Clinical psychology has been recently touting the therapeutic benefits of coloring. Research has shown that engaging in this activity can reduce both physical and emotional stress.
Lucky for fans of musical theater, adult coloring has recently entered the Broadway world. Andrea Koehler heads up Coloring Broadway, a company which creates theater-themed coloring cards. I recently spoke with Koehler about the genesis of Coloring Broadway, the power of musicals, and why fans of Broadway love using adult coloring to bring home a piece of the theatrical experience.
How did Coloring Broadway get started?
I work with an artist on The Coloring Project, Justine Fisher, who creates these awesome adult coloring illustrations. She also loves Broadway musicals and we did some Hamilton pieces in 2016. In early 2017, we realized that we needed to parlay that into breaking it off into a whole different line [from The Coloring Project, the parent company of Coloring Broadway].
What’s been the response from fans of theater?
It’s been wonderful to interact with the Broadway audience and to highlight the motivational and transformational aspects of musicals. My favorite response was at a holiday market where this 12-year-old girl stood in front of the Coloring Broadway samples and sang about three minutes of Hamilton at me, word for word, attitude for attitude. I get to witness in person the smiles of recognition and excitement.
What do you hope people get out of engaging with Coloring Broadway cards?
Coloring creates a space for self-exploration. It’s a great way for people to sit down and color while listening to the musical. When do we sit down and just listen? To just get to be present and with the musical almost as if you’re there in this theater.
To me, what is so beautiful about the theater, and what is lacking in our society right now, is that ability to shut off. In order for us to develop ourselves and move forward, we have to create space to do that deep introspective work, which can mean not responding to emails in the middle of a thought. Theater allows you to do that. It invites you in and then takes you on a ride, if you let it.
Andrea Koehler
That is the power of theater, it has the ability to transport us, to give us the sensations that other people might have had and then the opportunity to actually translate it into our own lives. You have musicals that are all fun and they let you leave us feeling joyful. You have musicals, like Waitress, which seem like a really funny little story about this woman who is a waitress but you come out feeling so empowered. I think that is the power of Coloring Broadway, to be able to then take that experience and revisit it at another time using the tool of coloring.
What shows have people been requesting from Coloring Broadway?
I had a number of people ask about Rent because that was such a significant, transformative and permission-giving show. People have also been responding strongly to Dear Evan Hansen. I think that show is so well-received because it speaks to that person that we all know inside of us who wants to fit in, that feeling like you’re just on the outside and no one will understand you. To have a musical that speaks to that and it examines where you go in service of that feeling is so transformational.
Theater can be quite therapeutic!
For me, that show was Les Miserables. In high school I was that “fat dancer” who didn’t feel like she could do much. When I listened to Les Miserables, I was Eponine. I identified with the character who didn’t believe in herself, was downtrodden and would give her right arm for the love of her life. Now as I watch it again as an adult, I can identify with Jean ValJean. I’m the guy who is doing anything to help other people. Self-awareness is really the way in the light. It’s the only way that we as humans progress and I feel like Broadway allows us to have some of that self-awareness.
How do you think theater can help with self-discovery and growth?
Theater allows you to be able to feel the feelings without having had the experience. As a white woman, I will never know what it’s like to be a person of color. I will never know what it feels like not have white privilege. But I can go to see The Color Purple and I can feel a small sample of an experience I will never have. Allowing me to have some semblance of this experience allows me to better understand the humans with whom I interact. This is why Dear Evan Hansen is so powerful. It frames it in a way that speaks to that 15-year-old in all of us who was awkward and who just wanted to fit in. It allows us that access point to understanding others that we wouldn’t have otherwise understood. It allows us access to empathy.
How can folks actively use the Coloring Broadway cards to aid that process of self-discovery?
Coloring becomes an extension of that live experience, it provides an opportunity to sit in a creative space with the musical that you that you love and reflect. The reasons why we bring things home with us so that we can remember that. “Souvenir” translates to “of your coming”. So we bring them home to remind us of these experiences. I love that this is an extension of the experience and it’s something that they interact with. They make a part of themselves, they add their own character, their own color, their own creativity to it. And then it becomes a true “souvenir”.
Where I want to go next with Coloring Broadway is to have questions and prompts on the back of the illustrations that connect the person coloring with the content. So, using Waitress, having questions on the back of the illustration to ask people to think about what caused Jenna to feel like she couldn’t get out of her situation and are there times in life when you feel like that. Being able to use the use the show itself as a tool for self-discovery and for self-awareness, that is my ultimate goal.
Click on the link below to check out the Coloring Broadway products in their Etsy shop:
You can purchase products for as little as $2.50 (for a digital download) or $6.00 (for a show pack). They have coloring from your favorite shows, including In the Heights, Wicked, Les Miserables, Dear Evan Hansen, SpongeBob Squarepants, The Greatest Showman, Hamilton: An American Musical, Dreamgirls, Rent, Hairspray, and more. Do yourself a favor and give it a try; you may be surprised about how truly relaxing adult coloring can be.
