 Good morning everyone. So yesterday we were really focused on craft. And you know, towards the end of the day, we pivoted and did the sort of 10,000 foot view look at the current cultural climate and current political climate. This morning we are going to assess the comedic landscape together, thinking specifically about the American theater. So this is an hour and a half session that we have now and we're gonna try to keep it roughly split between these three topics. Of course we'll follow the flow of conversation and we'll see where you all take it. But I would like to start out with a broad question, but what is the current state of comedy in the theater? Who's doing comedies? Who's not doing them? What kind of comedies are being programmed? Should I bring in Rameez again? Should I have him kick us off? Yeah. How do you assess the position of comedy in American theater and what are the challenges to the form? I think it gets shit on quite a lot. I don't think theater respects the comedy. What I mean by that is what I have seen in theater is willingness to only allow comedy that is safe and tested, but anything that pushes the envelope scares administrators away. Seemingly for the simple reason that it will scare the rich white donors. And ain't that a fun way to make art? I mean, I've seen a few good comedies on stage. Noises off, bad Jews, Spider-Man turn off the dark. But we all, but all of those were safe beds. Well, maybe not Spider-Man. There was nothing safe about that show. Is this thing on? Look. Look, I'm speaking experientially here. Let me explain. I'm brown, Middle Eastern brown to be exact, and I write comedy, really effective comedy. I know this because I've seen my stuff work in a room full of strangers, but because I'm not of a race that has been allowed to be funny beyond what I see as racial pulmonary, but me being funny doesn't get to go further than a workshop so theaters can put a check mark in their diversity folder. This may seem a bit like sour grapes, but I'd be willing to bet there are a lot of folks out there who feel the same way. So I think in theater, which sees itself as a high art form, when you bring in something that is funny, but that doesn't fit an already made mold or template, the high art tends to look down on that, but then we're getting into elitism in theater and that would need a whole other podcast. But since comedy is seen as a low art, I feel like it only gets led in the front door begrudgingly. Also, we came from fucking Puritans who thought laughter was an indulgence. That attitude is cellular for a lot of people still. Laughter is a show of emotion, is vulnerable, is therefore scary. So yeah, comedy is a long way to go in the theater. We're actually theater as a long way to go to meet comedy in a reasonable place. It means theaters have to take risks, which is a terrifying thing for most of them to do. I'm throwing a little shade here, but I think it's needed. We need to laugh more. We need it and challenges to the form. The only challenge I see is the challenge of being granted the platform in the first place. Theaters need to start letting different kinds of people be funny and understand that different cultures have different kinds of comedy. And if they want to cultivate audiences that will live past the next 10 years, they need to start diversifying the kinds of voices that get to speak in their spaces. That means speak dramatically as well as comedically. And that's all I said. Laughter. And we have Sean and the baby. Hello. Introduction to the baby. Yes. Guys, don't drive into Boston at night at the morning. Right. This is, I know you don't know this, but you do. Laughter. I love Rameez, and for those of you who don't know Rameez, he's also like ridiculously tall and very skinny and wears these fabulous glasses. So like I'm just picturing him saying all that, and it's delightful. Is he based out of New York now, or LA? I think LA. I don't know. He was gonna fly in from Burbank. Yeah. I never see him in either of those places. Laughter. And just to add into what he articulated in a fabulous way is that, is the audience is also all white, which is predominantly white at most of the large and so the fear that the artistic directors have of programming something is also part, like that is a huge part of it. It's like even the most well-intentioned artistic directors also live in a certain amount of fear of their audience, not just the donors. And we're so distracted by this baby now. I know. Hi everybody. Laughter. There's a baby here. But that, to me, I think I talked about this a little bit yesterday, it's just that sense that you only have so many slots and you wanna do something important. You wanna tell these stories and tragedy feels inherently more important. And the argument to do comedy, like I know for me and I'm looking at my daughter, I was like, we have contorted ourselves into any number of shapes trying to talk about why it's also important, why this play is not just silly. And trying to give something more merit than the artistic director thinks it has. Even though it's already there, people would just read the work as we are reading it. And so that question is to me always at the heart of why comedy's don't get programmed more often. Where are we seeing comedy programmed and by hoops? And by hoops, and we're looking especially at, I mean certainly we have playwrights, but definitely both the institutions, like where do these things happening and what kind of comedies are getting programmed? I can speak for us. So Company One is a theater that sits at the intersection of art and social change. So everything we program is designed to push our audiences and our communities towards taking action for social justice. And as a result, we program more comedies than anything else because the comedies we program are primarily by people of color, primarily using comedy to like a knife get into the middle of a social issue and kind of dissect it and look at it from a couple different perspectives. And so I will say that as we sit around our programming table throughout the year, we are most often not turned on by tragedies that are dealing with social justice issues because that just feels like Jesus, I don't get through that one. But we are really engaged by comedies that are turning these issues inside out and upside down and trying to position the artists, the company and the community towards taking action steps. So that is not common across the American theater landscape necessarily, but I will say for us we are always looking for comedies that are really socially engaged and that are using sort of that subversive quality in order to get us looking at the world in any way. I can say two sentences about us. I mean like, that's all I want to say. We have noticed that we tend to program a lot of gut punch comedies of like comedies that are funny for about the first hour and a half and then get like super serious. Like Mike Luce Tiger style, Lydia Diamond smart people, Gina Jean Frito's rapture blister burn, like plays that play like a comedy for a long time. And then ultimately are like, how do I live in the world and be me in a really serious way. And often have the conversation with our audience when they come of like, is this a comedy? I don't feel so great when it is. And so like figuring out how to market that and talk about that to people is something that we talk about a lot. And we don't tend to program a lot of silly and we need to figure that out. It was funny, one of my, I was not super involved in the planning of that season that they did, the March buzz, they did Animal Crackers at OSF, I think it was my second year there. And the audience just could not get enough of it. And then a couple of the, two years later that we did coconuts with the same guys playing the Marx Brothers that had played the Marx Brothers before. And it was super fun and super silly. And like in that Marx Brothers way, like there is the dig at the upper, I wouldn't be part of any club that would have me as a member kind of undercurrent of itself. And I also realized, but this is a side note that it was also like the least Jewish version of the Marx Brothers you've ever seen. But that's something else entirely. But the audience just loved it. And so that sense of trying to program comedies, you know, OSF programs, you know, it's Newark, Shakespeare, classics, contemporary classics, sort of a big mix of across 11 shows. We were trying to bring in more women writers in particular. And so I have a huge soft spot for Wendy Wasserstein. And where Wendy Wasserstein lives right now or her work lives right now is somewhere between classic and dated, right? It hasn't quite transcended or not all the work has. But Sisters Rose and Slide was like, I read it again for like the first time in a long time and I was like, we could actually totally do this one now. And so I was bringing it to the large season planning group and I remember turning to my artistic director and I said, we're gonna read it. And everyone's gonna say, why should we do this play? It's not important. It's just about a bunch of rich white people just sitting around complaining. And then somebody is gonna say, what about man who came to dinner? And sure enough, in the circle we read the play, everyone's like, like half the group loves it, half the group is like rich white people complaining. And then somebody sharing it was like, wait a second, what about man who came to dinner? I just looked at Bill and I was like, because there's that problem too of just sort of figuring out how do you get beyond man who came to dinner to open up the party to Wendy or Karen or all of you the tried true and tested thing that people want from comedy is hard to find. You know, my own sense is a playwright and I live outside theater communities so I probably have a war perspective is that plays are evaluated based on what they're about. That is, if you can justify the material by saying it's about something important, whether it's a comedy or tragedy. And I've stopped reading American theater for that reason because it seems to me that's the litmus test. Is it about something important? And my new comedy, which Sean is doing, it's about like the worst waiter in the world. And that's small, that's tiny. And so I feel as a craftsperson that the attention isn't being paid to execution. It's all about subject matter. We do a lot of comedies and I think one of our core values is joy. And that actually took a while to convince the board that that should be a core value because there was a lot of questions of like, but we want to be, we're a real theater, we're a Lord theater, as though somehow those ideas are in opposition, you know, and so it's like, you know, once we convince them that like, you know, like joy is part of it. And it was so wonderful to be here yesterday and then to go and watch. We did a first preview of Murder for Two with Joe Kenosian in it. And it's like that audience was literally screaming at the end, their love for the show, you know? And it's like, that show is thought of as everybody does it, but there's something to be said for it. Guys, everybody does it. You know, there is something in that show that is inherently universal and populist in terms of what people respond to. And so, you know, even though our board was nervous about joy being a core value, it's clear that on nights like last night, our audience has no second thoughts about being joyful when they come to the theater. These plays that I thought were like dramas that were funny or comic dramas, like could also just be comedies and they could still have, but if they're got, what Charles was wearing, got a punch of comedy, they could still have something at the end that feels bigger than maybe the first third or two did. But if they're also sillier, like that's also really worthy. And I think that, I think as a playwright, it's always hard to have confidence in that when you look at how most of the seasons look. I guess I was just thinking because we, because we do have this binary of comedy versus drama, are we arguing that there should be fewer dramas? Or like, is that an assumption that we're really making in this conversation? And what does that mean? Yes. I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I reject the binary. I love dramas and I have the greatest admiration for people who can write them well. I think what we're asking for is a sort of parody of a sort of, you know, that they're treated with a similar respect. Because I, yeah, I think the, maybe it's the, the binary that I see maybe more tangibly is like, what you're saying about subject matter, like shows that are, that are about an issue versus shows that are about a, or about something smaller that can't be defined politically maybe. And for me, I think there is actually quite a lot of comedy that's following in, that's in the social justice bucket. And it's the comedy that lives outside of that bucket that's, that's what's getting overlooked. To me, maybe that's the fact. And there's probably drama too that's outside of the social justice bucket that is also getting overlooked right now. Yeah, I don't know if that's true. I don't know what the stats are, but it feels like the most produced comedy in America might be like the importance of being earnest. And it's like, oh, it's universal. It's like, is like Victorian? It's like it's really universal thing. Cause, cause I go to that and go like, I'm gonna get it. And it didn't in high school because we had to. But I don't feel like that's really what's pressing like the youth of America right now. It's public domain though. Come on. Follow the money. That's what we're doing. Yeah. And you know, it's like, it feels like we're talking about slots and the slot mentality. It's like we're fighting against Christmas Carol and the importance of being earnest every season. And I think that from my perspective, try to earn a slot. You're also competing against other people within your ethnic category. So I have to, and you look around and like sometimes people within the ethnic category like, oh, what's gonna produce there? It's like, oh, it's, it's about North Korea or it's about China or it's about how I hate my parents, which you really don't. And so that feels like it's like not only am I pushing for comedy, but I'm also pushing up against a certain, it's like what they want is the whole question of the whole, we want the authentic sauce. And we want, what's most interesting about you is this thing that we can think we see that's different about you. And so that's what I, that's what, I know I'm jumping ahead in the sequence about what sort of we're up against, but that's sort of, I feel is trying to establish a space against these other factors as well. When I wrote Native Gardens, the first version, it had a really gut punch ending. Like the guy had a heart attack and then the other couple kind of won, but lost their soul and you know, it was that kind of thing. And you know, they sold a house and the neighborhood was never the same. And I remember, oh yeah, this is edgy, this is good, this is what they'll do in New York. And then I looked at it again and I was like, what would it take for it to be a happy ending? And I very, very consciously was like, it's not so hard to have a happy ending. And I'll tell you that ending is controversial. Like some people love it and some people hate it because they're like it's too, you know, but really it was just people decided to forgive each other and compromise. It's really that easy. That's what the people at the end did. But I struggled with that because I felt, I knew the moment I did the happy ending, that certain things, certain theaters would not touch the play anymore because I didn't punish people, I didn't punish the audience for loving kids. And I wanted to know where these places are in trouble. But I felt like, and I punished myself, you know what I mean, that kind of thing. And it was really a struggle to kind of just go, well, what, because I just wanted people to be, I wanted joy. I think that kind of, yeah, how can you talk about really hard things and leave hopeful? Because so many of these plays, I don't leave hopeful afterwards. A lot of comedies actually have an undercurrent of hopelessness in them. And I don't need, personally, I don't need that in my life. There's already enough hopelessness going. And so why do I go to the theater? To, you know, I think it needs to heal you in some way. It doesn't mean it doesn't poke things and that you realize where it hurts so that you can take care of it. But anyway, it was very interesting to me that I struggled with putting, and I was like, well, isn't that what a comedy, comedy is a happy, you know, people get married at the end or they find each other and tragedy is people die and have heart attacks and move away. So anyway, what is comedy and this idea of comedic plays that then give a gut punch, which I love, actually I wasn't able to deliver on that. I think you're right though that there's, so I agree with everything you're saying. And I also think that there's that joy at the end or the hope at the end of a comedy, even a comedy that is political, you know, whatever that means to whomever's reading it, politically engaged or dealing with a social issue or whatever, like the act of hope at the end, I think is wildly radical and like incredibly welcome. And I'm always, personally, I'm always most interested in comedies that can marry that with sort of that examination of something that's happening. True pilling and hope at the same time. Like I think about Kwee Gwynne's She Kills Monsters, that play is about a whole bunch of stuff. You could like dig into the stuff of that and have like post-show conversations and like, you know, thematic nights, whatever, but it is like wildly silly and like totally hopeful at the end. And for that reason, that was like a really great programming choice for us because though we do do things that have gut punches and then we often don't feel like we can send our audiences out into the world feeling like they've just been like destroyed, right? Even if it's, you know, for an important reason. Jamie, your question about who is doing the comedies? I mean, on the one hand, there's the theaters that we want to program comedies. And I feel like the other step is the directors who wanna do comedies and the directors who execute comedy well, right? It's a particular area of expertise. And when I ask people, you know, I'll say, like who are the directors who are good with comedies? It's a short list, you know? And we keep coming back to Sean, but he's somebody who kind of set out to be good at comedy. And I feel like we're not even, we have a shortage of directors who wanna tackle that area of expertise. It's like why Casey Nicolau directs every musical comedy on Broadway. Right? Or it's isn't strong. Yeah, yeah. But I also wonder if some directors are facing the same issues we're facing that, you know, they see there isn't a ton of company programs that, I mean, like, like Giovanna, who just directed Karen, she did a beautiful job with the comedy. I've worked with her. I had no idea she was so gifted with comedy because I've mostly seen her do kind of darker and more lyrical. So there may also be, maybe sort of like an interlocking question. But you are also right, that is a specific craft should be good at directing. Definitely for me, my work is most done in smaller theaters. And maybe that's just, that's maybe that's the normal forever. And we're like, it seems to hit a sweet spot in an 150 or less house, sometimes up to three. Like, and it's the rare exception that a play of mine will make it to one of the bigger, one of the bigger regional, regional theaters. But it finds, some of them at least have found this wonderful, have found this home and this other, and this certain sort of sides of theater. That was what happened with Boom, certainly, when it was, when it had its fun time of getting done a lot. All of those theaters, they were TCG theaters, but they were all on the much smaller, on the smaller house size end of the spectrum. They seemed to be the ones that gravitated towards that work. The other quite, the other thing I was thinking about just was, do you, as far as support of comedy, do commercial producers, are they more willing to go there than non-profit developers as far as? Because of the populism? Because of the populism of it, or I was thinking, what's that new world stage is right now? It's, I mean, it's out of the queue. It's like there's a Hufflepuff show, right? You were talking about that? Hufflepuff. And like a daytime drinking show. I mean, you can argue whether you want a show that's about daytime drinking at a regional theater, but all of the shows seem to be generally funny, including Jersey Boys. That was a joke. Although I feel like, and this is getting super reductive because it's just so broad brush, but I feel like the comedies that I'm seeing, getting programmed on Broadway tend to be more cynical than I have the stomach for. Like I can leave an audience in a state of like not having satisfying closure, but I do worry about cynicism. And when comedy is used to reinforce cynicism, like that starts to feel very deadening to me. Yeah, and I'd also just add on to that too, that just like I'm happy to have a super generalist conversation for the purposes of this meeting, for like to talk about the monoliths of commercial producers or non-for-profit producers. There's actually some incredible commercial producers out there right now that are really doing crazy shit compared to what was done 50 years ago in terms of throwing money around to support writers to just do their like, they're sort of doing their own commissioning in their own way. And then there's the bunch of people who really just like go to London once a year and try to figure out what's gonna make money in New York. And I do think, but I do think it is valuable in another way to contradict myself. I contain multitudes is the larger regionals, like the bigger, the Lord A's and the Lord B's do function sort of in a place of fear, a fear of collapse, a fear of losing the audience, a fear of being called out, a fear of not being cool, whatever it is. And so that keeps comedies like, I mean, we talked about them a little bit yesterday, but it keeps a show like that from being put in front of the 500 Seed House or the 800 Seed House because it's too scary to program that. That actually, the things that Peter made me realize that there's like a different technical challenge that is specifically comedy in terms of house style. Because you can't, yeah, like drama's kind of play anywhere because like if it's quiet, it's quiet. But like if you can't make the person in the really far back laugh and you lose like five rows, they can kill the front people from ever laughing. And that's a really comedy specific thing. And the kind of like most stand-ups would talk about the jokes they can tell in like a small house or the jokes they can tell in a big house and how you make the small house jokes work on a big house. Like Chris Rock does it by just like walking across the stage like, you know, just like he just paces it in a visual way that just holds your attention. Like it's just his rhythm that he created. And so like, I mean, some of it may be they're afraid of that audience, but there is like a weirdly technical challenge to like trying to make a thing that's funny play in a bigger space. And that's like- Yeah, and just to add on to that too, I think a lot of the larger, in a lot of the larger theaters, you're not playing to a full house. And that I think also changes the temperature in the room. I think that you could probably take what might seem like a smaller comedy and try it in a larger house depending on what your geography is in there and your architecture. But when you're playing to an 800-seat house that only has 300 people in it, it's hard. Yeah, and then there's a kind of, there's a kind of laugh you can't go for. Like the office is like hugely successful show, but the kind of laugh that that gets out of people is a hard laugh to play in a thousand seats, you know? Like you need this broader fucking thing that like the Marx Brothers used to deliver or whatever I- And you were also really physical, which gets back to my clown thing yesterday, where I think like when a lot of people are reading scripts, what they're reading mostly is the dialogue or maybe some juicy going stage directions, but they're not actually receiving like the entirety of a physical comedy. And this is something I've been thinking about is my comedy is getting more and more physical. It's like, how does that, you know, how do you, how can we create a situation where someone can see part of it or learn to read it better? I don't know what it is. It's a really difficult challenge that I love doing like a big physical set piece and everything, right? I just like people throwing things, the tables being upended or like, I love Farsi. I make a lot of characters on stage, yeah. Yeah, and when you do that at a reading, it dies. And you're like, I'm like, I didn't have a play and we were talking, it's like, oh, well, it should start with this huge crest of energy that's all like people, like a young couple, like trying to put their clothes on before the dad catches them fucking. And you can't, and then like in a reading, like you just know that the first time minutes are going to be like super slow. And then once it gets into like the relationship stuff, suddenly people pay attention. And at the same time it's the reverse. And so like a theater would read that play and like a large theater where it would sell like the audience, like they would capture their attention and might be like, well, this doesn't play on a reading so I don't trust it. And they have to really trust it to do it. And then a small theater might be like, well, I don't have the infrastructure to make some of these like crazy wacky physical things happen. So then I can't afford to do it. And you're like, well, this is where does this go? You know, and it's like, like comedy does run into these traps that like, you know, drama doesn't have to really think about or if you can do a comedy that's like dressed as a drama, you know, then you also kind of avoid these things. I think that that point about the development process as being sort of like it neutralizes everything. It sort of brings everything to like a center point of like, this is what can be accomplished in a reading. This is what, this isn't the kind of thing we will respond to. So this is the kind of thing we'll program, right? I think that's a really astute observation. And for me, as a person who reads a lot of plays, there's nothing I love more than a really sort of meaty author's note and a set of instructions about how the author wants me to engage the text, right? If you tell me upfront in, as I'm reading a play, not like in a development reading, but to myself, like this is a physical comedy. And so like all the people in this play are gonna have their own physical score. And it's gonna have this kind of crescendo. I'm gonna indicate it in the script by pointing at this. Like that helps me as a reader, kind of like just like retune myself. So I think in some ways, I think comedy has a bigger hurdle to jump in terms of getting script readers who may or may not have a lot of education in script reading, how to give them all the information they need in order to read it in the best way possible. Yeah, so we've transitioned very seamlessly into that. This is great. Into some of the obstacles and challenges, right? So what are the comedy specific challenges that you all have run up against? What are the barriers to getting more comedies produced, supported? Obviously we've touched a little bit on fear. We've touched a little bit on some of the unique challenges facing development. We've talked about how size and meaning that there's a sort of, at least in this moment, an innate sense that comedy can only play in a certain kind of house. What other challenges? I think it's also like what's allowed to be funny. And you know, I mean, I've talked a lot about villains, the show. Sean and I just said that we had this great first production and now we're looking for a second production. And it's a very, very physical play that's largely about motherhood and being a woman. And I keep, you know, a lot of people have said they're gonna read it and I trust that they will. But some of the people have said, yeah, it's just, it's silly. Like it's, I don't know, it's relevant. Like the sort of, like the number of women who came with me after the show of all different ages. And like, I've never felt seen. I've never seen a joyful play about being a mother. Like, I don't think that moms are usually so sad. I'm just like, this is relevant. If you know, half the house is feeling seen by it. And so it's something that I've been grappling with about how to assert the relevance of it, I guess. I was thinking so much about what Julie said about the number of unfunny people we've all worked for. And like, that's just so true. If you think about like, ultimately, like you can have a great author's note and you can have a great reading and all those things. But, you know, the people that pull the trigger on what gets put in, if they're not funny people, you know, I mean, it's just, right, there's also a thing where like there's actors, right? There's like certain actors that are funny and there's certain actors that are not funny. And regardless of how good a director you are, they're gonna stay in those two camps, right? And I think it's, I wonder that about artistic directors. Like, are they only swayed by numbers or reviews somewhere else? Because they don't intuitively understand what would play well for their audience. Yeah, and also then they, there's also a sense of trying to replicate. I mean, whether it be the box checking of like making sure you have the Asian play, the black play, the funny play, the girl play, whatever. There's that. And to a certain extent, the box checking, I think is valuable to a certain extent in that it keeps people accountable. It's when it becomes just limited to the box checking that I think we all chafe against that. But like that was the thing when we did these Marks Brothers plays, it's like all of a sudden then you're looking for what is the next Marks Brothers play? And like there's only a couple of them and they're dead and it's like, you can't just keep replicating the formula. But of course there's a desire, you found the thing that worked. So shouldn't you repeat the experiment? And then there's theater funny, which is different than real funny, right? Vanya, Sanya, Masha and close or whatever it is. Right, where it's just like, there's like a general sense that it's amusing and someone else found it amusing. And so that's that. It's the joke territory thing. That's right, right, yeah. Greg Kodas always says it smells like funny. You know, and you're like, oh yeah, I think this smells like funny. As opposed to like you actually laughed out loud. No, I remember I had a reading at Steppenwolf and it's a comedy that still hasn't been produced. And it was a great reading, like using some of their company members. People were laughing so hard they were crying. It was like this great kind of experience of a comedy that was working and it didn't get done. You know, and I'm like, I don't know, I don't know what to tell you. Like the evidence is there, you know? And I'm sure we all have stories like that. I feel there's an apologetic nature when the theaters do skit. It's like, oh, you know, this is our light play. And that's not true everywhere. I think certain theaters are turning that around a little bit. But sometimes I even feel a slightly apologetic about myself. I feel like I need to also be like, this is my fucking comedy and I love it. But there's a little part of me is like, oh, you know, am I doing this because I can't write the, the big stuff, right? And so I also have to, my role is also to walk in loud and proud and not, you know, you know, you're always scared. This is not what I always feel like artists do. They go, oh, this is not my best. Or, you know, or you're really worried someone's judging you. And so you're like, oh, I know it's not everything it could be, but you know that. And I want, I hear myself sometimes say that. I'm just like, I wouldn't talk that way about my children. I would say my son is not, you know, what I expected. But you know, yeah, exactly. I was like, oh, for a son, you know what I'm saying. So I, I, I, I'm not gonna just be so mad. Yeah. So I, sometimes I, I have internalized this kind of, this kind of looking down at it. And I need to, my role as a comedic act, you know, writer by something I could change is no longer be slightly apologetic or minimize, minimize. Cause it's really hard to write a funny play. And it's really hard to, you know, to get a lot of things across. And, and you know, everyone cries about the same things, but nobody laughs at the same things. So I have, I am really happy about this convening because I want to own, I want to own this, this, this more. And that feel like even myself, you know, with the sitcom thing and all those things they say. It's like, yeah, well it's the, you know, anyway, to have pride at full pride in the work without a butt afterwards. You know, we were talking, I did this conference in May at Hedgebrook about women in theater. And they were talking about the word mastery and how that's not often applied to female playwrights. And I'm sure that extends to more than female playwrights that to be a master is to be a white male playwright, you know. And so I will have people say to me, you know, were you surprised at how funny it was? I'm like, I knew exactly where the laugh was. You know, I could have scored it for you and told you where the laughs were. This was, this thing in common, we talked about like different types of comedy we all feel aren't being done in a weird way. Like, like they're not doing, they're not doing comedy that touches on hot button issues. They're not doing comedy that tries to avoid being political. It's like, those are like the opposite things. What's happening? But in a way, they think the ones that are done the most are the plays, I would also say like in theater, like there's just, there's like, I'll put it in quotes, but there's like funny, and I don't necessarily know if the plays, like this is a comedy or the writer would call it a comedy, but they're funny and they get a funny slot. And so it's the plays that can kind of be protean. That like you can, you know, you can sell them as like, this is about this big issue, it's about, you know, and then you can also be like, it's just about family. And if you can write a play that sort of can be sold all those different ways, then that's the plays that get done the most because it gives every person, every artistic director the ability to look into that play and see what they want and their marketing people to see what they want in terms of, I think those are the ones that are done the most, it's just really hard to figure out how to do that. How to write everything and nothing at the same time. Yeah, it's the same time. It's like, oh, I'm being a little too dangerous here, so I'll shave that off a little bit. It's not dangerous enough here. So I'm like, put a little thing in there, you know, like it's just this weird mishmashy effort that feels like really the skill that you have to build is how to talk about, I mean, I wanna call it straight up bullshit, but basically how to write a grant proposal for your work, where you can say, it's like writing a college essay. You just need to say whatever the nonsense you think these people, you gotta get in. And like knowing how to write the college essay, knowing what this audience really wants out of you and knowing that that audience will shift is the skill and then that helps you get done and that is almost nothing to do with the play. And that's actually the power of the good review. Like if you can get the first production someplace and then you've had that good review, then that artistic director can then say it has been tested, it has been proven, which, you know, on the flip side, it's also where the bad review means that the play will have a very hard time finding another life, right? And that part of, like this is where like, I can tell you how many dramaturgs are fighting for you. But it is true, and not to say the bullshit college essay as the child of parents who ran a college counseling service. But like those opening remarks that you put in your plays, how you write your stage directions, what blurbs you give us, or that you have your agents give us, if you know that we are reading your plays, give us those five talking points to bring in to make the elevator pitch for you because it is that hard and that brutal and that easy. I was thinking about it yesterday too, I was like, is there an alternative to script submission for programming? If, maybe this is for later, I was like, if instead I were, like a theater was wanting to work with an actor, like a really great comic actor, and that's actually the, that's, I'm sure some theaters do that, that's how it gets programmed is like, we wanna do something, and it's sort of finding those partnerships with artistic collaborators before you even get to the theater. Is another, like how do you, is that another alternative way to sort of showcase what a comedy could be because you've already kind of thinking about the performative aspect of it before it even gets to the decision making place? No, I think absolutely. I think the, you would say actor's theater was really more of a playwright's theater, right? Poorly name. But it was always interesting to me because like the decisions, especially around the Humanity Festival, were very, very playwright driven, right? Like we found these plays and then the playwright chose the director and then he moved on from there. OSF has this tremendously large acting company that's about a hundred something people right now this year, I think the next year it's gonna be fewer, but a repertory acting company, some of whom have been there for 20 or 30 years and are insanely beloved by our audiences often rightfully. And, but it's really a director's theater, right? It's like Bill, I don't know what it'll be like with the new artistic director, but Bill in particular, he starts with directors. He goes to his peers and he says, what are the plays? And so as much as Amritha or me or Louie or whoever else is reading is bringing to the table, he is getting from his colleague. And then if you then double down that with say like, oh my God, I have like such a great part for David Kelly or like, I know that you really wanted this actress to come back, you know, after being in New York for a couple of years and I have the right play that's gonna make her come back to Oregon. Like these, like this is part of, these are those five points that you should give us. And I think most good dramaturgs will want to, especially if you know us, like don't just like randomly say, hey dramaturg, it's Southern Arkansas route. But like, but what are, who are the people that you know? Like this is where, is it nebitism? Is it what gets you over the transom, like from the transom to the desk, to the meeting, right? But those five points, like know who you are talking to and the dramaturgs can really help you with that. I do think there's something about like comedy, taste is not shared in terms of comedy. And I think that's something that you guys talked about in that white comedy section yesterday. And I do think that that contributes to like, theaters are not a democracy, but taking a chance often happens in those sort of like more democratic moments where like everybody on staff rallies behind a play and just demands that the artistic director do it. And I do think that is a little harder for comedy because like even amongst our artistic staff, we don't share taste about what's funny. But you know, like I, doesn't need to just be a conversation for me to trust, but that's where like I will rally against a fellow until the day I die. Like that is just a play that I do not think or find you want to study it in school. That is not a play I need to personally sit through anymore. And so like that's where like getting into the scrum, like this is what I hope other artistic departments are doing especially at the larger places. Like I hope that they are getting into the scrum of this, right? That like as a dramaturg, my job is to read the play and I think I'm pretty good at it and say like this is not my cup of tea, but I can tell you why it's good, right? And it is, that is my training. That is my job. That is my purpose in your artistic department. But I will also expect you artistic director, producers, whoever else is in that decision-making circle to be there with me, to also see the value of something even if it's not something you like. I can't stand mushrooms. Just you not like them. I have tried over and over and over again, but like I will buy them if someone's coming to my house and they like mushrooms, right? Like it's not that hard. But I was thinking about Peter, your idea of packaging. You know it's something I struggle with because if I attach a play to a certain director and we sort of take it out together, sometimes it helps you and sometimes it breaks you. Sometimes the artistic director wants to direct it. Sometimes it's the women's project and you're working with a male director, you know. Like I never know whether that's helping or hurting in a sense. I've been thinking a lot about the Kuroi stories I've been talking about. Like they did such an amazing job of sort of making it easy for people to find these hard-to-find plays. And I, yeah, I know. And I don't know if there's some, like we could build like a little funny network, funny empire and not just plays, but if we could, I don't know what it is, I don't know how it would work, but like the people, like funny directors and funny dramas, I don't know if there's some way to kind of like make it easy for people to understand that there's like a whole comedy universe that could come to this play. Yeah. And I've been thinking, I was also thinking about the Kill Rises we were talking and I was sort of thinking about NPX and how things get tagged there and how powerful reader reviews are, like reader reports on the new play exchange page for a play that if I'm reading, if I'm reading through like a bunch of like, you know, options for, let's say, I check for comedies of a certain size or whatever and I'm reading the reports and like people who write about like feeling moved to laughter, that's a different kind of like endorse, even if I don't know who that reader is, right? But like that, sometimes that helps me get my, get the frame right around. So I'm thinking about like how to, exactly how to pull together things that, whether it's a network or whether it's a, some kind of like. A comedy NPX. A comedy NPX, right? Yeah. And sort of like making, like what are the tools out there already that can be leveraged and what are tools that are waiting to be built? Well, I'm like, it was so powerful about watching the killer, I spent a lot of time tonight. I've been on like the almost plus a couple of times. Like, it's to feel like part of something like, oh, like these plays are now being seen. I was also gonna say earlier, I was thinking about what you were saying about the readings process and some of the other conversations. And we more than once have programmed something that we were a little on the fence about, but then we saw even a partial video of just a really well done reading, like a reading that the playwright was like really happy with or that had been cured. Like even 10 minutes of a longer piece. Something that gives the tempo and the flavor, the aesthetic, the, I don't know, whatever that atmosphere is. Sometimes just even a short scene out of a play on video with non-equity actors who don't have to worry about the video. That can go a long way towards getting a group of people who have different levels of reading skill on the same page about what the potential of that piece might be. And that's a great idea, but I do wanna make an aside, which is a complaint about the photographs of comedies. And I'm the worst. And the marketing tropes where comedies blurbs involve exclamation points, I protest. And my first year in LA is always my first year there. They were doing the trail, the pincer play. It was being marketed as a romantic comedy. Woo! I said maybe I'm in the wrong place. The theaters? That was my first year in Louisville. Oh, I'm sorry, go ahead maybe. No, I've had this screen for a while and I'm gonna share the dream because maybe if I say it out loud, new group of people with a camera on it will come into reality. But one of the things I've been very inspired by with American Revolutions and I'm incredibly proud of this program that I've worked on is that it did create this cohort at least among the writers, right? That was sort of built into it. It's continuing without me, so it's like they're not dead, I'm just not there. But I'm sort of trying to figure out, knowing what I know about how theaters operate both on the social level and on the economic level and on the political level. And they all just repeat to a certain extent the larger ones. But I'm just like, what are the things that we could do to make a commissioning program that would actually serve comedy well? And so if anyone has, I've estimated it out, it would take about $4 million. So if anybody has $4 million, I will gladly take it. And sort of figuring out like, what does that mean? Like, what are your home theaters that you would wanna do it with? Like, what would a guarantee of production look like for a comedy that you wouldn't necessarily give every other commission? What would it take to get a theater to jump in on that? What are the development processes that most theaters have in place, like are so well-intentioned, but because of scheduling, because of money, because of everything, they have to exist in a certain form that doesn't serve every play, much less every comedy, every musical, every drama, every tragedy, every whatever. And so like, what are the things that we could put in place with the proper support that would enable a theater to think outside of their own box? So this is like, this is the Julie Dream, so $4 million. Well, I mentioned it yesterday, but the writer's room model that Ed Sobel did at the Argy, where you did have a guaranteed two-week workshop production of the commission. And writing a commission, knowing it's gonna open on a certain date is a completely different experience. And it was so effective, I have to say. And I think that question too, as someone I've known for a long time too, and a lot of the question of like, where do you invite strangers into the room with you? It's like, I love being a rehearsal drama therapist, one of my favorite things about my job, but after seeing the same scene 9,000 times, I might not be your best laugh, even though like on the first time, I am your best laugh. You want me in your room. I'm an easy, I'm go, but by the sixth or seventh time where you're gonna do it, I'm gonna be like, okay, it was funny the third time? I don't know. And so when do you bring that fresh set of eyes into it that are not necessarily people who are, when do you bring in the non-theater workers into the room? And who are they? And who, and like, all of these questions, like how individualized could you make each process? Because even American Revolution, like it's been such a delight to be able to serve the writers and give them, like people ask for a thing and I've been able to say here, you know, whether it be a research trip or a workshop or three weeks to, you know, just sit in an apartment at OSF and stare at the mountain while writing a play, what are the things that you can do to keep it individualized, but also knowing that there has to be a system in order for something to work, like how do you, like where are the subversions? So, but yeah, I think having that base outside of a theater, I think we'd probably also be good knowing what I know about how the regionals both collaborate and compete with each other. So we've magically transitioned from getting perfectly into the last piece of this work, this conversation, which is, you know, what's worked, like dreamy development, like what has worked well in your experience? What have you not gotten to experience that you think would help in the development of comedies who've obviously touched on some things already, but a physical comedy workshop to work on the physical part of the play, like villains had a lot of really big physical sequences in them and like a lot of more fights that were all so funny and that's like two things happening, like the choreographic and we had great workshops at the script, but I think there is some part of me that was like, oh, we also need to workshop like either the fights or the funny or the both, because then like really the first two weeks of rehearsal ended up just being building that stuff. And I did that like great to rewrite the day before tech, but you never really wanted to, you know. So I think for me, something I would love to find a way to do is to like the same kind of workshops we give to the techs to still have the, not necessarily be director driven, but have like playwright and director working together. I think that's huge, I think it's really important. And for playwrights to be able to ask for that. They think oftentimes theaters are trying to figure out what is the best model. And so I find I often will ask a playwright like what kind of development work do you need? And sometimes the folks were asking don't, they don't necessarily know how to answer that question or what they want for that moment, right? But I think if somebody said like, we work with Natsu, owner to power, right? And we did like many physical workshops before we got into rehearsal for exactly that reason. So I think I always love when players are able to tell me, yeah, like that's what I want. And then we can build that. That's great. I think with Desi of Desire, when we did it at Arena, we, it was me and the drama trick there, Jocelyn. And we didn't do a table read. We got up on our feet immediately. And we built the play, we didn't write, so we were building the play. And we're like, oh, we don't need that, you know, we actually had the actors, it's kind of improv-y. I mean, there was text, but the idea of how it looked in three dimensions with the physicality, we did three days. And that was incredibly helpful, especially for that. So I echo that in the idea that comedy, you build on things. And then you're- But like an actor finds something that's not incorporated. Yeah, you're right, exactly. And then you kind of start to incorporate that. It can't just be sitting around a table. Is there the technical aspect of comedy and the logistics of the entrance exits the time of a change and all of that does become important. That you have to test. Right, and also early in the script when you're still, I remember I had an extra priest and I was like, I don't need the priest. I just need the nun. You know what I'm saying? I don't have enough of the priest, right? But you couldn't tell that until we were like, walking around in this actor had nothing to do. I'm like, oh my God, you know? So it was interesting in that way. Very early, very early. First draft. I had a workshop of Simplix at EMS Ampers where in two weeks I had four presentations like two in the front and two in the back end and the amount of work I was able to integrate. I was pleasantly surprised at how engaged, particularly engaged, collegiate audiences. And I think it's institutions. Number one, it's not quite a captive audience, but you know, it's a little bit of entry. And, but you also had like parents would show up to and professors and so and so. You had like a very discerning audience as well and tuned in in a way that I was really helped it. And I think that maybe professional theaters could consider teaming up with more colleges and universities as incubators because they have resources and these kids are just dying for entertainment. I mean, it's especially with more remote colleges. I went to school and met the guys, so it's like, give me something to do. And it's not like they don't have money. So yeah, I think that for me personally, that was like one of the most rewarding processes I've gone through and I would encourage more of that. So if you know someone who knows your voice, I cannot tell you how, especially in comedy, because I've had people say, I didn't know this line was funny and Blake Robeson was like, oh, I knew it was funny. Like, you know, Sean knows it. There's people who know that. So you just do, find the ones who do, especially when you're, and then once you play it, then you can let other people, but when it's in a baby thing, you need someone who knows your voice. It's not the fundraising side. I, a lot of experience as a grant writer, which is why I have a job right now. Fortunately, unfortunately, I don't know. But I think there's a lot of these major institutions who are supporting commissions and development of new work. And it is mostly social justice theater, which I think is so important. I guess I'm lifting that up as that is a wonderful thing about foundations right now and also a potential barrier if you're not writing that kind of work. But Edgerton and Mellon and Tolman and these biggies. And I do find that as a grant writer, I'm often surprised by what playwrights will bring to the table or will not bring to the table in terms of grant writing. And I also, yeah, I just, I, yeah, I guess I'm, I'm surprised that's not more of a part of the playwriting vocabulary. And I've met some playwrights with like an amazing amount of grant writing hustle where they'll like approach me and be like, oh, I hear like, this commission is opening up in two months and I just want to let you know that I'm working on this thing. And then other people who like won't respond to my emails when I say like, okay, it's due tomorrow and it's a hundred million dollars. That would be like, that would be a great workshop for playwrights, you know? Sort of how do you speak the language of the funders? Totally hearing them, they're hearing this so much. I would always thought they didn't offer grant writing. My God, program writing. You're in a writing family application. Are you just talking about the hustle of playwrights or the way that they connect with you or? I think also the way they talk about their work or it's like, okay, we want to approach you about a commission, what are you working on right now that could be a possible commission? And even the way playwrights talk about those things or their understanding of what might be fundable or what might not be fundable. And part of that is just the, you know, getting to know a playwright and depending on that, that relationship with the theater, your relationship with their work and all of that is complicated. But I think I'm sometimes surprised that playwrights don't have a better sense of the, just like the pulse of what's getting funded and what's not getting funded. I was sort of curious. I don't know if you talked about this yesterday, but I wonder if anybody has looked at the trends of NNPN. We're newly core members and so I'm not, I haven't been like up to my eyeballs in it enough to know what has really paid attention to historically, what gets rolled and what doesn't. Sort of numbers wise, but it feels to me, it could be so wrong. It feels to me like it's more amenable to comedies. Right? Like that's right, right? So I'm thinking about like, for, this is really connected to what you were saying, for companies who are in NNPN, and I think it's a little different if you're a core versus if you're an associate, there are these opportunities for commissions that come up. So we just participated in putting forward a play to compete amongst a couple other plays for a commission from NNPN and of all of the member theaters across the whole network, only nine theaters put forth plays to be considered. And so like our odds are like real good and it's a comedy that we're putting forward. But I think too about like, if a player has a relationship with a company and you know that that company is part of different kinds of networks, whether it's NNPN or something else, or there's an American revolutions tag to it, like I don't know what those things are, all of them, but that was a moment where we put it forward because the playwright came to us and was like, we really, I really wanna put my play forward for this thing. And so we did, and now I realize he only has to compete against eight other people as opposed to a million, so. I had a really positive NNPN commission and it actually like touches on like development away from the theater and now in foundation. It was through Neutrometis, they had a full stage program, which was basically Neutrometis partnered with various groups of theaters, one of which was NNPN. There was a commission fee, the Neutrometis handled all of the development, the playwright designed their development process until, and then it moved over to a lead NNPN theater. So it was again like outsourcing a little bit of that early development, allowing me to customize how to get there and being supported by that amazing place. And then also very generously funded by the foundation. It's hard to write, because I feel like some of those options are more open to comedies than others. Like Mapfund, they're not known for their comedic projects, but like maybe the DGF, which is coming up I think on November 2nd, there's an NNPN and those other kinds of joint projects sometimes feel more open to that. And that's the part that you're going to, your point about not being taught grant writing in grad school. I mean, and maybe the residencies themselves have sought to answer some of this, but the actual way that the machinery works at the play factory is not, is opaque. And of course they're all different, right? But that sense of like when I am talking to somebody about how the season works at OSF, it would be impossible for somebody to know any of that from the outside. And so whether that be a grant opportunity, whether that be why your design deadlines are so early, whether that be like all of those things of like the parts of it that are kept from the artists who come to work at the institution and then the sense of entitlement that the institution can put onto the artist is a true thing. So I want to go back to Dreamland a little bit here. So we've looked at some- Stop being so real Duke in our shop. We've looked to have some bright spots or some positive experiences that people have had, but like what haven't you had that you would like to have? I mean, Lila Rose, you called out, yeah, having a sort of physical workshop, right? You're able to have a separate thing from script development. What are other ways that you think your company could be supported in development that you haven't experienced that you think would be helpful? This isn't constructive, but honestly, what we want most of all is productions. We want productions. Committees are tested in front of an audience, you know, it's the bottom line. I would like actors to get more training in comedy because they'd be learning where to take a beat or look or all of that. It is so, it's like a high wire and I think theater programs, et cetera, should all have, you know, and not just the Shakespeare comedies, but really actors just don't always get to exercise that muscle and they feel self-conscious about it. At least that's been my, just as we, you know, they're like, I'm an actor and now I'm doing, you know, I find that I would like for more actors to embrace the comedy of it and the hard training that comes with it. It's a very hard art form, especially if you're an actor. You know what I've discovered, which was interesting, I'm not a musical theater person, but I've discovered that musical theater actors are really good for comedy because that sense of timing, the sense of rhythm that comes with knowing music, you know. Performing. I mean, I don't throw a whole class at actors, but I have the complete opposite. Really? Because I find that musical theater actors frequently overindicate. And if you want, I mean, I guess it's like, we'll say Nathan Lane is a great one. And I think Nathan Lane can pull it in. He's obviously done it, but it's just, it doesn't know it. Or, I mean, but you mean, so it's like, yeah, Nathan Lane, sorry, Nathan. I mean, you're gonna do all right. I cannot possibly do it. I mean, I think what's hard is that actors that really can cut the comedy. And I mean, they can really do it. They get plucked to television really quickly. They're hard to keep. And a lot of them don't even know to do theater. It's not even a thing. They're doing YouTube videos, because that's how they want them to actually make money, or they're, and it's just, so there's something, there's also, you know, there's like talking to actors on how to like do that kind of comedy. Like, I don't think theater has done a great job of, like I'm watching the show, American Vandal, and every performance is really, really funny. But none of it, it's all straight dry. They all basically come out of it. Like, the guys who direct it are like improv people. They know how to find the humor in a very human real character moment. And I don't know that I haven't been surrounded by that in theater. Like, it does feel like in the way that, you know, you complain about the photo. It's like, that is the moment. They're like, well, if they're not smiling enough, like the people know it's funny. And that's a real, like the actor training is a real circle. I don't know what kind of training you need. Like, more and more people do improv training. So I think they're getting it from like that. It's like a funny marriage of like, Shakespeare and improv. Like, I've actually had lots of Shakespearean actors because they really paid attention to the text and to the beats. And so, I don't know, it's like a funny mix. I feel like something that would really help the field is how we can empower more actors to become directors. Of like, so many of the people who are so gifted with comedy as directors have that acting experience on stage. And how do we take people who are mid-career actors that have the talent to be directors and support them into that role, I think would be something that would be great for the field of comedy. I really feel like, Karen, I really appreciate you bringing up the training issue because I think that is so key. And it's, I feel like we're talking about actors and directors and whatever. But I think it's like across the board. Training in general, across the board. In comedy, which often gets relegated to people being like, oh, I got cast in the comedy. Or like, oh, I guess I'm doing great. And that in, you know, whatever the play analysis chops are, the dramaturgical chops that are not directed at understanding comedy, how and why it works, right? That from go, whether you're an actor or a designer or whatever, feels really key. Really key. So we have a question from Facebook. I want to bring it up. What? Hey Facebook, it's specifically from Mark Valdes. Hey Mark. Hey Mark. So Mark asks. He doesn't lane suit it, right? Yeah. Mark asks, hey y'all, came to the conversation late. So forgive me if this has been covered already, which I don't think it has. But wondering if theater, which requires long form comedy, offers the right structure slash form for a contemporary comedy aesthetic more influenced by short form. Hmm, hmm. Such as cartoons, Funny or Die, Simpsons, et cetera. Can you get that one? Yep. Mark is wondering if theater, which requires long form comedy, offers the right structure and form for a contemporary comedy aesthetic that is more influenced by short form. I would challenge me if something that theater requires long form, but and I think it's again, I know I'm supposed to be all dreamy, but that question of how the other thing that the slots do for theaters is it, it then requires a certain kind of play to go into that slot. And I know I've said this before, but just like the idea of doing a slotless theater would be really exciting if people would figure out the economics of that. The economics of slot theater is not working, so I don't see any reason not to try something else personally. But yeah, I mean, you're at a simple level at a place like OSF. I think our average ticket price is something like $76. So to give somebody a 45 minute play for $76 is a different thing than giving them three and a half hours of Shakespearean tragedy for $76, right? I'm still gonna choose what I choose. So that assumption, like yes, I would say that that is a fair assumption to make now. The question is, does that have to be a truth that we carry forward just because it is a truth that we have always carried? And so I would challenge that. Well, good job. I would just say that is absolutely something I recognize as an obstacle when I try to get comedy programmed is like one of the objections is I'm not sure it sustains to the second act. And you cannot convince someone that something is funny. Like you just, you could talk for days. And sometimes it feels like those art set meetings do go on that run and trying to convince someone that a play sustains into a second act without having a reading to show them or something. Like it's just, it's so theoretical at that point. And so like I do recognize something about that. Well, and I just wanna say just because it's a comedy doesn't mean it's not a play and what determines the length of a play is the story that it takes that long to believably unfold a particular story. So I understand that as a culture we have concentration span issues and stuff but I would hate to lose the sort of the growth that a full-length play allows the characters to undergo. Two answers to that. I think the first is there are shows I've seen like Rudy Candy, which is very much, it's not like a play play but it's consistently smaller sequences that add up to a larger discussion which I really liked as a theatrical experience. And someone comes from sketch and improv. I think that to the training aspect there are certain tools you learn doing short form. It's not a one-to-one thing. I like it from going from like being a sprinter to a marathon runner. Like the pain feels similar in a lot of ways. But if you really study improv and how you learn better, you're gonna have to be funny without necessarily telling jokes. I think that translates very well to longer pieces. I think that, I mean, I hate to use a movie as a reference but the Death of Stalin which uses comedic beats and not necessarily to comedic effect but still uses comedic timing to tell a larger narrative that does talk about larger scopes of history and relationships. I think that there is definitely do have the space in dialogue with like improv theaters and improv training and sketch training that does move very well between different mediums. One of the actors I've met through Sean who is this wonderful actor at Chicago named John Gregorio and he's been in a couple of night shows there and he's an incredible improver and I actually wrote a section of the last play that allowed him to have some improv which I'd never done and it was so wonderful and it was so great to see like these two crafts could, you know, I've always like control over news. I was like, no, no, no, you don't want anybody to do anything but it was brilliant and I think like the more we can work together like funny is funny, you know, like work together to find how these forms inform each other and more of that quality. Those also just like that contemporary comedy aesthetic that is really actually based on video manipulation like a lot of it and like memes which are just a still image and something like that but like there are young people who are just sucking it into their brains right now and if any of them are like, oh, I also want to write theater, they're going to find a way to translate that aesthetic into a more theatrical form. It's not going to be exactly the same thing as like the YouTube video or Eric Andre but it's not exactly going to be the same thing as a play. It's going to be this new thing and that's going to be cool. The way Quee kind of did that and that's like exciting. So, you know, we have the potential to evolve things if certain people get out of the way. It's capable, like I don't know if anyone, I'm sure someone saw Zendaya Izmichi in this room but like that comedian is a clear musical theater nerd. Like that is like the love of musical theater is that little memeable piece and you know, there are more of him coming along the way to find a way to translate these things together. I think it's also like who's going to provide the opportunity right is like that this 1491 show that we're doing next year between Tunis, 1491s are a video sketch comedy group of guys. I think their videos are probably like five minutes long at the top end and so when we were introduced to them through Rihanna Yazzie and New Native Theater and then American Revolutions commissioned them, at that point they had never written a play. They loved theater, they came to OSF a bunch and they saw a bunch of plays. They actually fell in love with Quee Gwynne's work and Karen Zacharias' work in particular just sort of like what are like because they wanted to ask that question like okay so this is what theater is and this is what we do so how do we take what we do and make it theater and this play that they're doing next year is it still very much has this short form aesthetic. It's a tour through 100 years of history so it does sort of that jump cut it does sort of have that aesthetic sensibility of it but it's a complete play by any definition we learned at our fancy grad programs, right? Culture class, this is the same thing. This is going to bring them up, yeah. Right, yeah, American Night 2 right out of the gate with American Revolutions. Right, it was a full play but they built it. I mean there's three brilliant comedians that write and perform. I mean that's the other part of, which is interesting in our role as playwrights because I'm not a comedian myself, right? Like I write but the idea of actually people who are performing it, creating it is also a medium that's not, that needs to be part of this comedy conversation. I mean in terms of Dreamland, I would also dream for more programming conversations that are more culturally competent so that there are, that there's more space for the wide variety of different cultural dramaturgies of comedy, right? That the different comedies from different, from people from different backgrounds, from different histories have different shapes to them and that the scope of comedy is as broad as anything else. But if we don't, if the people who are making those decisions all look the same, sound the same, come from the same kinds of trainings and the trainings don't have that kind of depth and breadth, then we continue to replicate the same systems of programming that give us the same comedies over and over again. Could you give me an example of some of the different comedy? I mean, yeah, I could, I mean, yes. So let's, different plays, different cultural tropes, right? So, okay, so we've talked about Quee a couple of times. So Quee's plays are comedies and they're really different from like David Ireland's plays, which who is, who writes about the troubles in Northern Ireland. He's a Northern Irish Protestant writer whose plays are not in their, in their forcefulness are not very different from Sarah Cain, for example, but have a kind of different quality to them. And those, like those, those different modes of comedy, if you're trying to program, trying to find your comedy slot, right? Like, and you have those two plays, plus let's say a culture clash play in front of you, plus let's say the Thanksgiving play by Larissa Fastworth, right? Like there's, those all have wildly different kind of like comedic textures to them. They have different timings. They have different presumptions about who, what you know when you come to the table to meet those plays. And if you don't have a sense as a reader, as a programmer, that they all can exist in their own truths and authenticity, and you try and figure out like how to, how to sort of neutralize them in a way, how to bring them all to the same level, whatever that might mean to you as a programmer, you miss out on a wide variety of stuff that is coming from just a hugely different background. I mean, so I mentioned earlier, Natsu Onodopower, who is a director writer, whose plays are like incredibly physical and are comedic and intersect with projection a lot of the time, and like projection that is responsive in the moment to the actors. That is a whole different kind of comedy than Neil Simon, right? So that's sort of what I mean is that I think that there are so many different kinds of very specific dramaturgies to comedy that painting it with all one brush, I think, for a programmer, I think that happens a lot. I think we've all, I think we see this in like every form of theater that comes across our desks is that there's a, there's a, you know, every, each of every single playwright, no matter who they are is gonna bring a central perspective to their play and whether it's visible to the eye, the fox told us that's not always essential. But like that, but all of our training and all of everything that we've watched and certainly, you know, people on our committees who aren't asking bigger questions, that central perspective is expected to be Shakespeare or Aristotle or something along those lines. And so any step outside of that becomes a transgression. And so, unless, so maybe now, I don't know, but just that, so I know for a lot of us, like we wind up in the, you have to meet this play where it is. And that, whether it be cultural competency or whether it just be like somebody has shifted a perspective is like a big question, especially, I find it's so much with trying to talk about women's comedy because there is just such this, people call it frivolous. It's frivolous, it's just about a mom. It's just about some ladies, some teenage girls. It's like, what does it matter? And I'm like, it matters to the person who is giving me that perspective. And so shift your focus over to here, the same way I have been expected my whole life to shift my focus over to her. I find it when I'm running children's plays, sorry. When I'm running children's plays, that I always have some jokes for the parents and then jokes for the kids. And then people are like, oh, well not everyone's gonna get in the same, with seeing my more Latinx plays. And they're like, well not all of the audience is gonna get that reference. And I'm like, oh, I'm okay with that. I'm okay with that. Like that is my Easter egg for people who know where I come from and what I'm saying. And that's, there's also that work because I've had people like, oh you, let's have the, can we translate the songs into English? And I'm like, yeah. Right. And I, like getting back to that thing about author's notes, those are the kinds of things, like if I'm reading a play by a person, I don't know at all. Like I know you, so I know that you're, I know how you sort of approach your work. But if I'm reading something by somebody I don't know, I love getting that sort of like, I don't need everybody to get this joke. I don't, like, the world of this play exists in multiple spaces, right? That's always helpful to me. And I love that in a play. So if you're talking about dreams, this is not going to happen. It's going to get younger and deeper. Yeah. That's the key thing for comedies, that like it's really hard to laugh after spending $120. Sure is. Like you're like, I've spent $120 on this. Like that's all I can think about. Is it funny? Yeah, is it funny? I mean, like I did, I was very fortunate to be in the young, in EST's Young Blood. And like there's so many writers out of that that are like super funny. And it was also just like when you're in it and you're doing these brunch plays, they have this series where they do a Sunday and you have like a week or less, I did a rehearsal in one day once, where like they do these, they do a series of plays and like they select different writers each time. And there was like such a competitive thing to be the funniest one in the, you know, and it's like, cause you kind of knew like everyone was drunk. They'd serve alcohol, I didn't know. But like there's a people, like a lot of the people there have some alcohol in them and they're more open and they're very well left and they're young. And then the writers are just like, let me see if I can top this person. Like can I get the final slot? Because the final slot, you have to go with like the biggest bang, which means you have to create. And it was like awesome work. And I think all of us, like a lot of the writers I can name really took that training and then put it into long form in different ways. You know, like, you know, but like it means really clear and like someone like Mike, like we were Rob Askins. But even I think, you know, I don't know how much any bigger love writing brunch plays, but like there's like little jokes in there that that's an environment that would force you to hone the little jokes. Because you need that. I remember Erica Salah, the very first show we did, she wrote this like, she came out of Austin, no offense to the commissioner of school at Austin, but she wrote this like three person play where like everyone was one, two, three with the name of the characters. And she was just like, oh, I really misjudged what this thing was. And then after that, she just wrote these like really funny short plays that just like kind of slayed every time. But she just needed, you know, it was just a chance to work on the craft and it was a really great experience. So I mean, that kind of pink you better is great. But like, I really do think like the fact that the audience was young and the fact that they didn't have to spend a lot of money meant they were happy to laugh. I mean, we had an audience too, right? Yeah, but we were packed. It was like energy and we were standing. Because that might be a dreamy too with like development that somehow has an odd, like a young, excited audience. And development that gives you more than one opportunity to present it. Because you learn so much in between. I can't tell you. It's a nice note to end on for this session. All the audiences, all the youth, all the booze. Thank you all for watching online and we're gonna continue the conversation, but offline.