Thousands of actors audition for every Broadway production, each one the chance of a lifetime. Some actors who make it past that audition find themselves living the ongoing heartbreak of waiting for a production’s star to step down and surrender the limelight. These actors are the standbys: talented enough to get backstage, but nearly never onstage.

Featuring interviews with three standbys—Merwin Foard, Ben Crawford and Aléna Watters —and the big name acts they understudy, The Standbys is a documentary that distills the Broadway dream down to deeply personal reality. First-time feature director Stephanie Riggs’s subjects risk homelessness, irrelevance and disappointment, all for a one-in-a- million gamble on the biggest opportunity of their lives. For standbys, success is always as close as the green room’s monitor, and as far away as the lead’s tenacious need to go on.