Reading: A Broadway Reinvention: The Benefits (and Challenges) of Persevering

When Broadway Producer Candy Gold (The Heidi Chronicles, Hadestown, Jagged Little Pill & more) was a novice reporter in Boston flying around the country to cover everything from politics to entertainment and discovered she was pregnant, she knew she’d have to cut back her crazy job. She chose the perfect “mom job:” freelance. Which worked fine until the economic downturn of 2008, when freelance dried up. A random television ad for a local cable station inspired her to pitch (and win) a slot for a self-produced show called Neighborhood Cooking with Candy Gold. Ten years later, she leveraged that know-how and her experience producing local children’s theater into becoming a producer on Broadway, eventually winning multiple Tony awards. The trick to it all, she says: Endeavor to “Persevere.”

Candy’s Top Tips for Reinvention

1. Endeavor to Persevere

   It’s my favorite word. It’s my credo. That when everyone’s telling you no, just keep going. When everyone’s going left, you go right. When everybody says this isn’t going to work, think of one more way to make one more phone call, or write one more email to help make it work.

2. Endeavor to Persevere by Doing Your Homework

   I did not want to be the unprepared girl in the class at Dana Hall. Everybody was so smart, that I didn’t want to be the person who didn’t do their homework because I would’ve felt silly. So I learned how to do my work and do it well, as much for me as for everyone else in the classroom. I wanted to be part of the discussion, and part of the group of people who had done the work. It made life easier. So now I read more, write more, engage more, think more, stay up with my cell phone under the covers looking at the blogs, and all that kind of stuff.

3. Endeavor to Persevere by Connecting The Dots

   Everything in life has a connect the dots, and you just have to find it. There have been years that have gone by where I still can’t figure out how to connect the dots, but I know that they’re out there. I just have to keep trying and failing and trying and failing until I figure out how to connect them to get to where I need to go.