2019re afraid of seeming threatening or being disliked.\u201d<\/p>\n
Of course, \u201cLet It Go\u201d is bringing an even younger crowd to Menzel\u2019s shows, which can create some delicate situations.<\/p>\n
\u201cBetween \u2018Rent\u2019 and \u2018Wicked\u2019 and even \u2018Glee\u2019 and now \u2018Frozen,\u2019 I\u2019ve always had to figure out how to negotiate, navigate around a wide demographic \u2014 which is obviously a very lucky thing, a gift, but also can be tricky,\u201d says Menzel, who has a 5-year old son, Walker, from her 11-year marriage to \u201cRent\u201d co-star Taye Diggs. \u201cI\u2019m a 44-year-old woman up there on stage and I curse, I swear about something and then I realize that\u2019s a mom in the front row with her little 8-year-old daughter in an Elsa costume.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut I have to be myself, too. That\u2019s a challenging thing is how I reconcile all of that.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Idina Menzel has adopted a lot of identities during her nearly two decades on Broadway and beyond. She originated the roles of Maureen Johnson in \u201cRent\u201d and Dorothy in \u201cSummer of \u201942,\u201d Amneris in \u201cAida,\u201d Elphaba in \u201cWicked\u201d and Elizabeth Vaughan in \u201cIf\/Then.\u201d She\u2019s been Shelby Corcoran in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[9],"tags":[36,11],"class_list":["post-547","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","tag-36","tag-world-tour-2015"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6Srnq-8P","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.idina-here.com\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/547","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.idina-here.com\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.idina-here.com\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.idina-here.com\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.idina-here.com\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=547"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.idina-here.com\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/547\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":548,"href":"https:\/\/www.idina-here.com\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/547\/revisions\/548"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.idina-here.com\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=547"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.idina-here.com\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=547"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.idina-here.com\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=547"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}