Meet Lizzie Hagstedt

We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Lizzie Hagstedt a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Lizzie, so happy you were able to devote some time to sharing your thoughts and wisdom with our community. So, we’ve always admired how you have seemingly never let nay-sayers or haters keep you down. Can you talk to us about how to persist despite the negative energy that so often is thrown at folks trying to do something special with their lives?

When I was in college, I remember a professor for some reason decided to tell me, quote, “you are homely and you need to learn to deal with it.” I don’t remember why. Maybe I’d dared to cast myself in a kissy scene. Now, I’d never been under any delusion that I had a future in modeling, but it was one of those moments, to steal from “Inside Out”, a personality island formed. Homely Island. I felt unloveable, I felt laughable. But as the years went on, I realized that, free from the pressure of ever looking beautiful, I could do whatever I want, I could just throw myself into whatever I was doing with my whole heart, and I found a freedom in my expression that I’d never experienced. But that took lots and lots of time. Also, theatre professors, do better. And for the record, I do occasionally feel beautiful.

Thanks, so before we move on maybe you can share a bit more about yourself?

I attended college for musical theatre at the University of Miami. The plan was to be a musical theatre performer, and I’ve done that. What I didn’t, however, factor in was that the majority of my work would be as an actor-musician. When I graduated school, the first job I booked was swinging the national tour of the John Doyle production of “Sweeney Todd” where I stood by for three roles and six instruments. Since then, not only have I participated as a performer in several other shows, often lugging an upright bass around the stage, I’ve endeavored to create work that lends itself to actor-musicianship.

While I was at college, my friend Robby Sandler happened to walk into a room where I was noodling on a piano. They asked me what I was playing, and I said that I had made it up. “You write songs,” they said. So we started working on a musical together. We had two musicals produced while we were still in school and we’re still writing together today. Our musical “Hereville” based on the series of graphic novels by Barry Deutsch received concert productions as part of San Diego JFest in summer of 2023 and at the Center for Jewish History in NYC in November 2023. More from that soon!

Up until recently, I had only worked as a composer and not contributed text. When I started working on my musical “Sophie Blanchard’s Rock’n’Roll Extravaganza” I initially endeavored to utilize existing poetry and not contribute any of my own words, but I fast ran into a wall. So I just tried writing lyrics and then I kept trying until I’d written a whole original musical by myself. The show was most recently the recipient of the Moxie Arts Incubator fellowship which culminated in an off-off Broadway production in August 2024. We are currently preparing for a March concert at Center for West Park.

Looking back, what do you think were the three qualities, skills, or areas of knowledge that were most impactful in your journey? What advice do you have for folks who are early in their journey in terms of how they can best develop or improve on these?

1) I really think playing the piano went a long way to getting me where I am. It taught me to read music from an early age, and eventually to notate music. I think if you want to learn an instrument, you need to set aside dedicated time for practice, accept that you will be stinky for a while, and celebrate the gradual progress as you continue to dedicate practice time.
2) I also have been such a musical theatre nerd all my life, I have a wide array of knowledge of musicals. That has given me an understanding of musical structure which I can then play within and sometimes discard. Go see shows! Listen to cast albums!
3) I really believe in setting my fellow artists up for success. I know not everybody learns the same way, so I try to provide as many modalities for learning as possible, as much in advance as possible.

How can folks who want to work with you connect?

I am always interested in meeting fellow actor-musicians, orchestrators, arrangers, producers! My website is lizziehagstedt.com and there’s a contact form there.

Contact Info:

Image Credits

Photo 1 – Jen Leno
Photo 2 – Personal
Photo3 – Matthew Murphy
Photo 4 – Chad Batka
Photo 5 – Liz Lauren
Photo 6 – Jen Leno
Photo 7 – Personal

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