Broadway Baby
It started out as just another ordinary, extraordinary day in the life of Paloma Garcia-Lee. After all, the seventeen year-old was already no ordinary teenager. This was the high school graduate who left her Wrightstown, Pa., home to live on her own in New York City and fulfill her dream of becoming a performer; the girl who had a job selling yoga-wear and a dashing life of going to auditions, taking dance classes, and trying to “make it.” She was already pretty impressive when she got the call that would change her life. It was 8 a.m. The person on the other end said he was calling on behalf of the Broadway company of “The Phantom of the Opera.” The question: “Would you like to join the cast?” The punch line: “You start in four days.”
Her answer was immediate. “I just said, ‘Yes, yes, yes!’” recalled Garcia-Lee, now nineteen, a spunky, spritely girl with bright blond curls and a bewitching smile. From the moment she hung up the phone, she hit the ground running. She had to be ready—Broadway ready—in ninety-six hours. “I got the call at 8 a.m.,” said Garcia-Lee. “By noon, I was signing my contract. By 5 p.m., I was getting a wig fitting. That night, I watched the show. In twenty-four hours, I had gone from working in retail to watching the Broadway show I was going to be in. It was bang, bang, bang.” She also made history. At just seventeen, she was the youngest cast member ever hired to appear in the American version of the legendary musical. The Broadway show is twenty-three years old. Garcia-Lee became the first person hired who was younger than the show. “There is one person in the cast who has been doing it for twenty-three years,” she said. “He just looks at me and laughs.”
Yet while Garcia-Lee might have seemed like a mere child plucked from obscurity, she had actually been preparing for her Broadway debut for fourteen years. “It wasn’t a shock,” said her mother, Terri Lee. “She was trained for this; she earned it. She worked her butt off.” Garcia-Lee began dancing at age three at Spirit in Motion, a performing arts school in Newtown, Pa., owned by her mother. Performing was in her DNA—her mother performed on Broadway, and her father was a studio musician and scenic designer. “I definitely grew up completely interested in the arts,” said Garcia-Lee. “At dinner, my dad would be talking about lights or music, and my mom would be talking about dance. I always thought it was normal.” For her, it was.
“She’s been around this her whole life,” said Terri Lee. “I was always running her around. Even when I was teaching, I had her in the backpack, in a snuggly. I would take the stroller to my dance classes. She was around performers her whole life. It’s all she knows.”
Garcia-Lee attended Wrightstown Elementary School until the fourth grade, when her schedule—school until 3 p.m., dance every day from 4 p.m. to 9 p.m.—left her feeling like she never saw her parents. So her family opted for home-schooling. That gave Garcia-Lee more time with her parents and the flexibility to attend ballet classes in Princeton and New York City. At thirteen, she auditioned for the North Carolina School of the Arts and was accepted into their Ballet Department. She was off to boarding school—a high school program that she completed in just three years—and she switched to the Drama Department for her senior year. The elite program chose just eighteen students from around the world. Garcia-Lee got in. “I knew I wanted to be on Broadway,” she said. “I wanted to be as well rounded as possible.” As graduation approached, Garcia-Lee was feeling lukewarm about college. “I felt like I didn’t really want to go to school,” she explained. “I didn’t want four years of a program to teach me what I felt like could just go out and do.” So she negotiated with her parents: let me take one year off, and let’s see what happens.
Needless to say, something happened. Garcia-Lee moved to New York City one week after graduating from high school. Her mom visited frequently, but Garcia-Lee was virtually on her own. At seventeen. In the Big Apple. “I had been there a lot, and my parents knew I was comfortable there,” she explained. “It was not like they threw me to the wolves. I really knew what I was doing.” She moved to New York City on June 1st. A few weeks later, a friend called and told her about an open casting call for “The Phantom of the Opera.”
The rest, as they say, is history: How Garcia-Lee doubtfully added her name to the list of 300 or 400 girls that early morning of the open call. How she started dancing, and the casting directors kept making cuts until she was one of the final five auditioners left. How they asked her to sing, and then sent her home. How she didn’t hear anything for four months. How she got the surprise call with the four-day warning for her Broadway debut. How she had three desperate, intense, insane rehearsal days until she appeared as a dancer in the Ballet Chorus in “The Phantom of the Opera.” How, all of a sudden, the girl who was not yet old enough to legally drive after 11 p.m. was about to step onto the greatest stage in the world. “It was all happening so fast, I never had a moment to think,” said Garcia-Lee. Ultimately, she found herself backstage just before the big opening act. A new friend in the cast grabbed her by the shoulders and said: “Paloma, you’re on Broadway.” “That kind of hit me,” she said.
Yet it wasn’t until later in her opening night performance that the momentous nature of the situation truly unraveled her. The second act of the show begins with a lavish masquerade ball. The cast assembles on an enormous staircase, bedazzled in elaborate gowns, singing a powerful chorus. “There are thirty-six people on the stairs, and we all turn and sing,” said Garcia-Lee. “It hit me then. The tears were running down my face. I couldn’t sing. I had to mouth the words. I was looking out at 1,500 people, and I could feel the volume of the voices behind me, and I thought, ‘Here I am. I’m doing what I’ve always dreamed of doing for so long.’ It was huge.”
After a few months on Broadway, Garcia-Lee was invited to join the national tour of “The Phantom of the Opera.” Too young to join the tour un-chaperoned at first, she waited until her eighteenth birthday, which arrived one Saturday in late April, 2009. She performed on Broadway on her birthday and joined the tour the very next night. After six months on tour, Garcia-Lee was asked to take over the role of Meg Ghiry, one of only seven lead parts in the show. She has been portraying that role for the past year on the road, traveling across the country and doing what she loves. “I’m living the dream life,” she enthused. “There’s not a day that goes by that I don’t feel grateful.”
Of course, life on the road isn’t always enchanting. Garcia-Lee traveled to twenty-two American cities in the past eighteen months. “I live out of a trunk,” she said. “It’s hotels and rental cars. It’s just as glamorous as that sounds.” She is on stage nearly every day, doing eight shows a week, including two on Saturday and two on Sunday. She spends her days at the gym or finding dance classes to keep her in shape for the relentless performance schedule. On the bright side, she gets to discover a new city every few weeks—sneaking in horseback riding in the deserts outside of Scotsdale, Ariz., a road trip to explore San Antonio from a tour stop in Austin, and browsing the glamorous shops on Rodeo Drive in Los Angeles. And at the end of nearly every day, she is on stage, soaking up the applause of loyal fans. “The show is just as exciting to me as it was two years ago,” said Garcia-Lee. “I’ve been doing it for two years and over 800 performances, and it’s still magical.”
When Garcia-Lee spoke to Bucks County Woman, she was just days away from finishing up her life on the road. The tour of “The Phantom of the Opera” came to an end on Halloween night, after an eighteen-year-long run. Garcia-Lee’s anticipation for the end of the show was bittersweet. “It’s pretty cool that I’m the youngest part of the oldest staple in musical theater,” she said. “Everyone knows what ‘Phantom’ is. It’s exciting to be part of the final cast. Every night, we are part of the end of this.”
So what’s next for the teenage stage star? The “Phantom” tour ended on Oct. 31st. Garcia-Lee flew home the next day. Her plan—Part One: pick up her new dog (she is an admitted animal freak), get back to her apartment, spend time with her parents, take some classes, and take a break. She said she was looking forward to waking up in her own bed. “It’s been a whirlwind,” she said of her two-year adventure with the phantom. But Garcia-Lee is hardly the type to rest on her impressive laurels. “Not once have I been like, ‘I made it,’” she said. “There’s more I can do. I’m so excited to get out there and do it.”
That’s where Part Two of the plan comes in. Garcia-Lee suspects that the Broadway version of “The Phantom of the Opera” may ask her to return. Yet now, she’s in the privileged position of weighing her options. Imagine being nineteen years old and considering turning down a Broadway show. Yet Garcia-Lee said that other Broadway companies, including “West Side Story,” “Jersey Boys,” and “Wicked” have expressed interest in her. Plus, she is pursuing film and television opportunities and has meetings planned with managers and agents. She’s eager to explore all of it. “It’s like I’m in a hallway full of unlocked doors, and I get to choose which one I want to go through,” she said.
There is perhaps a certain breed of optimism unique to those who have enjoyed wild success before their twentieth birthdays. Yet while Garcia-Lee clearly has the puppy-like excitement for the future typically reserved for those who still think it’s cool that they get to vote, she approaches it all with a sense of preternatural maturity, grace, and confidence. Her mother said everyone simply calls Garcia-Lee
“a light.” She speaks with amazing poise—after talking for an hour, she never utters a single “um.” She reveals a solid self-awareness, an unexpected worldliness, and keen composure. She may look like a delicate pixie, yet she is strong and gutsy, smart and very real. “I’m super-grounded,” she said. “Sometimes, crazy people are really interesting, but that gene was not bred in me.” She said she owes it all to her parents, who supported her and guided her but never pushed her to perform. It was all navigated by Garcia-Lee, who only benefitted from having parents who were in her corner every step of the way.
“We knew she had the tools early on,” said Terri Lee. “We always let her do her own thing. She does everything by herself.”
At this point in her young career, Garcia-Lee looks ahead with confidence. She has no reason not to. Broadway at seventeen, joining a Broadway tour at eighteen, poised for a future on stage, television, and film at nineteen. The past two years may have been a whirlwind, yet the adventure is far from over. In fact, it has likely just begun. “Let’s put it this way,” said Garcia-Lee. “There are endless things I want to accomplish before I’m even legal to drink.” That says it all.
Story by Lauren Eckstein
