Actress Helen Shen has felt a pull towards the stage since she was a little girl. From practicing piano to being part of a theater group, the spotlight has become an undeniable aspect of her character. Her passion for art kept her performing throughout college before moving on to Broadway after graduating.
Helen has participated in a range of performances that have challenged her, excited her and fulfilled her artistically. Her first stage performances were off-Broadway in “Teeth” and “The Lonely Few,” and in regional gigs such as her role as Lisa in “Mamma Mia!” Recently, she starred in the Tony-winning “Maybe Happy Ending” and the highly anticipated cult-classic sequel “The Devil Wears Prada 2.” The experiences she had working on these projects, coupled with her time at the University of Michigan, have formed her appreciation for the artistry of stage performance and acting.
In an interview with The Michigan Daily, School of Music, Theatre & Dance alumna Helen Shen shares these experiences and details how professional musical theater have shaped her acting career.
This interview has been condensed for clarity.
The Michigan Daily: What experiences at the University of Michigan shaped you as a performer?
Helen Shen: I’ll shout out my first crew assignment for practicum. I helped do crew for this production of “Passing Strange” while I was a freshman, my first semester there, and it completely changed how I think that theater can be, and I got to just be a fly on the wall while Tiffany Rachelle Stewart and the musical theater students got to like devise this piece from the ground up. The piece itself was amazing. That musical didn’t run very long on Broadway, but it did win Best Book for the Tony, and I just feel like it shaped how I think theater could be.
Also shout out living in Bursley, like, being at Michigan, I happened to room with another musical theater major who was also named Helen. The option is there for you to meet and room with anybody. A couple of my friends were, like, engineering majors. Obviously, this is North Campus, so a lot of them were, like, Stamps (Stamps School of Art and Design) or engineering kids, but I loved being able to take classes with people who were gonna have completely different lives than me and to just learn about it.
I grew up in New Jersey, and I remember my parents being like, ‘Why do you want to leave New York? Why do you want to leave the East Coast? Isn’t this where you want to be?’ And even though that is true, and I have since gone back to the East Coast, I’m so grateful for the time that I got to incubate in Michigan, where I didn’t have to think about booking or working. I just could enjoy being a student for a little bit. I’m so actually grateful for the time that I had to just be a student for four years.
TMD: It’s cool that you noted the unique atmosphere of Ann Arbor. Why Michigan if you were from the East Coast and wanted to be there post-grad?
HS: The life you’re able to live when you are in this Midwestern town is not super isolated, but it is isolated enough, especially for — now that I’ve been in this industry for a couple years and seeing how public facing it can be — it changes your artistry when there’s more eyes on it, and you feel like there’s more pressure, and you want to make a good impression. I don’t think that I was thinking about all of that while I was thinking about getting good grades and having a positive affirmation out of my professors. For the most part, I didn’t have to worry about what other people thought about me, not in the way that I feel like I have to now.
TMD: What brought you into acting? Were there any role models you looked up to?
HS: There were many that I looked up to as gatekeepers for the fact that I looked the way that I did and that I could possibly pursue it. There were all these roles and all of these shows that I wanted to learn about, but didn’t necessarily want to be a part of. Let’s say “Miss Saigon”, right? That was a musical that I grew up listening to and idolizing everyone who had done it, and it was a way for me to see that there was a semblance of an Asian community in the musical theater canon. There’s different generations who are like, I can respect and revere the history of what has come before, but I don’t necessarily personally want to be in this traumatic show as my only calling card to be a singer or a performer. And at the same time, when I was growing up, Kim and “Miss Saigon” were roles that meant that you were at the top of your game. All the women who have done that are unbelievable performers.
I suppose that is also why doing “Maybe Happy Ending” was such a special moment for me. Because Lea Salonga came to see the show, a couple of my idols that I grew up looking up to came to see the show. Our culture’s pretty new; therefore, Asian American musical theater is even more new than that. I just felt like I was at the start of a reclamation of what it can be and what it can look like and how it can sound, what it can talk about. I was just really excited that it was happening and that I was a part of it.
TMD: It sounds like you were always drawn to performing; did this interest develop after playing piano or joining the theater?
HS: No, that was definitely always there. There was a story from my preschool that we would do little puppet shows and talent shows. I brought in a puppet, and I remember making people laugh and being like, this is the thing that I enjoy doing.
My dad has a pretty heavy sense of humor, so I think I enjoyed that part, and the piano part was more discipline than performing, but I always gravitated to being on stage. The only other place that I can be on stage is after I practice piano. But most of it was like, I wanted applause.
I definitely had stage fright. I was a shy kid, too. So it didn’t quite make sense. But something about being on stage and in like lights and stuff, you kind of get lost in what you’re doing. I always loved to sing. I always loved music, serving a higher purpose in that way.
TMD: Thank you for the insightful answers. Another follow-up I had hearing your response was what is Asian American musical theater and where do you think it is heading?
HS: We did a lot of revering of history in my musical theater class, and we would talk about how Black theater has evolved and is such a core tenet of this industry, and how Yiddish theater was such a huge tenet of that community. And I always felt like, where are the writers, the foundation makers who look like me in this industry? We’ve been here for as long as the industry has been here, but not in huge droves. Even as I looked at the makeup of SMTD in terms of performance, there was only one other Asian girl who was in my class. Since graduating though, I have now been a part of a couple of shows where I’ve now been in bigger casts, or I’m not the only Asian person in this room and it still always feels special to take note of it and to appreciate that most of the time. We could be up against each other for the same part, but what a wonderful opportunity it is to play your sister or play your friend, to celebrate our differences, and then exist in community with each other.
It’s the stories people are clearly super hungry for — more representation. The only way to solve the scarcity problem is to add more to the canon. I don’t think that there’s one story or one show or one experience that’s gonna solve the systemic scarcity that we’re talking about. There’s just gonna be more writers who are passionate about it, and they’re gonna have something different to say than someone who exists in a different point of the diaspora.
TMD: Pivoting the direction of this conversation a bit, how was your transition from Michigan to Broadway?
HS: The showcase helped me introduce myself to industry folk, which were like my agents, my manager and other casting people in the industry. After that, I started to work off-Broadway and in regional gigs. I think I did a lot of wonderful work off-Broadway that felt risky and exciting and artistically, really fulfilling. I was kind of setting my own track, and I was building this role, and I was building this thing myself.
I don’t feel like there was that huge of a transition (between off-Broadway and on Broadway) besides the eyes on me. I felt like I was part of this community that felt so big and so far away, and then suddenly, I had a golden ticket to attend these events and talk to these people, and they knew who I was. That transition was a welcome one.
But I definitely felt like I was prepared to do the actual job of playing this role because I had done other professional work before. Off-Broadway and regional stuff you’re still just performing, you sing the songs, you act the role and you tell the story. But there’s a lot more eyeballs and a lot more resources that are poured into Broadway. It just makes certain things easier and then also certain things harder.
TMD: Along the same vein, for our final question, how was your transition from theater to film in “The Devil Wears Prada 2”?
HS: It felt more like a sprint to me, honestly. With theater, I felt like I had to do eight shows a week and prepare my body, mind and soul to be able to do that. It’s more of an endurance battle. My whole life revolved around the show as opposed to this movie. But as it pertains to “Devil Wears Prada 2,” it was a huge juggernaut of a project. I was in the same room as Meryl Streep. I was doing scenes with Anne Hathaway and just trying to keep up.
I didn’t know what I didn’t know, which is an exciting point to be at in an artist’s life. To do something that is new and scary.
Daily Arts Writer Michelle Wu can be reached at michewu@umich.edu.
