 sessions which we have we have special guests come on and join us to work to talk a little bit about their creative process and then of course to talk with you about your creative process and our first guest in our special sessions it couldn't be more special it's the most special person ever it's Oscar Eustis and I'll give you a little bio about Oscar you all know what Watch Me Work is and if you don't we've been doing it for 11 years in the lobby of the public theater and we appreciate the public theater we appreciate how round in joining us on this journey so let me tell you about Oscar Eustis he has served as the artistic director of the public theater since 2005 and before that he was the artistic director of Trinity Repertory Theater in Providence Rhode Island from 1994 to 2005 throughout his career Oscar has been dedicated to the development of new work that speaks to the great issues of our time and he's worked with countless artists to pursue that aim artists like people we all know and love like Tony Kushner like Susan Laurie Parkes like David Henry Wong dear David Henry Wong like Lin-Manuel Miranda like Richard Nelson and Rina Groff and Terrell Alvin McRaney and Lisa Crone just to mention a few folks he's been working with he's currently a professor at New York University and has held professorships at UCLA Middlebury College and Brown University he's a force of nature on the art scene a force of nature in the downtown theater scene a formidable presence in the uptown Broadway scene and of course all around the world in cultural institutions so he's just amazing so if you have questions about your creative process that you would like to ask Oscar hold them we will have them we will get to them soon shortly shortly but and if you have questions Audrey is going to tell us how to get in touch yes ma'am hey everybody welcome to the special edition of wash me work if you have any questions as a reminder if you're inside of the zoom all you'll need to do is press on the raise your hand button which is in a participant tab likely at the bottom of your screen on a laptop or the top if you're on an ipad or a tablet and if you're watching on howlround.tv you can actually tweet at us at at watch me work slp with the hashtag howlround which there's h-o-w-l-r-o-u-n-d or you can tweet at the public theater at public theater ny or send a message to our instagram and that's it great okay so what we're going to do again just to lay it out for you we work together for 20 minutes here's the timer and then today because it's a special session we're going to take some time to talk with oscar about what's he is up to these days talk with oscar use this about his work and then we're going to open it up and oscar use this will take your questions about your creative process and your work got it and if you if you don't you can't remember that or I'll remind you okay but well first thing we're going to do is we're going to work for for 20 minutes and uh all right so here we go eh ready adry all right all right okay that was the first part of the show where we work together and now because we're in special session we're going to ask a few questions of oscar about his work before we open it up to uh questions that you all will have for oscar about your work your creative process so not to like throw any surprises I'm looking I always look at people's background you have like these cool like books are those books behind you that's a that's called real life that's not like a background that's really you can see right up here I can't those are three plates that's a dresden china plate of brecht a dresden china plate of the storming of the winter palace in the october revolution and not a dresden china plate of prince and that's pretty much prince like prince oh because prince rogers nelson because you're from you guys are in the same we went to high school together they went to high school to get look at you it was the talented one I was the other one you were the you were you were the wonderful one who who blows the world apart in beautiful ways yeah yeah so we got we got some question no yeah well yeah yeah yeah but you know you know you know you were the tall one that's right so I was always tall of it so uh so we got some questions for you oscar because we want to know we want to know about your work today so questions like what are you working on right now I mean maybe not right this second although you can talk about what you worked on during the the big thing that's happened and um forgive me for uh going from anyway it's just happened uh four weeks ago I would have told you I would have made a very beautiful speech very much like joe hodge did from the guthrie if you looked that up in the one about how we're not going to turn into a television studio that we're not doing digital content that basically we're about live performance and we're just going to wait till we come back and then I stopped thinking and uh I was wrong and I stopped thinking it because of the the the way my mind always changes from the expense of putting on a play and we put on Richard Nelson's uh what do we need to talk about uh two weeks ago Wednesday last Wednesday uh so it's been 10 weeks and during the hour that we were watching it live 5000 people from 17 countries and 40 states were watching with us in the three days after that we got over 50 000 views and we just put it back up and it's still and and it's satisfactory with 2021 is that I thought it was a terrific work of art in and of itself and two it demonstrated was clearly an appetite for it so now I've changed my mind completely and what I'm working on um which is also the reason I'm nagging useless and all right but I want to that in front of everybody is uh trying to produce a digital season this summer um and you know we're working with WNYC the public radio we're working with WNIT public television we're working with the public library and we've sort of formed this loose group called the public consortium and what we're trying to do is we can't replace the experience which has been the part but we're doing what we call Shakespeare everywhere and trying to take the shows that we were going to do in the park and try to figure out how to transmit them and some of the experience of them digitally now it won't be the same I know that and you know it also might not work then we there's a couple of other shows that we're doing downtown I say downtown we're doing them all digitally so they're not downtown but you know that I think of as part of the downtown season and you know it's not now what I would say uh is it feels like it's my job to continue pursuing the mission of the public within the confines we currently find ourselves at it's not my job to sit back and wait till the world is ready for us it's my job to by any means not necessarily keep the mission going forward and that has improved my mood so dramatically because instead of you know these endless zoom meetings about cutting budgets and you know what are we going to do about the staff and you know all of these things which are all about retreat I'm now spending most of my zoom meetings which is my working day let's face it trying to produce shows trying to figure out how to get shows up how to do shows and that that's just been great that's been I mean it's been great for my spirit and we've had one good show we'll see if we can if we can find other things but I just one more sentence it'll be a long sense and all stuff that the the big the the thing that I'm really really excited about is by focusing on just how do we do this right now how do we get this done under these circumstances I am sure that we're coming up with discoveries that are going to inform our practice forever even after we're out of this session and that's you know that's the only way I think we and by we I mean all of us on this call the only way we actually know how to change things is just do our work and when we do our work under different circumstances we find out stuff that's different we want to do it but it's not a theoretical business it's a business about making work I love it it's not a theoretical business it's a business about making work not not taking into taking the circumstances into account and allowing that to inform our work it's thrilling what what what you've got the public theater doing these days so a question about like you wear many hats many hats artistic director dramaturg teacher and a director so how are your practices in each of these roles similar and how are they different do you have to like make major pivots when you put on your different hats or how does it all work I mean that might be better answered by somebody looking at me than by me but I tell you it doesn't feel like I'm making major pivots it feels like it's exactly what I just said which is that in different circumstances with different people different tools are required to do the same thing and the probably the best analogy that could give you is about raising money which I spend a lot of time doing a lot of time talking to people and asking them to give me that money or to give the public care and it was just hugely helpful about 25 years ago when I realized that I was doing the same thing when I was soliciting philanthropy as I do when I'm directing apply that it's that you get a group of people sitting on a table some of them know each other well some of them are scarcely met and it's my job to convince those people around the table that if they open their hearts and invest their resources in this thing we are working on that good things will happen and when when we're doing white noise that's a group of actors that you have to convince to throw themselves into this really scary and upsetting material and it's my job to create a room where they feel if they do that they will be happier than if they didn't do it they will be more filled they'll be more excited than I'm doing the same people the same when I'm raising money I'm gathering people wealth around I'm saying if you invest your money in this institution in this project in this play whatever it is you will be happier and you will be happier because you will be part of something that matters and we actually you know we have studies that prove the stuff psychological studies people give away money are happier than people who don't giving giving gifts is the most joy producing thing that a human being can do and so I'm not doing two completely different things when I'm a directing the play I am you know and you obviously have seen almost every side of me SLP but you know a lot of what I feel like I'm just trying to do is convince people that this common enterprise that we're engaged in is worth it is worth their investment and so I feel like what I'm doing is you know way is I'm trying to convince people my taste I'm trying to convince people that I love this play and you should too I love this theater's mission and you should too not because you should do it because I like it but the trust I'm trying to get is that they trust that I'm not asking to throw their money away I'm not asking throw away their emotional resources I'm asking them to invest in something that's worth it and the only way for me to do that is to believe it and so that's what I mean you know what's what's a little different a dramaturgy is a little different because and you've experienced this is that my job when I'm working with a writer I feel like is to understand the play better than anybody else except the writer the writer always understands it better than me and my job is to have read what the writers read to you know sink my thoughts up with how the writer thinks trying to understand how they think and be there and then it's my job not to own any of it and just go what I am is I'm the friend in the room who understands as much as I can what you're doing and my job is to help you do it and whatever that takes you know often it's trying to reflect back to you and articulate what I think your play is trying to do and sometimes I get it wrong but sometimes even getting it wrong is helpful because you've been able to oh he's getting that and I'm not doing and sometimes you know the most literal first I'm not going to tell any stories about you and me because it's too messy but I remember one of the greatest dramaturgical moments I had when I was visiting Tony Kushner up at a house he owned West Point at that point and I had to sort of drop a bomb on him a play he'd written that had already been produced and then I thought he really he made a mistake he made literally a plotting mistake and so what I did is I got up then I went grocery shopping and I bought all these groceries for a particular baked chicken dish and I made it very good and I said and I told him what I thought the problem was I dropped my mobile he started laughing and he didn't stop laughing he kept laughing and I walked into the kitchen and I spent an hour and a half making this baked chicken dish and when I was done I came back and he had paid just finally he'd figured out how to do it and I just tell you I knew that what I needed to do is I needed to say something to that and then leave him the fuck alone get out of his hair and you know it was either going to take or it wasn't going to take and the best way for me to leave him alone is on house was to cook him dinner oh I love that story yeah no I have I've never heard I've never heard that story but I also love how you talk about how you know the you have you know this amazing skill set and you employ it you know whether it's fundraising or working with a writer or you know dramaturgy in a way because in a way you the chicken dinner story makes me think you had to convince Tony to dive in to and I something you had presented to him you know so it's the same it's an incredible skill what do you what do you think is there I mean and now you know the public fear is going forward digitally what's lost or is that not even not even we're talking about what is lost we all know what's lost it's and it's huge because we lose the gathering together and you know that gathering together for celebration and for discomfort is one of the most important things to review I mean what I've loved you know the performances of white noise are so much for favorite performances of all time because everybody in the audience got uncomfortable and every night you could see there was some people usually there was only a few somebody just going no no and you know somebody walked out almost every night and it was at different spots but you could from where they walked out you go oh I know why that person oh I know that you know but everybody who remained their discomfort became part of the show became part of it and you know we obviously do other shows that are more just purely celebratory but that event thing of what happens when we all gather in the same room that's I mean that's why we love that's why we fell in love with it when we were kids yes you know and and what I do and we don't have that now certainly not in the same way but it's not my job to focus on what we don't have if I was retired maybe I could sit back and write moments and eulogies but I've still got a job and my job is to do the work do the work as best I can in the situations that that I find myself in and this is the one and so you know look when we did Richard show two weeks ago it's the first time that people in 17 countries didn't see a film of our work saw the work exactly like people in New York were seeing it that I hadn't even thought of that when we first did it and oh shit that's really actually something an opportunity out of this crisis and so anyway I don't I try not to spend a lot of time thinking about what we have lost because it's so clear right and and certainly I I'm with you on that page and certainly one of the beautiful things about this is that we we are doing watching work and I'm seeing folks who never had the time in their schedules you know to come to the lobby of the public theater and join us that way so it's a great it's a great gift yeah but um so now we're at the point where Oscar is going to take questions take your questions about your work and your creative process so um so Audrey ready yeah take it away I'm gonna let's do it all right Bob you are up first um are you unmuted are you with us um here can you hear me we can hear you hello thank you hello uh question both for for Oscar and I'd love to hear what you have to say Susan it's pretty specific to New York uh and it's not specific to theater in fact it's not theater related in a personal way so I was sort of working on a tv show uh an idea something I've been working on character as it takes place in Brooklyn um you know and I'm just trying to kind of wrap my head around how to continue writing it in this moment when the future and the way people perceive the world and it just feels so not even like I'm looking for an excuse but sort of disingenuous to try and wrap my head around it but not acknowledge that things on a social level like are going to be so different even if every conversation I just I can't conceive of it and I'm wondering how you would both think about creating something be it theater be it television be it silly be it macabre whatever about the world that we still are so kind of clueless about but wanted to keep working on a project that you know is about New York and is even about New York during and after this SLP do you want to start here the writer and you want me to go well listen Bob I'm I first of all I'm I can't be that helpful because I don't have to do what you have to do I don't have to sit down and look at a blank sheet of paper and make this shit up and I'm in awe of that so the first thing I want to say is take anything I say with a big grain of salt because I can't do what you do but the second thing I'd say is this life hasn't stopped this is your life you're in it this is our life this is New York City's life and I think that on some way we can't and it's not going to stay this way it's going to change it'll be different in a month it'll be very different in three months it'll be very different in two years but I don't think you know that we can't try to write for a world that we imagine that's going to be having unless the imagination is part of the act we can't write for a world that's in the past unless it's supposed to be a historical drama and you turn right you have to write influenced by everything what's happening right now what's happening and I'm not sure you know this is a really big deal for us I don't think this is going to be a really big deal in the history of humankind I think that humankind has been through a lot of plagues that are a lot worse than this one um Shakespeare's theaters shut four times in his career for the season because of the plague in London then ready who could get the fuck out of London when we talk about Shakespeare's plays we don't talk about the plague that wasn't the important thing about the important thing about him was that his people were alive the conflicts were real the way he expressed it was beautiful and deep so I'm just I'm just you know part of me is just saying don't overweight don't or overthink what's exactly happening right now you're not writing for probably for this second and yeah I totally agree with Oscar bob you know what I'm gonna say I'm gonna say well um write write write your write your play bob write your play you know um because I always wonder when somebody says you know something happened and it's it's causing me to stutter and the writing process I'm like maybe it's what you're talking about and maybe it's something else you know what I mean maybe those voices are just getting in your head and causing you to to pause so keep taking the world in and and keep writing and me too even though I am a writer I don't have to write I'm not writing your work so more power to you man and keep showing up here because we can keep sharing you on and maybe our our answers will be smarter or better or longer next time thank you thanks bob all right up next we've got Devin Devin you're unmuted hi Oscar um I'm in Los Angeles and I just have to say for me and I guess I've said this before is that this is a silver lining of a dreadful situation of the pandemic I was um this morning I was on Facebook for a minute and there was Elizabeth Marvel giving in acting class in Shakespeare and I thought wow I'm sequestered but I there's Elizabeth Marvel on my tell on my screen and there's Dr. Parks as I call her the writing doctor and then today I'm going to get to see Oscar so I you know it's just like it's just amazing what what um there's these opportunities as you referred to um and these opportunities in terms of transformation in theater so um I guess um I my question is I mean I was sort of going to ask what Bob asked but you've already addressed that but I love what you were saying about being a dramaturge and how you're the best friend to the playwright in the room with all the knowledge that the playwright has um so I guess um what I want to ask is um okay this is a strange question so like how is a dramaturge born I mean it's such an unnatural profession actually when you think about it like how does someone you know like the brain like what is that it is I actually don't think I was born to be a dramaturge my mother wouldn't have known what the word meant I think that's why she gave birth to me but um Janet Malcolm called being a psychoanalyst to the impossible profession she wrote a book about psychoanalysis called that and I think it's actually similar because um the reason she said psychoanalysis was impossible is that essentially you had to be totally present with another person without letting your own stuff interfere with how you're seeing or letting them and reflecting back you had to be somehow both a completely and you couldn't be a nebulous you couldn't be nothing you had to be smart and full and present and yet you had to not let your stuff get in between your client and your clients your ability to recognize and she said I think quite right this isn't a possible thing to do one of the things I've said is that dramaturgy is not something that should be a profession it's something that can be a practice but when I do it right there is a kind of giving up of myself that is not a human thing to do it's not a human thing to do all the time it doesn't satisfy everything in my opinion so every dramaturge in the old days when we have new play dramaturgies in America we're getting started in the 80s I literally could point to every dramaturge I knew and like either they're useless because they don't have enough of a self to actually help writer or they have serious boundary issues and they fall in love with the writer and they think they're the writer and they you know and it literally everybody was in one of those camps I think we've gotten a little smarter but one of the ways we've gotten smarter is that most dramaturges do something else and I do other things that are really about me that are really where my personality is expressed and I do enough of them so I don't feel like I'm burning myself up when I sit and listen this is more I talk for hours I feel like I can be you know what I'm saying though darling it's just it's you you you you're giving yourself to another person in a way that is beautiful and problematic unless you balance it so I feel very dramaturgy as practice in the United States because you know in Europe where this whole thing started new play development was not dramaturgy at all when I first met dramaturges in the 70s when I was working in Germany in Switzerland those guys didn't do new play development they did tons of research about you know Faustus and why we should be doing it now or you know shows the Roybar and once they and they produce program books that were 300 literally 300 pages long that you could buy in the theaters but that was it but here in the States for some reason dramaturgy and new play development have really become almost synonymous and be careful that your dramaturge really has a life unless you're in trouble thank you Oscar thank you Devin um all right up next we've got William are you with us William yes I am hello hi so since I've started play writing I've noticed that a lot of my work tends to either be adaptations of existing work or biographical pieces based in history and one thing I've always struggled with is one when do you put down the research and begin writing and also when do you find the moments that it's okay to change either what's in the source material or in history and what should remain hard fact first of all it's always the moment to start writing as soon as you have something to write you should start writing um you should not you know one of the worst things that can add I'm sure it's happening to me is you get stuck in feeling like if you just read one more book then you'll be a writer you know if I just if I just can really memorize the Elizabethan world picture then I can direct Shakespeare and the fact is you can write without any research you get to write anytime you want and what can you change and what can you make up anything anything at all um again and by the way Shakespeare as near as we can tell there are one or perhaps two original plots in all of Shakespeare's book we can't find any antecedent for Midsummer Night's Dream and there's one other one other than that he stole his plots his plots are not what made him great it's what he did with the plots that made him great so you don't get big points for originality the only thing I'll say about changing and staying the same I don't know if this is an exact analysis but as a director I feel like every time I've made a big mistake it's because I was flexible where I shouldn't have been or where I held fast to something that I shouldn't have I I made a classification mistake and what I mean by that is that there's certain things that um when I have ideas about shows for example there's certain things that at the core of that idea that are the central pillar of that idea that's why I want to do this oh that's where it gets my heart going it's weird and I have at times in the confusion of producing been too flexible about that oh well you know the actor hates it and you know they're like oh maybe we could change it and suddenly I find I've lost the show and the way that as a director you lose the show is you walk into rehearsal and you don't know what you want to do because you don't know what show you're making anymore it's the most horrible feeling you can pretend to give notes to people but you no longer have a sense of what you're trying to make so that they're fake or on the other hand I've gone fast to something that was certain was important it really and then I lose this but I'm killing the show because I'm acting as if this is the heart of the show and this is just a tactic this is just you know um I I worked the movie of Lincoln you guys probably know right that Tony Christian wrote we worked for years on the script that made that movie about the election of 1864 and then at a certain point Tony went you know that's actually not the story the story is the passing of the amendment the story isn't the election years of work thousands of pages flushed down the trial but not really because all of that turned out to be necessary for what he wrote but you know he changed his mind and he was and it's one of the things that a great writer can do Susan Lloyd when you came in and you talk about the end of father comes home that was that's another story you know about his which is he ever did Susan Lloyd was in the middle of a wrestle with Joe Bonnet of father's home you know play that we'd worked on for years and she came to watch us I have to change the ending I have to change the ending I was fucking brilliant guys I sat down and nodded my head for 15 minutes as she talked to me and when she was done I said that sounds right and she went off and changed and worked brilliantly so I was the brilliant one right just it was you know a great writer has the courage to change stuff that they thought was absolutely immutable because they can recognize when oh no that thing I thought was central home or dying actually it's the worst thing that's actually stopping the play it's not liberating so it's that kind of you know that I'm much more interested in that William and I am in you know whether something is historically factually correct or not or whether you're changing the adapted material there are no rules in a knife fight as much as awesome thank you thank you thank you all right up next we've got Chris Chris are you with us I am hello um my question is um so Tony Kushner has said that you're one of his favorite dramaturgs to work with Oscar and so I was wondering how do you know what questions to ask a playwright when you're working with them one of his favorite dramaturgs fuck him listen there's no science anyways what what what you try to do is you try to shut up about anything you don't understand or anything you don't love and that's one of the things that I feel like it's an absolute rule there are wonderful plays wonderful pieces that I absolutely should not dramaturg because I don't love them I don't get them enough I perfect example is I really tried it when I first taken this job Michael Mayer brought to me his you know the production of spring awakening which at that time nobody would do and I loved Vedic and I knew spring awakening I read it I listened to it and it just I thought it didn't work didn't like it didn't I I said no a few years later it's a big hit I'm Broadway winning all these awards and I go to it I'm like okay this will be a lesson in humility for me I will see in it what I didn't see and I watched it and left me completely cold again what it meant was I was not the guy to work on that I didn't love it I didn't it made no sense I didn't understand why if they could sing those songs they were sexually repressed because those songs were not sexually repressed didn't make any sense to me but that was just me and all it means is you don't work on something unless you love it and unless you have a feel for the writer and then if you do you just have to read as deeply as you can your own responses or your guide and you ask the questions that you actually have you don't make them up although one thing I will say that um Renna Gruff once played paid me a huge compliment she you know there's one point where I gave her a note on appliance she looked at me and she said how long have you been thinking that note so well you know she's no really when did you first think that I said about a year ago and she said you just did the I could not have heard that note until now so that's the other thing you gotta do you gotta be so empathic with the writer so you have to care about them more than you care about yourself for those moments and you don't you don't give them stuff they can't use I am Lynn Gray very early in my career I'm sorry I'm rambling but very early in my career I was working with a wonderful writer named Emma Gray and we were working on this adaptation of uberwa um from the 1980s and you know we thought it was a great play the comedy was great and then we were slaving over one problem and then and I'm in I went oh Emily I know how to solve this I got it I got it and I outlined this really smart idea for how to solve the problem and Emily just looked at me kind of gimla died and said you ask her that's a great idea the problem is it stinks of you what he meant was you know that old myth but that may be true but you pick up a baby bird and you put his nest in its mother or eject it because the human smell Emily knew if he put that idea in his play every time he tried to write there would be oscar's idea sitting there and he couldn't write it so you got to make sure that you got to show that you're in sync with what the writer is trying to do and when they're trying to do it is there also that you you you give a lot of great ideas but is it somehow that you don't put your smell on it how do you do that yeah you somehow yeah so the ones that you can actually like you had a notion for tony you've had plenty of ideas for me and you've managed to convey them in a way that they don't smell like I don't know how you do that but that's but that's about not owning it and that's about being totally clear in your mind you don't own it um lintel and was the dramaturge and went and after jonathan marston died she sued the estate for a piece of the royalties and what she said was that jonathan had made an agreement with her to give her part of the royalties and then he died and it wasn't written down so she had royalties and that's fine and you you have a verbal agreement with a dead guy that's hard to litigate but you can litigate that but then she did something terrible she tried to turn it into a class action suit for dramaturgs and they subpoenaed me went inside to testify in court and I told if you have me testify I'm going to destroy your case because I'm going to say that if you by some weird chance win this suit you will destroy my profession if writers have to worry when they're talking to me that I'm going to claim ownership over some of their piece if they listen to me well we know what we have that's called hollywood that's called you know what I mean that's and that is not what we do here what we do in our little realm is we treasure the individuality of writers voices we treasure that no susan moey parks play could ever have been improved by a committee it can't because that's what you're after you're after that individual voice and you've got to believe that all the way through your body and then it's easy because then it's not your play it's your place and be very careful of talking to people who don't get that about your work because people have to get that because Ron Lenny used to say that the three fundamental human desires the desire to eat the desire to have sex and the desire to rewrite somebody else's play you're just you know it's true that's out there in the one you have to avoid those people well it's just about six o'clock you guys oh my god you you you must promise us oscar that you will come back and visit and visit you know again because it's you are our first and special guest and our most special special guest i'm glad that i was the first because i have to have been the best one so far um but i i would just say to all of you guys it's real pleasure i've loved to watch me work in its existence for 11 years i'm very honored to get to participate and susanna knows i'll do whatever she tells me to do so you know she wants me to come back you better okay god bless you man have a great rest of your day and audrey we have we have more special guests are they on the website how do we how do we they are on the website for this week tomorrow we actually have young gene lee joining us and on thursday we'll have tim blake now come on back someone for being the best guest you are the you are the you are the you will always be the best at the first something like thomas the train or something the first and the best and just surrender to sign up at 3 p by 3 p m every single day on the website and i'll send you a zoom link between 3 p m and 4 30 p m eastern and that's it okay we love you guys thank you so thank you so much thank you ask her thanks audrey bye