For Grace Ohwensadeyo Rundberg, The Notebook is arriving at a meaningful intersection of timing, ambition, and emotional clarity. Just a month after graduating from Pace University, she landed on the national tour of the acclaimed musical, stepping into a production that carries the pop culture familiarity of a beloved novel and iconic film, while asking audiences to experience the story in a far more immediate way.
"A national tour was always a dream of mine," Rundberg told GoPride. "For it to happen so quickly after college, it really was just a dream come true."
That sense of gratitude is matched by a sharp understanding of what makes The Notebook work onstage. In the touring production, now playing Broadway in Chicago's James M. Nederlander Theatre, Rundberg performs as Georgie, one of Noah's friends, and understudies Middle Allie, a role that gives her access to one of the show's most emotionally charged arcs.
The Notebook North American Tour Company; credit: Roger Mastroianni
Her nightly role as Georgie gives her room to play. "Her role is super fun. I love playing Georgie every night," Rundberg said, noting the character's dynamic with Finn and the welcome breath of comic energy she helps bring into a story known for its emotional heft. But understudying Middle Allie has stretched her in a different direction. "This is my first time understudying, and that's also been a super challenging and rewarding experience," she said. "It's helped me grow as an artist more than really anything so far."
Like many audiences, Rundberg came to the material through the film. But living inside the musical changed her understanding of the story. She points especially to Ingrid Michaelson's score, which she says deepens the emotional architecture of the piece rather than simply decorating it.
"The movie's great, and the musical just brings that much more to it," she said. "This one is just so intimate, and the music really does the storytelling. It brings out so much of the emotion and the love."
She is also struck by the show's use of three sets of Noah and Allie, a structure that expands the story's emotional reach across generations. For Rundberg, that approach makes the material feel less like a fixed romance and more like a reflection of life stages, longing, and choice. She highlighted the way musical and lyrical motifs return throughout the show, allowing one version of a character to echo another years later. In her view, that layering gets at the heart of Allie's central question: what does she want, and how does she choose the shape of her life?
Offstage, the show's themes have become unexpectedly personal. Rundberg said The Notebook has taken on deeper meaning while touring because so much of it is about home. On the road, home becomes unstable by design. Hotel rooms change, cities blur, routines shift. What remains constant is the cast.
"Being able to create a home within this cast has been so important," she said. "Doing the show every night is really the one grounding part of my life that is always the same no matter where we're flying to or what city I'm in."
That perspective feels especially revealing coming from a young performer on her first national tour. Rundberg spoke candidly about the physical and emotional demands of doing eight shows a week while traveling, and about how much she has learned from the more seasoned members of the company. One of the clearest lessons has been sustainability.
"You can't do the show if you aren't healthy," she said, recalling advice from castmates about knowing when to rest, listening to your body, and trusting the structure of a company that relies on swings and understudies to care for one another. The lesson is practical, but also communal. Tour life, she noted, can weigh heavily on performers who are far from family, managing long-distance relationships, or simply trying to stay emotionally balanced in constant motion.
That balance matters in a show like The Notebook, which asks for deep feeling but cannot survive on emotional excess alone. Rundberg credits directors Michael Greif and Schele Williams for helping shape a process that allows performers to stay present without getting swallowed by the material. She says she never feels pushed into a place that is too dark, and she has built the discipline to separate what happens onstage from life offstage.
Still, the connection with audiences is unmistakable. "We can hear the audiences crying from the stage at the end of the show," she said. At the stage door, those reactions often become conversations about not only love, but illness, grief, and recognition.
For many audience members, the show's portrayal of Alzheimer's lands with particular force. That theme resonates personally for Rundberg, whose grandfather had Alzheimer's. She understands the heartbreak the disease leaves in its wake, but she also sees the comfort audiences take in collective recognition.
"A lot of people just say how seen they feel, not only by the love story, but also by the depiction of Alzheimer's," she said. "At the end of the day, the story is about everlasting love, and that defies all things."
If longtime fans arrive expecting a nostalgic adaptation, Rundberg hopes they leave talking about what only the musical can offer. Chief among those elements is Michaelson's score, which she describes as gorgeous, intimate, and deeply affecting. Her own favorite number is "I Wanna Go Back," one she singled out as especially beautiful.
That may be the real promise of The Notebook onstage. It does not simply revisit a familiar tearjerker. It reframes a widely known love story through music, memory, and the fragile but persistent ways people hold onto one another.
As The Notebook returns to Chicago for a limited engagement at Broadway in Chicago's James M. Nederlander Theatre from August 4 through 16, Rundberg is helping bring a beloved story back to the city where its stage life first began. Featuring music and lyrics by Ingrid Michaelson, a book by Bekah Brunstetter, choreography by Katie Spelman, and direction by Michael Greif and Schele Williams, the acclaimed Broadway musical offers audiences not just romance, but a moving meditation on memory, home, and enduring love.
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Individual tickets for THE NOTEBOOK are on sale now and range from $37.00 - $132.00 with a select number of premium tickets available. Ticket price listed is when purchased in person at the box office. Additional fees apply for online purchases. Tickets are available now for groups of 10 or more by calling Broadway In Chicago Group Sales at (312) 977-1710. For more information, visit BroadwayInChicago.com.