Volunteer Spotlight: Nicole Dieker Finley
Nicole Dieker Finley is a freelance writer and musician who has been working and performing at various theatres for most of her life. After returning to Quincy in 2020, she became part of QCT as both a volunteer and a teaching artist. Most recently, she served as vocal director for Triple Threat Boot Camp OVATION—and she’s looking forward to continuing her work with the Student Theatre program as vocal director for DIARY OF A WIMPY KID.
How did you first become involved with QCT?
I was in a student theatre production of A MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM (I played Hermia), which my parents let me do because I loved Shakespeare in the way that only a twelve-year-old who has just recently been allowed to open the gilt-edged volumes on the family bookshelf (which I did in fact ruin, cracking the spines and leaving fingerprints on the plays) can love Shakespeare.
They must have suspected that I would also love QCT—and that even after a twenty-year break to see the world, I would eventually come back to Quincy and the theatre.
What has been your most memorable moment working on a QCT project?
I know that I’m supposed to answer that I met my future husband at QCT, but when I met Larry Finley in 1999 during INTO THE WOODS (I played Little Red, he played Cinderella’s Prince/Wolf) he wasn’t my future husband. That all happened later, after I had gone off to build a career as a writer/teacher/musician and after Larry had musical-directed twenty shows at QCT and after he and I met, again, as creative peers.
Although I did write in my diary, on June 10, 1999: “Larry is going to be one of my favorites.”
There’s a later diary, the one I kept when QCT did THE WIZARD OF OZ (I was both ensemble and piano) where I describe the process of realizing that if I thought carefully enough about the way in which I wanted something to happen, remembering the process of execution as vividly as if I had already done it, I could make it happen in exactly that way.
That’s probably the most important thing I’ve learned at QCT, so far.
If you could play any role in any play or musical, what would it be—and why?
I want the Educational Department to do a workshop version of NATASHA, PIERRE, AND THE GREAT COMET OF 1812 in the Lab and I want to sing Princess Mary’s track, which includes the absolutely unhinged vocalizing in the opera sequence, and play in the live band when I am not immediately involved in the action, because this would be one of those immersive experiences where many of the singers would also be playing accordion or roving violin (yes, violin while walking around, it’s in the orchestration) or shaker egg depending on their instrumental training.
I love Maria Bolkonskaya as a character (I’ve read War and Peace twice, in two different translations), and I am also smart enough to understand that I am not the person you cast in the lead. I am the person you cast when you need someone to sustain a series of dissonances on a single breath, navigate the chromatic scales and diminished sevenths of the opera, and carry her half of the choral hocket while alternating between piano and glockenspiel.
What has been your favorite or most rewarding role as an instructor at QCT?
Teachers don’t pick favorites. It would interfere with our capacity to meet people where they are and help them discover where they can go.
What class or workshop have you most enjoyed teaching, and what made it special?
See above. You either enjoy every minute or you find a way to make a complicated minute enjoyable. (On that note, I will tell you that one of the things I learned during Triple Threat Boot Camp OVATION was that you have to be in the moment every single moment. As soon as you start thinking about what you’re going to teach during the next class, for example, everyone else understands that it’s okay for them to start thinking about something else too. So you have to treat every single second as enjoyable and special and worth everyone’s attention.)
How do you approach inspiring creativity and confidence in your students?
One of the very first things I did with Triple Threat Boot Camp OVATION, that very first morning when there were seventy-five people onstage including Basic Training, was to ask the entire group to sing a single pitch together.
This exercise works because of the way music works physically and mathematically, which is to say that a group will naturally achieve the same frequency if they are allowed to sustain a single pitch long enough to listen to each other and literally vibe, as the kids say.
Then you ask everyone to watch you as they continue to sing the pitch, and you cut them off so that they all stop singing at the exact same time—and that’s the moment at which they become an ensemble.
For solo work, I make sure that every student can successfully execute the load-bearing elements of their vocal role. Not all musical roles require you to match pitch, for example. In MY FAIR LADY, pitch is a load-bearing element for Eliza but not for Higgins or Pickering, both of whom can perform their roles by matching the rhythms and the general up-and-down of the vocal line. In A LITTLE NIGHT MUSIC, Desirée doesn’t need to match pitch or rhythm (especially if you use the version of “The Glamorous Life” that gives the bulk of the song to Fredrika) but she does need to be an extremely charismatic and nuanced actor.
Which is why I believe—no, wait, I know—that everyone can sing in an ensemble and anyone can sing a solo. If you give that out in the first moment, the way you give that first pitch, your entire class matches the vibe.
If QCT could produce any show with an unlimited budget, what would you choose—and why?
You already know that I want to do GREAT COMET in the Lab with a bunch of singer-actor-instrumentalists, and we could probably do it on a very limited budget.
What’s one thing you wish the audience knew about what goes on behind the scenes?
All errors are systemic errors, which is to say that if something goes wrong onstage—a dropped line, for example, or mic feedback—it isn’t actually any one person’s fault.
I’m telling you this as a good thing, because I know that many people are hesitant to participate in theatre because they are afraid they’re going to “mess up.” A well-executed production contains no possibility for individual error because you have somewhere between 15 and 150 people all working together to support each other. By the time a line gets skipped, the stage manager has already told everyone to move up the next cue; the instant a costume gets torn there are dressers waiting in the wings with safety pins.
On the flip side, if we get to the end of Tech Week and there are still errors in execution, it means that the system as a whole has not been thoroughly communicated to and/or learned by each individual participant. Every person needs to know every line. They also need to know exactly where each fly rail operator is standing, exactly how close they can get to another actor before their mic starts to squeal, and so on.
Does that sound frightening? It’s exhilarating. The experience of becoming the most capable version of yourself while working in harmony with equally capable people—it’s why we all keep coming back.
What would you say to someone who is thinking about volunteering at QCT?
You’re going to love it here.