 Are we going? Great. So I'm going to do like a weird fake transition now. Welcome anybody who's watching along via Halran TV. Cool. So we're just going to have a discussion for about a half hour, a little less than a half hour, because we have some folks coming to do our keynote at 2. We need a little bit of time to get them settled. But obviously some of this has already come up in the activity that we just did in our introductions, but I think Peter and I are interested to start talking about why comedy. And this for you guys I think should be really for you as a person. Why are you drawn to writing comedy? What do you see it doing? What impact has it had? And so obviously we can touch on the field a little bit, but right now I'd love for everybody to really think sort of in your own lives and personally. And we're not going to go around, so just pop it out as you wish. I love to write comedy because I want to hear the audience. It's really weird for me to go to a play where there's no sound coming from the audience and at the end there's just, I like some kind of proof of life, I think. And I feel a lot of, sometimes theater is really dead considering how many living people are in that room. And there's something about comedy that disrupts that and creates noise. And it so affects the actors and it so affects the play. So I find the engagement in the noise level is what most draws me to it. I like the idea of, there feels to be a connection with what's going on there. Thank you so much for that and just that whole communal thing that we all, or at least I crave when I'm working on theater. To me there's nothing like that other than comedy. You can get a bunch of people in a room together to cry and I personally have just lost my taste for tragedy, like that's just a taste thing. I've lost it. But just when you go into a room and there's a whole bunch of people who are all laughing together, it really does feel like that circle or that connection between the stage and the audience and all of us who brought it together is completed in like a circuit kind of way. Like a real electrical circuit kind of a thing. I don't know anything about engineering but I think that makes sense. You know I love comedy for the theater because I think there, you laugh differently when you're with 300 other people laughing at a joke than you do looking at your phone or at home. There's some kind of communal experience that allows you to experience it in a different way. And at the same time I think there's nothing more dangerous than doing comedy because we all know if in the first 10 minutes the audience doesn't enjoy your play, you don't win them back as the show goes on in your comedy. They just grow to hate you more as the show goes on, right? So there's like this weird chemistry where it's like you have to let them know they're in good hands. You have to invite them in. And then they respond differently than they do to anything else in their life as the show goes on. And there are people that laugh, have laughs that you will never hear unless they're in a theater the way that they laugh and the way that that encourages other people to do it. So I'm fascinated just by what is that chemical change that happens in all of us when you're in a room with other people enjoying something. Well, and there's something ecstatic about watching an audience laugh at your play and I have literally seen them slapping your knees. And you're like, oh my god, knee slapping comedy is it? So yes to the communal aspect, but I also feel what's important to me is the transgressive aspect. And I was thinking about that with your story about putting the googly eyes on the statues in Savannah. So one form of revolution is to tear the statues down, right? Statues that are celebrating the Confederacy or whatever. Another form is to put googly eyes on them and take their power away, like undercut them, you know? And I think that's where my psyche goes. I think people can like hear better when they've been laughing or see that. I don't know, there's no way that I think laughing opens everybody up. And when I studied with Paula Vogel in college, she was like, you have to make people laugh before you can make me cry. And I was not wearing a comedy at the time, because we were going to play that was both funny and sad, as many of my plays are. And I just, I think it's so powerful, simple as what Sean was saying, to sit and remember the people and be surprised together, or you discover something together. And usually that's what comedy is, is surprising people in a good way. I think we're living in such a disconnected, kind of scary time that theater is so powerful because it can simultaneously bring people together and then also bring up difficult or dangerous ideas like within that, you know, safer space. But my first love for comedy, and I also loved I Love Lucy growing up, is the sense of being absurd is a way to have a personal intimate moment of joy and also share it with a lot of other people. So I love that. Yeah, there's like, comedy is such a weird thing. It's not like there's a universal definition of what's funny. And things that people find funny are really, really hate. And so it's strange to just talk about it. Like there's like, it all means, like what comedy is doing for any one person is so different. And like when part of, in the theater, like if those three people are all like minded, which presumably like they read the marketing material and decided to audit together in similar individual ways, but like if you mix that crowd up, you could find like a comedy could die. It's like it's not funny to have those people legitimately. It's just like some of those people that are it's not funny before. And I think about like when I did improv, there was a saying, maybe Amy Poehler said it. So the idea that like part of what was funny in improv, because it's not funny if you retell it, what's funny is that you say a thing moments before other people realize it. Like I remember one of, like some of the laughs that I remember the best in terms of the big ones were me just pointing out something that probably everyone thought when I entered the stage, but it's like here's what that is. And so it's everyone sort of meeting a place of unity. It's like a mental place of unity all together. I don't know if that happens in theater. Like I've tried to find the way to write that in theater. It's different when the text is, the rhythm of the text feels, starts to feel like constricted. You know, like in improv, everyone has a tacit awareness that what just happened was sort of a miracle. Like there was a bunch of factors making that happen. But if you don't, you know, trying to get people to feel like they can be surprised, but like really loosen up. I think that's the thing that the laugh in a theatrical space does the strongest. It just is that everyone sort of can hit this moment of awareness. And what that moment does, it could just be they feel happier. They get endorphins. It could be, oh shit, like the power structure needs to change. Let's tear it down. You know, like I don't know. You don't know. And if you write the play, you don't know what's going to, you can't control that. But that moment when everyone sort of is just sort of like rolling together in the same sort of spontaneously occurring, unifying awareness, that's the part that I always like, love the most. And I don't understand. In theater, it feels like that's not enough. Like I've written things where that happens. I know that some reviewer or something will say that it doesn't feel like it's enough. But there's something in my mind, and I think all of us talking about it are sort of hitting on it. There's something actually transformative in your own life to experience that. And that isn't like given a label. Like I don't even know what language we use to describe that feeling. Like is there some sort of long German word for that that we can use, but like that? Let's put that on the agenda first. Long German word. Long German word, everybody. But like that's theatrical comedy. Like comedy, unlike in a movie theater, I guess everyone's sort of there too. But comedy with people around you, that's the thing that always feels kind of magical. Some of the folks here have already heard me talk about this, but as long as Halloween folks are out there and all of you are at this table. And I'll bring some good old school dramaturgy here. There was an article that I read years ago. I think it was from a journal. It may have been somebody from Harvard. But it was basically a study of people who went to go see, it was movies. And they took a bunch of people to see, and I can't remember what it was. If anyone can help me find it, this would be awesome. These are my clues. But they took a bunch of people to see a movie about two movies on the same topic. One was a comedy and one was a tragedy. And it was something very, it was probably like the Holocaust or something. Something very, very serious. And at the end of it, it was a psychology study. They talked to the people in the audience. And the people who went to see the sad movie were all just really sad. They were just really sad. It was a sad thing. But when they went to go talk to the people who had seen the comedy, the comedy people were just like, we have to do something about this. And they were really energized to do something about it. And I've been chasing this. I don't know where I read it, when I read it, but good luck if anyone can find it. J.F. Dubner on Twitter. But that part of, just to riff on what you were saying, as someone who has worked on trying to get theaters to program comedies and as somebody who has been so frustrated reading reviews of some place that I know are the smartest things ever being reduced just because they're funny to something that is silly. And there's nothing wrong with silliness. But it's a different thing than funny, right? And to have the, that comedy is not valued more as, I don't want to put all this pressure on you, but as something that actually can be used for social change that's the kind of story you want to tell with your work. That it is something that brings us all together and inspires us to then leave and either tell the jokes again or to do whatever it is that the movie or the play or this book or whatever piece of art you're encountering that has made you smile, it makes you want to go. And so find that article for me and then we will solve comedy. I feel like the two movies could have been like Doctor Strange, Live and Fail Safe. The difference between those two movies and how successful one is and how unknown the other one is, is always to me a point of the strength of what comedy can be. The existential absurdity of living in the Cold War was captured by this movie and in theory it's very, very chilling. It ends with essentially a global annihilation of such a song. And it's like one of the greatest things in my mind in that movie. But I feel like new dudes waxing on strange love really as I get older is like a bit of a cliche. I'm fascinated by the thing you were talking about how comedy is really local because we all know that there are certain shows that play better in certain towns than other towns and what is that? What is it that when there's an entire art form that is somewhat dependent on the geographic area, the class of the people and the race of the people in your audience. It changes drastically in terms of who feels like they have permission to laugh at what. I've done shows with all of you where we do it in one city and it plays okay and then we do it in the next city and it goes gangbusters and it's the exact same show from place to place. So I'm fascinated also just by what is that local aspect of comedy that really is like New England has a sense of humor. It's a rough sense of humor. It's a small sense of humor but it has one. So where does that come from? What's the difference between that and other places? That's one of the great things about working on a comedy is that there is a metric. It's a way to test it. If they laugh, it's working. And I always feel like I'm less firm ground when I'm writing another kind of play. But at the same time, something you said, Peter, that even when you're trying to write a drama you sabotage yourself and write a comedy, I don't feel like I do not set out to write a comedy. I think that there's something about my point of view which is inherently comic. So I set out to tell a story and it ends up causing people to laugh. But I think that's sort of a common misunderstanding is you're not like a laugh or like setting out to get them. You're telling your story and it's filtered through a particular point of view. Sean, I think there's something to what you're saying. It's really hard as a young writer to start writing comedy and then get anywhere. Because honestly the audience that will laugh at what you're doing is not the audience going to the theater. You're making your friends laugh and you're 25. You're not going to make those friends laugh and then get paid any money. I can name you venues in New York City and some of them are pretty nice venues, but you do that for yourself. You're paying. You're losing money to make that show. Those young writers just go into television. Feeder can't have a Neil Simon. This is a question that was posed recently. I don't know why. Something about him came up in the news. He died. Oh, he died. I wanted to bring my man's death in a joke. I didn't want to. But it's a Neil Simon. I knew he died. So Neil Simon... Why can't we have another Neil Simon? In part because the voice Neil Simon wrote that made everyone laugh was almost a universal theater voice in New York City. The people that decided theater had his voice. It worked. He could write these jokes. Trying to find a universal theater voice in New York City anywhere right now is really hard in terms of comedy. If you're asking... I've seen young people laugh at some plays at Playwrights Horizons that aren't explicitly comic, but I know someone's recognizing something of their own life at age 26 in that play. I'm not even necessarily finding it funny, but I kind of love that this person is finding this thing funny because I'm glad that they're there in this space. I think it's a real... I don't know how... You have to break so many things apart in theater to sort of create the conditions for that to recur. I want to build it off the idea of what's local in Neil Simon. One of the things that's interesting to me is that the American theater community is fairly disdainful of Neil Simon. Right? Because he's like commercial, and some people think he's a hack. The British people think Neil Simon is hilarious, and it's inverted for Alan Eggborn. They're sort of slightly contemptuous of Alan Eggborn, and we think he's sort of a comedy genius. So there's something about sort of valuing somebody from another culture in a way that we don't in our own. I even think... What I love about the way this is organized is that there aren't just writers here. There are also John Cintuis and Rose. It's also finding... I know we're talking about this more and more, but finding people that program shows or help shows come to life that care about comedy. It's been such a gift for me to get to know Sean here, and everything I wrote has always been funny since I was like 10. But I don't think... Especially as a young woman, that's not something someone identifies as you, a mentor or someone. I always wrote like magical realism plays that happen to be funny, or these kids things that happen. And for Sean drew one of my plays and say, this is the funniest comedy of all year, that's not why he's a comedy. I was like, of course it is. Oh my God, he said that to me. This is why. I am very sorry to start as like a political comic drama. You know, these like ways you try to fit into a system that doesn't value comedy, and I think it's been so joyful for me to now just be writing comedies that I know are comedy. So, great for that. There's something interesting about the regionality also you were talking about. One of my other jobs, which fortunately has diminished considerably, is performing an interactive murder mystery for corporate parties. And it's called Murder on the Menu. And I'm a cop, I come in, and it's a roast. So they're eating dinner, and the most successful shows are when the audience is of a certain community. Usually it's a company, like PG&E or an administrative assistance convention. And I think the exercise for me that I get to apply to my writing is to find the most successful joke, the biggest laugh always comes from the most specific and detailed and geared towards that particular group that no other group of people would ever laugh at. It gets the biggest reaction. And there's something about that quest. And I guess when you're writing a play, if it's going to have multiple audiences, how do you expand that audience and that group but also feels like you're talking directly to them? I think there's something really personal about comedy. And obviously to all writing details are better, but I don't know. Sean and I just did this play of mine and it's about the last superhero in the world who also is a new mom. And there's this big scene in the middle that probably has the closest thing to a political feminist speech in the whole play. And the superhero black girl is firing her narrator, who's a man, because she's sick of the way he's telling the story. And she ends up hiring her German pediatrician, who's a woman to tell the story. But she says a lot of things in that scene. And the one that the audience loved the most every night is why did you put me in these heels? And she's wearing these high heels. And it didn't feel radical when I was writing it. It just felt obvious. But it was the thing that the audience, family, the women, the audience loved the most. And it was such a good lesson for me in that thing of like, oh, we find funnies when we, you were saying about the joke that people knew already but then they didn't recognize it. Right. It was all in their heads. Or on their feet. That's the only satisfying part of Twitter when someone names that feeling that you were feeling. And you're like, oh, that's perfect. And you retweet it. And you feel like you've completed your journey right there. I'm also interested in the idea of comedy being beautiful. And the idea of it being, can be lyrical and like investigating different ways. Because people don't think of comedy as high art except if you're Shakespeare, right? Shakespeare's comedies are delightful and ha-ha-ha, and la-la-la. So I'm really interested in how to change that kind of feeling that comedy can, unless it's a, you know, people can think of farce as high art because it's so hard to act and so hard to do it. But I'm just interested in that part of the equation, too, of how do you bring comedy to not feel like the comedic relief of the season but actually part of the high, the, having big ideas within it, too. I really like comedy in this sense. I like covering very difficult topics. And a straight forward approach, I think, sometimes to me doesn't feel as satisfying. Like some plays I've written recently are about recent racism. And a lot of times you see plays that are produced about it. It's like, oh, it's a misery porn. Like, there you go. Racism's bad. And you go like, okay, my work is done. It's like, no. What's interesting is the comedic approach is the only way I've found that you can make an audience, including myself, is before I feel more complicit with the systems that are going on. So I know there's kind of like a sideways way of approaching it is in a way more effective, at least from my skill set, than trying to write something that's very straight on. You can capture more of the nuance by letting someone's guard down, thinking, okay, we're just playing around, right? And then you hit them. And then it's like, oh, wow. That cringe, I don't specialize in cringe humor necessarily, but sometimes you get that sense like, oh, do I do that? Which is like a great response on my part going, oh, yeah, that's the feeling. I want you to feel at least a little bit of empathy when you're expected, which is what I, that's why I like that starting point. And I know it's hard. I don't know. In my mind, I kind of view it like rock climbing because I don't rock climb. I'm mystified by people who rock climb. And I go, why do you do that? I go, well, the wall's there. It's like, oh, okay. I feel that there's something similar when I try to do something like that. Isn't that hard? It's like, yeah, it's pretty hard. But the payoff, though, it's like a low yield, but like high, oh man, this sounds so corporate, high return and investment. If you can get it right. Yeah, if you can get it right. I feel like you're getting, and a couple of you have touched on this sort of like central question that in some ways we're going to be dancing around for the next day and a half, which is, yeah, this question of like, why is it worth advocating for, right? Like, why is comedy essential? I think we have about four or five minutes left. So maybe we can just toss some more ideas there. Yeah, you know, I'm fascinated by that question because I think like audiences are so desperate for comedies and the leadership of most American theaters, there's a real lack of joy in programming them and there is almost no commissioning for new comedies at all. So there's this weird disconnect between somehow artistic directors are selling out if they give the audience what they so desperately crave. Right, and it's this idea of, we're going to program theater that's good for you. Right. And there's a little bit of a scolding and like this is the broccoli and this is important because, you know, it's about social change or something. And so I think comedy is undervalued because it's not considered important. And I think sometimes comedy is about big themes, but sometimes it's just about that rehab experience of making people feel like they're not alone. Right, that there's this truth to our lives and let's look at it and laugh at it and sort of feel it together, you know. I think the question of importance is such a big one and, you know, we can also, we can bitch about artistic directors. That's, I'm happy to do that. We'll do it after the live stream. Hi. But a lot of artistic directors that I've met just simply aren't funny. They're not funny people, nor do they value that. And that sense too of like what is important, like I do have some pity in my heart in a small dark corner about, you know, you get so many slots and you have 10,000 players to choose from for those slots. And everything feels so important and as you try to define what is important, it's like, yeah, you want to do the play about the very, very contemporary thing that's really, really terrible so that you can show that you are relevant. And that to me in season planning has been so profoundly frustrating that conversation with not funny artistic directors to understand that actually the most relevant thing is to come in from the side and make somebody think about something and get them to drop their guard and have a laugh and why are we arguing about why that's important, right? So to me that, I don't know how to put it in words even though I'm continuing to talk, but just that sense of like how to argue for something that is essential when it is something that I take as like that is a phase value thing like oxygen to me that if you don't laugh, you die. What's fascinating is like audiences want that. They want the different types of comedy. They want a first, they want a political comedy. They want all different types. Karen showed OSF this summer. I cannot tell you what a really huge long, fabulous journey it was to get that play programmed. And... Yeah, and there were a bunch of us who loved it and we fought and fought and fought why this play is awesome and that show, it was in a short slot OSF has a lot of shows and rap so it was in a shorter slot which was me and a bunch of other people were just like this is a bad idea you're going to want to run this one all year. No, no, no, it's a comedy. It's a girl comedy. It's like all of these things. And then sure enough it was the show that people were standing outside desperately to get a ticket to. It was the hit of the season. It is the one that everyone was so sad to see close. It is all of the things that we knew but we couldn't figure out how to explain that to the artistic director or to marketing or to development or to all the other people who decide what is important. Even though everybody who saw it left their feeling like tremendously energized by this like Tina comedy. It was exactly what it was. It was so feminist. It was huge chunks in Spanish. It was just amazing. And the audience got it but the theater didn't. The theater got it too late once the program was already done. I don't work there anymore. I don't work there anymore. I think about that with Nanette. I don't know if you guys all saw that or not but that to me was so powerful about the sideways thing of coming into some really difficult topics with humor. She was doing a lot of what you were talking about like making the audience complicit and laughing at something and then realizing what they've been laughing at. I think it was a really exciting idea that I don't think anyone would have turned on Netflix and watched an hour about the traumatic things she was talking about. That's what we'd signed up for. But I think I'm so bad I saw it and so often the only way to talk about hard things is to be funny and have that moment and not feeling alone with the hard things. Talking about that double-edged story that you talked about in the beginning too is essential in the sense that it's probably one of the most powerful forms in how it can affect somebody and maybe more powerful than drama. I think we always diminish the power that it has whether it's to bring joy in someone's life or to rock their world but I don't know at least for me personally that's the way I can do it the best way I've ever figured out how to do it whether it was from a defense technique in middle school but it also has the power to really hurt and I have approached plays in both of those approaches I remember starting to write a play that I wanted to hurt a little bit not be mean but to not leave you happy hurt in a good way and it's a loaded thing that we're not going to solve in the next one. We actually do have to wrap up now just this part so we're going to take a little break you guys obviously can continue talking we just have to reset the room a little bit but thank you guys so much.