“Freestyle Love Supreme” Cast Explains the Art of Freestyle

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR: Now, we head all the way back over to the East Coast, for a little spontaneity on Broadway, where a troop of musicians and performers are taking the theater world by storm with their new show Freestyle Love Supreme. A meeting point between rap and improv. Every day is different as the show is pinned on suggestions from the audience. It’s a passion project years in the making by among others the creator of Hamilton, Lin-Manuel Miranda. Now, our Hari Sreenivasan sat down with three of the cast members.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

HARI SREENIVASAN: What is Freestyle Love Supreme?

CHRIS SULLIVAN, CAST MEMBER, FREESTYLE LOVE SUPREME: Freestyle Love Supreme is a group on stage making up words and stories on the spot. I am a beat boxer. We have three lyricists generally and two piano players generally. I say generally because now we are sort of a squad. It’s kind of like a Wu Tang Clan of group mixed with the comedy and improv stylings of who’s line is it anyway?

SREENIVASAN: And this has been going on. You’ve been a part of this for a long time. This is something that — 2004?

SULLIVAN: Yes.

SREENIVASAN: And how did it start?

SULLIVAN: So way back in the day in the Drama of book shop in the basement, there was a company called Backhouse Productions. And that company was run by Anthony Veneziale and Tommy Kail who are now also part of the show. So they were workshopping in the heights, which has gone on Broadway and tour and Lin-Manuel was the writer of that show and Chris Jackson was in that show. While they were in these rehearsal processes, in between rehearsals and during breaks of rehearsals, Anthony, being the person that he is, was, would get them together around the piano and freestyle and have fun. And then it was only a matter of time when they decided to put it in front of people.

SREENIVASAN: And how did you get introduced to this idea and these group of people?

UTKARSH AMBUDKAR, CAST MEMBER, FREESTYLE LOVE SUPREME: I was at NYU and I was doing rap battles. I was like taking the serious rapper route and going to these freestyle open mic nights at this place with ill spoken Freestyle Mondays. Shock knows it well. We’ve spent sort of years as a part of that community as well. I was also I’ve gone through the BFA program at NYU. And I was doing my first professional job outside of college. It was called History of the Word. Doesn’t matter. The history of that (inaudible) has gone on to have success on Broadway as well. And he was like you have to meet these guys that kind of do — you are funny, but then you’re super serious when you rap and they are kind of doing something I think that can fit both of your worlds together. So then I met these guys and do sort of like — Lin and I started rapping. And we were like two pups from the same litter. We literally were just like how do you do the same thing that I do in such a different way but kindred spirits and we sort of added pieces to the group. There was a huge need for women’s voices in the group and her niece and Karen Malady, Kaiser Rose, and they’ve just enhanced and grown the, our voice. The point of view that the group has is so diverse and powerful in that way, which is really special.

SREENIVASAN: You see you are the longest serving member. Clearly, all the way since September, you have been a part of this.

ANEESA FOLDS, CAST MEMBER, FRESSTYLE LOVE SUPREME: September 13th. We’ve set our rehearsals September 2nd I think, yes.

SREENIVASAN: So what is — for someone watching that doesn’t know anything about, what it is to freestyle rap? What is it that you’re doing? How is it that you are able to make at that very moment with a word or two a whole story?

FOLDS: You know, coming into this process, it was really intimidating. But once you get on stage, you just go. Everything in your head that says you can’t do this, everything that makes you nervous, it quiets all of that because you don’t have time to think about it. We get these words from the audience and we have what, few seconds, to trigger whatever that opens up in our minds and then we just go.

SREENIVASAN: So somebody who thinks about a Broadway show, they think about the script, there’s a rehearsal, there’s a process. What you are doing every night is literally nothing like the night before. You have totally different sets of stories, you have different, perhaps mix of cast members. How do you rehearse for something that is completely improvisational?

FOLDS: Additionally, in a Broadway setting, you have a month of rehearsals.

SREENIVASAN: Right.

FOLDS: So when I first found out I was doing this, I was like it’s going to be great. We’ll start in August. No. We had a week of rehearsal. And yes, it was very much just going over the structure of the show and having people in the room, the audience which they’re a huge part of it, give us the ideas to just run it and get the reps and that’s how you learn. And you just have to be thrown into it really to figure it out.

AMBUDKAR: Yes, you are really drilling, rehearsing, and repeating a spirit and a philosophy of how you play, like how we play together on stage. Like, obviously, you need a basic skill set. Like Nees and some of us are stronger in different areas, like Nees can sing her whole body off, her lower half all the way off. And you know like Shock is obviously our backbone, he’s our drummer. My job is to rap essentially and to tell stories. But within that is a spirit of intense listening, straight like full support for one another. The idea of — if I pass Nees an idea or vice-versa, we’re picking it up and we’re running with it. We’re constantly listening to the audience and what’s happening. So many of the things that make our show great aren’t suggestions the audience gives, it’s reactions.

SREENIVASAN: So if I gave you guys words, random words, could you do something? I mean would that be too difficult?

SULLIVAN: I think —

SREENIVASAN: Are you feeling it?

SULLIVAN: That’s kind of what we do.

AMBUDKAR: Nearly impossible. We can do it.

SREENIVASAN: All right. So, I know one person on Twitter or Facebook said telemarketer was one of the words that they said. And I would say maybe mayonnaise. What is hard to — and what’s my control room saying? Brexit.

SULLIVAN: OK.

AMBUDKAR: Those three words. When the control room gets to you. As they keep going.

SREENIVASAN: Keep adding?

AMBUDKAR: Yes, if you’d like. If you want.

AMBUDKAR: What’s going on, Verizon? Calling up, they doing nothing. Pick up my phone, it gets to buzzing, telemarketer. Wait, that’s my cousin. Why are you talking from Mississippi, bro? That’s a great American accent. You want to take Brexit nex?

FOLDS: Yeah, yeah, yeah, the trading Brexit. We got to get to stopping. We’re going to exit because Europe is doing all of those things. Yeah, my name is Aneesa. I also sing. Yeah, what is the game we’re going to play. Give me a sandwich and I’ll put Some mayonnaise on it.

SULLIVAN: Yeah, we’ve got the mayonnaise, in the middle with his head. Oh yeah, it’s a mayonnaise Sammy. Oh, Shockwave with the beef Sammy, got any more words to give to us?

SREENIVASAN: Engelbert Humperdink.

AMBUDKAR: Humperdink. Oh, that’s right, my words I think I’m key role like Engelbert Humperdink. Who’sHumperdink? I run with the ink God. Me and Shock and Aneesa I think maybe he was someone who went to Hollywood and D.A. curve. What did he do bro’? Who is Engelbert Humperdink?

SREENIVASAN: Nathaniel.

FOLDS: Nataniel. Yeah. Tell me good, what’s your angle. Talk about the homie and his name is Nathaniel. Yeah, I know a lot of those on my page, looking all that and every single day. Yeah, yeah. Do it on the spot. It’s fall time and so now it’s not hot. It’s cold a little bit. It’s a little bit chilly. UTK, tell me what you doing with me.

AMBUDKAR: Nathaniel, I think that is the name of a cocker spaniel that I met the other day with my dog Rico. Nathaniel, cocker spaniel, manual, I need to read it. It’s a handful. Nathaniel is a hard work to get an angle. We’re in the America the star spangle or do they or is the president breaking ankle. Wait a minute. I probably just dropped the Anvil on the whole show. What I’m doing, we’re at a standstill, any more words or is this just a landfill I keep pouring out of my mouth.

SREENIVASAN: That’s good. Thank you. That is awesome. So, OK. So, your traditional rap. So this isn’t — you didn’t come through an academy to do this. This is something that you were doing when you were a kid. Were you doing this by watching hip-hop on what MTV back when they played music or what?

AMBUDKAR: Like most hobbies or vocations, it just came about naturally for me. I just was in high school backstage at a play. This guy Rafael Nunes picked up a guitar and I started just talking about what was going on in the room. But when you talk about hip-hop, or at least my experience of it, let me not put a whole blanket statement. But my experience of coming up in the early 2000s was hip-hop was ego driven, pretty masculine, and very much about self-aggrandization, right. I’m the best. This is what I do. Nobody is better than me. I’m going to shred an MC with all this lyrical weaponry. And then I show up to do Freestyle Love Supreme and Tommy Kail, who I credit with sort of opening up my whole world view and my creativity. He was like, hey man, you are very, very good at talking about yourself. You are so good at telling everyone how good you are, if you can talk about a burgundy chair with as much dexterity and specificity as you talk about yourself, I might be interested in what you have to say. And if you couldstart listening and supporting the people that you are with on stage so that every moment isn’t about you shining. Hey, look at me spotlight, handing, passing the ball, giving the spotlight away, sharing it. Then I’ll start respecting you as an artist. And that was a challenge that I accepted, luckily. And we’re still striving to sort of reach that level of high mind sort of beautiful symmetry and synergy that we’re capable of. We had it on stage the other night. Nees and I had our first moment of like total —

SREENIVASAN: Oh, yes?

FOLDS: Yes.

SREENIVASAN: How do you know when that’s happening?

AMBUDKAR: You can feel it.

FOLDS: Yes.

AMBUDKAR: We can feel it. Like I threw out a suggestion. The subject was something about Egypt or something. It doesn’t really matter. It’s not going to make any sense to anybody. But like I threw out a suggestion and Nees sort of like she caught it. She understood what it was and built upon it and created a moment that sent the audience into uproar. And we both knew that we had found something special together and the audience witnessed it happening in real time.

FOLDS: Right.

AMBUDKAR: And then you just sort of like pull the parachute and fly, like float away. We’re done. It’s almost done.

SULLIVAN: This reminds me of our director Thomas Kail uses this metaphor a lot. What we’re doing on stage is a basketball game. And everybody has their you know, there’s the point guard, everybody has their different positions that they’re playing. And we are constantly playing basketball. But points happen as they peak. So we have these moments where the flow state really hits and we know, oh, that was special. And then we kind of go back to improvising and then we hit the really —

AMBUDKAR: Looking for those moments of transcendents. And the audience is experiencing them at the same time that we are.

SREENIVASAN: So I got to ask the universe, what happens when it’s not working? Something just either you get past a bad ball or you get a weird word? I mean I watched you — I think the night that I was there, you had —

AMBUDKAR: He’s got notes.

SREENIVASAN: Period cramps. I mean, I was first of all stunned–

SULLIVAN: As a suggestion.

SREENIVASAN: As a suggestion. Someone in the audience yelled it. And the next thing you know you picked it up and you did an amazing personal story. I was like, wow, that is not something that I would just embrace and say, let’s improv this, right. I’m sure you guys have had experiences where you’re like OK, I kind of missed —

FOLDS: Absolutely.

SREENIVASAN: — how about the nerves when you get a word that you don’t know what to do with?

FOLDS: I’m scared every time. I don’t say it a lot. But it goes back to we got your back. If you mess up, if you don’t have something, there is a whole group of people on stage that truly have you. So, as I said, it just saves space and if you fall, they’re going to pick you up, somebody is going to pick you up.

SULLIVAN: And making mistakes can be encouraged.

FOLDS: Yes, it’s part of it.

SULLIVAN: If you are knitting a quilt and you make a mistake, you do it again. And do it again becomes a pattern, it’s no longer a mistake.

SREENIVASAN: Deep thought.

SULLIVAN: It’s like jazz, there are no wrong notes.

SREENIVASAN: Yes. So I read that in the early parts of when this group was forming, that you were friends with Lin-Manuel. You guys were actually when Hamilton was coming up that at some point you played Aaron Burr —

AMBUDKAR: Shock was there too in the initial stages in the band.

SREENIVASAN: Yes. And that you, what I read was that you were having some problems that kept you from being the creative person that they wanted to take into Hamilton. What happened?

AMBUDKAR: Yes. I was just living a lifestyle that was not conducive to being in the biggest Broadway history or any show for that matter. I was — I’m sober now five years. But at the time I was most definitely not and there were several opportunities, that being you know the main example —

SREENIVASAN: Yes.

AMBUDKAR: — that slipped by, you know, as a result of my not being able to show up. But I’ll say for me, yes, Hamilton or the lack thereof in my life is one of the greatest gifts that I’ve ever received. My relationships with Tommy, with you, with all of the guys in Freestyle Love Supreme and who are in Hamilton that I was close with are stronger than they ever were. All of my friendships across the board in life are stronger than they have ever been. My career has changed and taken on a new perspective and focus and then new focus and joy that wasn’t there before. And I think that it is in many ways something I can look at as a major milestone of like gang homey. Like this is what you stand “to lose” but in sort of the, within that loss, so much has been gained right from that, because I took it and sort of with a lot of help, rerouted my life and changed the trajectory of it.

SREENIVASAN: One of the things that you guys do on stage, that you all do on stage, is a story that’s true. And which of these — you have four or five different kind of templates that you do in the program, what’s the one that you like the most? What’s the one that’s the hardest for you if there is one?

AMBUDKAR: We get a word in the opening which just sets up this mic check. And sometimes that verb flummoxes me. I don’t want to be here. I don’t have the vocabulary for this endeavor. And it’s the beginning of the show. And then we do a game called second chance. A song called second chance where you’ll tell us a story about something that happened in your life that you wish you could take back. And we have had, I mean, that is a precarious song because we need to take what you’ve done. We need to compute it. We need to do it like that. And then we need to change the story to give you sort of a positive outcome with the hopes that you feel some catharsis and some healing.

FOLDS: But as you sing, sometimes you get a good word for a specific game and then there is another one time we did a true, where we got dichotomy and I was like I’m not sure if I remember what this means. I might know and I looked at Anthony, we’re going to switch seats, you’re going to go first. And through his — true, he was able to give me context clues so I was able to tell a story. Yesterday, we got your mother’s laugh and I told the story about my mom and how strong she was when my grandmother was diagnosed with dementia and how she was able to just be strong and be in her room all the time and laugh through it. And you know try to tell her stories and tell her pictures, to remind her of who she was. It was a really tough time. But that was — I got really choked up during that, because I haven’t spoken about that in a while. And then after the show, a young woman came up to me and told me that she and her family were going to visit this weekend, are going to visit their grandmother who was just diagnosed with dementia and I mean what else could you ask for? You know, it’s moments like that, that make it truly amazing.

SREENIVASAN: Neesa Folds, Chris Sullivan, Utkarsh Ambudkar thank you all. If you want to close us out with whatever you do.

AMBUDKAR: Oh, yes. Nees, did I mention, it’s good, being on the stage with you. Remember, we don’t have to rhyme, but if we want, we can spit too. Betwixt us is the Shock man. We’re rocking right off the top. And I got to pass it back to Aneesa for you to sing and rap.

FOLDS: Yes, sitting in this burgundy chair with my hair, I was sitting with you all and I didn’t have no fear. This was really cool and it really, really rocked. Did I mention as I said before I really like your socks because they got some stripes on them? If you can zoom in and then you could see what I’m talking about, my friends. I guess just (inaudible) do it all day. Thanks for sharing. Yeah, we’re just here to play because we’re making it up. We don’t really care. Sitting, in these real cool chairs. Yeah, having a good time. Yeah, yeah. You bust a rhyme.

SREENIVASAN: I have absolutely no rhyme.

AMBUDKAR: How about socks? Your word is socks.

SREENIVASAN: Socks. I wish I had more than socks.

FOLDS: Socks. Socks.

SREENIVASAN: I wish I could escape this very moment.

AMBUDKAR: Good job. That’s all it’s about.

FOLDS: Talk about being on the spot.

SREENIVASAN: Thank you. No, that’s not happened to me before.

AMBUDKAR: But that’s exactly what it’s about. I’m here, I wish I had more socks. I wish I wasn’t in this moment. That’s how —

SREENIVASAN: If I can make it rhyme and work with that.

AMBUDKAR: We’d have a hit Broadway show.

SREENIVASAN: There you go.

FOLDS: It’s that easy.

SREENIVASAN: It’s that easy.

FOLDS: Yes.

SREENIVASAN: Thank you so much.

AMBUDKAR: Thank you.