I tell Mary Testa that the very first time I saw her was when she did a cameo in Sex and the City, playing a cabaret singer who performs “All That Jazz” as Carrie (Sarah Jessica Parker) and Stanford (Willie Garson) sit in the audience. “I actually thought it would be a bigger role than it was”, she explains with a big laugh, “but I’m friends with Michael Patrick King, and he wrote this for me, so what are you gonna do?” Mary Testa always tells it like it is, which is why it’s no surprise that her new album Have Faith, which she made with Michael Starobin, is filled with so many grand ideas and statements about life and love.

A bold record from start to finish, Have Faith is comprised of songs by some of Testa’s favorite collaborators including Michael John LaChiusa and William Finn (with whom she made her Off-Broadway debut in In Trousers) as well as Top 40 hits like Aerosmith’s “Pink” and Alanis Morissette’s “Thank U” which she uses to comment on faith and the state of the world. Without alluding to specific religious beliefs, the one thing the album makes clear is that Testa has the ability to find beauty in even the worst moments of life as is suggested in the blissfully beautiful motifs she infuses the album with.

Testa has become known to mass audiences for her work in Broadway hits like Chicago, Xanadu and Wicked, but devoted musical theater lovers know her for her work in quirky pieces like I’ll Be Damned and A New Brain. I talked to her about alternating between Broadway and Off-Broadway, her inspiration for the mash-ups in the album and where she thinks musical theater is headed.

Have Faith is an album, as opposed to being a collection of random songs, and as such it took me until the fourth listen to discover it had all these gorgeous flourishes, like hints of “Over the Rainbow” in “Lost” for example. Can you give me some insight on how you ended up layering the songs like this?

Well, Michael and I based this on the last show we did. We’ve done four shows together, that we’ve created, since 1982, and what we usually do is that Michael does an electronic arrangement, so we do three or four songs that are electronically arranged. This show came about because we said “let’s put all of our electronic stuff together”, so we did, we added a few new things, and it sort of took a life of its own. It examined faith, which wasn’t something we set out to do, but just happened. The flourishes and the running themes, like “Over the Rainbow”, which offers a very hopeful, positive view - like “somewhere there’s hope” - and also the album has a cherries theme, from “Life is Just a Bowl of Cherries”, which as we all know from being alive is far from the truth (laughs). Michael and I are also very big on combining songs, like what we do with the Bjork song and “If I Loved You”, which is something we’ve been doing for a very long time. We realized the chordal structure for those two songs was very similar, and for example when we did “Life is Just a Bowl of Cherries”, we realized it went well with “Over the Rainbow”, and “Lost”...and that’s how that happened. Also, Michael is just a genius when it comes to orchestrating. We did the show at 54 Below and a benefit for the Transport Group and one of my friends said they’d like to see this as an album, and it resonates more as an album, because you can actually sit and listen to it, which is different than a live show, because when we do those people come, but they don’t really care! We’ll have one with a full audience, but people don’t know what we’re done, so it’s wonderful to have it as an album that you can listen to over and over and discover how great it is.

Were you afraid people wouldn’t respond well to “an album” in this grander sense of the word?

Yeah, it doesn’t really happen anymore, and these sort of “theme” albums are old. People nowadays just do a bunch of songs, but also you can listen to these songs separately, but it’s helpful when you listen to the whole thing for the first time to get it.

You brought up how you were finding these connections between Bjork and Rodgers and Hammerstein, and I might be looking too much into it, but this reminded me of the way in which people discover spirituality and faith, which is by connecting elements that seem random, but might just have a higher meaning, and you realize that maybe there is something larger than you…

Exactly! You’ve got it, that’s right, it’s what we set out to do. We like to take a bunch of songs, put them together and then they have a new meaning as a whole. We did a show called Sleepless Variations two shows before this one, in which we put together some songs in order to examine how your mind works when you can’t sleep, the thoughts that take you places, and that’s where Michael John LaChiusa’s “What If” came from, he wrote it for that show, but we realized it also worked well in Have Faith, because it has this dichotomy.

There’s also a dichotomy in the order of the songs, for example we have “Sister Clarissa” followed directly by “Soldiers of Christ”, and those two songs are having a conversation…

Yeah, “Soldiers of Christ” is a great satirical song about what’s happening in this country right now, and it’s not my point of view, it is a point of view, which is scary. I went to Catholic school so “Sister Clarissa” makes perfect sense to me, and there’s a danger in that, which is then fully realized in “Soldiers of Christ”.

Besides having songs from LaChiusa, you also include songs by William Finn, who are the two composers that you love the most probably. It must have been “a must” for you to include them in your album, right?

You know, their music really fit into the theme, and I love their work, so yes, when it’s applicable I’ll always try to include their stuff.

You’ve always been very outspoken about art and creation, so would you say your album is meant to inspire other artists and help them draw connections between art they love as well?

I didn’t set out to do that, but if that’s what happens, then it’s great. I’m glad that you picked up on that, thanks for saying it, I have been outspoken and I do think it’s important that as artists we continue to grow. If that’s the byproduct of the album then I’m thrilled. One of the first reviews we got from Playbill referred to it as “an inspirational album”, which was interesting and also really nice. We didn’t set out to make an inspirational album, it’s resonating that way and we’re thrilled about it.

I agree it’s inspirational, because I’m not a composer or a singer and even I have found myself mashing up songs I love following the album’s example.

That’s fantastic! The mash up thing we’ve been doing for a really long time, but what turns me on is when a song has similar chord structures, like the Bjork song, and when we do our concerts for the album, we’ll do the album as well as some new stuff. It’s exciting to me when two songs go together and when two people can vibe on the same frequency. Bjork came along ages after Rodgers and Hammerstein, but they’re on the same wavelength.

You’ve worked with Anika Larsen’s production company Jaradoa, and one of their specialties is outreach, I asked her about the role of musical theater in education and I’d like to recycle the question with you, because I believe you’d make a great professor.

I haven’t thought about teaching, but I do think it’s wonderful that Anika and her company do that, I have done master classes where the kids ask me questions, which is my favorite thing to do, because a lot of the time in schools they are not taught everything about the business. I like being honest with them. I don’t know if I’d want to focus on outreach, I see the place for it, but it hasn’t been in my path yet.

I believe you said once you did I’ll Be Damned because you needed work…

Oh no, that I did as a favor to Anika. I didn’t get paid for that, that was a freebie (laughs).

Sorry for misreading, but what I wanted to point out was that you’re also very honest about the fact that beyond the art and beauty of the craft, acting is still a job.

Yeah (Laughs) I mean it’s wonderful to create and to be creative and it doesn’t always go hand in hand with work. When you choose to be an actor you have to pay your bills and sometimes you have to do job you don’t necessarily want to do. It’s wonderful to get paid for doing art, but it doesn’t always happen.

You’ve done Wicked and Chicago and other parts on Broadway. Have you done these to get projects like Queen of the Mist off the ground?

No, I do them because they come my way and they’re interesting for a number of reasons. I like to work, but if I just did projects like Queen of the Mist, which I just adored and is one of the most magnificent parts I’ve ever had, I would be in the poorhouse (laughs) I think we got paid a little over $200 a week for that and you can’t live on that, so you have to get work that pays you.

Broadway in general is bypassing new works in order to turn so-so movies into musicals, so would you say that Off-Broadway is the only place to find the truly groundbreaking work?

Yes. It’s all about money, Broadway costs a lot of money and I think the powers that be are afraid of investing money into new shows because it all sounds so iffy. Broadway is about sustaining long runs to have people from all over the country come. I didn’t see Fun Home but I heard it was great and I hope it works on Broadway, because of the time these artistic productions fail when it comes to ticket sales. I haven’t seen Side Show either but it’s closing and it just opened! Which is unfortunate, because they don’t give them time to find an audience. In order to make money you need advance sales or a star, which is why The River and It’s Only a Play recouped, but the other productions with no stars have a harder time. I understand why producers are reticent, I don’t like it and it’s frustrating, but I get why they’re doing it. It’s a pain. Off-Broadway costs less to make, so they can be more experimental and they can do more fun stuff, which will hopefully transfer to Broadway.

I know Queen of the Mist through the beautiful cast recording because it wasn’t running by the time I moved here, and I’d like to see the show someday, I know the part was created for you so I wonder if you’re much more protective with these parts that you originated?

(Laughs) When you originate a part you always think it’s yours and nobody else’s. But the great thing about theater, especially this part in Queen of the Mist, is that it’s a part for a woman between the ages of 40 and 60, and there are very little great roles for women in that age range, so while I will always be protective of Anna and consider her mine, I hope and long for the fact that the show is done all over, so that women can experience that role. It will always be mine in my heart; however, if you want to see the show we taped it for Lincoln Center and it was such a great night too, the only thing bad that happened was that my hat fell off (laughs) but it was a really good taping of the show.

Mary Testa and Michael Starobin are doing a series of concerts to celebrate the release of Have Faith at the West Bank Café. For tickets and more information click here. The album is in stores now.