 Thank you guys for coming tonight. My name is Joey Stocks. I'm the new director of publications here at The Guild. This is my first time to coordinate and sort of moderate one of these, so I hope you'll be gentle with me. We've got a really interesting panel tonight. I'm so excited to have everybody here. And we're also live streaming. So we've got people watching us from, I have no idea where, other places. Probably some place to drive. I would hope. Great. Before I get started, let me just ask you to please silence anything that makes noise. Thanks. Appreciate it. And I'm going to just go ahead and bring our panelists in. The creator of title show and Silence the Musical, we have Hunter Bell, the divine sister and table of allergies fraught wife. We have Charles Bush. His plays include She Stooped to Comedy and The Argument, David Greenspan, writer of Yellow Man and Horse Streams, Pulitzer Fineless, Dale Orlandersmith. Thanks. Thanks for coming. So what I'm going to do is I'm actually going to get the conversation started. We're going to chat for about, oh, I don't know, about an hour-ish. And then we'll open up the board of questions. We do have a Twitter audience this evening, too. So we'll be taking some questions via Twitter. Gosh. I know. It's so fancy. Yeah. What is now? So I'm curious. I think I feel like I know the answer to this, but maybe I don't. Did you all start as actors and then find your way to writing, or was it the other way around? I guess I'll start. Yeah. I went to college, and I studied performance. And I have a great musical theater from Webster University. And that's what I knew about theater. I mean, I'd always kind of written as a kid and in high school and in place of my brother. We would act out my end placement. I consider that writing. They're excellent, excellent shows. But yeah, but I came at it as a performer, and then kind of crossed off the other side. Yeah. Yeah, I wanted to be an actor. I just wanted to be on stage. And I always wrote. I always did, but never really think that was going to be what I would do. And I just wanted to act. And really, it was a combination, I think, of going to Northwestern. And I was a theater major. And I was never cast in the play. And I was just too weird, you know? And I was never cast in the play. And I was from New York City. So it made me a little pragmatic. And I thought if I'm not being cast in a university theater, I may have a hard time in show business. And then at the same time, this is in the early mid-70s, there really was kind of a golden age of experimental theater. And I began to see more and more experimental theater. And I saw Charles Ludlam and Jeff Weiss and the performance group. And it really opened up a whole world of possibilities of creating my own kind of theatrical world. I was trained as an actor at the University of California at Irvine. And when I came to New York, I took acting in the course of different studios. And so I did my training as an actor. I think, in fact, Charles and I were doing the same bill once. And I lived with a little lounge. And there they are. Yeah. It's late. And it's Avenue B. And in 10 years, I'm like, yeah. We were on that. I think we did. Yeah, I love you. Probably. And I had the late show. And we all come out in the East Village. I'm trained as an actor. Again, training's an actor. But also I began to write when I was a teenager. And so I was a teenager. And I studied at New York Academy when I was a teenager. I was in high school. And then what had happened was I saw. We had to do all these stupid little things in high school. And I saw Short Eyes, which was with my Miguel Pinedo. And Miguel Pinedo had a little family, which is what he formed after he did Short Eyes. And Joe Papp snatched him up. And I became part of the New Year and we can see when I was a teenager, when I was on 6th Street. So I like that sort of between there and the American Academy. So that's what happened. I was writing stuff. Nice. So I would like to know how you all work. Since you're actors, do you start to work on a piece from a character's point of view? Do you imagine a character first? Do you imagine a character for yourself first? Or do you begin, say, with a plot? And then sometimes you end up with a role for yourself. Sometimes you don't. Just curious how that works, since you've all performed your own work as well. Yeah, I'll start. Well, a lot of the work I do, specifically like the title show and then another piece I'm working on right now, my collaborators like we play ourselves. And so we, you know, the title show was kind of to use a Linda Berry work or an autobiography. So it was taking the journey of the process of creation and kind of filtering through. We didn't work on the documentary. We wanted to do a show. And we actually didn't set out to put ourselves in it. We just, my friends and I, we're reading it together. You know, as it started and then we were like, we didn't think like anybody. So we'll just kind of, and as the process, that kind of started with ideas. And then the meta aspect came about of it and it became more interesting that we play ourselves and thought, plus I wanted to do it. You know, we were interested in performing and we trained and that interests me to do that as well. And then work for myself, I think it just starts kind of with an idea, like with an idea like what I want to say, like what's knocking out my door, what's interesting to me. And that's, I mean, that's the reason to do it. I think kind of because you get to say what you want to say, you know, he's telling you, unless it's a work for hire job, but usually the work for hire things for me is creating stuff for other people. But when it's work for myself, it kind of starts with an idea of something that I want to say because that's my opportunity to do it. Well, the plays that I write for myself tend to be sort of theatrical film genre, parody, motor or something of it. And so there's certain element of fantasy to it and of me thinking, oh, wouldn't it fun to be barbostamic in a pre-code Oriental melodrama? Wouldn't it be fun to be Mother Superior in a, you know, a 60s religious comedy? So there's a certain element of just fantasy fulfillment of what kind of fun role would I like to play and how fortunate I am that I'm in a position that I actually can get these things done. And sometimes too, there's certain challenges as an actor that I want to give myself. For instance, I was in a crazy situation where I actually had the possibility of writing a movie and getting a little indie film and getting it done. So it was a wonderful opportunity. And I thought I really, I sort of admire the real minimalist film acting where there's almost nothing physically done that's just through thought. And I really wanted to have that experience. So I wrote myself a part and wrote this film that was called Very Serious Person to give myself that opportunity to really try to do that kind of acting. And so yeah, so all those elements come into it. Yeah, but it just begins with an idea. Sometimes the idea is an expression of some feeling I have or some projection of myself and the play will take off. I always act in my own play. And then sometimes it's just an idea that's not related to myself as a performer. I've just written a play loosely based on the life of an early motion that was talking film actress Helen Twelfthrees. And so that, the idea there was just a little bit of what I knew as her life. Now, I kind of found my way into this play as a performer, not in that role, but. So you're not gonna play Helen Twelfthrees? No, I don't play Helen Twelfthrees. Can I play Helen Twelfthrees? No, I don't play Helen Twelfthrees. Fuck later. No, I don't play Helen Twelfthrees. And it varies, it varies. And I mean, I always, I always, I don't lack ideas. I always have something that's in my head and a lot of the time they do lack a lot of the work. What's important for me is to, and it's hard for me, actually it's not hard for me, it's part for all the people we set. It is that compartmentalization. I write about all kinds of people. And so it's not just a black play or a woman's play or any of that stuff. It's about writing. Like one of my friends was here, Jack, it's like I'm writing something for him to do. I've written for stuff for him to do. It's important to sound so corny, but it's actually applicable to be a citizen of the world. And so that's, I hear music all the time when I'm writing, like this new piece, Horst Street. There's a lot of, you know, there's a lot of Bowie. And there's some Bowie and there's some Iggy, but I'm a huge rock fan and I love Iggy and the students and all that stuff. So that stuff is in there too. So it's a matter of me getting it out quick enough. That's what my thing is. Interesting. Dale, I mean, I know you've got a new piece coming up. It's a solo work. Yeah. And so I'm curious how that came about. Did you- Black and Blue Boy's Broken Man? Yeah, did you set out to make that a solo piece for yourself or did it just- It just kind of happened. Black and Blue Boy's Broken Man, that's a co-pro between Berkeley and New Goodman, where I play all men that have been abused. Cause we don't think, we don't consider men being abused. Yeah, so. I'm curious how did you decide to do that it's a solo piece as opposed to writing it as an ensemble piece? I love the, well, androgyny, and human stuff. Years ago I worked as a counselor with Runaway Kids and one thing that you would hear about, or people didn't want to talk about, was the fact that boys got abused. We're just recently, and again the stereotype is, well, gay men get abused, this is of course, and obviously it's like a good boy gets abused, he must be gay, or the person that did it is gay. And this whole thing, this influx now of women, which has always been, sorry ladies if you get mad at me for saying this, is that when an older man seduces a young woman, they say it's molestation. The other way around it becomes initiation. So that's the reverse, sexism. So I just wanted to, just as a person on the planet, I just wanted to look at that and just look at aspects of sexuality and stuff, because we all have the androgyns. Again, I think also what we describe as androgyns in and of itself is sexism. If a man is sensitive, we say he's in touch with his female side, if a woman is smart, he's in touch with his male side, that's okay. So I just wanted to, just in terms of exploring that kind of stuff. My question is, I'm turning it to, it's my talk today. Yes. Yes. It is, what makes you decide in a creative process to make something a solo piece or an ensemble piece since you do both? I wanted to be a woman inside of that maleness if that makes any sense. And also as someone who is not, I suppose conventionally female of anyways, to also do that. I'm not saying that it's necessarily male, but I'm not conventionally female either. So that's the, it's just, it's just interesting. There's something to come, I've written a solo work as well and I do, it's not right play for other female that I act with other people. Hey, just kind of in the process, you kind of, at some point you begin to either explore or determine, but it's something you'll do on your own, even if it's multiple characters. Or it's something that really, really is meant to be played with other actors. I started out as a solo performer at first. Oh, gosh. First eight years, or eight years of my career as a solo performer. And it was just extraordinary training for me. And I'm actually gonna go back, we're gonna solo piece again after many, many years. But, and the pieces that I used to do were multi-character, I love narrative so much that they were, it was a challenge to try to write. It was as if I was doing the whole play, but playing all the parts and not use narration and just go into scene. And you know, at Northwestern, they had a big program called the Interpretation Department, which was working on reading the loud prose fiction. I took certain techniques from that and then developed and made it more theatrical for myself. And it was a fascinating experience. And eventually, I have to say, there was something kind of marvelous about when I put together this ensemble to be able to just play the one part and have the rest of the cast play the parts I didn't want to play. And that was it. Hunter, I wonder if you'd talk to us about how you think acting informs your writing. Your acting background in forming that. Well, I think it just gives you a perspective of what else has to be done. I mean, I don't know any other way, so I can't speak about how I know what I know. But I do feel like when I write a piece that I'm not in, I feel like I do have empathy a little bit of like, and I want it, I definitely have a point of view and strong opinions about what's done. But I also want an experience, and it's been my experience, that I do want it to be collaborative. I want to, I'm interested in bringing out the best in what an actor does and what they bring to the table and writing to that and lifting that up and elevating it. I think about right now, like the silence of musicals downtown, there's an actor, Jen Harris, who plays the lead and Jen's extraordinary. And I'm grateful for her, you know, I'm like, so she's amazing. And so it's kind of like, let's get in the pool and play together. And I would be a fool as a writer to be like, saying exactly like this, and I'll hear none of it, you know? And you know, I'm interested in that collaboration, you know, and with her, of her to be like, bring an idea to the table and let's mold that together a little bit. So, and I think I have some empathy about that because that's experience I would want to have as an actor. You know, I want to, I want people to have a great creative collaborative experience. Sometimes there are times I want to say like this, but you know, I do, as an actor, I kind of think about what experience do I want to have, you know, in the room, in the process. And so I think it kind of gives me awareness of that. And also then the day-to-day stuff, the, you know, what it feels like to wait tables all day long and then have a day of auditions and projection and all those things in your body that is your life experience as an actor. I understand that sometimes that comes into the room and so hopefully there's some empathy and support for some of that in terms of the process too. I think it's helpful, I think probably all of us, that it's helpful in a way when you're an actor and writing for actors, we know rhythm. You said that we had an actor's language. I think we have that in our favor. I've had wonderful experiences, of course, writing not only for myself, but for specific people. You know, I've worked closely with Julie Halston over the 11 parts for her and I know every consonant and vowel sound that sounds funny with her Comac Long Island accent and it's so much, and I just have, drive such pleasure from hearing her voice in my head and then of course when we get together to work on these things, since she's not a mind reader, I have to kind of tell her how to do Julie Halston every time after 25 years, you know, and talk about her in the third person too. But no, this is how Julie would say it. And I sort of say it along, talk like her and then she imitates me doing her. So that's kind of, we sort of start from there and then she takes it to another level but I do that with a number of people. Lately I've just been more and more writing to the same people and I find it great, great satisfaction, pleasure. Yeah, so, Hunter, I'm curious, so when you talk about collaboration, I mean immediately I think about title of show and how that script came about and since it feels very much like everyone has their own distinct voice, how collaborative was that process? Well, definitely, I mean, we delineated the hats of like, I take the ownership of writing the book because I was doing the happy lifting and I'd be the one at night trying to put the greens together and but we would start kind of with a scene or something and I would work closely with my writing partner, Jeff Bowen, who's the personal assistant. Wherever the scene started, we would kind of create something. Very often then we would bring it to the table with our co-stars and collaborators, two actresses, Susan Blackwell and Heidi Glickenstaff and we would read it, we would just kind of read it and then we would talk about it and then I'm open again to say like, sometimes the thing was like, go get a glass of water and it felt more comfortable to be like, go get that glass of water, just so it felt comfortable in their body. I'm open to that and again there are times too though when we tried one time to put a tape recorder in the room and tape recorder itself's talking about art and it was a horrible failure because we're all trying to be important and interesting for the sake of the tape and trying to say and I'd listen like two seconds but people were like, it was so full of crap because we're just, I'm gonna say something important to the tape and we'll capture it in this play and it was terrible. And so it was just, again, like kind of with Charles like I, they're also my friends and I know their strengths and talents so I tried to write for them and lift them up and know what they bring but in the collaboration thing it's again, how to stay open and we'd have that work session and I'd go back and tweak it and bring the pages back the next day and talk about it. So, yeah, that's a little bit how I've worked a little bit. Yeah. Did it get dangerous? Because sometimes I had a piece that was doing out in an L.A. called Lones. That little case. It's a heavy duty. It's written like Washington, yeah? And the way I wrote it, it's about incest. Did this woman as well as her, can't say her name, but she was somebody else, molestered kids, so they meet in this room and you know, they have to turn around. And one of the actresses said, well, this, you know, this line did so, I mean, I didn't even know this broad, you know? So, you know, start jumping up and down, you know? But somebody at one point said, would you consider changing the line? And I said, there's no way on God's good that I would do that. So is there, this is what I was asking. So is there a danger sometimes? Because if I'd listened to this woman because she was so uncomfortable with the piece, would you, like, have you ever altered work? With, well, with the title show collaboration was a little different because those are kind of my core collaborators that I return to a lot. And so there's a different trust, there's a different communication in that tighter circle. I do know what you're saying, sometimes too, it is a little like if you crack the window open careful, just then, oh yeah. And I'm like, well, I was thinking this and like, so you do have to be careful about it. I think sometimes too about, and, and, And actors do just say, you know, I'm trying to put, you know, most actors, dare we say, only think about their part, you know, and their, their, their line, not the other, you're not sure about it, yeah. That's right. You need to say that. Yeah, so it can, the answer is, can it be dangerous in a particular collaboration? It's not, and there's a lot of communication with therapy to kind of protect that kind of work that we're doing to kind of elevate so all those rise. But we get into it, yeah. Absolutely, I do think that actors, the trend sometimes is that a play is like a screenplay or something where it's just kind of a loose thing that, you know, and actors feel free to, you know, a lot of actors feel free in trying to make something sound natural. You know, they'll edit lots of m's and your nose and things like that. And I'm actually teaching an acting class after the first time and I'm there. It's a, you know, Kevin Hepburn as Maria Callas, you know, they're very thoughtful, they've got ideas, you know. And I, oh, I said something very grand the other day. I said, I said, Ed, I said, you must, I couldn't believe I said it. I said, you must treat the commas and periods the same as if they were a noun and a verb, you know, but I thought it was true because, you know, we believe, there's been a lot of time from there where that comma went and the new thought begins. And an actor might just, oh, I'm trying to make it sound natural, so I'll add the an and the line together or change extremely to vary, not realizing that first the next line, the next actor has to vary, you know, and it's bad playwright because they only think about their lines. I agree with the whole, I mean, one of the things that Tyler Schultz was varying, people, like, it's very conversational. It seemed like it was happening over the top. Everything that was said on that play, you know, was on that page and was crafted very carefully with a lot of timing and serveery and or, you know, comma, kind of thing. And I, that's what I wanted, you know, and that's what had been worked on in that because it meant something. So I agree with that. But then a play that you perform and are done, I've even directed some of the plays I've been in. And then, I once met a young German director who told me it was one of the greatest experiences working on that play. So I said, well, how did you do it? We played one called Dead Mother, surely not all in vain. And it's very specific in the play. The actor disguised as his mother is not in drag. So I said, well, I just really had a wonderful costume to be in, you know, I said, really? And he cut all the other scenes that we thought were unnecessary. He did it in a box. One of the most incredible experiences of my life. And I said, well, how do you usually work in German? How do you work with a playwright? Oh, we do not like to play with it. We find this guy disturbing just the work of the artist. Oh, you actually told that verbatim. That's what he said to me. Oh my God. I left his, it was nice. He told me he wanted me to do a lot of my work and I left his appointment and feeling so downhearted. So it isn't just the actor to do it, it's when people get a hold of it out. Of course, yeah. I mean, I've heard someone recently, yellow man, they put in four characters opposed to the two kids that it's a long story, where it's, you know, these two children and it takes away from what it's about because, you know, these two people are talking about their impressions of family and you guys coming from their point of view. And I'd heard about this and I just went ballistic, you know? I mean, and it's, you know, how did someone do that? How did someone do that? And also, and again, we were asking about, like, you know, in terms of work, I, like I said, hear music all the time, like with horse dreams, like I would have to be, hopefully someone else, you know, some of you will see it. It's like 11, see 9, 9, 9, 9, 9, 9, 9, 9, 9, 9, 9, 9. I'm, like, if I say to somebody, like with this piece, you have to really, again, you have to know Roger Moll and the actor that I'm working with. It's a wonderful actor named Michael Lawrence. And so Michael was working on one of the pieces and he goes, I get it there. He goes, it's kind of like Keith Richards solo with Stray Cat, Wooloo's meets something. And I forgot what he said and I said, that's exactly right. So you keep, so even the musicality in terms of that, it has to be there. Or maybe I'm hearing a version or maybe I'm here. It could be so eclectic. So if you, one can't just roll over somebody's work, like that's horrible. That's awesome. That's awesome. That's awesome. That's awesome. That's awesome. You never even got the rights. Oh my God. You never got that. Well, you find out, and then also you find out after the fact, you know, I was, I played Psychic Beach Party and it was 90 minutes, no intermission. That was the way I was written, you know. And all kind of builds and then I guess some production and, you know, googling, you know, middle of the night and I didn't read some review. And I guess they put it in two acts and some local critics said, well it's clear that Charles Bush doesn't know how to write an act break. I'm gonna kill him. I'm gonna kill him. I'm gonna kill him. Yeah, yeah. At the risk of sounding clever, I'm wondering if you could talk about the reverse. How does your writing inform your acting? Or does it? Well, only sometimes for me, you know, I'm consciously or not giving myself a particular challenge. You know, there's something I want to work on. I mean, sometimes it's a technical thing of switching characters very quickly, of playing multiple characters. I did a play called The Myopia where I played 17 people in one scene. It's all these politicians in the back room. And well, then there's a recent play where I wrote a couple back to where you are that I acted in. It was more the emotional trajectory that I didn't notice at first, but as I began to write it, that became very important to me. That gave me an interesting challenge, one that I had never had before. So is something that I think is a matter of it over to a challenge to do something that I haven't done in the past? Yeah, yeah. Because even when I do these sort of genre parody plays, there's, I come to it from a very emotional place, you know, and I like changing tone and I like being real outrageous and then going for some very real emotion. And so it's, in a way, it's how marvelous it is for us when we write our own roles to write things we know that we're another actor. It has to find the emotional connection. I, you know, there was this scene in The Divine Sister in this, you know, outrageous movies group play but where my character finds the mother that she never knew and I wrote it with a very emotional thing. You know, my mother died when I was seven. It's a very present search of mothers, a very alive thing of me. And I wanted to present myself with that challenge every night of having to go to a painful place and use it fully. And, you know, in the third times that I was never, why the hell am I, you know, picking up this scab, you know, that I'm glad I did it. I mean, I enriched me as an actor. Yeah, I think that also too, like, I mean, the part I went to the writing room and I was attracted to it and bring my own stuff because I was more confident in that. When I did other people's stuff, I was, I perpetual people pleaser and I was like, am I getting it right or somebody did it before? Am I gonna do it as good even if it's we'll park right in Oklahoma? You know, it doesn't matter what I was like, but I knew if I did my own stuff, I was like, well, only it's right or wrong. If I say it's right or wrong, it is what it is, you know, like I made it up so I'm gonna judge of what that is and so it made me more confident, I think. And so when I return to, and I don't do it much, but if I go to something else that somebody else wrote, I think I'm more confident just in my own skin as a person, as a human being, as a performer, just all kind of maybe more confident moving through the world and less scared, less afraid. Oh, but when you're working with a director and they're guiding your performance, they might ask you to think you're not doing right, even in your own work. Oh yeah, absolutely, absolutely. And we, I mean, I trust very much my director, collaborator, Michael Brest, is at my outside eye and he got trusted to push me in places that I wouldn't go or you know that I'm like, nobody wants to see that and I'm like, actually that's exactly what we need to see here, you know, and really push the, similar to my childhood, like these levels of something outrageous and too, I think, you know, I'm like, let's just make them laugh and Michael would be like, and now let's make somebody feel something too. So the outside eyes push me to things that I wouldn't normally do around me towards. Yes, funny, because I would say, you know, last night, you know, the houses, you know, I was talking to a couple of people about this. You know, Latticeck is a great theater, you know, they're really great, but it's, you know, but the house has been kind of small for whatever, you know, because they don't have a lot of money and we advertise this stuff. And yes, this is what it is. And last night, two kids were like, front boys, they were like, there's their money. Then this woman walked out and every insecurity that I ever had just came because I was telling my friend that, because you know what I almost did today? I almost called in sick because I was so upset by that because I was like, what was going through my head is what did I do wrong? And the thing is, maybe I did something right because it's not supposed to be about people pleasing. You know, it's supposed to be about honesty. And you know, so I think when people, not in droves now, because that hasn't happened, but it's like when people walk out or when people kind of look at you sideways or on the frat boys and going, you know, you know, maybe, you know, I did do something right. Because at this point now I really, I want to, because I can see myself just primarily, you know, just being a writer. And the stuff that I want to write is really just, I think off the hook, I mean, I mean that in a very good way. And a horse dream is very, very unsafe for me. So I think when something is uncomfortable and it's uncomfortable for me that that is good. I'm frightened to speech myself, but that's a different, it's a different one. We never know if people are walking out either too, you know, you know, the macinacolitis, if you know what I mean, if you're chicken personally, you know. And it's just, you just don't mind going to take you to a place. Okay, you know, the divine sister, you know, the stage, they, it was a time of those years, several playoffs and then they added these cues in front, so literally the front row was their knees are against the stage, you know. And of course, at one point I had to sit down very grandly right down here and somebody's man's face right here, and as I sat down, oh! You know what I mean? You know, but since then you see these people, you know, they're all lit up in the front, and oh, there's this one woman, just the whole place, she was just sitting there like this. You know, the aggravating and the cast, we're all just kind of like, is she insane? What is she, you know, how could she be so rude? You know, I mean, it's an assumption and there's no intermission, so you know, she was just kind of stuck there. And, you know, the assumption was that she hated it so much that I said, you know, she, poor thing, she might have, you know, had a migraine. Yeah. And I had nothing to do with this at all, or it might have been that she hated it, like, but you know, you know, it's like, you know, but you know, I don't know. There's a famous story of Martha Shlama, she was a cabaret singer, and she was giving a performance and somebody in the front row at the table kept going like this during her entire performance. And she was so obsessed, and she went backstage, she said, I gave a terrible performance to her friend, and they agreed, was it true? He was this person in the front row, and she's talking, and then there's a knock on the door. She opened the door, and that guy is there, he goes, Miss Shlama, you win. You never know, you never know. Well, you know, there's a lot of the experience, too, where it seems like it's such a quiet house, and now people can say, oh, I laughed so hard. I think this is an aspect when you perform some stuff, too, it's the double whammy of vulnerability, because you know, if it's somebody else, you'd be like, at least the safety net, like, I'm awesome, but this writing's terrible, or like, the writing's awesome, but the actor's messing up. When it's you, it's the double exposure, you know? It's so, it's all you, it's all you. So I think there is a heightened sensitivity of this or whatever, of like, they need everything about me. There's also a heightened sense of, there's also a heightened sense of focus, because unlike another writer or the director, you don't have to sit there in the audience, especially during press previews, worrying, because you're concentrating on your performance. Oh, yeah, I much, I do prefer that, like, just being in it, and then you take that ride. You control, you're in control, it's when you're not in it, and you watch the, or you watch the press performance, and what are they doing, you know? The cast is like, oh, no, oh, no. You guys read the views? What? Everyone. I do not tell after, if I'm in it, not tell after, because, or when I feel that's, you know, like I kind of say, do you know the time, should be really, really? I wrote it for, I read it for title show, because it was fodder for the actual piece, like it was feeding into it, but I dipped a toe like a late night self-googling, you know, whatever, and it is that thing of like, don't pick it up, don't put it down, because, you know, something to be like, just whatever thing, it just longs on to you, so. I was reading that, I think, a thing of, Son, I was talking about criticism, there was a little snippet of that, and it was really great, too, I thought it was just, kind of, about being careful to pick it up, and the one thing I loved about, too, is that the trading part is it does, it gets in your way, it can get in your way, and get in your way for when you go to sit down, that the keyboard and the pad, and trying, just trying to free that up, so. I mean, so yeah, that was, that's funny, because what happened was, I've read some stuff for horse news, and the reviews have been mixed to good, but there's a few scathing ones, right? That's always going to be, and somebody, and this is the thing that, oh man, you know, I kind of like, went kind of, well, why are we doing this? And so what happened was someone had said, you know, from the days of her doing solo work, you know, then we hadn't seen her in New York since, how do you call it, since yellow, man, I've been working in the regional, she didn't live up to her potential. Ooh, oh my, wow, I went, oh man. Wait, does she know something that you don't know about your future? Yeah, right, thank you, that's a good way to put that, right? So I was like, oh no, you know, and it was like, that was, I mean, all the good stuff went, the bad thing is what I focused, but also again, too, it's like it has to be invention and reinvention, and I'm trying to get to a head, I've said this repeatedly, it's like, not to read all that stuff, but to a certain degree, as a writer, you do have to read it. As a human, you're going to, you know. Oh, and if anyone, you certainly, That is, that's like, I, if I catch them in the streets, you know, you can't know them. You know them, you know them. And even when you're trying to avoid a memory and trying to avoid it, you can't because it's the real world. And so they, if it's good, they'll put it in the front. If it's bad, nobody says anything to you, so you know, that's how I'm just like, hey, somebody said anything, I'm like, well, now I know who you know, you have to figure it out. And then when you don't read it, the whole, when you hear it, you just try to get a sense out of somebody wrote this really vicious thing. Somebody says, I'm sorry. Well, you know, the review I write my head is worse than anything I've ever done. I read it like John Simon used to always give to me. And so, you know, finally, I always have to read the God damn thing myself, you know. Oh, this isn't as bad as I, that's what I wrote him, he was thinking, you know. It's like a passage to be panned by John Simon. I was like, yeah, just get in that clover. He's not doing too well at all. But I don't know, I guess I'll try not to, try not to pick it up from my head, you know. Very, very hard. I know it's streaming. Of course it's like the times of year because I don't want to, you know, I want to know where I stand. I want to know, you know, am I going to be here next week? Am I going to, you know, I don't want to know. But isn't it something that we'd be lying on? I mean, it, that, do you, here we go. It's like, I think sometimes certain, this isn't I saying that American audiences in the summer, please, I mean, I'm saying that. It's amazing how certain works, say, may die here, but does well abroad. Are you having that experience? Yes. Because I think to a certain degree, not always, people look for justice opposed to truth in a lot of ways. Just using this piece as an example, someone that said, I don't like, I don't like the people in this. It's like their, their parents are not positive role model. And I hate that kind of thinking. You know, I think the role, I mean, our role is to, you know, to tell stories. You know, there's the beginning, the middle, the end, the story, the conflict, the resolution. And if you're looking for that kind of justice, I think an audience has to be open to the fact that there are different kinds of truths. It may not be your individual truth, doesn't mean that it's not, that it's invalid. And sometimes when something, like all this crap that's going on, say, when I was reading all that stuff, it's, it's really cool that I wouldn't get, you know, out of my own way. Maybe within some of those bad reviews, that there's some truth to it. And I have to, you know, be able to look at that, you know, and, you know, look at it clearly. They could, they could very well be true to what that is. Some of it is brutal, some of it is ugly, and some of it is like, you know, but also what is true? What, what is possible truth? So I guess sometimes, sometimes I think like with, you know, here in the States, what we tend to do is we want this kind of, we want to end on a certain kind of high all the time. And, you know, it doesn't, it doesn't work that way. I actually have learned, had certain insights from reviews that, you know, after I've calmed down, you know, it might be quite a long time afterwards. It could be just, you know, a few weeks after the show's over, or it could be a couple of years afterwards. And I've gone back and I find often that there are critic senses a problem, but doesn't know how to pinpoint it. And then I, to a certain point, maybe from my, I can interpret it myself as, oh, what he thinks is the end of the, probably the end of the play is actually something more complex than that. And often I've done, actually, almost every time, when I've put together the same old French acting edition after the New York production is over, or whatever, I usually do a rewrite on it. Because of what I've learned from doing the play or, you know, having a time. I'm wondering, do we have any questions in the audience? Yeah. My question is about hats. Is there a time in the process, especially when you're in the thick of rehearsals, when you can switch from writer to actor, from actor to writer entirely? Do you ever want to? Well, I do know that at some point you have to take the writer hat off. You have to, because you have to pull the scene and it's the most difficult thing to do out on that of, especially when you're writing a, if it's other people in it too, because that first few times, you know, I would be across them like, two things happen either like, oh, I gotta, I have to remember to change that, or that's not playing right now. So immediately I'm not in it. So I'm not in it. So I do have to, you know, you have to, I gotta do the action, set it aside, and be like, I'm in this, it is what it is, when we get into rehearsal, or afterwards we'll have a discussion, but the scene has to play, and we have to move it to its fullest to realize it, because if I'm half in and half out, I'll never learn anything about it. So I do have a distinction about like, of like, okay, respect whatever the page is, trying to get out of my head as much as I can and just play the scene and enjoy it. Yeah. Yeah, I find I take the hat on and off numerous times in the rehearsal. Yeah, I don't know, it's not really an issue for me. I can get into the scene and then, or even like in, you know, it's been, I was a wonderful thing being the writer of the actor in a long run, when we were doing Divine Sister, it was way into it. There was a line that just, I was always bugging me, this wasn't worth it. It got a laugh occasionally, but not enough, and it's like, oh no, I'm gonna cut that. It's a nice feel to have the authority to just, I call it writer. Yeah, cut that, so I'm about to take that out. Yeah, but yeah, I find it just, I can just throw myself into it as the actor and then pull out a second and see, because then often when you're in rehearsal, you have to do it quickly, right? Go home, work on it, have it in the next day for the other actors, and yeah, I think it's more easy than you would think. See, it's not easy for me, that's the whole thing. It's not, I was, I mean, because actually, like I said, Ladlestick is a real cool event. I was like saying, at one point, can you just, there just has to be the actor, you know? Because I was working with Ordnett, and he knows, he pretty much knows what I wanna say. He doesn't write my thing for me, but no. It's excruciating for me, in fact. You know, because I wanna get to a point where I have this, okay, let's just get this, because I'll say, let's get this shit out the way now. I don't have to do this anymore, right? I can just act now, right? Dale, he'll say to me, Dale, well I know you're gonna kill me, but you need to, like, can you think about adding him? So it's not that easy for me. I envy you, it's not, it's not that easy. You know, it's fine. But finally, we kinda go, okay, okay, you know. It's not good. What amuses me is after all these years, I've been doing this for about 35 years, and I still get, or people like, we're gonna do a reading of a new piece. Somebody, producer, somebody to say, or if I'm working with a new director, oh, do you think you'll be able to hear the play if you're also reading it? I've been doing it for 35 years. I hear it actually better. Oddly enough, I find myself, I think I almost hear it when I'm acting, doing the reading, and I play my part with all of you. I actually think I hear the play better than if I was just sitting there. I sense, oh, you know, I sense how the character's yakking, I'm talking too much, like I'm not. You know, to talk too much, or the rhythm is off, it's slowed down, and somehow you're in the world. I hear it better. I agree, I agree completely. Yeah, oh my god, I'm gonna be just swinging out the watch all the time. It's a very porous process, and you move in and out. It's kinda seamless, I think, at times, and there's nothing, you know, divided in a way. Do you direct your own pieces? I direct my own solo pieces. I was gonna look at it, but I used to direct my own plays. I've been collaborating with people who are rarely with these soloists. No, I just thought, I thought she could do a better job directing it than I could. I think one's a little static. We just became very fond of each other. We worked with each other on a couple of things. I gave it, like, a back to where you are, and she did this beautiful job with it, and then. I can enjoy working with her. So do you direct your own pieces? I've done it, but I don't have a good third eye. I've never done it. Because I can allow myself to get away with indulgence. You know, I can milk an audience, but I like that, I like the applause, I got it, which is very bad, it becomes at the expense, excuse me for literally calling, at the expense of the text. So I envy people who can do it, because there was a show that I saw years ago, and this happens a lot, say, within the one person genre. What began to happen was there was a lot of autobiographical work that came out, came out, and came out. And most people in this room, everybody in this room has an interesting story, but it doesn't necessarily mean it's a piece of theater. This theater is about language, right? And this one person that I'm talking about, I saw the show, solid hour 15, fantastic. Next thing you know, hour 45, all this, a lot of, you know, interacting with the audience, and this person also directed themselves, and also worked on this show too long. And it relied on audience milking. So I could see where I have the potential to do that. And the few times that I've done that, it was about please like me, opposed to, you know. I've never directed a play, or you know, it's written nothing with me in it. And then times I think, oh gee, I wouldn't mind just answering only to myself, but I've always really got so much out of the director as dramaturge. I could do without the dramaturge as dramaturge, but the director as dramaturge, I've really enjoyed all my plays and benefited from that enormously, you know. And then the questions that a good director asks you, is the questions that could get you to think, you know, I've just gained immeasurably from all of that. Missed that, terrible, I really wouldn't miss it. Yeah, I write pretty much for myself as well, and I know all of you do, that I've belonged to several playwriting groups over the years, and I safely say that there's a built in bias in many of the groups about a writer performing their own work, they're just that set against it. And so even if you wrote it for yourself, you cannot do it on your own within this group because you need to be out here to hear it. And I wonder, I agree with you that sometimes you can hear it better having performed it. Not everybody works that way. I wonder how you get around something like this with these groups that refuse to let you do your own work. I'm trying to do it for myself. I think it's a very, you're adamant about it. I wrote it for myself, and I'm gonna, if you don't like it, dump it to the damn plate. Do you need the group? Well, I experience it with many groups. They just refuse to let the writer... No, but do you need to be in a group? I need to be in a group because I appreciate the feedback that I get from the group in terms of material itself. But I wonder if you've ever experienced any kind of prejudice about you being in your own work. I don't know, I think it's why I was drawn in great mode of work because I got to do whatever the hell I wanted to do with people. I made it up. I mean, I was kind of railing against not being able to, I wanted to say what I wanted to say and how I wanted to say it. I didn't want anybody to tell me differently. And so I, I don't know, I wouldn't tell you. The next time somebody says that to you, tell them this is a great line I wish I worked with. Tell them I said, I have the right to invade my own privacy. I have the right to invade my own privacy. The person who wrote that was Anne Sexton. I have the right to invade my own privacy. I think it's so cool. You just have to say too, just that I conceived this play for myself there, just totally entwined. I can't separate it and this is the way the play is going to be at its best is just with me playing this part that I wrote for myself. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, if you start performing your own work with you and you demonstrate the ability to bring something great, strong to your own work, generally people who want to produce your work want you to be in it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You establish yourself as a skilled performer in your own work. Generally speaking, the people who come up to you sometimes you come as a package. Right. Yeah, they want you to be in it. But I don't think groups need any rules, frankly. I mean, a friend of mine is just having a play done and he wrote, he's not acting at it, and he won't let him to rehearsal. And I can't stand it, it's awful. I don't think it would scare a book out of me. I can't stand the rule of it. And he had no say in the cast. It's a very small theater, but a lot of modalities I have a question. I was going to ask, I think also in terms of groups, what is it that the individual wants from the group, too? Because I also think that we have to, one thing I'm beginning to learn now, for instance, whether it be a director or anything else, specifically director, just recently I began to really know what directors can do with my work. I also think in terms of when you go to a group or when you go to a school or whatever it is, what is it that you're looking for? What is it that you need? I mean, the questions that, I think, your own individual questions also serve you? Well, had anybody who writes anything know these relies on a somewhat astute group of people to give them accurate observations and criticism? Are you sure there was two? I would typically, that's what I'm trying to say to you. I mean, it's the actor's studio. Well, I got mixed feelings about that. But the point is, you expect a certain standard to be upheld, okay, because of them. But this is not just about them. Almost every group that I come across has that same logic, which is, you need not to be in your own stuff. You need to listen to it. And if you wrote it, and you said, well, I can do it better than somebody else, because I spent a ton of time with it. There's so many groups that won't put that on you. There are many things that won't inflict that. Yeah, I mean, that's limited thinking on their part. And it's not even, it's totally removed from the tradition of actor performers. An actor writer, that F. and Y. Nansen's test is full of his wagon, I mean, it's just... Well, see, I was in the actor's studio very briefly as a writer, because as a writer, I think, and I don't know whether they still do this. As a writer, you have a limited amount of time as an actor, you're there for a long period, it's a lifelong thing. And this was back in 80, a Frank Casaro was running it at the time. I brought in some more biographical stuff, you know, and he was here, and he was cool with me. People didn't quite know what to do with it back then, because this was, this is like a little bit after Eric, goes in and was doing, you know, certainly, he kind of fought back the genre where it's gone from there to kind of now. And he was cool with the stuff that had gone in. So I don't know whether they're saying that now, because it has become such a confessional, because what's happened with, and I'm sure you guys see this too, where a lot of people are bringing in like a lot of, you know, actors are out of work and it's hard to get it done. So a lot of people are bringing in autobiographical work. Not everything, the one person genre does that have to be necessarily autobiographical, but it has turned into this confessional to a certain degree. So I don't know whether it's coming, having said what I just said, I kind of, you know, whether it's coming from that, where people are telling you about their angst, you know, and stuff, because I see a lot, I mean, I get, I teach at HB Studio, right? And to my youth was so low performance. And I get a lot of stuff about, oh, you know, when I was a kid, I got beaten, or this man did this, or this woman did that. And one of the questions that I asked, I'll ask somebody, I said, you know, how old are you? Now tell me how old we are. And more than likely, you know, they're from their late 20s on. And I said, if you live this long, you've also hurt people. So let's talk about what you've done too. Or if you're playing your mother and your mother was a, my mother's a bitch. I said, your mother wasn't always born a bitch. Let's write a model of her when she was eight years old and pregnant and pregnant and pregnant and pregnant. So this is what I'm saying in terms of the kind of work, you know, how somebody is working with someone. I mean, that plays, you know, this kind of victim confessional, I don't know whether that's happening there. Is that, is there a lot of that? No, it's not. It's sort of the ensemble stuff. It's an ensemble piece. But also with the ensemble stuff, I mean, if it's autobiographical, is it like a lot of it, it's just like, angst ridden and. I really say it's very true. It's also from the writer's section of the episode. I think it's more like, when I was just, they just think of, oh, you can't have an objective eye because you're on stage and it's so limited. So should we, has it ever been helpful for you to hear someone else do your work? Never. Never. I'm just curious, either it's a writer or it's a performer. I'm not a part of that one for myself. Yeah, I know I'm eventually gonna do it. I do not have to figure it out for myself of how it's gonna go down. It's actually, I write, you know, it's sort of an interesting thing. When I write the roles for myself, I read so specifically for how I'm gonna say the line. And a lot of times, the dialogue, I write for myself isn't particularly amusing, you know. And when you read on the page, it just seems like movie dialogue. But I know that I'm gonna devote certain actresses or do what I call my trip on it. And so, and it was interesting, I saw production recently, actually, of The Divine Sister, a skilled person, playing that part, and got no laughs in the dialogue. And they had to bring in all sorts of psych gags to do because he was written so for my particular eccentricities as a performer, and the lines really weren't that funny. And sometimes, you know, many people seem to read the play now, think it's all that funny. But I know that I'm gonna get laugh here, laugh here, laugh there, based on my observations of star acting or actresses. So it's sort of, and to say, it's so specifically written for me. You should want to, I've acted in a trauma of the Mr. Romance, and I'd seen trauma of him do it. I think I saw him twice, but before I went to do it, I went and got the video, I went to the library to look at how he did it, because I'm not gonna try to reinvent the wheel, I'm gonna see what he's done, what I can learn from it. And in fact, I've done that with a couple of other plays, not written by the actor that was played, but both The Boys and the Band, and also The Revival of the Royal Family. I wanted to see what the other actors have done. That's certainly the case of somebody who's performed in their own play, and certainly the case of a Rhyme of Death, I think. No, too, I tell you, YouTube is just the most marvelous thing. I recently, I had to do Lady Bracknall, and she put her first finger in us for L.A. Theater Awards. It's this thing which they do on the radio in front of a live audience, and when we get two rehearsals, then you do it, you know. And so, after a while, I went on, I knew the play, and I'd seen either of them in the movie, but I went back on YouTube, and I watched Wendy Hiller doing it, I watched Joan Flower ride doing it, I said, you know, either of them, and just took, took, took, took, you know. Yeah, to see, I remember one time a friend of mine was auditioning for part of Tessitura and Gypsy, in one of the Gypsy revivals, and she, she said, I don't understand, they, she says to me, you know, she's a cheap stripper, but she said, you know, it's her hoity-toity, I don't get it. And I said, why don't you watch the movie, and just see where the laughs are, you know. Oh, no, I couldn't do that. Well, you know, it's there, you know. I'm just, you know, gonna take it for the, get the part. I'm just having a very weird experience, because I saw your play, I didn't know it was your play, I got to the theater late, I always pour over, you know, and after the theater, we just went for coffee and talked about the play. What, more streams? Yeah, so it's so interesting to think that you were the writer, I've never had this happen before, and I, and I, the character's so serious, and so much of the conscious of the play, and it's very, it makes sense, it really makes sense. And it would be interesting, I think, to see someone else play it, would they bring, obviously they would, but it's- No, it's cool if someone would play it. I'm not writing, I didn't write this specifically, just- No, I know that, it's just really, not knowing, usually I've seen it, you know, I know the writer, and it's just, it's, as an audience person, it's just really interesting to get that now, and to see you, and to, and so the play in itself, this reaction that I'm having to the real play, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know. Thank you. Dale, Dale just couldn't be the first to talk to you for a while now. No, no, I'm just- So, sorry, so actually following up on her thought and just a quick comment on what you had said earlier, and then I have a question. So the comment on what you had said earlier following up on her thought is, you should already have known that people would walk out of that play, and you should be complimented that they walk out of that play, because it makes you very uncomfortable, because most of us are not used to watching people going down the tube, becoming junkies, going from productive lives to becoming heroin addicts, and it's bound to make people uncomfortable, and they're not gonna wanna see it, and they are gonna walk out, so you should feel good about that. Okay, because it means, I mean, it means you got the real feelings there, you know, the real feelings are there. If they didn't feel uncomfortable, you missed the feelings, it wasn't there, so that's a compliment. Okay. So, my question is, so Black and Blue Bones? Black and Blue Boys, Broken Men. Okay. So, when you were describing earlier, that you wrote it in part to explore the woman inside the man- And this would be a- Right, the dynamic of sort of the reversal of the typical sexual abuse power dynamic. Yeah, one of the things that's certainly- So, would you be interested or could you see different male actors playing those different characters, or would that change- I battle with that change in the meaning of the- That would change the dynamic, it's the same deal, like, you know, I know like someone, there's someone called David Kale, David Kale's a wonderful soloist, I want to go to a piece called Lillian. And I know that there's, years ago, he told me that there's an actress performance on his comedian called Penny Arcade, that's one of the things that wanted to play Lillian, and I said, no, and he said, no, too. Because that changes the dynamic. It totally changes what it's about. I like seeing, I guess there is, for lack of, again, there's the Androgyns. Androgyns, you know, and underneath, I don't know who wrote this, but they said, you know, underneath great writing and acting, there is Androgyns. So that would totally, I don't, we haven't said that, I'm not saying that what I'm doing is great, but I like exploring those different aspects of things. Whatever, my version of what is masculine, or what I thought is masculine, what I thought is male, you know, is, I'm taking it from that point of view. It's the same thing when he does drag. I don't even think of it as being drag, because when I'm watching, Charles, I'm seeing a woman. Maybe it would have changed, it totally would have changed it. It totally would. Yeah. And I, you know, when I, in my place, when I choose to be in drag or not, you know, if somebody doesn't play in Tuscaloosa, they can do whatever they want to do with it. But when we do it in New York, and it's my production, it's very specific. Certain roles are just very interesting. When you, I like taking the obvious, like when we did psych of each party, there was part of the mother, there was the very sort of Joan Crawford kind of thing, and it was very much sort of the drag queen part. But I wrote it for this wonderful actress, McGann Robinson, who had a, somehow it wasn't slightly androgynous. Think about it, this magnificent, low voice, and she kind of, a lot of people thought she was a guy in drag, but then there was this wonderful moment in the play where there was a little flashback where you saw the mother when she was young, and we had her costumed in this rather tight dress. She just saw McGann's figure and how womanly she was, and there was a soft wig, and suddenly saw that there was this underneath, sort of this dragon lady, sort of drag queen, where there was this girl, this vulnerable girl, and it was a marvelous moment. So I think when that play is done, usually they've got somebody in drag playing it, but I thought it was very interesting when we did it that way, or just do the opposite thing. No, I was like in my plays, now the Julie Halston sort of plays the drag queen part really in my show. She's a really outrageous one, and I'm sort of the kind of the elegant lady next to her being the really outrageous person in that. I think it's kind of interesting, but no, and most ladies I work with are about five, eight, no, and so it's, yeah, so we're good. I have a question to just the writer part of all these guys and the lady. I'm interested in how you feel about stage direction, adding it, taking it away, and Charles, you mentioned what you do sometimes before you publish. In the stage directions? Yeah, like keeping them in, cutting them out, what you learn from certain things, and how that determines, I'm sorry, what you learn from production, and how that determines what you keep it in. And when you send it out into the world like Yellow Man, they are like, do you feel compelled to, I don't know, stamp it in? That's not really the right word, but like stamp it in any way. When I write it, when it comes out, you know what happens is, depends on what it is, yeah? And like I said, with the exception of two times, I've worked with majority of directors I've worked with are smart. I can be, no, except for twice, they were dumb. But, this is where in terms of trusting a director happens to me, and also not getting too precious with what's in my head, because what's directly in my head, I have to have a healthy sense of balance, balance. Is this, can this realistically happen from the page to the stage? So sometimes I, it'll just come out, it'll just come out, it'll come out in a second, we're on our feet doing this, you know what, this does not work. So but yet, but initially I do put it on the page, yes, but sometimes when we're actually getting up and we're moving and we're doing it, I've learned not to be so precious with it, but yes, so I'm giving you a mixed message. On the one hand, it has to be there, on the other hand, when, if it has to go, it has to go. I have a very few stage directions in place. There are almost nothing except for the exit, enter, enter, exit, unless it's a real plot thing. And then of course when you publish it, and then, you know, of course in the, it's a tricky thing, isn't it? When you've actually had the production, there are more things you want to put in. You have to watch out, too, because it's not for the director, you don't want to, you know, put in things that he brought in, you know, for this production. You know, we used to, in the same old French, or in the acting edition, they have their full costume plot and all that, and you know, it's a very helpful diameter of groups. But in my earlier scripts for a week, it really wasn't fair to the costume designers because we didn't have a bottle, green, velvet dress with, you know, gold lace trim. You know, it was so specific, so you don't do that anymore. But yeah, you have to kind of, it's a fine line, but I tend to have very, very little sense. This was necessary, so it's clear. It wasn't necessary, and as others were saying, in the course of reversal and production, you might take something out, you might add a little something, you know, like, it's like a line, something, you might just change it. And then, and then when you say, people gonna do what they're gonna do, and that's part of the game, and I'm part of you as grateful that it's being done as a writer, and then part of me is like, oh God, you know, and I, so learning to put less and less, and that that production is gonna do what they're gonna do with it, and, good time will be there by all. And good time will be there by all. And the same thing, too, with the experiences where we've flown out and seen things, and worked with people, and it still didn't matter, and that's fine. I mean, it's not what my vision or intended, but it's what's happening, so. I'm wondering if you ever cut stage directions out for the other actors, but then the director lets the one that you had originally do it? Well, they were like, no, you know, I put those notes in the front, they asked us to write everything too, but again, I think, like, I don't know, in my experience, when I've talked to the directors of things, you can say what you're gonna say that they come out, and sometimes they'll respond, and maybe do something, and a lot of times they'll just do that around the bank, and. But I think it's not, you need to, those of us who perform in our own plays, it's true for any player, right? And I, I mean, I was just thinking about the other day, we should have another conversation, because they don't have a player like Samuel Beckham who is so specific in his plays, and frankly, when it's ignored, or when there's a perverse reading of it, it's so disrespectful to a player like that, where he's been so specific for a very good read, and though it really varies, it depends on the writer, it depends on the kind of play they're writing, and somethings can be more open, and somethings really should be appeared to very strictly. Do you think Beckham, Tennessee Williams? No. Do you think he'll do a shot? Shot, Beckham? No. How did you come up with the title of genre for the title? Because I was fascinated when I saw that as the title, like a bracket, the title of genre? It was lifted actually from, for those of you who don't know the piece, it was a chronicle of its own creation from my conception to the opening of our way. The form for the original theater festival that we submitted it to had a field, it said like name, address, genre, title of show. I think it actually said like name or show or whatever, but I didn't like name or show, so the title of show, and it was in brackets, and I liked it. I liked it, part, not out of gimmick, but oh I liked it the most about it, was that I liked that people did not know what they were coming into experience, and you could just, there was something, it sounds kind of, I wanna throw them out a little bit when I talk about it out loud, but I feel it, of like you projected whatever experience you had walking into it. It wasn't called making a dream or writing a show, or whatever, I didn't want it, I kinda wanted you as an audience to walk in with a blank slate and sit down and have an experience, and so it was insert your experience here was kind of what the idea behind it was. So it was part of the gimmick of the thing of course, but it really, it stuck because I wanted, you have a blank slate as an audience and walk in, and whatever you felt about it, is it funny, I don't know, is it sad, is it tongue-in-cheek, is it campy, whatever, I wasn't telling you what to feel about it, you just walked in and sat down and had an experience, it's what interested me about it. Drew, this is beeping, I know what that means, it's out. Thanks. Well, is that what the beeping was? Yeah. Sorry, I think we're at the Zara Street. Hold up, hold up, hold up, hold up, hold up. I think we're at the Zara Street. Is that our streaming to radio for your business? Nothing, you did the streaming, it's just fine. We're still streaming. We're still streaming. But that was the origin of that. Sorry about that. So, picking up on that, where you didn't want your audience to walk in with a preconceived image of what you wanted to think already, a lot of writers I talked to are not in favor of writing with a political purpose or with a purpose of, I don't know, intentionally to shape people's thoughts and stuff like that. You should just write with experience and stuff. But when I write, I very much have that purpose. It's like a driving purpose behind me, writing it all. So, I want to ask you guys, how much of that shapes your writing versus just, you know, just write what comes to you or what's entertaining to you, versus what is that actually influenced through your thoughts and actions? When you read stuff like, say, all my sons and when we read all this Wilson stuff, it's there. But I think when somebody gets so into bombarding people with a sense of right, a sense of wrong, again, theater is, it's about the story. I will get the political stuff and what someone feels and thinks within the storytelling. But I don't mind being taken there. I just don't want to be preached to. Because a lot of it becomes preachy. And I really don't like things like positive role models and stuff. I really don't like it. Because what ends up happening is that's where it becomes preachy and formulaic, you know? Again, you know, going back to Washington. So, the whole point that is like, you know, again, it's really, people are talking, I mean, race is mentioned. But ultimately, it's really, if one were to see it, you'll see it's about how a child has to give birth to himself, you know? And how there are people on the planet who should not have kids. And we're looking at the generations, you know, the sins of the father and the sins of the mother, right? But it's done hopefully with good storytelling, opposed to someone just doing this and doing that. And, you know, you're trying to invoke and provoke without imagination, without the beauty of language. So when someone deliberately becomes like, you know, and I see some, there's wonderful performance art, but you've also got people who get up and rant and rave and I just don't want to hear it. You know, it's not, you know, what's happened today, for instance, it's like, you know, it's good that the vagina monologue is in the world, but a lot of it really just got taken off the hook because it no longer became about theater. It became a political movement in and of itself. You know, I mean, I was asked to do it. I didn't have the time. And me personally, I think it's a necessary piece, but it didn't necessarily interest me, you know, individually. It doesn't mean that it's not valid, but at one point, you know, it was done, I think it was done in my friend Catty Schaubach was in it, and this was done at my Madison Square Garden and someone else was there and said, there was a flyer on the chair. If you're a woman and you've been raped and we mentioned that, raise your hand. That's no longer about fear. That's not fear. So that's the kind of tension, you know. I think I have a, I mean, I do have an agenda. I want ideas. I mean, I'm interested in sharing my ideas out to the world, but I tend to agree I want a good story. I have a character on campus. You have a human experience. Yeah, because it's just, I don't know if it just comes from a singular place of political ideology or so. I don't know. I'm like, I don't know how it expands over a whole story. There's a tradition of the impassioned to treat this play, but I think when it really works, like I love the normal heart, I thought, you know, and I remember when I saw it, the original production, I'd never had that experience as an audience member seeing really seeing the world that I was living in at that moment on stage and it was extraordinary feeling. And then it was interesting seeing it again recently. World has shifted a bit as far as AIDS goes, it's shifted and it was interesting to see the play slightly divorced from it's just polemic and I thought it worked awfully well and you know, but as much as Larry Kramer's rage and their characters were just mouthpieces at times, still there was essential characters and a human drama that was so compelling and that was grabbing us as opposed to just, you know, lecturing us. I vote for you in drama. But that can incorporate a variety of different approaches and there even, I'll just set up for plays that are not really even concerned with stories. I was studying the root of Stein for some time and she says exclusively, she's not interested in story and action, she's been an emotion of time. I think there's still a human experience there. It's gonna be narrative. And I vote for Richard Forman too, which issues narrative violently at times, but it's still an expression of human experience. But I think that there's many forms and I think these two are on political. It'd be very stylized. It'd be very naturalistic. I mean, Arthur, you think about Arthur Miller and the crucible, which was a reaction, he stated, but the human drama that was so overwhelming even divorced from that particular situation, the point is not as attentive to that particular period of American history, but they want to still easily be affected by that. We have time for one more quick question if anybody has anything? Great, I'll tell you what, yeah, go ahead. Okay, I'll ask this of the panel. When you're writing your story and you hit a wall and you get stuck, what do you do? I'll take a break. I'll just take a break to try not to struggle with it and I'll take a walk or watch some bad television or sometimes I try and push through it. If I know, I don't know, I try and have an instinct to be like, am I just going to tap some lazy or I don't want to be like going here and that way I push through, but then sometimes it's okay to be like, I'll go put this pen down and I'm gonna go out to the world and see and you don't know what might inspire me. And so to release the struggle a little bit, to surrender to it as opposed to like, it's not coming, it's not coming. Wait a minute, maybe a week goes by and you just can't try and try and just force it. Yeah, I don't know with three okay words. I love that. She said, I don't know with three okay words and I agree, yeah. Meanwhile, I'm talking big and bad because a lot of times it pisses me off when I don't know, but yeah, I've learned that I don't know with three quick words It's just frustrating. I just want to get the first draft out of where it's stuck. And the double arrow, so you're frustrated it's not coming and then double the arrow to say, punish yourself again that you're mad that it's not coming to you. So that's to kind of break that cycle a little bit. You know, not be gentle to yourself. So all that time it's been lying down because it's a little productive too. You know, ideas, your brain doesn't stop. That's it, it's hard. It is hard. How do you realize, you guys, that you're going through all of this? Do you realize? Yeah, I do. I never stop. I never stop. I never stop. I always fantasize that like, I just like I'll sit down and write and I'll school out like gold and then we'll rock the world and I'll be done and handed into the world and it doesn't work like that at all because it's a little just kind of living in the awesome chaos of it and it doesn't stop. I don't know, yeah. I heard it dig up and it could be said my husband said a work of art has never finished its abandon. Oh, that's a good one. That's a good one. Yeah, but I think you have to really, I mean, I really enjoy the editing and rewriting. It's the first, trying to get the first draft so agonizing at times. But once I have anything on paper then it's not a discipline. I just love. I just escape. I just want to get back in over and over and cut one more word, find that one more funny thing that muses me to put in, reshape by, you know, I love it. I just love it. Would you guys help me thank them for doing this? Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you very much.