So much more goes into a Broadway show than meets the eye! Performing in a show eight times a week is no easy task; those who take to the stage are athletes with high endurance and stamina that allow them to sing and dance with seemingly boundless energy. At the same time, performers are human beings who get sick, have personal commitments, and run into other scheduling obstacles throughout the year. That is where the exceedingly important quartet of swings, standbys, alternates, and understudies come in.
Though they are sometimes used interchangeably, these are actually four separate jobs (though one performer can sometimes hold several of these jobs at the same time). January 15 marks National Swing Day (as formalized by Actors Equity). In celebration, Playbill is explaining the difference between the four separate-yet-connected professions.
Understudy
Chances are, if you're a theatre fan, you're familiar with understudies. Utilized throughout professional, regional, and even some community theatres, they are the first line of defense should a principal actor need to step out of a performance. These understudies, who are usually a part of a show's wider ensemble of chorus during normal operations, will have memorized all of a principals track's lines and blocking (and songs should the show be a musical). If the principal actor calls out, an understudy will usually step into the role, with a swing then assuming their ensemble track (more on that later).
When an understudy goes on, you receive a small slip of paper in your Playbill identifying who they are and the role they are playing for the day. These little slips (which are hand stuffed in Playbills by the front of house team) can become highly collectible, with many understudies going on to become top-tier performers in their own right.
Famously, Sutton Foster was rocketed to fame after beginning her career in understudy tracks. While she had appeared on Broadway as an ensemblist and replacement (in Grease, Les Misérables, Annie, and The Scarlet Pimpernel), her big break came when she was hired as the understudy for Millie Dillmount in Thoroughly Modern Millie. The role, which was originally to be played by Kristin Chenoweth (who ended up turning it down in favor of a sitcom deal), went to Erin Dilly out of town. But when Dilly left the production during the rehearsal process due to creative differences, the then-unknown Foster was promoted to full-time Millie. Immediately earning rave reviews during the out-of-town tryout in La Jolla, she then took the role to Broadway and went on to win a Tony Award for her performance. Foster is now one of Broadway's most influential stars. So remember, whenever you see an understudy, you may also be witnessing a future superstar.
Alternate
But what about alternates? You've likely been hearing a lot of buzz about alternate performers this season, due to Mandy Gonzalez's tenure as Nicole Scherzinger's alternate in Sunset Boulevard (although the production prefers to call her the Special Guest Star). Increasingly popular in the 21st century, alternates as performers who take on principal roles on a designated, limited schedule. Unlike understudies, alternates are not a part of the ensemble or chorus on their non-principal nights; for many alternates, they don't even have to be in the theatre on the nights they are not performing.
Alternates are often employed for particularly difficult roles, to prevent any one actor from having to summon the stamina required to get through eight shows a week. Usually, these scheduled off dates will fall on Tuesdays, to allow principal performers two days of weekend rest instead of only on Mondays. In Sunset Boulevard, Scherzinger typically does seven shows a week, with Gonzalez scheduled to perform every Tuesday. Additionally, some alternates get first right of refusal should the standard principal be out for any reason: While many alternates leave those other performances to understudies, alternates will occasionally choose to perform outside of their scheduled dates, such as Gonzalez opting to step in for Scherzinger January 7–11 while the latter was on vacation.
Standby
For many years, the terms alternate and standby were used interchangeably, but in recent decades, the jobs have began to diverge.
Unlike alternates, standbys do not have a weekly performance schedule. While they may, occasionally, be scheduled ahead of time, their engagements are not regularly predictable. Standbys serve as offstage covers: unlike understudies, they are not in the show's ensemble or chorus. But unlike alternates, they are also usually required to be at every performance, just in case they need to step in mid-show.
Standbys provide shows with essential principle coverage should something happen in the middle of a show. You'll often find standbys employed on productions where there is a significant preparation time required for a principal role, which would make taking an understudy out of their chorus costume and putting them into the principal costume extremely difficult mid-show.
Standbys are quite notably used at Wicked for the leading roles of Elphaba and Glinda, with the likes of Shoshana Bean, Eden Espinosa, Megan Hilty, and Brittney Johnson all joining the show as standbys before they took on the roles full-time.
Swing
Last, and perhaps most impressively, we have the swing.
Swings are essentially standbys for the understudies and other ensemble members in a show. There is, however, one massive difference. Unlike standbys (who cover one role offstage) or understudies (who may cover a small handful of roles) swings can cover a wide range of different ensemble tracks. The number of swing tracks depends on the size and diversity of the ensemble. For example, one male swing on the first national tour of Kinky Boots covered an eye-popping 17 different tracks, but in other shows that number shrink down to a much-more reasonable five tracks.
Usually ensconced in a special backstage dressing room reserved for the swing team, swings come to the show every day, and are supposed to be prepared to go on at a moment's notice for any of their tracks.
You might think memorizing one monologue was hard. But when a swing goes on, they must execute the track exactly as it is usually performed: that means different vocal lines, different halves of choreography, sometimes even completely different accents! As if that wasn't enough, they also do their best to have the same behind-the-scenes traffic as the normal company member: if they're covering Person A's track, swings will often make a point of crossing backstage at the same time and in the same way as Person A, participating in any backstage rituals Person A might have with other company members, just to make sure no one is thrown off their game by Person A's absence.
Every swing has a different method for remembering their tracks, with many maintaining what is called a Swing Bible version of a show's script, which is highlighted and tabbed to high heaven. These reference books, which you can often find a swing studying even years into their run of a show, are critical when perhaps the most stressful moment in a swing's show schedule occurs: a split track.
To clarify, an understudy, alternate, or a standby don't usually perform a split track. Principal roles are very clearly defined, and the plot of a show can fall apart if those lines are blurred. Things are a bit more malleable when it comes to ensemble and chorus roles, where performers are often already portraying a variety of different characters within the world of the play (consider Les Mis, where an ensemble member may play a prison laborer, a factory worker, a prostitute's john, a young revolutionary, and a French aristocrat—all in one evening).
When illness, injury, or general calamity strike, ensemble track coverage can become a precarious game of Jenga: Again, let's use Les Mis as our illustrative example. Usually, Les Mis requires 23 cast members on the stage. If there was to be a flu outbreak on a production of Les Mis in which group of closely interacting actors became sick at the same time (say, Jean Valjean, Fantine, Cosette, Marius, Enjolras, Grantaire, four barricade boys, and two ensemble women) there would be a coverage crisis. Most shows employ, at most, four male-presenting swings, and four female-presenting swings. At this theoretical Les Mis matinee, Jean Valjean's standby would go on, as would the understudies for all of the other principal roles, taking them out of their ensemble tracks.
For those of you doing the math, replacing all of those sick principals would leave two empty spots in the female side of the ensemble, and three on the male side, plus the ensemble members who have also called out due to illness, adding up to four empty female spots, and seven empty male spots, which means there are more empty coverage spots in the ensemble than there are swings.
That logistical nightmare is where swings split tracks come in. Now, if only two or three of the female swings were being utilized on that side of the aisle, a female swing could have potentially volunteered to go on in partial drag as one of the male ensemble tracks, should she know it: such a hail mary pass has happened before! But as all four are stepping into female-presenting tracks at this hypothetical matinee, that means the male swings have to figure out how to be in two places at once, performing multiple tracks simultaneously to make sure everything that needs to be done onstage by the seven missing people gets accomplished. Swings study their swing bibles religiously to make sure they know exactly where everything and everyone is on stage at all times so, in a moment of split-track crisis, they can distill everything down to the necessities to keep the show on the road.
Sound stressful and confusing? It is!
It takes an incredibly bright mind, and a supreme level of patience, to be a swing. Their ability to remember details, execute them with precision and safety (all the while giving a top-notch performance) renders them extremely desirable, and highly employable.
Unlike understudies, standbys, and alternates, who often go on to pursue principal contracts themselves, many swings make a career out of the profession, going from show to show to show with few breaks in between as a highly valued problem solver.
In short, the industry can't survive without swings, and we here at Playbill salute their hard work this National Swing Day!