{"id":2116,"date":"2024-04-16T02:58:25","date_gmt":"2024-04-16T02:58:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sbiz.thongtinluat.com\/?p=2116"},"modified":"2024-04-16T02:58:25","modified_gmt":"2024-04-16T02:58:25","slug":"after-real-housewives-kandi-burruss-is-all-in-on-broadway-vu-thuy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sbiz.thongtinluat.com\/after-real-housewives-kandi-burruss-is-all-in-on-broadway-vu-thuy\/","title":{"rendered":"After Re\u0430l Hou\u0455ew\u0456ve\u0455, K\u0430nd\u0456 Burru\u0455\u0455 I\u0455 All \u0456n on Bro\u0430dw\u0430y"},"content":{"rendered":"

In ELLE.com\u2019s monthly series\u00a0<\/em>Office Hours<\/u><\/em>, we ask people in powerful positions to take us through their first jobs, worst jobs, and everything in between. This month, we spoke to Kandi Burruss, a producer of the Broadway revival of\u00a0<\/em>The Wiz<\/u>, opening April 17. A reality television star who won season three of\u00a0<\/em>The Masked Singer, Burruss recently announced she was leaving\u00a0<\/em>The Real Housewives of Atlanta\u00a0after 14 seasons to focus on other creative pursuits.\u00a0<\/em>Burruss got her start as a recording artist in the girl group Xscape and has writing credits on songs such as \u201cBills, Bills, Bills\u201d by Destiny\u2019s Child, \u201cTell Me No\u201d by Whitney Houston, and \u201cBreak Up with Your Girlfriend, I\u2019m Bored\u201d by Ariana Grande. She also received a Grammy award for Best R&B Song for co-writing \u201cNo Scrubs\u201d by TLC. Born and raised in Georgia, Burruss attended a performing arts high school where her love for the arts blossomed.<\/strong>\u00a0Ever since, she\u2019s been passionate about\u00a0uplifting Black voices in theater and music, and last Broadway season, Burruss produced August Wilson\u2019s\u00a0<\/em>The Piano Lesson, which was named\u00a0the highest-grossing\u00a0<\/em>August Wilson<\/em>\u00a0play\u00a0in Broadway history.\u00a0<\/em>Below, she opens up about when she first started performing, her undying love for\u00a0<\/em>The Wiz, and how Broadway\u00a0still needs to change.<\/em><\/p>\n

\"After<\/p>\n

My first job<\/h2>\n

I\u2019ve never had a job. Honestly, I wanted to work, but my stepdad told me he didn\u2019t want me to, because he just wanted me to focus on school. Then, I got my record deal when I was 16 years old. Our group Xscape put out our first single before my senior year, so I went into\u00a0my senior year with a No. 1 record on the R&B chart. From there, I haven\u2019t stopped.<\/p>\n

On my unconventional career path<\/h2>\n

I always say to stop telling your kids they have to wait until they graduate from high school or college to go after their dreams. When I was in high school, my drama teacher took our class to audition for a community theater play. That opened my eyes. I was like, \u201cWait, what? So, I don\u2019t have to just do the school play?\u201d Nobody ever really tells you that you can actually go and apply for those things, start performing in different places, recording your music, putting your stuff up online, or auditioning for TV, film, music, everything, as a kid. When my English teacher in the 11th grade asked everybody in class, \u201cWhat do you want to be when you guys grow up?\u201d I said, \u201cWell, I want to be a singer and an actress.\u201d She said, \u201cWhat real job do you want to do?\u201d Mind you, we were at a performing arts high school. [Xscape] got our record deal that same year, and the following year, our records were on the radio. I was still coming to school on the days I wasn\u2019t on tour and had that same teacher. My mom had the greatest time rubbing it in her face.<\/p>\n

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Why I wanted to produce\u00a0The Wiz<\/em><\/h2>\n

\"table\"<\/p>\n

The Wiz<\/em>\u00a0is my favorite musical of all time. As a kid, I only saw the movie version, and I literally would watch it again and again and knew all the words, all the songs. When I was a teenager, Stephanie Mills released \u201cHome\u201d as a single for her project at the time; I used to listen on the bus every day. So it\u2019s a childhood dream to be a part of this. We toured\u00a0The Wiz<\/em>\u00a0first and then came back to do our run on Broadway. I love our version of\u00a0The Wiz<\/em>, because I feel the new updated script [featuring additional material by Amber Ruffin] is so funny.<\/p>\n

The stories I\u2019m passionate about<\/h2>\n

I really love stories that are relatable. I love stories that can touch people. I love stories that make you laugh, make you cry, and make you think. I think the best part of being a producer on\u00a0Thoughts of a Colored Man<\/em>\u00a0in 2021\u00a0was that\u00a0it\u00a0really made people think and touched hearts. It was the first show on Broadway that starred seven Black men [and had an all-Black team], and it showed them in a different light\u00a0than the way Black men are depicted in the media. I love to elevate the voices of people of color on Broadway, because for a long time, shows that starred people of color didn\u2019t get the same support financially. It\u2019s sad to say that, in 2024, we still have to push for that.<\/p>\n

How Broadway needs to progress<\/h2>\n

People like to throw money at a problem, but really it\u2019s leadership. If you don\u2019t see diversity in your board or in your executive room, you don\u2019t have any people to tell you when something\u2019s wrong or to introduce you to new ideas. I love being the talent on the show. I love being the singer on the stage. I love being the actor on the TV show, the reality star. But to me, if I want to bring more opportunity, I really need to get behind the scenes. Broadway is a place where we have started seeing more opportunities for people of color as far as it pertains to talent onstage, but as far as the people who are running things in the background, there are not many of us. It\u2019s constantly evolving, but we need to continue to push for representation.<\/p>\n

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And that\u2019s just in business, period. I don\u2019t know what makes people scared to invest in a Black-owned business or a Black-run production or whatever it may be. It\u2019s important to me to get behind these projects and also prove that shows that star people of color can be successful. At the end of the day, that\u2019s what makes people want to invest. 70 percent of our ticket buyers [for\u00a0The Piano Lesson<\/em>] were people who were buying a ticket to a Broadway show for the first time. I think that, realistically, a lot of Black people didn\u2019t go to Broadway shows in the past because it never was marketed to them to make them feel like, \u201cThis is also for you.\u201d That has been part of my job, to build a team that says, \u201cHey guys, we got this great show, we want you to come see it.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Why I left\u00a0The Real Housewives of Atlanta<\/em><\/h2>\n

I just felt like it was time. I\u2019ve done 14 seasons straight. It\u2019s a lot of stress and a lot of drama. My last season I was on there, I just felt like people were coming at me for no reason. I was really just straight stressed and on edge and lashing out. I didn\u2019t like that feeling. After the season was over, they were like, \u201cOh, we\u2019re going to try to figure out how we\u2019re going to switch up the cast a little bit.\u201d As they were taking their time, I started doing a lot of other things, and I started thinking to myself,\u00a0maybe I should take this moment to really figure some other stuff out<\/em>, because I wasn\u2019t really happy. Then they were complaining, because I was working so much outside of the show. They were like, \u201cOh, she\u2019s always doing something else. She\u2019s not really committed to the show.\u201d I\u2019m like, \u201cWell, it\u2019s not like I\u2019m going to stop doing all these other things, so maybe it\u2019s my time to throw up the deuces.\u201d And I did.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/section>\n<\/div>\n<\/section>\n<\/div>\n<\/section>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In ELLE.com\u2019s monthly series\u00a0Office Hours, we ask people in powerful positions to take us through their first jobs, worst jobs, and everything in between. This month, we… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2117,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2116","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-entertainment"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sbiz.thongtinluat.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2116"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sbiz.thongtinluat.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sbiz.thongtinluat.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sbiz.thongtinluat.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sbiz.thongtinluat.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2116"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sbiz.thongtinluat.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2116\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2118,"href":"https:\/\/sbiz.thongtinluat.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2116\/revisions\/2118"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sbiz.thongtinluat.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2117"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sbiz.thongtinluat.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2116"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sbiz.thongtinluat.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2116"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sbiz.thongtinluat.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2116"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}