 I can get the job done, and I can mind produce the event or the play in a way that enables other people to do their work, but I feel like the real collaborative relationships that I built and predicated on something else, and I remember even when I was, many years ago, when I was a literary manager at Benhead Theatre Club, we were developing a play at the time by John Patrick Shanley, with whom I'm just a little fortunate to be elected, who is notoriously kind of solitary, especially solitary, in the way that he works as a writer, and he doesn't seek a lot of feedback from other people, but when Meadow the Artistic Director had a lot of feelings about this particular play, and we all did, about what might need to happen with it, and she said, and he hates the word John Patrick, he doesn't like to use it anyway, and he, according to, I remember her saying, the way for you forward to make a connection with John is not going to be to march up to him and proclaim your role in the theatre, it's going to be to make sure you introduce yourself to an opening night party and see if you guys hit it off. I mean, it was my role in the organization to kind of look out for this project as we were working on it, and that sort of happened of all, you know, and we ended up having a nice collaboration as it were, and we were collaborating so much on the play, but he ended up soliciting some feedback from me and inviting me over to his apartment at 1.0 or whatever, you know, that it was more than, you know, it might have been something else, and certainly more than it was somebody who just marched in and said, well, John Patrick, I'm the institutional amateur here, and I'm here to explain to you what's wrong with your play, even though I, you know, significantly less experienced than you are and, you know, you're a genius, you know, like, you know, so, you know, I think it really is project, but I think you live with Leslie, and we work together, but I already knew that I liked her a lot. No, it wasn't. I thought that worked in your play, it wasn't. Yeah, I know. I feel like that was a selection. No, I know. But we already had a whole way of speaking to each other. Yeah. Because we've worked together at Columbia in the dramaturgy department, so we share students and we talk about dramaturgy a lot, and we had a whole history to build on when we went into production for the play. Yeah. And I also really trusted that you understood my play, and you knew that before we went into it, and you were funny, too. I was thinking, too, about the, sort of, relative to Ann's kind of, about creating the circumstances of what I would call collaboration or success rather than looking at results, and I actually think that the way you do that is pretty simple. You know, it's actually, if you, particularly if you're a director of a project, because he's often a director as well, but it costs the directors and directors for all of our one-mile roles, he says they're just directors sometimes, which is to orient everybody that you're putting together in the same direction, or to put them all in the same direction, which is towards the work. It's not towards their own needs or their own gratification or their own insecurities, but the job is to get everybody in the room on board with the same idea, you know, that what you're working towards. And that can amount to agreement about what the story you're telling. It can amount to agreement about the fact that a writer is going to continue to work, and the actors should know that, and the actors can bring something to the process, but that they should also be willing to roll with getting invaders to a certain point. It can be about making sure that, you know, if that's also just about respecting and acknowledging what work people are doing, sort of seeing what they're doing, what they're doing, what they're doing, what they're doing, what they're doing. It's about making sure everybody is committed to the work first, and their own issues, you know, really set them to the distance, I think. No, I'm sorry. Well, aren't you thinking about the work conditions? Could you repeat that sentence again? You cannot create results. You can only create conditions in which something might happen. Okay, I'm not sure I understand that, I think. Okay, see that word? No. No. I'm serenity. That's what I was afraid of, I think. Switch questions. Wait, now that I'm trusting, I'm on it a little bit. What I've been thinking since you gave that sentence is, it's two different things for an actor and a writer, and I experienced it different ways when I was an actor and when I'm a writer. For me as an actor, that dream, that idealism, that you're going to walk into a room that's a safe place so that you can be so vulnerable that you can investigate yourself, I honestly think that that safety is up to you to find for yourself. I actually think that. That the investigation, and as I spoke to my group that I had earlier, that one of the people that I have learned from is Olivia Ducakis, who has an amazing ability to go after what she needs. And she's been such an example to me of a woman who pursues herself with a fierce and conscientious appetite, which has allowed her to figure out her role in a play. Now would other people call her a good collaborator? Perhaps not. She's not that interested in what you're doing. She's interested in what she's doing. But her performance is usually something that makes the play or the movie work. So I don't know how that fits into making it safe, except that she can do that for herself. And I've always admired that. As a, just a minute again, as a writer, to be really frank with you, I don't always know how to keep myself safe in a room. I'm not sure as a playwright when to speak, you don't always get to work with somebody who asks your opinion, who advises you in a kind of way that you hear things, yes? So that in America, when playwrights are working with their collaborators as a playwright, it hasn't always been so easy to be able to say, this is driving me crazy, this is really wrong, things are, it doesn't sound right, should I leave the room? Can I speak now? You don't always know. You don't always know what your place is as a writer. And the kind of zeitgeist feeling about it is that writers aren't supposed to talk that much. Now when I was with you, you didn't mind my speaking out and often turned to me and asked me, that's not always the case. So conditions, I don't know what they are. I also asked writers to leave the rehearsal for extended periods of time because I needed to do certain kinds of work. That happened the best, but it was something I understood and it was the right time for it to happen. It's a playwright being welcomed into the room, I'm just trying to deal with these conditions. What are the conditions that make a playwright feel welcome? And what is the contract for the playwright? It's not that clear. But I feel, as somebody who is a devotee of immediate gratification, I feel that one of the conditions of creating a successful collaboration is that everyone is on the same page about this is a process. You don't have to find the answer right now. And things can be not good in order to get to the good part. And it doesn't mean, I don't mean not good, but sort of not fully shaped or formed. And as a producer, I feel part of my role is to understand that and to be encouraging. And by the way, I didn't always do that and I humiliated about things that I think about from the past where I was like, oh my God, why didn't I know that then? But for me also it has been a process of learning how to ask questions. And I am a pretty convincing salesperson. So I often have to say to a writer, look, these are my words and here's the bad words version. Because I never want a writer to take my ideas because they're not going to be good. The only ideas that are good from a writer is from the writer. So you have to establish a language. So when I say, to me, conditions means, okay, what's our deal? Our deal is that we're going to listen to one another. Our deal is that we're going to trust each other and that we're going to trust that this process is going to lead us somewhere. But don't you feel that has to be earned? That you can't just say, oh, we're going to trust each other. I don't trust people who say that. You don't have to say that. It just happens. You trust is earned. No, no, no. We never had to say that. Well, that's because we got off. I think you walk into it. I mean, I don't think you trust somebody who asks me to trust them. You don't say, well, you trust me. I don't trust what you think. Why don't we go into it? It's like when somebody says, oh, trust me. It's like, oh. You know, I think you have to look from the producing side or from the artistic leadership side is that I don't think there are conditions that you could describe that could make generalizations at all. I think my job is to make sure that every collaborator, every artist who's involved in the creation of a new play or a new title for that variety of play is enabled to do their best work, to do the degree that I can understand what that is so that that can mean setting ground for these kind of people too. That can mean looking at knowing who is directing the show and knowing where they're going to appear off to the left and leave somebody behind or knowing that you have a particularly excellent designer who brings a certain kind of vocabulary into the room who should be given a voice or who have a particular actor who tends to dominate a certain actor in your play who tends to direct to the other actors and the director as a player on a simultaneously. And so in order to... And so there were a lot of setting conditions for work and the last case production that I directed was about managing that personality. It wasn't about creating a platform for butterflies and rainbows in your cast. It was about, you know, actually you can't talk that way to people. But also making sure that the work was the center of the process. It didn't have to get hostile or inspirited. There was a process of saying, actually, thank you for your idea, but stop talking about them. Or we'll talk about them later. There's a lot of that. And that, for me, in that case, was my role as the director. But we often, even when we're visiting one of those old rooms, as, you know, Charlie and I do, we have to do something about it, too. Just to sort of make sure that there isn't somebody in the room who's feeling like they couldn't do what they wanted to do because of the way in which everybody else was working. So listening, sharing passion, focusing on the work and having someone like Christian around who can enable all the collaborators to feel empowered to fill their roles in the production. I think you set that up in the beginning. I think that the way that people enter the organization or the process, if it's not an institutional production, sets people off in their direction. You get a strong sense of the culture of the organization from the minute that you start to put together the granted chain but the new artists who come in get a feel for how the producers work and how they take care of people or not. You know, I think that it's the director. I think that you need to feel that the director both knows exactly what he, she, is doing and is open to it both. And that you have some sense of being able to trust that person. I know that's where I've gotten in trouble, where I haven't trusted my director and then I act out. You know, I've gotten in trouble in that way because I want to investigate something that I'm not being invited to do or I don't trust an impulse. It has a lot to do with how a director can do it. I personally think it's very hard to be a director and I think there aren't many really good ones either. So finding a relationship with the director and the director that you trust is a very good thing to do because that's what happens in a way and people investigate but they feel they're welcome to investigate. And then also finally, someone has to make the decision. So this is now, now we're doing this. Yeah. This is what's going on. So productions happen in a variety of different ways starting with different people. How do you evaluate your collaborators, I guess, and how do you find collaborators when you have an idea for a new project? Are they all old relationships that you then realize maybe this person moved good for this or how do you find those collaborators? I'll collaborate. Thank you. I go to a lot of theater and I am always interested in finding new talent, writers, actors, directors. And for me, it's really about reading that precedent saying if we can be in the room together without getting hives. Yeah. I feel like being a director of new plays is really hard. It is. Because particularly if you're oriented towards wanting to, in some way deliver what you believe is the player's truth and the vision of what they're really trying to do, even though you know it will not look like what's in their imagination precisely. But if you're trying to really serve that vision in some way, it's very hard because in fact the player will never see exactly what was in their mind. So there's never going to be a complete alignment of those two ideas. So I feel like I find that relative to writers who, with them, I had a relatively easy time getting to some sense of re-written stories and what they're doing and what techniques they used to get there and where they feel like they can want to continue to work. If we can agree on those things, that's a good stepping out point. But also I've done really well by writers unless there's one who did this too and pushed back on me not to criticize what I've done but to say, well, that's good but it could be that they have pushed me to do better work too but it doesn't just sort of fall to me to disappoint the writer. It falls to me to advance the process and then they push back and so we move forward together in the right way. But you never know how that's going to go until you're back in it. But I think with collaborators in general we're hiring people for projects that we're producing I think I said this yesterday or it used to sound like a lot of people I have. I always do, especially my students I tell them, you know A number one rule in order to get ahead and find collaborators in this business is to not be an asshole and because we choose people to work with who we want to have around we obviously look for the most talented people that we can find and not all theaters care as much about who they're surrounding themselves with as I think we do generally but it's no fun we can finish this business so really hard if it's not if nobody's having a good time because of some of the characters that you've hired it goes very quickly from idealism to higher health to personalizing so we choose personalities we choose to talk No, I have a I'll try to do that I think the collaboration is so different at different times and that it's you have different collaborators I was like I with this play that I'm reading a scene from this play that I'm working on right now used to be a one act play and it grew up to a full length play based on having been a one act play and for those of you who have tried to do that who can agree that's a hard thing to do to take one act into a full length because it's like building a house on top of an apartment it's already a made thing and you're trying to make it something else so I needed people around me I needed to do a lot of readings of that I needed to go to the people who I trusted and I felt that I had people in my community just to hear it and listen to it and then I had one reading in the theater that was very a successful exciting theater got very excited about my play and told me gave me some direct flat out advice that they would do it if I did one thing to it which was take out all the direct address and I did that and then I brought it back to the theater anymore and I felt that I had really stabbed my play in the heart and just as I was listening to it just as we were reading it for the same producers who loved it so much three weeks before and were sitting like this three weeks before and then we're sitting like this the next week and when it was over the room was silent whereas before it had been like and the giddy feeling that I had allowed me to give up my good sense and do something to my play that was wrong and so I then had to retreat from all collaborators figure out what my play was and when I came out of that I didn't do a reading I sent the play to five close friends Christian being one, Chris being another and asked tell me what you think and tell me what to do and that form of collaboration is what I needed at that time to re-find the play and so I think when writers are looking for directors you have to really know what kind of work that director does you don't go to Peter Sellers to come from underneath your play and find what the writer is trying to say Peter has a vision that goes on top of whatever work he's doing and it's quite beautiful and wonderful but it's more about what's percolating in his mind and his interpretation and if that's what you want for your play then he's a wonderful choice as a collaborator but you know don't go to the hardware store for breakthroughs so you admire somebody's work but you need to know how they work if that's going to really sit in with the way that you work and sometimes that doesn't happen immediately and you've got to get to know each other a little bit but I think you need to be knowledgeable about the canon of someone's work and and look at the way that they see the world and the way that they interpret the world correct I think writers also writers need to remember that they actually have a great deal of swag in that conversation if you're in a position to have your play produced you know if you feel like you've found collaborators, particularly director that you have really been really trust that really remains your work that really makes you feel good for work to be successful on your terms it's important to advocate for those people because theaters will often sort of say well we've got our you know five people that we tend to go to a lot and those people may be that good some of them may be a really good match for you but if there's somebody that you really trust you can always say will you at least meet with this person even if they don't know them will you at least take convenience and down about the play before we go to somebody fancy or before we go to somebody that you know and therefore they don't want to call it I think writers often don't do that because they're so eager for the opportunity and they're so frightened that the opportunity will go away that they don't they don't use the leverage that they have to their own best advantage so let's say that you have you pick the right director it's the right time for your piece you're in the right place there's still going to be some conflict inherent in collaborating with other people how do you how do you deal with that even with a good team and even within your good team how do you know if it's time to bring in a different collaborator if that good team at the beginning isn't working to the middle of the end well I usually just storm out of the room not at all not at all well I mean I have had an experience of having an idea for a musical musical working and putting together a creative team and then it doesn't happen for me the reason and also because I'm going to be the person or one of people who is going to be responsible for raising the money and convincing people that this is a really good idea and putting it and taking such a long time the time that I know that the collaboration is not working is when I don't know what the piece is about so I know that I've been saying that already but it's with the best of intentions and the ideas simmering up here somewhere but nobody can actually say well this is what it's about this is the foundation of this so in that particular process that was the moment that I knew that this collaboration was going to work and by the way these were very very talented people so it was not for any reason other than well I mean maybe the idea wasn't good maybe that's why they couldn't come up with it so it wasn't a matter of anyone's fault it just wasn't happening and at some point I had to be the one to release ourselves from each other and sometimes that goes well and sometimes it doesn't but I can just kind of feel it and Christian said you don't really want to do it anymore kind of lose the juice I also think it's a I think we get very close to the idea that as soon as there's a width of conflict in the world it's bad or that that's a bad thing I actually sorry yeah the conflict is like there is sort of a you know I think people do presuppose that conflict is somehow dangerous or bad or is going to lead you to a disaster and so I mean there are ways to have conflict in the world if everybody is oriented towards the work if you've done your homework and you've set up to use the answer so the people can succeed conflict should lead you to a better solution but I really believe the tension between two ideas or two people who are trying to find a way to communicate about a solution to a particular problem is the way towards coming up with that's how you get to something better than either one or so of you know whatever many people are in the conversation could come up with on their own that's how you solve it I also think you have to privilege no matter what your discipline I really believe in privileging that the best idea in the room has to win it has to be acknowledged not everybody always agrees on what the best idea is you kind of know when you see it usually and the ability to sort of fight your way towards a solution which then everybody can recognize while putting their own ego aside is the best solution to a problem is the way to kind of orient people from the room so it doesn't become personal you know what we're trying to do we disagree this is the solution that's come up with no solution this is the best one I can agree that mine wasn't the best or you know I think directors know to a lot of trouble what they feel that they have to have the solution to everything or writers actually actors solve problems designers solve problems if you can let go of the assumption that it's your job to own all of the decisions then you end up having the right kind of you end up having friction instead of conflicts you know I I don't really know how to deal with it I can get very frustrated and not know how to express myself well to be really truthful I have not been able to resolve conflicts well sometimes I haven't known how to suppress my fear and need in the kind of way that make people able to listen to me I haven't been able to do these things I just have to say oh me too I'm the same as the thing it's the things we need to try to do it doesn't mean that there's a system in place you know sometimes it's very basic like for instance for me it was always very important to me that Armenian people were in my play I wrote that play I wanted Armenians to be the profile the Armenian profile just to be raised up and I had I had good well known producers behind me and I was never played out a lot of productions and I'm so grateful to those that actually and Armenian you know and it didn't ever happen to the degree that I wanted it to happen and I never knew how to say it I never knew how to make it something that seems so simple you know and I have to say that I'm grateful to Oscar Eustis because he did the play of Trinity Rep and he brought out 26 Armenians in the middle of the play and had them sing the national over and it made no sense but I appreciate it it's Armenian that's Oscar Eustis I'm telling you that sounds like a good collaboration that's a good one too that's Trinity Rep well let's open that's a great option and I'm going to open the conversation up to you guys do you have questions? I've often heard said that theater is the writer's medium probably but I guess I'm a little concerned by Christopher Sanger he sometimes vanishes the writer not from the Christian Christian sorry I just wondered like what part of the process would a writer's hearing it not be actually the unwelcome because it stresses people out and because and because sometimes sometimes you reach a point in rehearsal not near the beginning nor is it near the end it's usually somewhere in the middle where you need the freedom as a director to make mistakes and to not get it right and to wrangle with the actors in your own way to let them make some choices that you know they have in mind that the writer is not going to like to find your way into thorny parts of the material you may feel you need to solve that the writer hasn't solved and you don't have the conversation yet about that sometimes I don't know how to talk about a particular piece of the play that I don't think works but I don't know why until I kind of sit with it and let it be good and let it be bad and let my work be bad and you know probably terrible staging ideas and there's a point in that process which is usually just torture for the writer because they're just watching they're just watching their work be ruined not to write it it's a very specific experience with Tina Howe it was a big deal for me that I was going to do this particular play I loved it for a long time and it was a play that she had waited decades literally to have produced in New York and the stakes were very high for her it was very strange and shifting and there was a point in which I just had to kick her out in some sort of fury I think this is the moment where I need to work on this and then I want to show it to you after I've come up with something because I will want your feedback on it but I don't I can't build it with you here in the room it's just me out too much my stakes in serving what I thought she wanted was also hot and I didn't feel I felt her presence in a way that was about my neurosis probably more than anything she was doing but it was about you do go out and she was incredibly gracious about that and she's been around a lot about you she was like, yeah, I know this is the moment where I got it back I have to go away you tell me what it was I know she came back and said this piece of what you did she described one scene that I had directed exactly what she had in mind and she said you haven't taken the same responsibility for the other one that comes in the second act and she was right and I was bummed to hear it at the time but I knew she was right but I knew we were in the right place with it I wouldn't have been able to hear it if she had been there the whole time well are some of these problems because the writer just isn't being clear and the writer hasn't done their job no then we're playwrights no I pushed writers whether I was directing a play or producing a play or working as a director to clarify it's not about like anything goes and so when I'm directing a play it's at some point of my job to deliver what's there it's in conversation with the writer but you know I actually I don't and actually my question kind of ties into this last thing you touched on my question is in regards to rewrite and Leslie told us about that experience we had especially with the play that we're going to see part of tonight but how is rewriting factor into a good collaborative process is there a time is there a really good time for it is it wrong for a director to ask for rewrites you know just sort of the horror stories which I think maybe we know a lot about are there times when it's good you know other rules to abide by and in general like to cut it out or to bring in some of that I think that when you're working with a new play that you rewrite all the way through tech and then you rewrite all the way through previous I think some people do that and some people don't but I think that for instance David Ray had just had a play off Broadway that was directed by Joe Ronny and he rewrote and rewrote and rewrote and rewrote all the way through the whole thing and he's really glad he did he's glad he had that director he's glad he changed the play the way he changed it and and Nicky Silver went on Broadway and took out a whole monologue that was happening in his play so it's the way you learn about a play because plays are not meant to be read alone in a room you learn about the play as it comes to life so in the first playing sections it's interesting you can learn about your play from the first read around the table in rehearsal when actors are still just finding their way into it you can hear what's right and then how you hear it you experience as the play starts to grow and you just if you trust your environment it's great when you keep focusing and keep working toward it I mean I'm a fan of rewrites and my plays need them but others not so much you know Rich Greenberg writes a play it's in darn good shape right away he doesn't really have to do a lot of that but it's how you know yourself how you're inspired by what's around you to me I need to hear it over and over and over again and you adjust one thing in the beginning and you adjust something at the end because this affects that and also for a new play once you have an audience you really start getting the previews there's a good example I think of in this section the process you describe is also the reason why it's a little dangerous a lot dangerous to have too many previews in line with what we were talking about yesterday with Chris because I think writers unconsciously begin to rewrite the play to what works in a new environment with people I'm thinking of the play that I worked on together which is a play that functioned exceedingly differently around the table than it did apart its feet it was a play that had six characters each in three pairs essentially each of which were essentially in a discreet space and having overlapping storylines where they crossed over into different spaces but also had overlapping dialogue for most of the play so actor A in room 1 living room 1 over here was actually taking this cue from actor C over here in the bedroom not in the same house so they weren't able to hear each other and around the table that works swimmingly well because we just read it fast and it sings it always did once you actually add to that all the physicalness that was in that show which was built a lot and the traffic pattern and the simple difficulty of having to remember that stuff for an actor and having the actors of various abilities to line lines and that's what criticized any one of them but it was a play in which we could never see if it could work until they were cold but that took a long time for a couple of people to apply and that made it that hard to do but anyway as soon as you added all those physical elements rewrites needed to happen in order to keep the play moving in the way Leslie had always intended it to move which it did successfully around the table it needed she had to pay that attention to her in the process otherwise it would have been dead in a lie and it wasn't because the play didn't work it was because it didn't work I want to say something also about collaborations everybody's got to understand what their job is and I don't think that I have been guilty of this maybe I'm just walking it out but as a producer I don't give those directors if I have something to say I'll talk to the director if I have a relationship with the writer sometimes that happens but my direct channel is to the director and I do not interfere with the relationship between the director and the actors the director and the designers and I don't interfere with the director and the writer even when I have a relationship and that is so important because it is a path to disaster because you can't hear all of that static and make sense of it and the relationship from the director to the actors in particular is so vital I'm not saying that the writers don't talk to the actors but that's still kind of in the inner sanctum so and I'm saying that I realize that everyone here is a writer but if you get into that situation of pushing their way into where they don't belong as the writer you have the position and the right to say I think this might work better if we follow this channel and now on Broadway there are nine million producers all of whom think that they actually have produced the play or the music you do see this and all of a sudden there's Joe Blow with a checkbook going over to somebody in the show it's like what are you doing and another thing that I have established when I'm if I'm the lead producer or something I required everybody to send me the producers to send me their notes and writing because you have got I don't want to just sit there and listen to you sing you take the time you sit down you put in your writing and then I can read through it absorb it share with the director but I have to protect that play and the play we have to hire a movie from the other day there was a producer that was hired there were so many people about the title on that show it was one of the first notable ones a million people and there were so many people they had to have somebody to make sure that those people didn't show up and to make sure that those people were sending their feedback directly to producers so that they could filter it and process it but respectfully the people who were doing this the checks felt that it would be heard but because otherwise it would have been made and I have gotten good notes from people who are smart and even if they're not experienced I'm not saying that send me your notes delete them but you have to be judicious about it and be respectful of very delicate vulnerable nature and bring the play from what's on the page what we're going to really experience interference is negative in line with that how much theatricality do you expect the writer to survive or I don't know I'm directed by too much on the script and also one of the words I'm hearing from that would be a console is that still a popular idea that the creator of the directorial concept like the directorial concept the famous prince and so on a concept musical a concept show I mean I actually heard Boris Arnson say I was walking around Wall Street one day and I realized what a physically alienating city this is so I called Stephen into the company I'm sure twigs stories for stories too but I always find it I think what the writer's role is supposed to be is sort of prescribing the actuality I don't know if there is one but some writers take care of a lot and leave kind of a roadmap and others really don't others really do it open the attitude of interpretation and I think it's that I know has a totally different disposition towards what how much road they want to give the rest of the creators to kind of interpret and deliver something different to others you know others I don't know I don't really think people talking a lot about coming together with a concept so much do you know why people tell you that you're placing to be rectifying you what is it that you're doing that is making that oh you're saying too much stage direction that's what I thought I can respond a little bit to that too much stage directions and maybe you can tell me what you think about this I think the number of stage directions that are in place is kind of the thing to respond to that you know there was a time for instance Tennessee Williams just so much so so detailed so detailed in the stage direction so precise about what he wanted before the play even started we knew so much about it and then we moved into a period where it seemed all of a sudden more important and kind of cooler to have fewer stage directions and Harold Churchill wrote a play that had no stage directions at all and it was one of the things that I pointed out in all reviews as though it were a plus it's one of the things that I tell my students is that I think stage directions are sensitive to some sort of baddish evaluation and that it's up to you to bring in what you think you need in your play to be able to tell your story so I'm on the side of saying this is your choice if you think the story can be done I will also add that I know that when I put in a lot of stage directions it's one of the things I go back to when I finish my first draft and I think what can come out of the stage directions and go into the intention of the characters so that it doesn't need to be up here it can be between them somehow so it's one of the things I look at as my own map of how to develop a play further you know what I mean are there any final questions? I'm just thinking your first question conditions such a conditional word and maybe if you requested it in situations what would have been so unhappy how to and go there I've worked my way through it actually I know that quotation and I know that and speaking from a point of view as a director of a company of actors in which they work with writers but their work is not generally particularly writer centered in the way that we're talking about so she's I think we've discovered that that kind of applies to other loads of work but that comes directly out of her experience and no disrespect to Rambo you can't disrespect Rambo she really is one more thing in this morning's New York Times there's a review of some new play I don't know what it is but we had something like four authors and they used the terrible of things designed by community was it the women's project? was it like for the guys? I don't know I'm more than that there's a collaboration perhaps one of the most interesting I have a question John when you were putting together how was there any difference between when you gather the playwrights for motherhood Outlaw and the playwrights for standing out of serenity did you, I mean the one project started one way and the other project started completely different motherhood Outlaw started with an idea that Susan Rose and I had about a world that we wanted to explore and we wanted to bring in an ensemble of writers to explore this world and Lisa Peterson who directed it had a lot to do with shaping it and giving that piece a sense of a journey starting on ceremony started as a benefit it started in Los Angeles and there were I don't know how many writers weren't offered at that point and then it went to the New York Theatre Workshop and I have a long association with that theatre and I went in to see this benefit which was it was a benefit it was 3 hours long and 35 actors and you couldn't hear anything and it was a thrilling mess because it was really about something for me that I cared about it was really about equality it was really about I mean I understood from the first beat of that play that the world was gay marriage but the heartbeat was about civil rights the heartbeat was that if you can take away your rights you can take away my rights and it deeply spoke to me in a way that that was just so urgent and it had and I have also determined several years ago that every play that I was producing would have some kind of philanthropic arm so with motherhood out loud we benefit organizations that help families with standing on ceremony benefit organizations that work for marriage equality as I started to you know take that big collection of writers and saw for me that there was a 90 minute piece that could be just as effective and maybe a little easier to sit for 90 minutes for 3 hours and then I started to pull pieces so I started to look at it and say well what hasn't been said because a lot of pieces duplicated you know the ideas and that was frustrating sometimes because I would get submissions from really good writers but they were saying the same thing but I had to make a choice about what was going to fit into the puzzle of that evening so standing on ceremony is something that was almost presented to me as an idea and that it was my job to curate it develop it and help to make it an evening that would be fun and meaningful and I also had this idea that this is going to be like a party and when we were developing in Los Angeles we were in spaces that invited the opportunity after every performance we served wedding cake so and it inspired conversation and then also we had the opportunity for people to sign up to volunteer for various organizations we were working with but it was a delicate balance you know it was a stage a stage play it was fun and also you look at that collection of writers even though I couldn't get Chris to write a piece he would have fit beautifully into that groove but also when I reached out to Chris you know he said to me well I don't really have an idea you just have to respect that but someone that was just getting out of the way look at that list of beautiful writers and both mother put out loud and in standing on ceremony and that's when you just say okay do no harm I think that's all we have time for so let's thank our lovely panel standing on ceremony will be produced and formed here in South Florida next week at the Broward Center the theater here with the Broward Center to bring this down along with Joan and it runs from June 21st to 24th so we encourage you all of course to come and see it it is the South Florida and really South Eastern premiere of the week so anyway coffee break like I said and we'll come back together at