 Thank you for taking time to come out for the cold New York January night to celebrate with us the great Lincoln Center Theater Journal it's one of the great publications I see even in the world when it comes to theater and trading contacts and it stands what one says so easily excellence but it really does and not just for one year or two year or three years almost like the slugger of the Yankees over decades it is the truly one of the most remarkable 29 years and I just want to also point that out to have such a high quality over such a long time to be able to continue to do as it is truly outstanding and also a real cause for celebration this is what this evening is about with friends with our friends from Lincoln Center Theater and with you friends in the audience it's important that we have a good theater but it's really important also have a good audience so thank you all for coming out for us we are also welcome Andrew Bishop who is here with us as some members from the board from Lincoln Center Theater came out here. My name is Frank Henshka I'm the director of programs and executive director and what we do is we bridge academia and professional theater international and American theater and this is why the work of Lincoln Center Theater is so close to us and we really admire this a lot closer or further away than how we are but especially since we are also a publisher that we really think that this is a great model how to really try to explain to give context with words to action on the stage and it's a remarkable thing that we try to overlook it or take it for granted but everybody who is involved in publishing and printing knows how much work is behind and how hard it is to create such outstanding work all the time so tonight we are going to like a mechanic shop we're going to open the hood of that beautiful shiny car that let's see covers and papers so beautifully designed one of the mechanics how does it work how does this get done over time and time again what is behind the ideas in the minds of the people who are here with us and it is not just anybody who is with us here tonight these are really great great workers in the vineyard of theater who we have with us in the American theater but also in the world theater so we have with us a John Gware tonight who seems it is worth his time to also dedicate a lot of it to this journal and I think it is rightly so but it has a lot of high interest in the great Incotanio, the foremost drama talk also here in the Americas and with her work also with the Lincoln Center director's lab one of the few truly international places global places that connects cultures and theaters and art from around the world also in real time in spaces where bodies and minds be also 20 years and this is a lot of experience here in the room we have Alexis with us the great editor and Tamar who is the designer and we're coming also thanks of course of the secret crew right with that guy who helped to make this happen there will be a short introduction about the magazine by Jonathan and we will talk about two issues and we see how they get together a little bit short reading and then a Q and A with you and with the audience and a little reception with some wine and cheese here to celebrate this almost 30 years of publication or this truly outstanding world class magazine and then hopefully it will all inspire us to read it again work it again and also do our own research and we go and see theater and see what it really means what it stands for not just take it what we see on stage it's the only context we have and by last thing is if you have a cell phone please do take it out for one moment and I do the same thank you so much and now thank you for coming thank you for your very generous words the introduction is great I was a little intimidating I'll leave that to John and you Chen who's sitting over you thank you for helping us today and thank you again to Andre and or my colleagues had email thank you all for coming so in this hour together which will end on time we've chosen two issues of the review to look at and we'll show you how we put them together probably that'll be about 15 minutes on each issue and then what we have a special surprise John will read a short piece he wrote that's not a surprise well it's great and then we will take some questions from you to end our hour and then adjourn for refreshments it's not a coin I just wrote a couple notes not coincidence that this little group here has been working together for literally decades we are about to start brainstorming issue number 67 our printer is here tonight Stan Wolkoff from Masterpiece I can't believe you came all the way in in this cold night and brought us a beautiful proof press proofs that I've never seen before and I guess you've been printing since our 12th night issue in 1998 and our I think our beloved copy editor is here but she's too shy to be introduced so I said I wouldn't introduce introduce her Carol Anderson and editing the review is something well actually it's everything I imagine a life in the artistic circles of New York could be a famous and brilliant playwright who knows absolutely everyone and everything an editor Alexis Gargogliano from Knopf Simon and Chuster out of his books and now Judith Reagan who knows every novelist writing today and is more knowledgeable about poetry than anyone I've ever met other than the poetry editor of the New Yorker an award-winning art director Tamar Cohen whose own work I greatly admire who comes from a legendary family in the world of modernist design and sitting tonight other was the great Elaine Lustig who did all the copy for the covers of the New Directions in the 50s and 60s it's just we know I mean when you see her the covers of Tamar's mother you just say oh well that's in my brain yes so and tonight sitting here we're only missing our pictures editor David Leopold who lost electricity early this morning when a power line fell into his driveway in Bucks County not worth risking his life to join us although we can thank him for making this power point that you're about to see so John and I are going to just say three quick things before we start there are three important aspects of our magazine that defined its mission the first is what John who founded the magazine felt how it started what well hang on because we have so many things to do I don't want to go all the way back to the beginning just but I think it's important to say how I think it's important to say how the magazine started started by accident thanks to the New York Times is that in about 1988 Gregory Moshe who was then artistic director of of Lincoln Center with Bernard Gerstin brought over a festival of South African playwrights black and white about a dozen and they were having a festival of South African theater and then all the playwrights were going to meet and have a talk and Lincoln Center called up the New York Times and said we'd love you to cover this would they be a wonderful story you know and what all these these artists you know South African artists of you know black and white are coming to coming to talk coming to work in a show they work in America with the first time and the New York Times said we already covered South Africa and Gregory said what do you mean they said Athol Fugart that's South Africa and they weren't interested in anything else but Athol Fugart which is a great playwright but that was their commitment to South Africa so they had was a wonderful a wonderful evening plan where the forum were all of them talking and we decided that we would print it up it was going to was it wonderfully we said well let's type it up and print it up and we made volume not thinking that it would be volume one number one that it was just our first edition it was about maybe 20 pages and it was absolutely terrific issue and then uh and the first seven uh uh and joined us in 1993 so that in about five years we did uh without this was and came for the uh eighth issue so there were seven issues in the over five year period and uh and they were mysteriously a zealous worker throughout all the uh the first seven issues so there if you ever find one will please give them to us but that's what happened to us and but we've been very very lucky because we realized that the magazine filled a hole that that that was not we didn't see anywhere else perhaps mainly in the in the national theater in London uh was the closest it came to but what we wanted was we wanted to have a magazine that would function as an ideal or an ideal companion the person that you wish you were going to the theater with to say oh you know what no but that I know all about that you do so to just to make the show be make the theater and especially the plays that Lincoln Center was doing not just part of me was entertainment but a part of the intellectual life of uh of the uh of the city and of the theater great um so as we turn to the first issues uh I'll just add one last caveat besides this idea of the ideal theater going companion if you come up from the walking up the aisle of the coast of utopia and you say I wonder what Margaret Atwood would say about utopia there she is in the issue talking about utopia so our idea of bringing in writers and from other fields not necessarily writers about theater to open this discussion to the larger community our our other primary mission in fact in a way it's our most important is um is to support the productions we are doing at Lincoln Center so to thoughtfully and discreetly amplify a director's interpretation to provide background and indicate avenues of discussion about a particular play often a world premiere so we play a role we feel or we hope in informing how the press as well as the audience approaches the play so to turn to our first example of the king and I directed let's talk a little more about I mean let's let's let's let's give a few more that we can do this where we just have you know I mean I think it's important to show things that we did for example when we were doing the Waiting for Godot uh I remember I asked Richard Howard I said well have you ever met have you ever met uh Samuel Beckett or what do you think about I'm not renting him in the street and he said oh he said I once wrote a poem about Waiting for Beckett and and he's never been published so we published that and that to me was the ideal of of of really carbonating the atmosphere around around a production so it's just not we didn't want it to be all grim and academic sorry Frank yes in our agreement we wanted to be make a very very playful idea playful ideas that uh the play of ideas that uh uh that should uh support uh and then live in the production so uh but one of the reasons we chose king and I was because I think it it's a it's a wonderful issue it's a beautiful issue but it also does a lot of what we I think it does a lot of what we hope to do um our resident director Bartscher has done um several really remarkable um pieces of work where he'll take a work that's well known and find something in it um and bring it to the front in a very subtle way and in the case he did this in South Pacific he did this here with King and I so we try and feature a product in in the magazine um some interview or some spread uh about the design of the piece or an interview in this case with Bart about what he was trying to do and his um his way into the play which he feels we all agree with him is in the in the actual musical itself originally is the fact that she brings a book to to say I am with her and that book she gives to a girl and that book is Uncle Tom's Cabin uh and to give a girl a book is to change the world so that little idea is one that we threaded through this issue we asked a young african-american writer like Katori Hall and Brandon Jacobs Jenkins their take on Uncle Tom's Cabin my favorite thing about in the the research we did looking for ways into this story was going into the life of Anna Leon Owens uh which made me think of a uh there was a great writer 19th century radical George Gissing who wrote a wonderful book called The Odd Women in the second half of the 19th century in the British Isles there were a half a million more women than men meaning there were 500,000 more women in England Scotland who had no role in life there was nothing for them to do and they started traveling around the world they started traveling and so it struck me about this is where Anna Leon Owens was one of these women was one of these George Gissing odd women but then I found another detail that another reason why Anna lived in the far east in the first place was she had a terrible secret she was half-cast her mother was a dark-skinned Indian and she didn't fit it which did not help her uh living in England anyway and somebody connected with the production they said oh please we have Kelly O'Hara's Anna don't don't feature this too much about the mixed parentage of Anna so uh we buried that it's in the art it's in the issue but that's the kind of research and then the wonderful David Leopold found uh these extraordinary pictures that women in the uh in the the king's uh harem one of his many many wives to produce all those children who march in they had a camera and they took pictures of themselves and uh David found these and so that's the kind of thing that uh that that thrills Anna and I that we bring it then to Alexis and Tamar to uh and we just passed our cover um but Tamar who's one of the most widely traveled people she just got back from India for the seventh time or something started showing us all of these incredible images of Thai temples and and um maybe you'd like to talk a little bit about because it's ends up reflected of course this fits in nicely with Michael Juergen's wonderful set for the production but but how did this cover image come about? Um it's always hard with doing the cover and that's why I always have an extensive conversation with you about it because you know what's going on can people hear me um people you know you know what's going on with the production and that's not something that Alexis is always so you know cued into and it's always hard with the cover because you want the cover to say everything but you can't have a cover say everything so the thing that I'm often given a lot of the research that Michael and everybody does in this particular case he had done extensive research Michael Juergen does the sets and also Kathy Zuber who does all the costumes and I was really influenced um with that and I really wanted even with the way I did the topography I had all these details on the top and on the bottom of the type I really wanted it to be decorative so I um I wanted you know we had actually I think that was actually a meeting we had with Andre where we were all trying to brainstorm and come up with something and um in the end I ended up kind of dissecting the patterns that I saw on Thai um what are they temples or they were temples and working with an illustrator and coming up with a very simple design and also including um a little silhouette of Anna and the king and she's carrying a book and things like that so that's sort of how that happened and then Alexis had the bright idea after we were talking about this give a girl a book to say well why don't we just reprint Anna Lena I am Malala well one of the things that we talked about well when we sit down I think it's useful to sort of talk about the process Annie sends us the play and we read it and most of us don't get any other insight other than that and we show up to our first brainstorming meeting and we talked to Andre and Annie about how they want to present the show and some of the big ideas that they want to convey and then we just start brainstorming about books and writers and ideas that we want to incorporate into the process and it's I mean you're sort of kind of seeing the dynamic up here tonight I have an idea I have an idea and everybody jumps in and we come up with a big list and then we start approaching writers and we start with our dreams and sometimes they come through when you get Margaret Atwood or we should tell the James Salter story James Salter that's Annie's favorite story yeah it's my favorite story I love him and we were looking for somebody to write about James Mitchner when we did South Pacific and we were thinking okay who's who's been in a war you know who had had has gone through this and obviously people are getting older and then we realized James Salter had been I said was he in the Korean War briefly and then you called him I think and I think I gave you his number and he said he had been in the war although not really on active duty but he was a great admirer of James Mitchner and so we said would you and he wrote one of the most wonderful pieces we've published which is just it's a pleasure to read aloud an appreciation of the author James Mitchner so that's sort of the fun of how we begin to who's got the phone number what's the idea and how do we get to the and it's and luckily having the Lincoln Center opens doors we just say we're going from the Lincoln Center review people will say we'll take it and and follow through we so we just have that we just call people blindly and the name Lincoln Center says okay yes I will listen and oh that sounds good and we used it we paid $250 in order we raise $500 and so it's favorite nations and I write the check request you can see and uh and uh yes so it's uh yeah it's very very fun so you came up with this yeah so one of the things that we wanted for the king and I is you you want to understand the reason for bringing something back and reviving it and and looking at history again and so we were looking for connections between the past and the present and we thought about Malala and tell Malala is what did you say did you put your name on your tongue she won she won the Nobel Peace Prize she was the young girl who had acid thrown on her face because she was oh I'm sorry yes isn't a good return I'm very glad to straighten you out man and we took part of her Nobel speech just to sort of bridge the idea of educating women now and and then and then we also had and then you should talk about was your idea for Katori and and and brand and maybe talk a little bit about how that evolves well again it was it was looking at another angle and this is a show that deals with race on one level from a different time and we thought it was important that Bart's point of view was through the Uncle Tom's cabin and we wanted and that is a book that is quite controversial and perhaps not everybody still thinks has the merit that it had when it was first published so we went to two Black playwrights to sort of look at the relevance of it and then what that relevance means to the show today um Hattie we have a final guest who's just arrived I'm just looking at each other the other thing is that we we really can can gather between John who knows everything about this and Andre and you know it's a great deal of knowledge about the about when we're doing a revival like this about the past history of the of the play and I don't know who found whether it was Andre I can't remember who discovered that that the original young 10 year old who played the son in in the original production of The King and I, Sandy Kennedy was still alive he's now in his 80s and he has a perfect memory and we invited him in and interviewed him and have an absolutely wonderful piece about being a 10 year old in the original production of The King and I and he brought us a wealth of visual material and Tamar is kind of a visual fiend we often go up together to the library the performing arts and they pull out all kinds of research and Tamar just goes through it like this and he brought us all kinds of things and you find images that you need I'm not talking we'll talk in a second about other images but you find art sort of archival imagery maybe a little bit I mean there's I always try to have a mix of different type of imagery and this particular issue it was more historically based so I used more illustrations and these were all photographs from I mean they were incredible it was like finding a treasure trove you know not on eBay but a real person's collection so I always try to have a mix the the next issued that will show you has more historical images and I always try to I'm an artist as well so I always try to get in contemporary images and then if I can't find it I make it so it's just do we have any other contemporary artists in this issue otherwise we'll move on to Joe Turner I mean you know I do I do I love doing research so I do a lot of extensive research trying to find images and what I always try to do is try to find images that are evocative rather than things that really illustrate what the article is about well so we since it's exactly seven I think we should segue into Joe Turner because we have about 15 minutes on that and then we'll open to questions so is there any last things we want to say about the King and I before we move through okay so go see it if you have it so Joe Turner is a completely different kind of issue in a way and maybe I should have you start because you got you you commissioned the first piece I felt very passionate about this one I mean I feel it's funny there are different issues there are some um where I know I go into the meeting and I already have sort of the whole thing in my head and I I know all of the writers that I think would be great and then sometimes I go in and I don't know anything and and my thinking about the play really evolves and this is one where I I live with an actor and he was he had done several August Wilson shows he was about to do another one and I worked with a writer named Charles Johnson when I was editing at Scribner and he was one of August Wilson's best friends and it just sort of this this it just came together magically and kind of every avenue of my life was pointing to all of the issues in this play so we went to Charles and he wrote this beautiful piece about his friendship with August Wilson and all of the autobiographical pieces of August life that play out in his plays and also the way they talked about violence and within the black community and just lots of big ideas and how they thought of themselves as writers and it was beautiful and then we were looking I think for a poet and one of my favorite poets was married to one of another writer that I worked with at Scribner and I called him and it turned out that August Wilson had funded the organization that they run for giving their name name name Kavakana poets called Kavakana and August had had been one of the reasons that they could sustain themselves over many years Cornelia CD and so he wrote a beautiful poem for August that was an original which doesn't happen that often for the magazine and and then lots of other actually that was the first issue Katori was in. Katori was in that issue she is an amazing playwright I'm forgetting the mountain. The mountain top. And her first play was who do love and we wanted someone to write about who do and the religion and magic and the spells that were in this community and Katori was from Memphis and she had gone and bought potions before and she wrote this wonderful essay that again connected the past with the present for us. And we my contribution to that issue was something that that that John and I have done many times and I think it's one of our signature pieces my contribution to this issue was that I interviewed my and I'm happy to be able to say this my old friend Taj Mahal the great blues player who I've known for a long time and who's besides a great musician he's a tremendous tremendously knowledgeable historian so I called him and our tradition is that we interview people with very you know all people have distinctive voices but we like people with really distinctive voices and then we take ourselves out of the interview so it looks like it's tape recorded and looks like a piece but our we're not in it sometimes you know it'll say the person's name and then editor asks a question and sometimes it will then there's an answer but sometimes it just looks like the person is speaking about things whether Laurie Anderson's a wonderful thing that she wrote about Tibetan Buddhism after the death of Lou Reed for Sarah rules wonderful play and one of the best things we've ever published it's online you can go on our website which is lct.org www lct.org John and I did an interview with our beloved Anna Anna Krause the founding board member of Lincoln Center Theater who had been Joshua Logan's assistant on South Pacific and that was a soul it was husband was one of the writers anything goes in life with father Russell Krause and and whose whose voice and soul is so unique it's just transcendent so we just took ourselves out and it's just Anna talking in this wonderful way and following that model I interviewed Taj Mahal I mean my voice and his are so radically different it wouldn't it wouldn't work and I I got him on the phone and I just asked him all the hard questions you know who is Joe Turner and why did he come and go and he just told me the answer and and you know what happens with the Juba and he told me the answer to that too and he told me about a book I had never heard of which I absolutely couldn't believe and six months after we slavery by another name and six months after we printed the magazine it won the Pulitzer Prize so his voice in this issue is so unique that it would have been ridiculous to have me asking questions so that's another thing we like to do often vanish and as vanish yes and then design wise this was quite unique I think the cover was unique and finding you those incredible images of the houses maybe you could talk a little about photography on the cover I actually went in and letter pressed all the typography and found on eBay an old map that I bought of early 20th century Pittsburgh and kind of milled them together you know I've been doing the magazine for over 20 years so I like to keep reinventing what I do I want to ask you how did we come up with the the format was that your decision how do we decide I don't remember because the original production was she was this size and it's just it's a different would it be a different design to have it this minimally smaller does it make a little I mean it's I don't I don't remember how I don't remember 22 years ago um and then this issue for me was nice because it was a real mix of contemporary art and historical photography and also just really I love to really work on the typography for each issue and having the type relate to what the theme of the issue is and early 20th century I did a lot of research it was just really a treasure trove can you show us some some of the photography in the issue as we flip through um there's that fabulous kind of I can go back yeah there were just a lot of historical um and then that's a really well known collage artist named Tony Fitzpatrick um I actually did a lot of research I went to Botanica all around the city um in the snow trying to find material for this piece and I ended up not being happy so that's how I I mean that's how I ended up with this we we after our brainstorming meaning we reach out to authors um sometimes they say yes sometimes they say no pieces come in and Alexis does a brilliant job editing them and then we all go over to Tamar's house on 22nd street and she has spent about three weeks designing thinking gathering and we go to her house and we always have tea and then the whole what looks like pages about this big are put up on the wall and and then she says here's what I'm thinking about this article in this article then we we mostly just kiss her but sometimes we rip it to shreds you've never ripped it to shreds actually John always asks what are the colors and you explain what the typeface is and each page is individually done and the order and the order of the uh Alexis does that with Tamar really maybe you could talk about that order Alexis tells me the order and then I change it that's basically what happened and then I bargain well no you're you're you're pretty you're pretty nice because the pacing of the issue you know you want a long piece a short piece you know maybe but you also want to set up some of the big ideas up front and then maybe have the lighter pieces it you just sort of want to balance it I mean I'm pretty much the luckiest art director in New York because you give me complete freedom and that's a rare opportunity and a rare gift and it's always interesting having done so many issues sometimes I mean our most challenging thing as as Tamar mentioned is always the cover yes how do we present uh you know a play of complexity a play of many meanings in some image that will be I mean an attractive magazine cover should I should I hold this up and sometimes that sort of happens by some mystical way that we all agree and other times it's a nightmare and the most awful nightmare was South Pacific which had the happiest outcome and maybe you can tell us after two and a half hours how it came about I don't remember how long we were in your office Andre but I think it was hours and we weren't coming up with anything and I remembered that a friend of mine had a collection of scarves that were themed around Broadway productions and he bought on eBay where did he buy them Mark okay um and he had a South Pacific scar so I I scanned it in and kind of redid it and it became the cover because it's very important that we don't use the cover that is the poster for the show that we want the magazine has its own independent life yes it's not a marketing tool for the play itself exactly although we don't want it to contradict the poster or the set but somehow be its own thing that yes keeps expanding from that um any other things about because we're about to reach the question time any other things to discuss about Joe Turner no and also we did we did a little piece about the production interviewing some people so it's again this combination of of insight from from you know people like a Tory or Taj as well as people who obviously who knew August Wilson from a different point of view that that you might not be able to find on your own that you could only find courtesy of the knowledge in this and then we're meeting next week to work I can't tell what the play is but it's a play that involves revolves around a very famous modern historic event in the last 20 years and so that's just going to be a thrilling all the issues everything interests us every time a play comes up it's like oh we can't wait to do this issue and there and the number of things that are floated around would like let's do that play because the issue would be so great so we've never run out of ideas ever I don't think I still want the food issue oh we want Tamar's wait been waiting for years for the food issue oh that's I mean but this is what okay this is things that we love about about our magazine the thing when we talk about the fun that it is when they when Andre did dinner at age the uh the Edna Ferber George's Calf and play there's a great plot point in it you know the all the movie you know the the host is having the splendid dinner in which lives it depend and the main the center of the dinner is lobster aspect and it and it fails and getting their lobster well we are so fast but why lobster aspect is such a central part of vote of this play I mean you know the plotting of the play lobster aspect and so we called Corby Kummer who was the food editor at the Atlantic Atlantic Magazine entering their food and he said oh I'm an expert on lobster aspect it was the last this play takes place it was the invention of Jello and packaged gelatin that killed the enormous exoticism of having a lobster aspect where you would have to boil a cow for days and so that's so he made it where this wonderful piece of recipes have had to make lobster aspect in the old way that showed how uh why it was so important these people trying to show off in the level of which they were showing off and it's like little details like this that make you laugh so hard to track down say today when I wake up I'm gonna find the history of lobster aspect now get ready because you're going to read now and then we're going to open to questions so get your magazine oh the last thing is um uh we also had a very very funny thing in that issue where we decided to go to a number of really wonderful contemporary writers Jennifer Egan Kimmer who else was in that issue um and and asked them to write about the worst dinner party they ever had and and those are also memorable uh short stories about terrible dinners so I'm trying to keep us on track time wise that's one of the things I try and do so we thought just to segue into our questions we wanted John who who was always here for us to you know he knows everybody he he knows everything and sometimes we say oh just write it so this is a piece that he wrote for our production a richard city of conversation a play a wonderful play by Tony Giordina a wonderful writer who uh who andre has brought back uh into a career of playwriting and there's a play about the history of a social hostess in washington from the 50s 70s into reagan uh and uh it was a beautiful play and I had uh gone to um I'd go to school in washington in the 50s and I what I wanted to do was I just wanted to give a sense of the of the of the of the uh the lives of this Georgetown salons what was going around in the air at that time okay so it's called georgetown 57 in 1957 I was a freshman at georgetown university and had never been happier in my life georgetown was considered a party school and was it ever the ratios of girls to boys in washington dc was four to one every school in the area had mixers every weekend every weekend georgetowns were called rat races you dreamed of meeting a g girl as women who worked in the government were called g girls were easy to nail and hot to trot but for now we'd settle for girls from trinity on their amount of visitation convent back then lush pickings meant endless bouts of lindy dancing tab hunters young love a lot of gin and tonics and beer and desperate attempts to maybe neck was one of the rugs as girls were known then while pat boone sang don't forbid me but all the lust was virginal everything was a sin except drinking and we did a lot of that alarms woke us up early every morning for compulsory daily mass at dawgren chapel the priest would pace up and down no communion why confession is right here why put your soul at risk i remember agonizingly confessing that i had touched a girl the priest in tone through the grading you must never see this tool of satan again but father i'm taking her to the fall festival what's more important the fall festival of your mortal soul three hail mary take communion receiving a copy of playboy in the mail was grounds for immediate dismissal priest went through my room as they did and found that i had come to the nation's oldest catholic college founded in 1789 with copies of madame boboree and ulysses mr. ambrodie s j r freshman prefect summoned me to his office didn't i realize these books run the index of forbidden books merely possessing them put my soul at risk i i bought it all georgetown in addition to making me and my soul feel very safe was easy more like high school than what i thought college would be and i was okay by me ike was president wasn't georgetown itself our section of washington also the home of the people who actually ran the world the boundaries of my world were defined and safe and comforting i never laughed so hard in my life and then one day in the spring of 1957 on my way to class in copley hall i saw a woman striding with distracted authority out of a wooded area there was a shortcut to reservoir road the site of georgetown hospital it was unhinging to come upon someone so shockingly beautiful but not movie star beautiful this woman because she was a woman with her capital w an adult as opposed to every other female in dc who was a rug possessed a ferocity her head was much larger than her slender body her slender legs her dark hair slightly short and curled in a current fashion had been slicked back in a way that emphasized her features giving her eyes her nose her mouth the force of a primitive sculpture but there was nothing primitive about her elegance today you recognize the clothes she wore the casual retro fashion that Ralph Warren would popular popularized decades later but back then that look was new her clothes are the quality of a disguise though had she come from another continent a more passionate continent the smile was not directed at the world like the social smile of everybody else in dc but sprang from some secret interior place what was she thinking she was happy but in a way i had never seen she seemed impossibly complete i started to follow her but couldn't i told myself i mustn't be late for class she was terrifying the next day at approximately the same time i waited at the stone stairs leading from ritz warrow nothing the next the next she appeared again on the path which was thick with winter trees just starting to show green she walked with the same confident gate that said i belong to the world in a way that you don't could i speak to her would she answer did she even speak english what would i say i followed her to a red brick house on end street she entered and shut the door i told my roommate bill the next day he joined me at the stone stairs and she appeared we followed her back to 3307 end street she went in bill had an idea we went around to 33rd street to a driveway behind the houses where cars could be parked deliveries made we checked garages bill said here if we stood in the darkness of the garage looking through a window that opened onto the garden she came out of the house wearing a two-piece bathing suit she stretched out on a lounge chair and rubbed lotion on her body she leaned back to receive the first warm raise of 1957 i tell you the effect was electrifying what do you do with these feelings that had everything to do with and nothing to do with this woman we asked around about her oh yes isn't she something she's the wife of the junior senator from massachusetts she's catholic life took over i didn't see her again life went back to being safe or so i thought in may at the year's big dance called the spring festival the dean of manic stern jesuit named father rock sj was caught in a situation with the young president of the student body in a room at a hotel where the dance was held no one was told specifically what had happened we didn't have words for that but something unspeakable had happened word got out that the priest would be leaving the campus the next day we woke up early morning to watch as he was driven off in disgrace the president of the student body was put on leave no one spoke of it ever again how could we no one's vocabulary can tame the words for the meaning of what had happened but it had to do with sex the campus atmosphere was charged with an unspoken incomprehensibility whatever they were for the another where they another side of the feelings engendered by that woman of indescribable power who could talk about it rules changed we gentlemen of georgetown no longer had to endure compulsory daily mass had we been bought off was this the bargain for never mentioning this episode again everything loosened at parties on jukeboxes elvis presley replaced pat boom the next time i saw the woman was in the fall of 57 i now a sophomore saw her at the theater she was very pregnant and that november she gave birth to a daughter i counted back and realized that when i first saw her she must have been coming from georgetown hospital in the early days of her pregnancy i was happy when a few years later she became the most famous woman in the world but i never again saw that stunning ferocity the change to my world so we'd like to answer a couple of questions before we eat our cheese would anyone like to uh yes can we put the light up a little bit bret so we can see and we are also not only so we hear you better we are recorded so we will give you a microphone maybe you just introduce yourself and who you are but can you get the mic my name is susan schwarz i'm a long time linkedin center member very happily so and i have a very simple question how long does it take to do the magazine from start to finish oh we can answer that if you do the schedule you tell us i'm thinking backwards i would say it's about um two to three months it depends on how much time we have sometimes they have to be faster it's about from the time we have the initial meeting till the time that the articles are due it's usually about two to three months and then alexis has the articles for about a month to edit them and then it takes me um from the time i get them six weeks and then two weeks to print it so it's and and we have them uh delivered at seven a.m. on the morning of the first preview of the show so right now we're we're we're not late but we're going with the summer issue so it's about four four and a half months i would say yeah four and a half to five months but we've done things you know whenever faster if we have to get them done faster we do them faster it really just depends and also it's interesting is that the general run of everything we put them out in the lobby and people are supposed to pay for them but nobody ever does and uh that we usually run run it's about 10,000 the first issue is about well downstairs it's yeah well here's stan it's from seven to 10,000 and upstairs our print runs have been as large south pacific was a quarter of a million copies so they can be very very big for an extended run of a show but it's very but it's just it's just close enough where you're hoping to get people one of the things where it's easy to get people because you you're asking them to write something right away and not giving them time to uh you know people you know people will say okay well if i can do it next week i'll do it but uh if you have to wait a few months you know you'll never get it well and also i think they do it because they they are really taken with the play or they're taken with the idea oh they're invited to opening night and given a pair of tickets yes opening night that helps yes one second of this thank you i'm marian and i um part of a team creating a new magazine called galerie and um i think it's uh interesting what's it for what does it yeah what is your magazine gallery is about art sculpture culture cultivated the arts plastic arts um and it shall be coming out in four months or so um but i found it interesting all the women are wearing the same color i know we noticed that we noticed that uh but also um i was in Bangkok years ago i lived in Bangkok and it was not at all like the the Anna and the King of Eye and i was there last month and it was even less so so it's interesting that you have a magazine that people read without having to subscribe to it so you have an enormous luxury and you have also the luxury of time and amazing amount of elegance in in your research ability amazing we we don't have that luxury in in most magazines i've been to you have to get it out fast you don't have any leeway any margin well then i would say to me to hook up with andre bishop and haddie judiker and allison blink and elizabeth peters and our board and they'll show you how to put a magazine together right good luck on the magazine and gallery every time i go to a play at lincoln center i'm so grateful that you have that magazine and i always pay for it thank you and so you're the one dollar and the king and i magazine i thought was absolutely spectacular and just incredible but i always feel like i'm the only one taking the magazine i mean do people really pick it up oh yeah people pick it up there's no question in fact andre and i are getting pretty good at sussing out we have to make a decision of how many to print way ahead of time i mean way ahead of time but we're pretty good i don't have a big mailing list too yeah we have a mailing list we do have a little subscription but um uh yes the people take it in fact we we go back on press i just emailed stan we were going back in press for the third time for king and i but um increase and and we say please please take one not everybody wants to go to a play and think about it or read about it and so they're not going to take one but many people like you are interested in that and we make sure the critics get one up with their opening night ahead of time yeah but what we say please you know take one suggested contribution a dollar so that second part is a challenge to us yes sir how you managed to cover cost of utopia by stopper nine hours play that was difficult that was very good it was a brilliant issue because we know it had to last for three issues and uh i have a copy of it right here and uh what we wanted to send a piece of it to have a modern voice on it was contacting margaret atwood who does write about utopias and dystopias and we felt it was very very important for her to have her take on uh on these worlds both real and imagined and also the back cover of course is manet's great masterpiece which is viewed visually in the production in the play itself on stage it's sort of created briefly so we actually got to print that on the back cover so you could look at it in more detail and then other things that we had is uh we did uh and uh who's a brilliant scottish writer wrote about no nation but the imagination about this about the formation of how how countries and new governments form and uh paul rodney wrote a hilarious piece about the fox and the hedgehog and uh taken from isaia berlin's parody of the isaia berlin speech and uh and then we had an interview with tom stoppard where we asked him about how the play came together and he he wrote it's a piece called he i'm writing three plays called but bachun and bilinski and herzen i think uh and uh and then and then there's a uh conversation with tom writing about isaia berlin uh and genie fuchs who's a wonderful she was a ballerina who's become a wonderful academic wrote about george sand who was an intellectual woman at that you know at that time and so we we wanted to have a very very and then we in tatiana tolstoyah wrote about her life in russia and so that was how we dealt with a nine hour play we want to have an issue that we wanted one issue that would last for uh you know they would illuminate all three plays any any thoughts about that or that was my first issue i don't even remember the process you're in shock yes i remember the margaret one but yeah okay any last question does that answer your question did you have a reason for asking that question how in america it was possible to present a play nine hours whole always full and subject of the play character of the play absolutely not known for americans so that's well that's we hope that's we hope this issue did and it's also because our andre bishop our artistic director sitting behind you had the faith in the play and jack o'brien did did a uh production that was i've seen the production in london and it was very dull a trevon on production it was very very dull production and jack o'brien uh transformed the place saw the plays with such clarity and presented them with such clarity and the brilliance of that production was that you didn't have to know everything you didn't have to come with an encyclopedia of knowledge to see the play because the story of the play was so compelling and what the sides were and what the issues were so it was all to bob croley and the set designer and and jack o'brien uh the production of the play that andre oversaw uh made sure that the the clarity of the issues was more important than the than the ideas and names it was dropping okay i think we have time for one last question and then we will don't yes we have two questions two last questions and then we're done i just wanted to make a suggestion for your food issue well first write a play about food well that's the play i wanted to suggest tina house the art of dining which is a lovely sweet play and talks about food from beginning to end and no fires on stage this time i remember she was remember that diane weese had a terrible fire the actress was burned it was a nightmare the sternocan exploded onto diane weest so we have to be careful about that and so it's a very dangerous play for the actors so last question behind you yes thank you my name is christina moderano uh i'm the editor in chief of seven years old performing arts magazine in romania and i must i must tell you that your work it's terribly inspiring for us for me um and uh my my question would be um what is the biggest challenge what do you find that is the biggest challenge for you in giving continuity to this magazine i think that's amazing i think that the continuity is really all visual no i don't i think the continuity comes from saying in the the meetings that we have and the talks that ann and i will have and then alexis and i will is to find out what without dumbing it down what is the play about agreeing on the story that the play is about and i think that clarity of that attention to the play's center listening to the play to hearing what the play is telling us is is what determines all the articles that we will put in we just don't put things in random you know say oh here's something you know oh here's russia will put that on the coast of you know it's about that every every article in the magazine has to is dependent on the declarative sentence uh that is what we feel the story is illustrating the sense of the story and that to me is the declarity alexis do you want to finish with a thought about that i also i've worked on this magazine as an assistant for an old boss before i've got to be the editor and it was always for me tamar's design that really pulled it together but it's also being able it's just sort of addressing curiosity and i think for us that's why we've all done it for so long and it always stays fresh because you get to come in and actually think deeply about something in a way that is meant to also be entertaining and that allows us to keep it fresh but we're always go and we always pursue the same it's that idea of the uh you know of the ideal companion we want to what we wish we knew about the plague what what would we like what what strikes us with curiosity but what what makes us i i guess curiosity thing for that word is the uh is what connects to all the issues and i just want to read one thing that just just uh i just want to read because i just found this today going back uh this is what the editors wherever they were wrote in 1987 and the very first issue that that uh the south african playwright issue this journal has been brought into existence as a means of investigating bit by bit theaters unique power and the way in which it bears witness to our time we hope to elicit intelligent excited diverse ideas and writing from a broad range of people who unlike most reviewers understand the nature and intensity of work behind a play we're concerned with what makes theater so important and nourishing to our lives we may be disappointed by much that we see but we are also dismayed by our own cynicism therefore our few pages will not be limited to the reporting of facts or erudition or grievances but will be devoted to a freer kind of questioning each issue of this journal will investigate a specific question or circumscribe region of the theater often we will use an artist or production of lingon center theater as a point of departure and that was our initial uh that was our initial intention in 1987 can i say one more thing which i was just thinking about i mean i think another thing that keeps the magazine fresh is that we all really like each other and we're kind of a family and we've been working together for so long that there's just i don't know there's just like a glue that makes it work and is married to joe centauri and i'm married to a delch at field trailer but ann and i are secret husband and office we've been married on the side for many years thank you for coming thank you very much