INTERVIEW: Broadway fans, go on a spiritual journey with this new tarot deck
Image courtesy of RP Studio / Provided by official site.
Emily McGill has built a career out of theater and the Broadway scene in New York City. As a publicist for a variety of shows and professionals over the years, she has been at the forefront of the industry, helping to tell stories of the magic that happens each and every night beneath the proscenium. Even this reporter has worked with McGill on fielding pitches and making requests.
Now, McGill is going deeper into the world of theater and embarking on a spiritual journey with some of the beloved characters and icons of Broadway history. She is the creative force behind The Hirschfeld Broadway Tarot: Deck and Guidebook, which is now available from RP Studio. Working with The Al Hirschfeld Foundation, McGill created a tarot card deck that takes the legends of Broadway and matches them with the archetypes that are often featured on illustrated tarot cards.
Think of the title character of Candide as the Fool or The King and I’s King Mongkut as the Emperor or West Side Story’s Tony and Maria as the Lovers. Strength is represented by Luis Alberto Molina from Kiss of the Spider Woman, while Chicago’s Velma Kelly is the Wheel of Fortune. Louise from Gypsy can be found on the Death card, while Sweeney Todd is the Devil.
Each card is illustrated with one of the iconic theatrical sketches by Hirschfeld, perhaps the most famous Broadway artist of all time, someone who has a theater named after him. Plus, there’s a guidebook that dives deeper into the spiritual journey (or theatrical history lesson) that awaits.
“I began my tarot practice when I started therapy,” McGill said in a recent phone interview. “In 2014, my grandmother passed away, and so that led me to go to therapy. And my therapist actually used cards during our sessions, and so she would have me pull a card if I didn’t know what direction I wanted to go or needed some clarity on something.”
After those initial interactions a decade ago, McGill found herself desiring to have a daily tarot practice, but she didn’t have a deck. Her therapist said she should download an app (there are many!), and she began a personalized daily journey with the cards. When 2020 hit, she began reading cards for other people during the pandemic.
“I started thinking about expanding my collection of tarot decks, and I thought, well, I love Broadway,” she said. “Let me see if there’s a Broadway-themed tarot deck. There wasn’t anything that was readily available, so I decided to start working on one myself. I worked with a dramaturg for a little while, sort of dream-casting things, seeing the archetypes that exist in the tarot reflected in theater characters, a very natural connection that I made. So from that, I started the process.”
McGill hit the pause button on the project when she became a graduate student at Columbia University. She was attending the school to attain a master’s degree in psychology, and that’s when an editor reached out and asked to know more about this Broadway tarot card project. At that time, the cards were on hold.
“We started talking about it, and the tricky part is that for a project like this, 78 tarot cards, all the different characters for Broadway shows, it’s sort of an IP nightmare, if you will, thinking about having the rights holders for all these different musicals and plays and things sort of sign off on everything,” McGill said. “So with that, I was thinking about a single IP, and a friend of mine suggested the Hirschfeld archive. I didn’t now anyone there, but I asked a friend of mine about it if we knew someone.”
Her connection to The Al Hirschfeld Foundation came via the Museum of Broadway, located in Midtown Manhattan. They were running an exhibition about the late, great Hirschfeld and his art, so McGill reached out with the hopes of being introduced to someone who could say yes. That’s when she met David Leopold, creative director at the foundation.
“He thought the idea was kind of nuts in the best way, and we started meeting at the Algonquin [in Manhattan] and holding what we called casting sessions where we would talk about characters that appear in Broadway shows that related to the archetypes of the tarot,” she said. “So one of my favorite ways to explain it is if I’m talking about someone who listens to their intuition, knows what their intuition sounds like or how it appears, listens to their intuition, and knows what right from wrong means to them, is willing to deal with the consequences of following those actions for their own moral compass, I’m talking about the card the High Priestess, but I’m also talking about Elphaba [from Wicked]. There’s a really good alignment there, and so we started the process. And we had a great time. And Mr. Hirschfeld passed away in 2003, so there is no Elphaba from him. So we were kind of looking at 75 years worth of archival images that wrapped up in the end of 2002. I think one of the last shows he drew was Hairspray.”
Those casting sessions got the tarot deck and guidebook set in motion, and now theater lovers can pick up a copy from RP Studio.
McGill said she believes this project can definitely engage Broadway fans who love these important figures in the industry’s history. Plus, there’s the added benefit of finding some direction, whether or not one is a believer.
“In 2017, when I started reading cards for myself, that was when I started to take it really seriously, and it was really more about just helping myself have some direction each day and thinking about what themes I could be looking at at any given point in my life,” McGill said. “I think tarot is really effective as a psychological tool. It’s something that helps us know what our heart or our gut is trying to say, but it hasn’t made its way up to our minds yet. And so tarot is a really effective tool to help us sort of dive into some of that subconscious stuff that we’ve all got going on.”
She added: “I like to say it’s like texting yourself a meme. That image is worth a thousand words, and when you layer a meme overtop, then it really gains a deeper meaning. I kind of think of tarot similarly to that. Right before the pandemic started I started reading for other people. It was the end of February 2020, so two weeks before the pandemic started in New York and Broadway shut down, a lot of people were looking for direction and clarity. So I found that folks were really interested, and it’s been a delightful experience to deepen my own tarot practice and to help demystify it and destigmatize it for other people as well.”
By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com
The Hirschfeld Broadway Tarot: Deck and Guidebook by Emily McGill in collaboration with The Al Hirschfeld Foundation is now available from RP Studio. Click here for more information.
