NEW YORK (AP) — Tracee Ellis Ross is starting to notice the small things that bring her happiness: The satisfying click of a curling iron, say, or the taste of olives. It's sort of her job right now.
The actor and producer is making her Broadway debut starting Tuesday in “Every Brilliant Thing,” one of the more uplifting and joyful plays this summer, even if it delves into the subject of depression.
It's the story of a narrator who compiles a list of the things
to prove to his or her depressed mother that life is worth living — like ducklings, spaghetti Bolognese and dancing in public. No. 999,996 is: “Peeling off a sheet of wallpaper in one intact piece.”
“What is incredible when you start doing this is that you really do start to notice things that you never thought of before,” says Ross. “They’re everywhere and that’s why this piece is so beautiful: It changes the way you see the world.”
Ross steps into the Broadway role originated by Daniel Radcliffe and then held by Mariska Hargitay. It's a solo show, but the audience helps, with some asked to read items from scraps of paper and others pretend to drive a car, craft a sock puppet or act as the narrator's parent.
Ross will be helping select and convince audience members to join her in the show, wandering the aisles to chat as patrons first file in. She'll be looking for kindness — and even some resistance.
“It is a sense of being of service to the material and a little bit of reluctance is actually a special quality in the roles that we need to cast,” she says.
Written by Duncan Macmillan with Jonny Donahoe, “Every Brilliant Thing” allows its narrator to ad-lib and changes some of the brilliant things to fit their background. So “wearing a cape ” for Radcliffe can be turned to “tutus” in Ross' case.
“The list has to feel authentic to them,” says Macmillan. “What they would have found brilliant at different stages of their life, that’s changed from person to person.”
The play gets a rewrite for the new performer and is adjusted according to their age and background — a favorite cereal or cartoon — who they may have had a crush on as a teen and what movies they might have found brilliant along the way.
“They have their own personal reasons for connecting with material, but they are also incredibly funny, open, generous, humble people that we root for,” Macmillan says.
The play runs only 70 minutes, but Ross never takes a break, does crowd work and she's basically been asked to memorize a 40-page monologue during just a three-week rehearsal period.
“It felt like I was swallowing a whale and learning how to digest it through my fingers and through my body and through my voice and through my heart,” she says.
Ross, who graduated from Brown University and studied acting at The William Esper Studio, started her career auditioning for theater, films and TV. She's become best-known for roles in shows like “black-ish” and “Girlfriends.”
Broadway was always on her bucket list, but she says starring in a play that connects with other people in a hopeful way hits “my sweet spot.”
“It's a story that is about something real that so much of us are struggling with, but yet it is told through the lens of the lifeline of what makes life worth living — just everything that could be on a bucket list for me,” she says.
“Sometimes hope can feel like a daunting idea in the face of feelings and also facts, but I do think that having the ability and the map to reach for other things can balance out those moments in a way that gives you an opening to the next.”
She resisted the temptation of watching Radcliffe or Hargitay in the role: “It’s hard for me once I get somebody else’s performance or idea in my head.”
Asked for one more personal brilliant thing and Ross, one of five children, is quick with an answer: “That moment when you and your siblings glance at each other because you know exactly what’s happening and only the five of us know but nobody else does.”
