Broadway singer Sierra Boggess hopes message of hope is enough

AFTER creating the title role of Ariel in the musical The Little Mermaid on Broadway in 2008, Sierra Boggess aims to bring her “you are enough” message to Australian audiences in her concert tour in June.

The Little Mermaid Broadway star Sierra Boggess will be performing in Sydney in June.

AFTER creating the title role of Ariel in the musical The Little Mermaid on Broadway in 2008, Sierra Boggess soon received an avalanche of fan mail from young followers.

What she didn’t expect was just what some of those fans would reveal.

Children and young adults poured out their hearts to Boggess, telling her about their personal ups and downs, and what they didn’t like about themselves.

The young singer was fully equipped to be a musical theatre star, with good looks, a stunning voice and great acting skills.

But she wasn’t ready to take on the problems of perfect strangers who clearly saw her as someone they could confide in.

“It was overwhelming at first,” Boggess admits.

But the New York-based star was soon on top of the situation, thanks to a mantra by which she lives her life.

It was her voice coach Mary Setrakian who first told Boggess: “You are enough. You are so enough. It’s unbelievable how enough you are”.

The simple creed is Boggess’ “war cry”, and audiences at her forthcoming Australian concert tour will find she talks about it a lot.

American musical star Sierra Boggess.

The Setrakian mantra also gave Boggess the key to unlocking the most helpful response she could think of when it came to letters from upset fans.

“I just write back the simple quote, ‘you are enough’,” Boggess says. “It is the most important thing for me to get out. People just want to be heard, to tell their story.”

Acknowledging she “is not a trained psychologist”, Boggess says she aspires merely to lift people’s confidence and to change their outlook on themselves.

“I want people to stop striving for perfection, because that’s shame-based and it creates so much of what is wrong with us in the world — anxiety, depression and all that stuff,” she says.

“(I want people) to take away that we are enough just as we are. We are perfectly imperfect just as we are. Our answers are in nature, so when we are feeling confused or low, we can simply go into nature and observe that.”

As for why young fans felt they could share their problems with Boggess, the soprano believes it’s because of the roles she has played.

“Ariel (The Little Mermaid) represents the person who thinks they were born in the wrong body or the wrong time, so I would get letters from people who were struggling with things that were very personal and they feel like you are the one that understands,” she says.

When Boggess debuted as Christine in Phantom Of The Opera, the fans wrote again.

“Christine represents the woman who loves the unlovable, so I have fans that feel unloved,” she says. “I feel responsible because I play characters that are underdogs. It became more of a responsibility than I realised.”

Boggess aims to bring her “you are enough” message to Australian audiences in her concert tour.

Boggess’s sister Summer is a cellist who will form part of the concert orchestra. Summer’s husband Brian Hertz will conduct.

* Sierra Boggess In Concert, State Theatre, 49 Market St, Sydney; June 3, $70.21-$141.58, ticketmaster.com.au