'The Next Ten Minutes' from 'The Last Five Years' is one of the most beautiful songs I've ever heard.
Jennifer Damiano
I was born in Westchester, NY. I grew up around the Rye Brook area, and then I moved to White Plains with my family.
I'm so thankful for my one year at regular high school in White Plains.
When you put the musical in front of an audience, you get to see how the audience reacts.
In 'Next to Normal,' I had millions of breakdowns and panic attacks, but nobody ever heard about those.
You have to learn how to take care of yourself.
I was feeling like a real misfit in middle school, but when I saw 'Wicked,' it made me feel really cool for being different... and you can carve that in stone!
I listen to a lot of indie or rock music.
I'm always trying to convince myself there's something important about what I do. But some peoples' lives are really altered by a night at the theater.
I feel like every time I walk into the audition room, they can tell if you're faking it and if your heart's really not with it. So I try to keep it as real as possible.
There's no better feeling than being on a Broadway stage for me.
I'm really excited about the revolution that is young people actually playing young people on Broadway.
I was always singing around my house, and my parents thought they should put me into voice lessons just for fun.
I did commercials and voice-overs as a kid, and it just lead to musical theatre opportunities.
I feel like it's important, especially at young age, to find exactly what it is that makes your style so important as opposed to just trying to fit into the iconic styles of performers out there.
I think it's really easy to just get caught up in what everyone else is doing, so I think the most important thing to remember is to be really strong in your own shoes. That is the main thing for me. The one thing that kind of gets in my way sometimes is when I'm a little too aware of everybody else.
I was pretty new to the Broadway world once I began working in it. I hadn't really grown up being too aware of that many shows or that many actors in shows. I was always obsessed with Judy Garland, though.
Female artists I love the most are Fiona Apple, Paramour and Regina Spektor - those girls that really write amazing songs themselves, and they're younger and cool. I'm not quite sure I could ever write songs like any of them, but if I could, I would.
Twenty-two is just such a random age. It's a little blah.
I've never been involved in something where people cared about my personal life and the gossip of it!
I have worked hard in my career, but I have been lucky as well.
I was, like, this token teen angst child of Broadway. It's so funny. What is that? I don't even know. But I loved it.
I didn't think it was my dream to be on Broadway; it just sort of became that, and then it just became me wanting it more and more and more.
Every night, I'm like, 'Where's the party?' and then it cuts to me on the couch with the remote control watching repeats of 'That '70s Show' and 'Boy Meets World.'
I can now put 'experienced aerialist' on my resume.
I legit can not parallel park. This is no joke!
Somewhere during the 'Next to Normal' Broadway run, I found myself learning more about myself onstage than in real life, and I truly realized the beautiful, tremendous, extraordinary gift that is performing.
I was totally all about the American Girl dolls when I was little - I had so many.
I think my great-grandpa was an opera singer or something.
A lot of teenagers have parents that are maybe a little too real with them.
