 I can't remember. It's like, the good, the bad, the now that's the worst than the best. And Eliza, you're, are you going to come up Eliza? Come on down. Come on down, Connie. Oh, yes sir. It's coming down, Kia, we've got a joy. So, the worst than the best, stories. And remember, panel, you are being broadcast nationally. Oh, thank you. The worst than the best, tall tales of production and experiences and why and what you learned, moderated by Eliza Fett. So, without further ado. Hello. If a play fails in a forest, does the audience hear it clapping? So. That was helpful. Yeah. Well, I think we, well, let's hear the tales. Okay, all right, I want to go first. Siri set an alarm for 15 minutes from now. Oh, you bitch. I'm sorry, that was terribly sexist. Okay. Well, you'll. Let's hear it, Connie. Okay. So, the public theater, my play dog opera. I wrote this play about the friendship I have with Greg Lemming, who is also director. At the same time that I had finished it, the public theater under Joanne Acolytus decided to give me the melon grant. And then there was a big coup and Joanne was fired. And then George Wolf came in. And the only way to get the money for the melon grant was to turn that play in. So I turned the play in. George called me and he said, I want to start the season with this play. And I said, George, that's fantastic. And I would like Greg Lemming to direct it. And he goes, who? And I said, my friend Greg Lemming, who's a director, a real director. And he said, okay, we'll talk. So what happened is they turned Greg down and I got pissed off. And I said, well, then you better get me an A director, A-list director. So they gave me someone I will now call the very crazy Jerry Gutierrez. Jerry Gutierrez had just won a Tony with Jerry Jones in the heiress. And he just survived cancer surgery and he was ready to go back to work. And then I found out later he wanted to do a downtown show. So somehow later. Anyway, so George said, well, I think you should leave. So Jerry called me in the evening. He was loaded, but he was very kind of perky. Loaded with money or something else? Something else. And he kept saying, I love your play. I love your play. You know, if that happens, just it's an alarm button that you should. So he said, meet me at Orso. So I went to Orso and I'd never been there. And once I got in, I realized I would never be able to afford anything in this upscale restaurant. And he had this bag with him. And he said, in the bag is my companion. I can't tell you her name because if we say her name, she'll sit up and we'll be kicked out. She's a dog. So we went into rehearsal and we cast it. That was a little shaky, but I got Christine Nielsen. So I was happy about that. And then Jerry had this concept, which was instead of using any props, he was going to use sound effects all up Lily Tomlin's wonderful show, The Signs of Intelligent Life. And even then I thought, well, that would be okay. Not realizing it was going to suck up rehearsal, take so much time. We started working on it and it did take an enormous amount of time because we didn't have the sound design yet. Because the public theater was completely disorganized. Everybody was gone. I never saw George. George actually never saw the play all the way through. He only saw one act. I didn't see either of the dramaturgs, Friends of Mine. And I didn't see Rosemary. I saw nobody. So we were just out there kind of... It sounds like it was pretty challenging. What did you learn? Is my time up yet? I just want to get fair. Because I figured everybody gets 15 minutes. Oh. So what happened is they hadn't hired the sound designer, so Jerry called the work stoppage. And the actors went with him and they just left. So the time kept ticking. Finally somebody hired the sound designer he wanted and then we went back into this interminable tech which took up most of the 23 performances that the play was supposed to have. It finally opened but the time it opened, Jerry had resigned but the actors stuck with it. God bless them. And on opening night I was at the party and I was like, where is everybody? I went out into the lobby and there was George and Morgan and Rosemary and they all had the New York Times and they were reading it. And they wouldn't give it to me. So my friend Helen Sheehy went out into the street. Me and New York Times came back in and we opened it and it was a rave. The first money and only money review I'd ever gotten. And at that point if Joe Papett had been alive, he would have extended the play at that point. But that didn't happen. And since they had a subscription audience, which I hate, they would say it was sold out and there still be empty seats. And it was unbelievably traumatic. So Christy Nielsen won an obi and we went to the obi awards which was on Monday and the Love, Valor, Compassion guys came over, Terence McNally's, and they're like, we can't wait to see your play. And I said, well, it closed on Sunday. And they were like, what? And yeah, so it took me a while to get over that. All right, that's my story. What did I learn? This is a fascinating story that you have this rave of traumatic. Would you have done anything differently or what did you learn from it? What wisdom can you... I can say that as a playwright I didn't realize I had more power than I did. I thought all I could do was pull the play but I couldn't pull the play because the public owned it because of the Melingrad. I could have gone to George if I'd been able to find him as the producer and go, what the fuck? My agent was not... I was a nice girl. And I'm a team player. I worked for a theater and I was like, okay, well, this is broken. I did this done. I'd never been a brat. I'd never been one of those people that storms out of rehearsals or anything. And so I didn't do anything. So I got run over in front and then they backed over me. And then Jerry died the next year and my agent at William Morris called and said, well, you know, Jerry died. I bet you have a lot to say. I said, I think it's tragic. Oh, that's terrible. And he was eating something and he had some teeth missing because of the surgery. Knowing that what William Morris wanted me to say was he finally choked on his own ego. I knew that was my line but I wasn't going to do that because it's icky. So what did I learn? You need to think about yourself and not be so much of a team player. That's what I learned. Okay, the end. Thanks, Carla. Kia, you're up at the back. I remember this in such detail. You probably know this because I probably told you many of my funny stories, but it's kind of funny now. This was a long time ago and it was an off-Broadway theater in New York and I gave this production and there was this person that people had said good things about who had just come out of Yale, actually. So it was her first big job but she was older. She was like 40 and had just come out of Yale. She got recommended and we met and really quickly she turned out to be nuts and is in volatile and apparently that was also a descriptive word that no one told me before I worked with her and I really tried to cut to the chase because she actually, we had a stage manager that was highly recommended and she didn't know why and making these mistakes she was making these terrible mistakes and of course in retrospect I realized because she yelled at her and screamed at her all the time she screamed at the tech people I mean the only people she didn't scream at were the actors except one of them which was one of the leads and it was like there was tension all the time so anyway the story to get more specific is I mean this seems crazy, I'll have this work out but I swear we went 13 days without a day off that doesn't seem equity possible but I swear that happened we went from the tech to the dress rehearsal to the first previews so this was the 12th of the 13 days, it was Saturday night and we were all so exhausted and the director looked like she had you know dark circles down to her belly so anyway it was afterwards and it was just me and the director and the assistant director who now is a pretty prominent playwright Jenny Schwartz was my assistant director because she was thinking of being a director then now she's a playwright but anyway everything else had gotten dark and also this friend of hers from Yale who had come right out of Yale and was now a literary manager first said something to me that I remember I found irritating and I just sort of like was like really chilly with her and then it was like friendly but friendly in a condescending way and then she starts talking to this woman like for an hour she's telling her stuff and I'm thinking oh my god I should say one of them is just little thing before she told me because I guess I mean a little vague about her oddness so the first day of rehearsal she told the cast she didn't really like plays it was kind of her way of saying how special this was that she deigned to direct it but he didn't take that as a helpful comment and then she said she liked films and her herbal business that she was starting and one day I went to display with hers trying to be friendly and she had this little vial of something or other some herb and she said I asked her oh what is that and she said whatever it was and she's I forgot the name of it but then she said it helps to keep me calm and I remember thinking oh you better be drinking that by non-gallant it's not what it was so anyway so this night when she's after the theater started everybody's gone we're all tired and it's time to give notes and so we sat down she and I used this director and I said why don't we wait till tomorrow morning when we're all rested and she said give her notes to me now and she has her coat on and her purse and so a couple of times I said we should wait till tomorrow she said give it to me now I'm really not exaggerating too much with it I mean she was and I got so I started to give her the notes and I got to about the sixth note and she was just sitting there with her arms crossed glaring at me this whole time and her coat on and I finally said why don't we wait till tomorrow and she said give it to me now and I said well you're not writing any of them down she fell and looked at what she said I have not been there enough I deserve to give her any notes and every person up I missed like a day and a half of rehearsal and I was in I was at the 10 out of 12, 10 out of 12, 8 out of 10 and half of the second 8 out of 10 and she said I did not deserve I was not around enough to deserve to give her any notes and she was like blooping out so much and the assistant director was looking freaked out and I finally said alright let's just start a walk away because she was like so crazy and there was no sense to even discuss it and she said oh I can't come back and act like a woman for once in your life why did I in my life where I felt like I was always running away from a fight so she went hit me right where I'm now right where I'm now I'm giving this whole lecture right I remember telling a friend later about this whole thing and she said yeah did she know you before and I said no and she said how did she know you've never acted like a woman ever during life I said yeah so what I learned was not to work with her again beware of herbalists and the circles down with the belly feel like when you spun around and then so she said don't walk away be a woman and then what happened you came back then I came back with my arms crossed and she went in a long lecture just screaming at me for the next several minutes but I don't know how much I learned other than I did the best I could under the circumstances in a way there were tricky circumstances early on so I could have fired her and I didn't want to I thought the scramble for somebody else would be really difficult so I learned that situations like that make excellent anecdotes they certainly do and really we're not like bad mouthing here this is about learning and hopefully there's of course great wonderful specificity in these nefarious tales at times but you have to learn by doing things can you can you learn this stuff in school anyway these are philosophical questions Jody let's hear your I believe you had two I have two on about this my first one is um I've never spoken about this in public but I have to leave out a lot of names probably including my own once upon a time directing a show by my friend Neo Bell I can name him at the Marquee perform and for those of you at least I'm sure this is probably still true it was certainly true then it was very difficult to cast men in their 40s or 50s in a play because most of them are working with film or television and anyway so I was very young and um I was I can't say I was simply persuaded I also chose I made a decision to hire an actor who had been very successful in television and wanted to do the role and so we cast them and um and then we began rehearsing and some strange things started happening like he couldn't go longer than 15 seconds without stopping he couldn't remember his lines he couldn't remember any blocking he would turn to us me and Neo and ask strange questions in the middle of a run through these were and this started piling up and we sort of looked at each other at one point and said you know this is just not going to work I tried everything to try to talk him through it help him etc it for whatever reason and you never know exactly what it is maybe the role presents particular challenges or someone's been working in television too long to face something that requires sustained acting and so we had to fire him I had to fire him and so I fired him and um and then something wonderful happened suddenly Mike McGuire who won a Tony for the championship season appeared and he took over the role and he was great so it's actually a really happy story and probably when we were casting he wasn't available I know that was true and then he was available and he was awesome it's one of the best actors I ever worked with and um and he was so good that what can sometimes happen if you do have to fire an actor in a company it creates a kind of earthquake the company can be very very negative and difficult for other actors to deal with because they begin to have fear and everybody sort of can get upset but that never happened with this company and I think it was largely due to Mr. McGuire so I was really grateful and what's the lesson from that well um everything in its own time and and be careful you know the other thing I learned and this took me some time was you know be patient with casting you know just just hang in there something will will give way and you don't you can as long as you can learn to be patient that was something I had to learn the other story is just you know I can tell fairly quickly I think is um I had uh I was had been working for two years on a production of an adaptation of Mao Tzu with Fred Newman and then Nora Ferguson and Clay Tyler Farrow and then Cass was filmed out with students and I had a big grant from the university to purchase a lot of equipment to do basically was a video triptych was part of the production and this was um Sunday before we opened on Thursday and I remember we were in the green room I was talking to my tech people we were just having coffee or something that morning before we went back into tech and everybody was at suddenly was someone came into the room and he was kind of strange and I said what's going on and uh he said you better go into the theater I said okay so I went into the theater and it was strict there was nothing there someone had come in and stolen $80,000 worth of equipment with the entire build of the video um production of the show it was all everything was saved there this was an O2 so it's not like it is now where everybody has much more readily available storage anyway and then it turned out I couldn't believe it I've never had it was the most one of the most it was like the Grinch or something and the Grinch turned out to be two there were three Grinches two Duke students and one student from University of Maryland and they had um and all this the moral of this story by the way is make sure your doors are locked that's the moral the door was locked but there was like not a panel in front of the deadbolt so they somehow managed to uh get into the theater steal everything but what they didn't know is that there were cameras everywhere so we actually had them on film and so eventually they were apprehended right but in Maryland now obviously this isn't going to help me I got a show opening on Thursday and Don DeLillo is going to be there and uh you know there's nothing in the theater and so I had some great people working with me and they rebuilt the video and I think they probably stayed up for you know 48 hours doing it but they were awesome and and they took care of it but it was you know the kind of last minute psychotic event that was just insane there's much to it yeah that is insane um I wonder like in thinking about these things you learn through trying experiences um what about moments have there been moments in your uh experience where a budgetary constraint uh perhaps one that was already known or a surprise budgetary constraint prompted some sort of unique design solution or uh happy surprise wow so many times really really so many times yeah any particular anyone else you want to talk about um somebody take this um there's always always some budget constraints and so the uh the working the you know the designers and the director and I come up with solutions particularly the designers and uh I always like it better it's like okay that's gone good you don't need it I have become sort of an advocate for bare stage uh perhaps because of the world I came up in with wonderful designers but then more and more I just felt like I saw a lot of shows that I thought were hurt by a design that had done all the work of the play actually happened fairly recently uh with the production of Eurydice where I sat and was sitting with Sarah Rule and we came and we sat down and she said okay the play is over this is an installation that says everything the play says but you know being the Minch that she is she was lovely and you know it was it was labor of love on the part of the people sometimes I think maybe people who say I love your play should just be fired you know it worries me I'd rather have somebody go okay let's uh let's work on this you know rather than keep the love out of it yeah I'm doomed then Conn yeah people around saying I'm really yeah well you're not a middle aged alcoholic yet budgetary wows I mean I worked with some brilliant designers that did plenty with theaters always so limited and so so you know I definitely have brilliant design stories but uh I don't know they necessarily expected that there would be like you know it's different than I expected I just love what they come up with you know it was so narrow I wonder too like uh rehearsal mishaps or like a workshop that went sort of askew that maybe then resulted in learning oh gee we don't need those two actors we need one actor to do those parts I'm sure the actors are really happy with that so that's never happy that's no no we need all of our actors I'm lying of course I'm lying I wish we could be I can tell you about a fantastic production experience great it was uh firstly I did at the Children's Theater of Minneapolis and it was Raggedy Ann and Andy and a lot of it was original by part and they did it I mean the way Children's Theater in Minneapolis did just gorgeous just and there were two worlds there was the doll world which was scaled to the actors playing dolls and then there was the human world so there was a bassinet that was huge in one scene because that's where the one with the dolls and then it was normal size in the human scene there were so many wonderful moments but I think this is the one that got me I had been away and they had started tech so I came into tech and Jimmy Ingalls I don't know if you know him he was a brilliant lighting designer was lighting it and he said oh Connie oh Connie okay I want you to see this cue this is the reason I went into theater just for moments like this so I sat down and they started it and what's supposed to happen is this baby has been born and it's just a bassinet that closed and then I had asked for a zillion stars come in the a zillion fairies come in the window and then a large sort of angel fairy comes over the bassinet and sings the song it was just a very simple little poem a blessing on a child and all babies and then that goes away in the lights come up on the human scale and there was the sister who had trouble with the birth of the baby and she had the fairy puppet and she was entertaining him with it so that was the I actually I asked for a zillion fairies to come through the window the rest was pure design it was absolutely gorgeous but so after we ran the cue I mean I just couldn't even speak and I looked over Jim Ingalls and he put his head down on the tech table and was sobbing you know and I said Jimmy this is you know this is why we went into theater this it's just never going to be more beautiful than that and you know to to an extent that is really true there was this incredible Craig Wright played a you know a rock in the show and he played a fire hydrant that peed in the show it just was it was gorgeous just absolutely gorgeous I can share another tech story I guess when my play breath boom premiered at the world court in London and the there's part where the main character does a fireworks show and which I've seen it done a few times but that first time was the best and there were some things they did with optics which are kind of you know it was cool it's kind of an obvious choice but it works really well but the coolest thing well I should say there are ten actors in that play and there were four in the scene and it's in the park when they did the fireworks so what we did was they took the other six actors and they were just dressed in black and they came out to make the fireworks and one of the coolest things was the lighting designer did this thing where I forgot what this was called but it was like glitter except I think maybe the pieces were slightly bigger I forgot what it was called but she had those actors in black I take it take this stuff and with a straw blow it through these lights and it felt like fireworks were showering out of their mouths and it was so magical like so much more magical than if there were real fireworks actually it was so theatrical so like there's an example right which actually I love to do that designers should do something that's completely challenging and seems impossible on the stage and the way they can make it possible can be so magical can I add something about the fairies coming in through the window I was sitting at opening night and this little girl was sitting on her grandfather's lap and when the zillion fairies came in this huge window she said grandpa are those real fairies or doll fairies so and what they had done was that you know what a bobbin' is it's a scrim that's solid the children's theater had made all these reticulated fairies and they were sewn on the bobbin' at so when it came down and they had all these specials on the side they would turn and it looked like a zillion fairies coming in through the window oh my god I love that production it's just fantastic well now that we're in this lovely very glittery magical state I wonder if we could open it up to hear some other tall tales of things learned I saw a hand go up in the back yeah questions are weak the stage is ours Judy actually kind of did touch on this but maybe Key and Connie want to add or Judy if you think of other things to add but I'm really fascinated by the idea of vetoing versus choice and casting and we're always told that we have veto power not necessarily choice power and I've been really fortunate in the readings and reflection that I've loved every cast I've had but I'm wondering if you guys have ever had to use that veto power of like this person's just not right for the role and if you had to use that how did you do it in a way that was tasteful and respectful and that you were able to keep a good relationship with the theater and the director and the actors I've never been forced to use to hire an actor it's always for the world premiere I've always been a part of it and if it's a bigger cast sometimes the director and I won't negotiate a day like you can have this person and I'll have this person but that's not to say that a few times I haven't made mistakes but they've been my mistakes that production I was talking about was actually a rep in rep so it was complex when you have a rep situation because they're always trade-offs and so sometimes you got to trade off and you might not get your top choice but hopefully you can at least negotiate to have somebody you can live with my experience is that I've objected but discovered that the veto power actually I really didn't have it the only power I had was the power to pull the play and I tried to do that once and I was wrong actually and it was this production for Micons in Los Angeles at The Matrix Theater Joe Stern was producing it and the first production this really lovely guy totally misinterpreted the play and you know that play there's a moment where Edelman crosses and goes where is God? Where is God? Where is God? Where is he? Where is he? Where is God? Where is God? She goes off and then Jim comes in and goes did your mother come through there? Through here and Kathy says yes and he said how did she seem better? So that's the scene so what actually happened was the woman comes on and she's like where is God? Where is God? Where is he? Where is God? Where is God? Where is God? And she exited and you know the play was over at that point there was no nothing funny there was something relentless so and the actors knew that something was up so I hated this production and I thought so the only thing I could do was pull the play and I was going to pull the play and then Joe Stern met with me and he said I'm going to give you a new production to my mind it's about kitchen table and three chairs and the actors awesome you got Chris Tabore directed Christopher Tabore and that's the play they did and I saw it was absolutely beautiful completely simple and you know all of the stuff they need could be done with those kitchen chairs and it won a drama league award that was an incredible experience luckily Joe Stern pulled me off the ceiling and got me calmed down that's the one time where I wasn't a nice girl and you know what I was wrong so I wasn't rewarded but I was rewarded with a really good production casting experience once where somewhat similarly to the repertory challenges it was a production at a school and there was some recommendation of who we should cast as a to play an older gentleman we did somebody in his 60's and it turned out that the actor we had couldn't well he quit the day before we were supposed to start rehearsals and because it was tricky I ended up being the older man in the play and I've been doing it since gosh darn it so I learned the rest is playing on a plane other questions yeah I have a story to tell like Biggie Smalls I have a story to tell that's if Mark and Mary Beth don't mind same train same train story so Mark and Mary Beth easy and I collaborated on the same train I wrote the stories of poetic monologues and Mark wrote the music to them and Mary Beth directed and we had this project in development for a number of years a number of readings and we finally got our first production this is back in 2004 at a theater in New York City and we were in rehearsals with actors we were working with and midway through the rehearsal process there was artistic differences between the producers and myself Mary Beth and Mark and so after a series of events in the long story very short they decided, we decided to step to part ways well two days or three days later we get a phone call from one of the actors telling us that they were going to do the play anyway and that because I had option they had option to play it was theirs and not mine and they could do whatever they wanted to do with it and so they proceeded to rehearse the play with intentions on opening it with a new director a musical a new musical composer and without me I could not come to the play I could not collaborate on it or anything so nearly to say I was a bit heated and Mary Beth was heated and Mark was heated and my agent who told me not to get involved with these people anyway and my agent Joan Scott you think Barbara Walters and you got her and when I called I said, legally it's about those people isn't it I told you not to do that right and you know I'm from Harlem USA born and raised in a way where my chest is like a badge because some of the people up there well a lot of people up there who I grew up with they support me they come and see my plays and stuff so I'm not up there all the time these days but anyway during that time I went uptown and one of my guys he's got a country he saw me and he comes to my plays you know he's a street guy you'll leave man when am I going to come see your next play and I say yeah country you're not going to believe this and I told him the story and he's like word he said they stole your clay he said you know these people I said yeah he said he said you know they can fall hard on the ice you know you know we can come and spray the stage and he needs us to and I'm like nah nah nah we're going to do it legal way so so long story short Mark's dad an attorney and Mark's dad got another attorney and marched into a room and sit down for a day to get our play back from these people that actually stole our play so anyway that's it I would just say there's a gauge between and you have to gauge sometimes people are either limited in imagination or energy who are working on your production you're going to come across it and whether or not and how much you can do about it is tricky but it's not fair to have your production limited because somebody is in a life space where their energy is a little bit limited it's not fair to have your production limited because somebody's imagination is not large enough to see what you've written it helps to have a great director to negotiate that but sometimes it's not fair and again you have to be very diplomatic about how you go about framing things to get that person's energy behind you and to do what needs to be done but it's a battle worth being fought obviously because it's your production but that is a trick and I don't think you'll almost it's a really rare and great situation where you walk in and everybody working on the production working to exceptional standards that will match what needs to be done so sussing that out is a challenge and then finding an ally to get everybody working up to that speed I've been in situations of playwright where they say well we can't do this the universe can't appear on the ceiling of the theater and I've said actually I know three different ways that we can do that I'll get on the ladder give me the keys, I'll lock up when I'm done so people will tell you I can't do this sometimes you just have to push a little bit further I have just a brief addenda there's this organization called The Dramatist Guild and they have yearly you have to pay under $150 a year totally worth it our beloved Doug Wright wrote this musical called Hand on the Hard Body and it was done in Texas and one of his collaborators saw it and she said you would not believe this is unrecognizable they moved scenes around they just did whatever they wanted to with it so Doug called The Dramatist Guild brother called his agent he called The Dramatist Guild and they shut it down so it's and that was a bridge that Doug was willing to burn because that wasn't a play you know so it's just they also have a standard contract they have free legal advice yeah I think we're at time yeah sorry so remember to lock the doors be patient with casting stand up for your playwrights