CODY RENARD RICHARD:
Guided Into Greatness!
By Kevin E. Taylor
Some people don’t take well to be told what to do. If you try to force them into a particular thing or direction, they push back. But with the proper guidance, that same person can catch a spark or grab a baton and run full speed ahead into their own destiny.
Cody Renard Richard was guided.
“When I was younger, I wanted to be a vet or an architect because they are just things, jobs that people had told me about. I didn’t know about the arts or theater or Broadway. It wasn’t until I was in high school when I was kinda pushed to pick up an extracurricular activity. I wasn’t like a troubled kid. I was always in detention and I was a class clown. They said that I needed to find somewhere to put all of this energy. And then I enrolled in the Drama Department and I just fell in love with the program. It was the first time I felt like I was with people who understood me. At the time I had no idea what it meant. I just felt comfortable and there was a teacher who poured into me immediately. I just did it for fun, but it just led from there.”
While in “this new space” of theater, Cody didn’t feel the need to be just like the uncle or the family member who was doing well at the Houston Rodeo entertainment field that he needed to duplicate. He didn’t feel the need to live up to the legacy that was a big deal in Texas.
“In this new space, I wasn’t trying to be like anyone. I didn’t feel the need to emulate anyone. I was able to be myself and not knowing I wasn’t being myself. But looking back, I was just able to be goofy, uninhibited Cody. The teacher just allowed for that and I think that is what I was gravitating towards. So I think that’s what did it. It was a space where I just felt free. I was just being. I was able to just be and that’s probably what pulled me through.”
But it was the words of a teacher that took that goofy class clown (who just wanted a different sense of responsibility that wasn’t a chore, a family obligation) that allowed him to rebel and choose for himself.
“My teacher said ‘you should go to college for this. You’re really good at this!’ She told me one time, because she pulled me aside and made me her stage manager and she said ‘You have this way of making people listen to you without yelling.’ I was 15 at the time and I didn’t really know what that meant, but I have carried that with me for so long. But she was the one who saw something in me and pushed me towards college and gave me plays to read and she directed me, she kept planting seeds without being like XYZ. That’s the thing that I liked because so many people kept saying ‘you should be a doctor or you should be a lawyer. It was ‘YOU SHOULD! YOU SHOULD! YOU SHOULD!’ And there was somebody else saying ‘I think you have a talent for this. How about you try this?’ And Ms. Carrie Woods, that teacher, really put me on the path. We’re still close.”
Later, working in stage management in high school and then working at regional theater, on his way to college in St. Louis, he found his sense of self as a young man in exploration of his sexuality and sexual expression. “In the moment, you don’t know what’s really happening, but you don’t know what it means. When I left Texas, I started to branch out and try different things.” But the journey to leave Texas behind wasn’t as simple as get up and go. Ms. Woods helped him apply for a grant from The Bill And Melinda Gates Foundation that allowed him to leave the weight of responsibility and obligation behind because he was striking on his own, on his own terms and with his own (earned) scholarship, which meant that the pressures to succeed, to be, to fulfill dreams and continue to be “shoulded” upon was gone. Cody Renard was able to be free.
So high school in Texas led to theater in St. Louis but there was no agenda. “I was able to dive into it. What’s wild is I went to St. Louis to study stage management not really understanding I could have the career that I have now. I just went into it because someone told me I was good at it. That was all I needed, to do something I was good at. At that time I had never seen a Broadway show. I didn’t really know about Broadway and NY. I knew you could be a stage manager at The Alley Theatre in Houston, TX. I was like maybe I will come and do that. I was so naïve to the world that is New York. That wasn’t the dream. The dream was to go and get a degree and go and be a stage manager somewhere. I didn’t even know that the life I am living now was possible.”
The shift in perspective, scale and his vision happened when young Cody graduated high school and was headed to college and realized that he needed to get an internship so that he didn’t walk onto campus as a kid who didn’t know anything. So his old man thinking, his wise young soul knew he needed to arrive prepared and he got a gig with The Alley Theatre where he witnessed what it was like to be in the big league.
“The arts really found me because we didn’t go to shows and plays like that in Houston. The only thing we would see was the Tyler Perry VHS plays we would watch! I didn’t even know that touring shows came through Houston like that until the year before I went away to college. I think what got me was during my sophomore year of college, we came to NYC for Fall Break, me and a group of friends. We came here and I am a fearless type of person, but I was overwhelmed with how many people were here, the bright lights and I was like WOW, THIS IS WILD! And then I went to see Avenue Q, which isn’t even a big show. But I was looking through the Playbill and I get to where the stage manager was listed and I said out loud ‘I’m going to be in one of these Playbills one day! MY NAME IS GONNA BE IN HERE!’ In that moment, I said to myself that I was going to move to NY and work on Broadway. And I think the reason why I was able to do it is, there are a few reasons, but one of the main reasons was nobody told me how hard it would be. So when I spoke it into existence and because I didn’t know how to do it and no one else knew what it meant, no one was able to say anything negative. I thought that this world was bigger than me and I felt like I needed to be a part of it.”
The show that brought Cody to Broadway was Lysistrata Jones, a musical about a men’s basketball team at fictional Athens University that has lost every game in the last 30 years and its lead character Lysistrata Jones aka Lyssie J. transfers to the school, joins the cheerleading squad and inspires the girls at the school to stop having sex with the team members until they finally win a game! The production was something he worked on off-Broadway and when the show was destined for the big time, literally from downtown NYC to Broadway’s main houses, they were told that new stage managers would be taking over, but Cody refused to take no for an answer. “I’m going to figure out a way to get on this show on Broadway. I reached out to the director immediately. I reached out to the choreography immediately. I (Facebook messaged) the lead actor and they all wrote back because I wanted to be on this show on Broadway. This is what I bring. I have relationships and the next thing I knew I had an interview with the Lead Stage Manager and she hired me as an intern and my career moved forward from there.”
That “world” of live theatrical productions has placed Cody Renard Richard behind the stages of some of Broadway’s biggest spectacles (Sweeney Todd, Into The Woods, Kinky Boots, Hamilton), live TV musicals (Jesus Christ Superstar, Annie, The Wiz), New York operas (Porgy and Bess @ The Met) and even his first gig at Madison Square Garden with Cirque du Soleil. He is also an adjunct teaching faculty member at Columbia University and served as Adjunct Professor of Stage Management at New York University and Fordham University.
That world and access to it has given Cody the opportunity to not only give back to community but to also build legacy. He has also been able to give back, in contribution, bringing one of the most innovative and daring productions in Broadway history to The Great White Way with a Big, Black, Queer Voice!
As a creative producer, Cody was brought into help develop and bring into being A Strange Loop, Cody was able to help bring into fruition the vision of a show that was groundbreaking for Broadway. A rousing Black Queer production that tells the story of a boy trying to tell the story of his life, A Strange Loop shook up Broadway and has bolstered a revitalization and pushed an infusion of new Black voices and veteran Black faces on Broadway and so much of this representation has helped young and youthful Black LGBTQ/SGL people find their way and their voices in their artistry or adoration of it.
“I didn’t come out until my mid 20’s and I didn’t necessarily know that I was gay, but I knew I was gay, but I didn’t know. Going through college and not having to name something, I knew it was a thing. Being a Black queer kid in college, and being one of only a few. I had teachers telling me I had to dress a certain way to be accepted. When I came to St. Louis, I was this little country boy who didn’t sound the way I sound today. I have my nails painted now for this interview and I would never have done that, before now. I was told once that a ‘fro made me look unkempt. But now, through years of unlearning, I know none of that shit matters. But it pushed me to show up as fully as I can. I wasn’t able to show up as my full self until a couple of years ago and maybe that was because I didn’t know who my full self was. So now that I have taken the time to ask ‘WHO ARE YOU?,’ I am more intentional about it. As a stage manager specifically and producer, and all the things that I do, people expect me to look and do a certain thing. But if that’s not in alignment with me, I’m not going to show up that way. I’m still going to be able to lead with who I am but you’re going to take me in a fucking sequin top or with my nails painted black because the knowledge that I bring doesn’t change with how I show up. That’s about my own sense of self-discovery.”
Mr. Cody Renard Richard has also placed his name, heart and energies on and around the idea of scholarship, mentorship and support, with the founding of The CRR Scholarship Program, in partnership with the Broadway Advocacy Coalition. The CRR Scholarship Program aims to “build a bridge into the industry for the next generation of theatrical leadership of color.” The man who has been named by The Kennedy Center of Performing Arts and Variety as One To Watch in theater arts and entertainment purposed to “give back. I wanted to give students the resources and the knowledge that I didn’t get when I was growing up. I wanted them to see people who looked like them doing it. I wanted Black and Brown people to know that there are people here doing what they want to do, to give them a mirror image and to alleviate some of the financial burdens around college.” Started in 2020, Cody says that with the conversations that were happening around George Floyd and the pandemic and so much, he was pushed to dream big and now the program pulls 10 students of color from around the country who work in the “offstage theater arts” (stage managers, directors, playwrights, et al.) in a cohort that helps support their growth and development.
When we laugh about how he is able to do so much, he laughingly offers “God won’t put more on my plate than I can eat!” And then we speak about how he was given an opportunity to host a show because a new creative platform came to him with the carte blanche open-ended question: “Is there anything that YOU want to do?” Realizing that they meant Cody, the creative, with a full blank slate, he spoke about his desire to host a show, an unexpected turn for the quiet, behind the scenes titan, who had to honor and own that there was a place he wanted to play and he couldn’t say no. (“A semi-dream of mine is to host a TV show,” he says with a soft but sincere LOL). He loves what Karamo (Brown) does on Queer Eye, but he wanted to do something like what Terrell Grice does on YouTube with singers. Now, as host of Broadway Song Association on Broad.Stream, he brings many of his Broadway friends—some of the most talented voices in the world—to his show to conjure songs, moments and memories with a single word and the playground of Broadway musicals as a reference. He is living his best life and playing on the sweetest playgrounds on Earth—NEW YORK CITY!
When asked what big Broadway spectacle he holds in a special place, he offers this. “The first production I saw that took my breath away was Wicked and it still does. I have been offered to work on the show and I think I probably never will because it is the show that I hold in that space, that space where that dream has to stay where it is and I don’t want to ruin it for myself. When that thang at the top started to flap its wing, I was like WOW. It’s such a thing that spoke to me so early on and it has to stay as it is!”
As a final piece of advice to anyone bold enough to believe that they have a dream or gravitate to his story, Cody leaves these sound words: “Nothing is impossible and everything is well within your reach, you just got to do it. I’ve learned and I’ve observed that so many people have ideas and wants, but we rarely act on them. So I would say ‘JUST GOT FOR IT’ because either you fall or you fly. If you fall, you’ve got to get up and if you fly, then GREAT! That’s been what I’ve always done. I’ve always just gone for it and when it didn’t work out, I just figured it out! I did it and if my story speaks to you, know that I SEE YOU!”
@CODYRENARD.COM
