Sounds great.
And it looks like it's spelled normally,
but I'm just going to ask.
It's Marissa.
It is, yes.
You'd never know.
Sometimes people are like, well, actually,
it's whatever.
And I'm like, okay, glad I asked.
Perfect.
So I want to set the stage.
Yeah.
Did it.
Yep.
what does uh and I know I'm
gonna you're gonna say
there is none but what does
a normal week look like for
a performing artist for the
people you get to treat
because I've heard eight
shows a week and you know
like how crazy things for
me and I know you work with
a varied group but like
what's as close to normal
as you can describe as
possible for someone like this
Okay.
Let's start with like a Broadway performer,
shall we?
And then maybe we'll,
maybe if we have a second,
we can venture into modern,
modern dance territory.
I'm in New York city though.
So let's like set context
there because it's going to
look different if you're somewhere else.
Okay.
Everywhere.
Right.
So Broadway performer,
you have eight shows a week, right?
Usually that's like one on
one on every day of the week,
except for Wednesday and Saturday,
which we have two shows.
And then Monday is what we
call a dark day where you get like
You get a day to be normal
and do your groceries and
maybe do your laundry.
So during that time,
you're always performing at
night and then on matinees
for Wednesdays and Saturdays.
But sometimes you also have
rehearsals or put-ins or
things of this nature,
rehearsals happening one,
maybe two times a week for
shows that are open and running.
And then on top of that,
folks might have other gigs,
might be something like
soul site teaching soul
cycle or being a personal
trainer or it might be
participating in a workshop
um from ten to six monday
through friday or whatever
which means that you're
developing a new production
or a new show which is so
much so much energy output
I feel like people are like oh
you're a broadway performer
you just perform at night
like no these people are
hustling their tushes off
and then like modern dance
modern dance is also kind
of cuckoo bananas right I
think for smaller dance
companies um you know for
for a company that has
maybe twelve individuals
you're looking at being in
the studio and rehearsing
for five to seven hours in
a day and if you have a
small modern dance company
that means that like
everyone is in the room
It's not like cast A is
rehearsing and cast B is not there.
Like everyone's for a small
modern dance company, everyone is cast.
So everyone has to be in the
room and learning and
dancing five to seven hours
a day of like rehearsal is a ton.
Not to mention the travel
that definitely happens and
the performances that happen.
And then juggling that with
what we call layoffs.
Layoffs are like your
contract might only be
thirty two weeks in a year.
And for those two to four to
six weeks at a time,
you suddenly find yourself
with with no income and no rehearsal.
So how do you manage that
and make those ends meet?
So there's a lot.
There's a lot.
You've got a hot take about this,
because it sounds like you
obviously have a little bit
of a finger on the pulse of this.
And your hot take is the
care system for performers
is so reactive.
Describe why it is or how that is,
and then why does it need to change?
For sure.
Okay.
Now I won't say that this is ubiquitous.
Like there's some companies
that have what I'm calling
a more proactive system and
they've been written up in
literature and I have been, you know,
I've had the great pleasure
and honor of working with
some of them in some of these companies.
So a reactive care system
kind of looks like, Hey, we need to have,
we need to have physical
therapy contractually,
or like as a thank you to
our performers when we're
performing at this particular theater,
you know, once a year, twice a year,
et cetera, we'll have,
care come in,
but we won't have anything
necessarily consistent or
adequate enough to attend
to all the performer's needs, right?
So basically then,
little issues will start to
kind of come up and potentially fester,
and people might try to
like self-manage and regulate,
or the company might try to
throw a few resources at it,
or it also depends on if
the performer is willing to
speak up and talk about
whether or not they have an injury.
And then these things kind
of fester and we don't have
adequate care to take care
of them and suddenly they're big issues,
right?
And when they're a big issue,
it's not just the fact that
someone has an injury,
but now we need to change
casting and we need to do
it super quickly.
We haven't had a preparation
and maybe we need to bring
other folks in to cover that person,
which costs money, money to rehearse,
money to pay that additional person,
money to make additional costumes.
And so instead of providing
adequate care from the get
in so much as having PT in
the space early,
having conversations and
infrastructures regarding
care for each performers
and what that looks like
and how we're going to
attend to your injuries so
we can all talk about
injuries the same way as
opposed to it being taboo
and hush hush and the show must go on.
I had a brain fart.
But anyway, we we
I feel like the show must go
on as a lot like, I mean,
the parallel in sports is no pain,
no gain, right?
Like they're the same thing.
They're like, hey,
I understand that there's
an injury going on, but suck it up,
rub some dirt on it and get out there.
And that is really easy to say.
Yeah.
And probably sometimes with
some of these artists, not.
possible or not easy to do
or not possible to do.
It feels like you're talking
about the world of performing artists,
but this could be also
applied to the world,
not just performing artists
or military operators or athletes.
This is reactive versus proactive.
And when you do that on a population scale,
people are happier,
they feel better longer,
things don't pop up when they might have,
and things cost less
because we have to bring in
the cost element as well.
Exactly.
Right.
If you stub your toe or you start,
you know,
you walk in the streets in New
York and your foot hurts,
if you get it seen taken
care of right now,
we can probably give you
one or two little exercises,
maybe some supportive footwear,
and you're going to be fine.
versus if you have a two
week trip plan to New York
after day three, your foot hurts,
I'm just gonna ignore it, right?
And then by the end of the trip,
you're hurting a lot,
you have to change all of your plans,
and all this money that
you've paid for your trip
is now kind of lost, right?
You've got to change everything.
And then the care is gonna
take longer as well.
So you're not- There's this
phrase reconditioning.
Is that what the missing
link is in performer rehab
that most people, even clinicians maybe,
are missing?
Yeah, that's a really good point.
Yes,
I believe we are missing the
reconditioning link.
How do you describe, like set the stage,
what is reconditioning?
Yeah, okay.
So as we established from the beginning,
right,
being a performer constitutes like
being able to do a lot of stuff.
You need to have a very high
level of conditioning, right,
to just get through your
day and to be resilient from the get.
When folks get injured,
what tends to happen is
everything falls off.
They've gone from like a
hundred to approximately
zero as we're kind of
working through the acute phase.
And what I tend to see, and again,
this is not a blanket statement,
but what I tend to see is
that folks start to
rehabilitate a particular injury.
and they rehabilitate the specific muscles,
tendons, tissues, et cetera.
And they get to this point
maybe in their mid-stage of
rehab where the tissue is better,
but then they have such
like a decreased level of conditioning,
right?
Because they spent three, four, five,
six weeks, right?
Just making sure that their
ADLs or activities of daily
living are like okay to go.
But then we tend to miss
this huge chunk where it's like, well,
we don't only need local tissue capacity.
We need power.
We need strength.
We need coordination.
We need anaerobic capacity.
We need all these kinds of things.
And that's where the
reconditioning comes in.
That's where we tend to lack.
So that when folks come in,
they feel better,
but they're not ready for
the demands of an eight show week,
plus the rehearsals,
plus the other gigs that
they have on top of that.
So what would the gold standard,
you can wave a magic wand and sort of say,
this is the gold standard
for performer care and the
system it would look like.
What is that?
And then follow up,
what's stopping us from doing that?
That's a great question.
Well, I will say,
that, you know, as we established,
just like Broadway looks
different than modern dance, small,
large modern dance companies.
I mean, the budget looks different.
The involvement looks different.
And even in a Broadway show,
not all shows are created equal.
You could have a ninety
minute run with five actors
who basically stand on stage versus a
um two and a half hour show
with like high octane
dancing and heavy props and
all that stuff right so um
let's I think it would be
better to talk about like
common pieces as opposed to
you know one blanket what
it would look like because
again I think it needs some tailoring but
I think we start with this
and that is that we need a
common language and an
infrastructure that we all speak.
So I think the biggest
paradigm shift is that all
parties need to get on the same page.
We need to understand what
our system is gonna look like,
what our expectations are.
We need to create a common
language around how we're
going to deal with injury,
what kinds of information
we're going to share
between physical therapy, AT,
S&C and company management, right?
Um,
so that we can all speak together
because if we all have
different ideas about how
things are going to go,
we can have an awesome system.
Right.
And it's just not going to work.
So that's thing one, right.
Thing two is then providing adequate care.
And it's not just like, okay, cool.
We've provided PT and like, you know,
or AT or whatever we've
provided backstage care.
But if you're like squishing
care into fifteen minute chunks,
which happens quite often, right?
You only have fifteen
minutes to meet with your
backstage care provider or
only thirty percent of the
cast can be seen in a week.
That's not adequate, right?
Because what ends up
happening is that the small
niggly issues that are
happening today are like, oh, my gosh,
it's totally fine.
My ankle's fine.
But you have such a big injury.
You can't lift your arm.
I'm going to give my spot to you.
And then that person with
the little niggly injury
like waits and waits and waits and waits.
And as we discussed before,
they have a bigger problem, right?
So providing adequate care,
which looks like enough slots per people,
enough time to kind of get
to the root of what's going on.
And we can work efficiently
like it doesn't have to be
too much longer than fifteen minutes.
But, you know,
and then and then once
someone gets injured,
or something pops up,
if it doesn't get to come
into the PT table,
can we at least have a
conversation where it's like, hey,
Joe got hit in the shoulder
with this prop yesterday.
PT, are you aware of it?
PT's like, oh, hey, no,
we weren't aware of it.
Joe, come in.
We just want to triage and
make sure things are OK,
as opposed to waiting.
Again, it kind of goes in the same circle.
So there's that kind of conversation.
And then when someone gets injured,
Helping to keep an eye on that individual.
Right.
Which could look like, hey, Joe,
I know you got hit in the
shoulder and you're going
to go see our our physician
who's like on the show with us.
We've let the person know what's going on.
Do you have the resources you need in PT?
OK,
you've gone to PT outside PT outside of
the show.
Is your PT going well?
Do we have the
reconditioning piece taken care of?
Are there do you have access
to all the resources you
need in terms of like,
do you need a mental health
care provider?
Do you need a dietician?
Like,
how can we look for all these
individuals after all these
individuals health and well-being?
Because as we mentioned before,
when we don't have that
reconditioning like piece
figured out and we kind of
lose these folks as they go
into medical leave,
what we see a lot is that
folks come back.
from these medical leaves
and again local tissue
capacity is pretty good but
the rest of them we need
like they need more work so
when they come back there's
also there there can be
this game of like they're
in technically but then
they start calling out a
fair amount but calling out
I mean like they will
instead of doing eight
shows a week they'll be
like oh at the second show
of this wednesday I don't
think I have the capacity
to do I'm not ready which
creates another stressful
ripple effect as well so we
want to make sure that
we're heading that off at the pass
before they come back in so
everyone is set up for
success if that makes sense
so what is everybody in
terms of clinic owners
rehab professionals outside
of performing arts what do
they need to learn from
that model what could they
take away and say huh like
that's a really good lesson
how could I translate that
to what I do if I'm not
necessarily like marissa on broadway
You mean like for mongols,
like not performing artists?
Yeah, in terms of just like, yeah,
for non-performing artists,
like what can they learn like for that?
I feel like most of our colleagues,
let's just say in
outpatient physical therapy, right?
The broadest of scope,
they wait for reactivity, right?
I don't know who you are
until you walk in the door.
Yeah.
Maybe the idea is that we
flip the script on that.
I'm trying to do as many
stage and script puns as I can, Marissa.
I'm just hoping you're picking up on that.
Yeah, you got me.
I totally got you.
What are some lessons that
someone listening who's like, hey, listen,
this is interesting.
I'm not in performing arts,
but I can take something from this.
I feel like that reactivity
thing is everywhere.
Yeah, the reactivity thing is everywhere.
I mean –
I kind of come back to like education,
education, education, right?
I think the other thing that
we're learning in,
we work within a dance school,
my clinic works within a dance school,
and we found that we put a
system in place,
but people didn't
necessarily know how to use it, right?
So we can,
we can tout that we are proactive,
but if people, again,
don't understand the
language or don't have the
skills to then navigate it, like,
So with this school,
and I think that this can
work for like regular
outpatient ortho or folks
who are not performing
artists like we have we
have workshops where we're
kind of like giving folks
like a ten minute video to
learn from before they come
into the space.
And then we talk about things like,
how are you going to manage
your load over the summer?
Like,
so that you're prepared to come back.
How are you going to manage your load?
This could be, I'm just giving an example,
like how can you manage
your load leading up to a
marathon so that you don't
need us so much at the end, right?
Kind of prehab, if you will,
which I know a lot of
people use that word,
like prehabilitation, education tools.
And then like,
we also have a very robust
list of individuals that we
cross refer to.
And I'm not just
thinking like other PTs.
I mean,
we have a healthy list of mental
health practitioners, dieticians,
you know, all that kind of thing,
because we need to make
sure that folks know that
something might not just be
strictly a musculoskeletal issue, right?
There could be a mental
health component that's
getting in the way of them
getting to where they need to go.
Sure.
You do a lot of things, wear a lot of hats,
a couple of different
costume changes for you.
Thank you.
Yeah.
Clinician, business owner, parent,
how do you focus on
balancing this while also
pushing for change in your field?
I think it's easy for people
to jump into Facebook groups.
I talk about that a lot and
sort of yell at clouds and say,
this sucks.
But you go out of your way to build,
you've gone out of your way
to build something that can-
be the vehicle for change.
I want to make sure I gave
you a nod to that and say,
what are some things that
you learned doing that?
Because it probably wasn't easy.
No,
and I don't think past tense is correct
either because it's still
not easy and I don't expect
it to be forever, I think.
How do I balance it?
I don't know what balance means,
but I'm trying very hard.
Listen,
I think it's important to note that
everything that I'm
involved in makes me very
passionate and excited and happy.
And so that makes balancing things, I mean,
whatever, getting everything done, again,
balance,
I don't think is an appropriate
word when we're talking about me,
but it makes managing all
things much easier.
And it brings me great joy
to know that I am improving
the community in which that
I inhabit and has been a
part of both as a
performing artist and a
professional for a long time.
And I think community is
another thing I just said,
community is so important.
And I think that I'm so
indebted to all of the
individuals who have come
before me and paved the way
so that I can be standing
here talking about these
like lofty dreams and goals.
And what I also recognize is
that for a long time,
performing arts physical therapy,
at least like in the city that I live,
has been pretty siloed.
And by that,
I just mean like there've been
all these incredible practitioners,
but there hasn't been as
much cross collaboration and pollination.
And one thing that I have
really tried to create,
which I think in some way
helps to balance things is
to recreate community
within my generation of
performing arts and
community in like a myriad of ways.
Part of that is making sure
that as clinicians,
we all know each other.
We have continuing education
that we host at my clinic
where we invite other
performing arts PTs from
the area to come in.
And those have been really
well attended and I've met
some incredible individuals.
And that way we can, like,
a lot of those people are
taking care of the folks
that I see who are injured
on workers' compensation, like, claims.
They're taking care of those
folks backstage that when
they go back to their show,
I'm able to be like, hey, so-and-so, like,
just want you to know this
person's coming back.
Like, here's what's up.
Like,
and that creates a better community
for our performers.
Some of those folks we collaborate with.
We also create a community
for our performing artists
in so much as a lot of
friends and friends of
friends know each other within our space,
which I understand can be
an intimidating place to heal in,
and it's not for everyone.
But we also have strength and
conditioning sessions for
folks who are injured to
kind of get back in the
show and so we've like
intentionally
unintentionally created this
community where folks can
heal together and kind of
get prepared together so it
shows up in a in a bunch of
ways there's more than
enough to go around we are
we end up being stronger
together for each other we
can learn from each other
and we can create a better
community for our performing artists
If someone was listening right now,
someone within the
profession of rehabilitation,
whatever that might be,
and they wanted to work
with performing artists,
they wanted to do something
similar to what you're doing,
what would some suggestions be?
I'll give you a couple of
different scenarios.
A student who still hasn't
graduated yet or someone
who's been in rehab, wherever that is,
and is now looking from the
outside in saying, well,
how do I get into this?
What would be a first step
or two that you'd suggest?
That's hard.
I think for new grads, yeah,
or like people who are
aspiring to come into Performing Arts PT,
it's really challenging.
It's really challenging.
And you need to...
it's my personal opinion, obviously,
but I think it is to
everyone's benefit if the
person who is entering into
working with performing
artists has had some time
to develop like pattern
recognition and like really
efficient manual skills and
clinical reasoning skills,
because you're often the
first point of medical
contact if you're with
someone backstage and you
need to be prepared to make
some really challenging
conversations and get your
emotions like kind of out of the picture,
right?
So I think that I know we like it,
people who want to work with
performing arts are like
really want to work with performing arts,
but I would say like,
give yourself a beat and like, go,
go get some reps in maybe
like study for your OCS for a hot sec,
you know?
Cause I mean, for me,
that really helps like
bring a lot of things
together and make sure that
you're ready to handle it.
That's one.
I think to like learn dance
culture a little bit or
performing arts culture,
performing arts culture is
different in every space.
And it's so important to be able to
kind of put your finger on
the pulse of the community
that you're walking into.
Like Broadway is different
than modern dance is
different than ballet is
different than puppetry.
And I'm not saying you have
to be an expert in every single one,
but kind of understanding
what that looks like,
even if you don't
understand what the codified steps are,
that's fine.
You can learn.
Very important.
And I think for folks who
have put in the reps and
are ready to dip their toes in,
there's per diem
opportunities for performing.
Again, I'm speaking to my city.
I can't speak to what's happening outside,
but at least in New York City,
there are opportunities for...
clinicians to come in and
help with some backstage
coverage to get your feet wet,
which could also lead to a job eventually,
or more than a per diem job,
a more permanent job.
Yeah.
Where can people find
information about your business?
I wanted to make sure you
gave out that link and
people can take a look at
what you're doing.
I appreciate that.
www.flyspacenyc.com.
Perfect.
Yeah, you can go to flyspaceNYC.com.
Is there anything I didn't
ask that you maybe thought like, hey,
I hope I get a chance to
talk about this or when you
talk with other people who
do something similar to
what you do that comes up,
is there anything I didn't
get a chance to ask?
We talked about, yeah,
my biggest points are like
the proactive injury
management and then community building.
and using each other's
resources and lifting each other up.
I think that's the soapbox
I've been on recently.
And those two things that
you just said are very simple to say,
not necessarily easy to do.
So how hard could it be?
It's just get a bunch of
people to think forward and
invest in something that
hopefully will pay dividends in the end.
But if you do invest in it,
the chances are you don't see it.
So it's a lot like selling
something like insurance
where you hope the person
never has to use it.
Or if it's there, you don't see it.
And creating community,
how hard could it be?
Well,
these are humans doing human-y things.
And understanding those
people and trying to
facilitate that is very simple to say,
but not necessarily easy to execute on.
I could not agree more.
And one thing I will say is like,
I feel like I used to be,
and I'm conditioning myself
out of being one of those
people who's like, yeah,
we're just going to break the internet.
We're going to make one post
and everything's going to happen,
or we're going to have one
interaction and things are
going to just change.
And it's absolutely not.
I'm sitting here talking
about shouting to the abyss
and obviously making plans.
These are things I expect to see in five,
ten, fifteen, twenty years.
And we're planting the seeds
now and sowing it and
watching things grow slowly.
but uh very passionate about
it happened for a long time
and I'm I'm here I'm here
for it yeah good things
happen that way uh marissa
last thing we do on each
episode is called the
parting shot it's just your
last chance uh to take a
bow a mic drop moment
soapbox statement what
would you want to leave
with the audience as we
wrap up okay well first of
all like I I am drinking a
tea oh yeah I've got I've
got an espresso because we
are recording at ten
o'clock in the morning
Correct, correct.
So there's no alcohol
involved in this situation right now.
But what are my parting words?
Yeah, parting shot.
What would you want to leave
with the audience?
Yeah.
I think I want to go back to
this idea of community.
I think it's really easy to judge a person
or an interaction by the
information that you have in the moment.
And it's never as easy as that.
And I think we do ourselves
a disservice if we don't do
the work to get more
information and kind of
invest in people and
relationships and things
without all the data first.
Which is kind of like
tangentially related to
where the name Flyspace came from.
Flyspace is my business and
my physical therapy company.
we were thinking about, and by we,
I mean me,
I was thinking about being
something like onstage PT
or stage left PT or something like that,
offstage PT, whatever.
But then someone,
a friend of mine mentioned, he was like,
what about fly space?
And I was like, well, first of all,
what's fly space?
And the fly space is the
area above the proscenium stage.
Proscenium is like most
theater that we see, right?
With the curtain and the stage, yeah.
And the audience is sitting out front.
The fly space is the area
above the proscenium stage
where flying set pieces and
actors are hung.
And when he said that, I was like,
you know,
That's really brilliant.
And it's brilliant because
my philosophy has always been,
if you stand far enough away,
or in this case up,
you can start to see all of the players.
Right.
And so you're not just
seeing them from stage, right.
Where like, you know,
I'm missing a big chunk, but I'm,
I'm seeing them from above.
in the context of their
surroundings with all the players.
Right,
so I start to actually understand
what's going on and can put
them in context.
So how is that?
Pretty damn good.
Okay, thanks.
Marissa Schaffer from Flyspace.
Thanks so much for taking
the time and talking with us today.
We appreciate it.
My pleasure.
Thank you.