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Maybe if I give them every single thing in my body this time, they'll see how much I care and how talented I am, and how worthy I am of her role. And it's just this constant like seeking validation from somebody else instead of like finding validation within yourself.
Welcome to she Pivots, the podcast where we talk with women who dared to pivot out of one career and into something new, and explore how their personal lives impacted these decisions. I'm your host, Emily Tish Sussman. I'm thrilled today to be sitting down with Carla Stickler. And you might know who she is if you're a Broadway fan
like me. She played the role of Alphaba in the famous musical Wicked, and after years of being in the ensemble, touring and playing the lead role, Carla decided to leave it all behind and transition into tech. And like me, Carla's pivots have been full of waivers. She returned back to Broadway when they needed her the most, at the height of COVID. Throughout this episode, we'll explore how Carla weaves in and out a feeling like she was in
control of her power. Carla talks about the ups and downs of working in an industry where you're always striving for validation, and her ongoing struggle to fully pivot away from the thing that she loved for so many years, and the thing I identify with most that even if you love what you do, it can still burn you out.
My name is Carla Stickler. I am a software engineer, but I was also an actor for a very long time.
Did you always think that you were going to be an actor? Yes.
Mostly. My family is really really in the arts. My mother is a pianist, and my grandmother was an opera singer. My grandpa was like a violinist and a graphic designer and related to Gene group of somewhere down there anyway. So music and all that was always in my family, and so I kind of always knew I was going to be in that world. I sang a lot. I wanted to act just because it went along with singing. I felt like if I was going to be the best singer that there was, I had to also be
a really good actor. But I really wanted to be an opera singer. That was kind of my first passion. I wanted to be like my grandmother was like, she's awesome. My grandmother had like this giant thing of red hair, and she was such a diva, and she wore like these glamorous clothes, and she had this beautiful voice studio downtown Chicago. And I was like, I want to be just like her. She's amazing. And then I ended up
having vocal surgery on my vocal cords. I was at Cincinnati Conservatory of Music and I was studying opera and I was like, I'm gonna be an opera singer. This is my dream. And I was having some trouble singing and my teacher was like, go to New York. Go see this guy. He's incredible. He will look at your vocal courts and I'll tell you what's wrong. And immediately he's like, you have a cyst.
I can remember.
So I had surgery and then I just like a good nineteen year old, panicked and didn't know what I was doing. And I was like, maybe I shouldn't be an opera singer. The doctor was like, you may not be able to sustain really high long notes for a long time. Because that was it. I was like a Sobrano. I was like a coloratura. I wanted to be like Natalie to say, for those who don't know Natalie, to say,
go look her up. She's incredible, sings in like five in chiels on her back, high notes, incredible opera singer. But I was like, oh my gosh, if I can't do that, well, then I can't. I'm not going to do this. So I was like, well, then who am I if I can't be an opera singer. Who am I? And I dropped out of school and I worked in a deli in Chicago for a semester. I was like, okay, well, my boyfriend goes to NYU and I like NYU and I want to be an actor. I could just be
an actor. That's the next thing, right, because acting singing same thing. They're just performing. So I transferred n YU. I guess if we're going to get into pivots. That was my first pivot.
So she studied theater, leaving her singing aspirations behind until one day a professor suggested that she should explore musical theater, the perfect combination of her love for theater and her singing background, and so.
I was like, great, I will learn. I learned a belt and that was kind of it. Like I that was like going into my senior year of college where I kind of figured out, oh, I'm really good at that.
Do you remember if there was like a song that you just connected with and you're like, wow, my voice can do that. Jason R.
Brown, I'm not afraid of anything. I was singing it and it was the first time I'd like hit these like notes of like, oh gosh, it's so hard to explain. It's like the first time singing felt like nothing like it felt like the sound just kind of poured out of me and it was like this very it was like a release almost, And after having so much kind of trauma around singing for so long, I remember just like, you know, the song is like I'm not afraid of anything.
I can do anything. It's a little more complicated than that, but there was something about like holding back and letting go and allowing myself to like feel that for the first time. I was like, Oh, I love this, I can do this.
Do you think it had something to do with the content of the song, like what you were singing that let you like release into it.
Yeah, there's a lot of emotion in it right in that song, and it's a lot of connecting with who we are on the outside versus how we feel on the inside. I was like at late teens, early twenties, trying to figure out who I wanted to be for the rest of my life and feeling all this pressure that I had to be a performer.
Do you think that your family put pressure on you, even if they didn't know it, to achieve a level in the arts that maybe they had not been able to achieve themselves.
I don't know if they did it on purpose, but I think I just I was good at singing, right, Like people told me I was good at singing. So I think there's this common thing when we're young that if we are good at like an artistic thing, or if we're good at anything, right, adults like to label us and be like, that's what you're going to do. Oh, you're really good at ice skating, You're going to be a figure skater. Oh you're really good at basketball, you'red
a basketball player. Like I was really good at singing, and so I was going to be a singer. I think there's a part of me that felt that I never understood as a young person why my mother stopped performing. She's like, but I decided to stay home and have kids since sart my family, and as a kid, I couldn't understand that. I was like, you quit on your dream. How could you do that? And I couldn't. I just
couldn't wrap my brain around that. So I was like, well, I'm going to do that because you didn't get to do that. You gave all that up for me, So I'm going to go and do that for you, for me, for everybody. Because I have this You've all told me I'm fantastic. You've all like blown up my ego and like told me I'm incredible. So obviously I can do this thing and make that happen.
But that ambition, inspired by the life her mother left behind, came with costs. She was living not only her dream, but her mother's dream, and like any job, it felt like something was off.
We don't see the private stuff. We only see what's on the on the surface, and people have trouble wrapping their brain around that you would ever possibly want to give something up that they see is something that everyone wants. They're like, wow, how could you? Like when I left Broadway, I had a lot of people that were like, why, You're like living my dream. You're like living the dream And I'm like, yeah, but the dream is really exhaust like I'm burnt out, and it's like hard to show
what that look. People don't see that. All they see is that you are living the dream.
So you graduated, Where did we go from there?
I lucked out. I got an agent right out of college. I booked the Asia tour of the Sound of Music, and I played Leazel and I went to China. I was just an idiot on that tour. I had so much fun, but like just I did a lot of partying because I was like, I'm not going and this is so cool and I'm twenty one. Like I was like invincible, I could do anything. It was very fun.
Despite feeling invincible, she still struggled with feeling enough.
I've always been really insecure. I don't know. I feel like if you pull every every single perform in the world, they'll all tell you that they're just the worst performer ever. There are things I know I'm good at, but I think at that age, I just didn't know. I wasn't super confident about it. I knew I had a lot of feelings around it. I knew that like things were working out really well because I had booked the show right away, but I couldn't quite figure out how I
fit right. Like I still wasn't I wasn't sure if I really loved a musical theater yet because I was still kind of mourning the loss of my opera self. I still just wasn't sure. I think I didn't know what I wanted, so like when I got back and I was here and I didn't have my union card yet, and I was like, oh, what am I going to do? And my agents were like, so we're going to need you to like go to open calls. And I was
like what, but I have an agent. They're like yeah, we just need you know, go to as much as you can. And I was about to quit the business again because a year had gone by and I couldn't get anything, and I had been in for like Mama Mia, and then I was out in California for like a couple weeks with this X of mine and I was like, I think I'm going to quit the business. This is awful, Like I hate everything. I'm not getting any I'm not getting work. Maybe I made a bad decision. Maybe I
shouldn't be doing musical theater this year is awful. And then Mamaia called me all as California and they're like, can you come back and do another audition? And I I got a really back cold for the audition and I was feeling terrible. And I get there and I'm in this dance call and it's like dancers. I'm not a dancer and these girls are like kicking their face and this combination is really hard, and I like froze,
and the choreographer comes up to me. She goes, Carla, I don't know if anybody told you, but you're not here for the dancer track. We're auditioning a couple of things right now. This combination is for the dancers. You're here for the Sophie understudy track, who doesn't do this much dancing, so don't worry. And I was like, oh my god, thank you for telling me that, because I was literally about to burst into tears. I was like,
what am I doing here? Why did I leave California to come and embarrass me home in.
This dance call?
And then like I sang. And then like a week later, they were like, great, you want to go on tour in a week and I was like yes, and I booked my first equity gig and I went on tour for like a year and a half and then I was like, Okay, this feels good. This is like reaffirmed I should be doing this.
So she set out on her first US Broadway tour, hopping from city to city every single week.
This tour we were doing one week stops. Every like Sunday, we'd load out of the theater, travel Monday, open Tuesday in a new city.
So what was the relationship. I mean to traveling with the same people for a year and a half and then for three years.
I learned a lot about how to be independent, how to like try to separate work in life. It's really hard when you like live with work. I would find like a Whole Foods or a health food store, a grocery shop. I would make sure that I had a kitchen. I would find the yoga studios I could go to, and I would try to kind of build a little bit of a life during the daytime when I wasn't
at the theater. That would allow me to feel sort of normal, so that I wouldn't get totally swept up in like the drama at the theater, so I wasn't
always hanging out with everybody that I worked with. It's really really hard, and on a touring production, everybody on a touring production thinks they deserve to be in the Broadway Company or there's something better out there, So you constantly have people flying to New York for auditions and talking about those auditions, and then like talking about, Oh, my friend just booked so and so, and now they're going to be in blah blah blah, and I'm going
to go back for that opening. And it's just like a lot of everybody's trying to warn up everybody all the time, and it's very sometimes exhausting was the word.
I was going for. That sounds east bad.
It's really hard to just like settle.
I want to pause here and explain for our non Broadway listeners what Wicked is. The show centers around the origin story of the Wicked Witch of the West. Like Wizard of Oz, we follow the friendship and journey of Glinda, who is Glinda the Good Witch in the movie, and Alphaba,
the green skinned Wicked Witch of the West. Not to spoil a musical and a book that has been out for decades, but Alphaba is the protagonist, the misunderstood hero of the story, and her trauma as the outcast led her to become an advocate for the little guy, fighting against a system that villainizes anyone who is different. So did you go right from Mama Mia to Wicked? Had you seen Wicked by the time you joined the tour?
I saw it in two thousand and five graduated from college. I'm really embarrassed about this, but I didn't like it. I'm really sorry. I hate saying that out loud. It's not that I didn't like it, but when I watched the show as an actor, I have a problem where when I watch shows, I can't turn off my actor brain. So like I'll watch and I'm like, Okay, what track am I? Who am I going to play? What's my What do I do? And I was like, am I Glinda? Am I? I'm like, I'm obviously not an Alpha BA.
I was like, am I a Nessa Rose? So like I was like, I guess I'm a mess I'm Annessa Rose?
Why don't you think you were in Alpha BA?
I'm small. I'm like not quite five four, which is not actually short, but they love to cast Alpha basall even though a Dina Menzelisfi for Christon Tanna with is like, what's right? But not every Glinda's going to be as short as Crystontena With. So they like this thing of like alpha but being taller than Glinda, and so I was like, well, I'm short. I also didn't feel Alpha BA at that time in my life. I didn't feel that kind of power and not how to channel that
in myself, so like I couldn't relate to her. So I was like nessa Rose Tragic, I could do that. Great funny thing is the first time I auditioned for it, I actually went in forness Arose after I came back from Mama Mia. The message that got relayed to me to my agent was they just don't think you're tragically beautiful enough. So I was like, great, I guess I'm not gonna be a wicked And then like a year later, no maybe not a year, but like like a few
months whatever. I had gotten married in that time and I then got very quickly divorced. But it was right when I was going through my divorce my agents called again. They were like Glinda Alphaba, and I was like, Alphaba, this divorce has taught me that I'm a really strong person. I can be an alphabet absolutely, and like I was able to then channel all of that divorce energy into Alphaba and it was incredible, Like I like got it finally. When I first had seen the show, I was like,
I don't have anything that tragic. I don't have anything to relate to, and I don't know what that power looks like in myself, and so like having gone through that process of like finding my strength, I was like, oh, I can be Alphaba. That was when I was like, okay, let's do it.
Please welcome Carla Stickler from Wicked. My future is.
That's true.
So I was on the first National tour for three years. The first year I was the understudy, so I was in the ensemble eight times a week, so I was like the second cover. So there's Alphaba, there's a stand by who's an off stage principal cover, who's the first to go on, and then there's standers study who's in the ensemble. And halfway through that second year, they were like, we're gonna move up to stand by and I was like okay, but I had to wait like six months,
which is like an agonizing six months. I couldn't tell anybody that I was moving up to the role because I knew, but like I couldn't talk about it because I didn't want to upset anybody. Like so I once I moved up, I was a stand by for a year on tour, which was great.
It was great for a number of reasons, but surprisingly the stand by role is more coveted than the understudy role. Why simply because it's easier. The standby doesn't have to be part of the ensemble. The stand by is the best role. It is a better role than the understudy roll. The thing that's hard about the understudy role is that you're doing eight shows a week. It's a different level of exhaustion, where like when you're in the stand by you get to rest a lot.
On the tour, we get to leave halfway through and us act too, and then in Broadway you just leave after she enters Act too. You could go home, which is the best. It's great because we're like, all right, fine, because look at that point, I think the whole thing is if she goes down and Act two, they have
to stop the show. So it's faster to get the understudy, who's already wigged and miked, into green, than it is to get the stand by into green, because they would have to wig her and do a lot more prep work.
If you've never seen Wicked, Alpha but is fully green, And if you're wondering how long it takes to be greenified, so was I.
We started half hour a half hour before the show. It's eight o'clock curtain seven thirty. You should be in like tights and your body suit in the chair, ready to go, and then they start greeting you. Ideally they're done greeening you by the time the show starts, so you have like ten minutes to warm up and get into costume. Sometimes they're faster. They can do it in five minutes if they need to, and you.
Don't do it yourself. Absolutely, and does the stand by green? No, only if she's going on.
Only if she's going on. Yeah, So, like there are spots in Act one where they know that they have time to get the standby ready. A common spot is Alpha bo will sing Wizard and I and she'll be like, I'm out and then and she'll continue on because she doesn't have to sing anything, or a couple of scenes, so she'll continue through the show, and then there's like a swap out where she'll walk off stage and the new one will walk on.
And that really happens all the time.
All the time, and people don't notice unless there's like a drastic height difference or like a body shape difference. Like people might be like, hmm, something looks different, and then they'll make an announcement of intermission.
I mean, I guess if she's green.
Yeah, nobody knows, nobody cares.
That's the thing.
It's like, it really doesn't matter. I think that's the beautiful thing about the show, right, I mean, as long as the Alphaba is like a solid actress and singer, like, nobody cares who's playing the role. It's not about the actress, It's about the character.
Okay, So you moved from the tour to Broadway and how did that feel to go on Broadway as Alphabet? I mean, you've really stepped into your power.
Yeah, it was great. While I was on tour, I really kind of grew into the character. She changed a lot for me over, Like I go back to there's some random bootlegs from when I was on tour, and I watched them and I'm like, oh, that's such a different version of what I would do now, especially like recently, Like when I went back, I just I'm such a
different person. So I think that's the beautiful thing about Alphaba is you can kind of take where you are and channel that inter her and it changes as we get older, right, Yeah, And you can you can kind of morph with the role and grow deeper and deeper. But yeah, I learned a lot. I learned a lot about myself through her. She's such a powerful character and her journey is it's sad and lonely, but she finds
her strength. I think when you play that role too, there's kind of a loneliness that goes into playing the role, and so you kind of like become Alphaba when you're playing the role a little bit. You know, you get to the theater early, you're kind of by yourself a lot. It's you, your dresser and the hair people and wardrobe,
and then you don't see anybody else on stage. And then when you do go on stage, everybody's like kind of laughing at you, and then you're by yourself, and then you switch places there on stage, you're off stage, and then the show ends, and then you go to the dressing room, you shower, and by the time you leave, everybody's left. So there's this loneliness to Alphaba that kind of goes with just playing the role, right, and then during the daytime you have to be quiet, you have
to take care of yourself. That's the thing that ultimately led to my burnout was doing the same thing eight times a week. It takes its toll on your body. I had a bunch of injuries. I had a neck injury, I had some foot injuries, and I just your day today is all about making sure you can do the
show at night. So you know, you wake up, like, maybe you go to the therapy, maybe you go to the physical therapist, maybe you go get a massage, you're steaming your voice, You're making sure that you are ready to do that show at night, And so your whole life becomes about can I do the show tonight. Like I would wake up and I would lay in bed and I go and I would like war. I would like, I'm like, okay, is it there? And I would just
kind of check my range every morning. I was like, and I would know it was going to be a good day or a bad day based on what I felt like right when I woke up. And it just get really exhausting. And you don't really get a break when you do a show like that for years and years and years, and so your body is just kind of like you're in maintenance mode all the time. That's the thing when people are like, why would you give that up? You're right, the show is really fun, but
all of that other stuff. Doing a long running show for I did it straight for five and a half years, NonStop, eight shows a week, with like two weeks off every year.
That's a lot.
Really messed my body up. I'm still dealing with like my neck and jury and stuff.
On top of the physical toll, the show began to take an emotional toll. Between the demand of doing eight shows a week at odd hours, she began to feel isolated and unable to find time for her friends.
It's hard to go out with friends after shows because you're like, I gotta go to bed. So it's hard to kind of like have relationship with people who are not in the business. So either you're like only having relationships with people in the business, which can get exhausting because of like the competitive nature of the business, or you're just not seeing people. And that was hard, Like I missed a lot of holidays, I missed a lot
of family events. Like during the time I was on tour with Wicked and in New York, I had a boyfriend who was a teacher, and it was really hard because our schedules were flapped and we had this point where he got clearly frustrated because like, we never saw each other and that sucks.
Carlin knew she needed to make a change, but I think it's important to note here that it's hard to leave something you've dedicated so much time and emotional energy to. So instead of doing the hard thing and leaving, we end up searching for a better purpose an excuse. So she made her first career pivot, deciding to leave the show in twenty fifteen to attend NYU to get a master's in theater education.
And so I was like, I just need to get out of the show. I need space to breathe, I need space to think. And I needed a reason to leave Wicked. And I was like, I'm going to be a teacher. I like teaching and grad school, Like being a teacher is a noble thing as an actor, to go do right, like spread the gospel. I was like, I'm going to do this. This feels really good, this feels powerful for me, this feels like a purpose great.
So I did that, and right after I left the show, a friend of mine was doing this cruise ship show and she'd gotten pregnant. She's like, do you want to take over my show? While I'm pregnant. I was like, I do and it was perfect because I could do it alongside grad school. So I'd like fly on Wednesday to the Bahamas and then I would do like two forty five minutes sets with me and like a three
piece band. And I got this like little bit of performing that was really joyful, and I could do that while I was in grad school, while I was teaching, and it was this really beautiful balance of the two things. I was like, Oh, I get I get to perform this joyful thing where I get to like be myself and sing stuff that I love, and then I get to teach and inspire and so it was really lovely and in that time I found my power again and I was like feeling really good.
Carla ended her relationship with her then boyfriend and shortly after met her now husband on the exact cruise ship she was working on. The stars seemed to align between the two of them, both from New York, both performers, both looking for something new, and he.
Also lived in New York. And then we also found out he was from my hometown. We went high school together. I had played softball with this sort of sister. Our parents knew each other. So I was like, this is
meant to be. The universe is colliding. And things were great because he met me after Wicked, which is such a weird thing because he never really knew me when I was like full time in a Broadway show, so he's always known me when I've been in transition, and so there's always been this conversation of, well, Carla, I know at some point you're going to stop transitioning, but like you keep kind of transitioning and transitioning, and I'm like, I'm going to settle. I'm going to find the thing.
And you know, I taught for a while. My cruise ship show got canceled right when he and I moved in together, but like he had had a brain tumor and so he had to have brain surgery, and so like all of these things were kind of colliding at once, right around when my show closed and I finished grad school, and it was just like this moment of oh, okay, this is a lot of things what is important. And I was also still kind of auditioning and he was trying to audition as well, and we were both just like,
maybe that's not important. His brain surgery kind of made us realize maybe like family and relationships are more important. So we kind of stepped back from that. Like with my show closing, I was like, Okay, I'm not going to audition as much. I'm going to teach more. I taught on a couple of faculties here in the city
and I really leaned into that. And Wicked was still kind of calling me in during that time, so I was kind of like on and off in the show, and he would see me, like go back to the show and be really stressed out for two weeks and be like Carlot, that was awful. I was like, I know, He's like, do you need to do that? When they call? And I was like, I can't say no. I can't say no to Wicked.
Why couldn't you say no?
Wicked is like an abusive boyfriend. I mean that in the way that like we loved them and there's so much like passion and there's so many interesting things about them. And every time we go we're like, it's going to be different. It's going to be different this time because they've changed. I've changed. I can manage it better. And then you go back and it's the same every time. Every time it's the same, and you're like, why didn't
I see it coming? And I would go back and I get really excited that I was there, and after like a week or two, my body would start hurt again, and I would get those feelings of wanting more while I was there again, like I had been the under study and I had been passed up for the stand by role in the Broadway company.
After already playing the stand by role, she craved that role again. It was less intense and harsh on her body, meaning she could still experience the magic of Wicked without the toll on her physical health, so she kept trying.
So I was always like, well, maybe I'll go in and they'll see me again, and they'll and I saying it out loud, I feel so dumb, because it's like, maybe they'll love me this time. Maybe if I give them every single thing in my body this time, they'll see how much I care and how talented I am and how worthy I am of a role. And it's just like this constant like seeking validation from somebody else
instead of like finding validation within yourself. And then every time I come back, I was like, I can't do this anymore. I hate it, and they call again and I would go and so finally, in like twenty eighteen, I was like, I'm so tired. I can't keep doing this, and like teaching was getting really hard because I was feeling how crappy that element of the business was. I was just like, it's not fair. It's not a fair business. They're going to just chew everyone up and spit them out.
And I was starting to like feel for my students because I was like, I don't know how I can tell you to go into this business if I don't truly believe the structure of this business makes sense.
I want to hop in here because I think this is an important point to emphasize. During my conversation with Carla, I really saw this as a breaking point for her, the idea that the thing we love and we're so passionate was no longer a fit as we changed. For me, it was when I realized that I couldn't be there for my kid's formative moments while also showing up the way I wanted to in my job, realizing that the structure or the system I was working within no longer
fit me. And we hear it time and time again, when we talk about people's pivots, when we remove the veil from our eyes, is the path really serving us? Or is it time to pivot?
And I was like, how do I inspire people to go into this business when I don't feel pasionate about it? And that's when I found coding. I'd come back from one time at Wicked and I was like, God, I hate it. I can't go back.
What am I doing?
Why do I want this? What am I doing with my life? They're never going to give me what I want? What is the point of all this? And why do I need it so bad? And my friend came to my birthday party, He's like, hey, I'm a software engineer.
Now I think.
I was just like so desperate to find something that would make me feel smart and powerful again. I felt like I had all of my power had been stripped away from me.
I was like, I could do that. I don't know.
I'm a crazy person. I think that's really what it comes down to.
But I was like, I can do that.
I don't know what that is, but I bet I could do that. I'm smart numbers. I was always very good at numbers. And I went home and I started teaching myself, and I was like, this is incredible. Look at what I did. I made this thing happen. Look at this button. When you press this button, these words appear on the page. I did that.
Wait, how did you teach yourself?
There's a bunch of stuff for free online that you can go and do. And I just started googling, like literally, I was like, Google, how do I become a software engineer? Is software engineering hard? How much money do first year software engineers make? How much money do second your sofa engineers make?
And I was like, holy crap.
I didn't realize there's this is the thing about software engineering. And I think why I talk about it so much to people who are like unhappy in the arts or they're just trying to figure it out. I'm like, software engineering is artistic, it's creative, but it's also accessible, right, Like, if you have the time and the ability to commit it to learning the skill, you can change your life
in a very short amount of time. Getting into software engineering, there's a little bit of a hump that you got to get through, but as soon as you learn the basics and you get your first job, the pay skill just explodes right within a year, you're making six figures. Within a few years you're a mid level engineer. And Google and Apple and like all these big companies are
like trying to recruit you. And so I was like, cool, if I'm going to try to change careers, let's do something that's really hard and interesting and will also give me like a four h one K and health insurance and like the stability that I never really had.
At the time, she was working on an off Broadway production and her plan was to apply to tech jobs after her show closed and the premiere was set for you guessed it March of twenty twenty, when the world as we knew it shut down.
So Broadway shutdown I think on Wednesday, and that was Friday, so we were in we were not in New York. We were doing it out of town in Pennsylvania, and Broadway shut down, and we were all in the dressing room and stay like, oh God, this isn't looking good. And then Friday was supposed to be our first preview, and Friday morning they're like, we can't have an audience.
We're going to do the run tonight. We're going to videotape it, and then you're all going to go home tomorrow, and I was like, Okay, well I was going to start my job search for my engineering job when the show ended, so I guess I'm going to start it now at the beginning of a pandemic great, which was awful because nobody was hiring junior engineers, and so finally I was like, I got to pivot. Pivot, Hey, I'm
going to look for software adjacent jobs. So I found this customer success role at this company, and I was like, great customer success, that's technical. It's also it worked with people. I like working with people, so it was like very customer facing tech.
It was great.
It taught me like the lingo, it taught me how to work remotely, It taught me how to like communicate in this kind of very different world. And it allowed my husband and I to buy a car, moved to Chicago, buy a house. It allowed us to kind of like have this life.
I feel like what you're describing is you totally transformed your life into this leave it to Beaver, like going from the extreme of Broadway to this idyllic, picturesque life and then you went back. Yeah.
I don't know if I'll ever be able to kind of turn off that thing. Like I'm like a fly to a light right, like you flip that switch on. I'm like hello. Broadway was starting up again, and I remember feeling a little itchy about it. I was like, oh, I feel like I should find some performing here in Chicago.
And that's when Wicked came knocking again, this time due to the omicron surge. They asked her to come back to cover Alphabet for a few weeks, and then I was.
Like I should say no. He's like, do you want to say no? And I was like maybe no. He's like, do you want to do it? And I was like, okay, I feel like I have this duty I should go. At that moment, I was like, this is bigger than me. This is kind of like Broadway is struggling, and I think we need to show the world that Broadway can make it through this, because I think if Broadway can make it through this, I don't know if it'll ever recover from this. And I think a lot of people
felt that. And so I was like, I'm going to do this. It's going to be crazy, but here we go. He's like, here's a deal. I support whatever you want to do. It's like, if you want to go, you should go. It'll be fine. I will be fine with our friends, by myself in this cabin in Michigan. You should go if you really feel like you want to go.
And I was like, I think I have to go. And He's like, Okay, one day you're developing software and the next day you're starring at a Broadway show. That is a spellbinding moment from the life of Carla Stickler. And as we've been reporting, COVID has taken its toll on Broadway. But over at Wicked, they really do believe the show must go on. And that resulted in a triumphant return for someone who thought her performing days were over.
But between the shows and plenty of green makeup, going back to Broadway reminded her of what you moved to Chicago for in the first place.
Part of the reason we moved to Chicago was that we wanted to start our family. Surprisingly, it's not that easy to get pregnant. I think they lied to me. I feel like I've been lied to my whole life that it's just like really really easy. That's been like the underlying plan of the whole thing is that like find the stable life, go back to Chicago, start your family.
How have you been handling that emotionally? I understand from a lot of friends a lot. I feel like everyone I know who has gone through it that it just it really takes a toll on you.
Yeah, it's exhausting, and people don't talk about it a lot. You don't know much about how awful it is. I think the thing that is the hardest thing for me is that as a woman, I think society kind of pushes hard that motherhood is the thing you do with the rest of your life till your kids are eighteen, and then you go and you retire and you like
have a fabulous retirement. I think I always just assumed that was going to be this part of my life, and so now that it's taken longer, it's kind of starting to grapple with the idea of like, oh, what if I'm not going to be a mother, and what is my life going to look like if that doesn't work out. That's weird because I don't think I've spent a lot of time fantasizing about my life as an
adult without children in her forties and fifties. I mean, there are women who do that right, Like I have friends who are like, oh, I never want children, and I'm like great, But like, even though I wasn't ever sure I wanted children, I didn't spend a lot of time fantasizing about my life at that age without them or in general. So there's just kind of this this conversation that my husband I keep happening of well if this isn't going to work out, what do we do?
Like?
What is next? Who are we?
And I'm like do we stay in Chicago? And as I've been doing the fertility stuff, I've had to kind of take a step back from a lot of things because it is emotionally exhausting. It's really hard, you know. So like a lot of things I've been put on the back burner, I've had to say no to.
Well, rethinking your expectations for yourself and your life that feels crushing even interested me to think about it.
I try to think about it in terms of I'm really good at I keep saying it, but pivoting, right, Like if I hit wall, which I have before, I can say, Okay, this is what I'm meeting, this is what I'm dealing with. How can I make the most of it, and I have in the past been very good at that. I have made it work, whether maybe sometimes I've hit rock bottom in order to crawl out, but like, I have been faced with some things that have been very difficult for me that I've had to
kind of find my strength in. My expectation for what I want my life to look like has changed many, many times. So I'm okay with it changing.
Not gonna lie.
It's a little exhausting after having to keep reinventing yourself, but I think life is long and I plan on living till I'm like one hundred, so I gotta get used to it.
You do a lot of TikTok and Instagram social media talking about not just pivoting changing but encouraging I think, particularly women and particularly in the arts, into rethinking their lives. It's really focused on the professional side. Do you think that that has become the outlet for you to focus on?
Really interesting thing that happened when I went back to Wicked was there was like these couple waves, right. The first wave was, oh my gosh, software engineer a broadway that makes no sense, But like, if I can show other people that it's okay and that there is a world where you can do multiple things right, where the thing that your college self decided you wanted to do for the rest of your life doesn't have to be the thing you do for the rest of your life.
And if there is a way to find value in yourself alongside your journey as an artist, so you're not constantly seeking it from somebody else, why not find that That was just not ever a thing that anybody presented to me as an idea when I was younger, Right, it was like struggle, starve, weight tables, and then you're going to be a star, right, and that's going to be your story.
And like we like.
Promote those stories all the time. We love to talk about them. The girl who who was waiting tables and got discovered and now she's whatever, and we love that story. But it's just like it's not going to be everybody's story. It's not going to be most people's stories. So finding ways to like be confident in your life by having that Maso's hierarchy of needs, having good health and comforts and things so that you don't have to worry about just like the baseline things, so that you can achieve
your greatests. Whatever.
Well, Thank you so much, Carl it'sen great to have you on.
Thank you for having me.
Carla still works in tech and recently started working for Spotify. She lives in Chicago with her husband and they're both happy after pivoting out of the theater industry. Oh, Carla still dabbles in her own Broadway roots from time to time. You can follow Carla on TikTok and Instagram at stickler Carla and hear more about her journey with fertility, life and tech and a little Broadway gossip from time to time.
Thanks for listening. Thanks for listening to this episode of she Pivots, where I talk with women about how their experiences and significant personal events led to their pivot and eventually their success. Be sure to follow us on Instagram at she Pivots the podcast and leave a rating in comment if you enjoyed this episode to help others learn about it. A special thank you to our partner Marie Claire and the team that made this episode possible. Talk
to you next week. She Pivots is hosted by me Emily Tish Sussman, produced by Emily Eda Voloshik, with sound editing and mixing from Nina Pollock and research and planning from Christine Dickinson and Hannah Cousins.
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