 Good afternoon. Welcome everybody. We are excited to welcome you all to Mechanics Institute. We are joined today by new Conservatory Theatre Center, which is based in San Francisco. We are thrilled to welcome our special guests, playwright Charles Bush and Bay Area icon, J. Conrad Frank, who is portraying the role of Lily dare in the play that we are speaking about today, the confession of Lily dare. And they are in conversation with director of Alan Sawyer, who will be our moderator for this discussion. My name is Alyssa Stone. I'm the senior director of programs and community engagement at Mechanics Institute, and it is my pleasure to welcome you all, and it is great honor to have these three extraordinary creatives joining us here at Mechanics Institute. For those who are new to Mechanics Institute, welcome. Mechanics Institute was founded in 1854 and is one of San Francisco's most vital literary and cultural centers in the heart of the city. Mechanics Institute features a general interest library and international chess club ongoing author and literary programs and the cinema lit film series every Friday. Please visit our website, mi library.org to learn more about our upcoming programs and we hope to see you again, both in person and online. This talk will be followed by a Q&A with the audience. Please add your questions in the chat, and I will read them aloud partway through our discussion today. So if you've got any questions for our special guests, please pop them in the chat and I will read them out loud when we get to the Q&A portion. You probably saw that this event is being recorded and will be available on YouTube later this week. The Confession of Lily Dare is currently playing at New Conservatory Theater Center in San Francisco and NCTC has generously extended a 25% discount for any of their shows using the promo code MILibrary. So please use that promo code MILibrary for a 25% discount on any NCTC show and we'll see you at the theater. I am very excited to welcome our special guests now. I'm going to read out their bios and then pass the baton over to our director who will be our moderator for the discussion. We are pleased to welcome Charles Bush, who is the author and star of such plays and films as The Divine Sister, The Lady in Question, Red Scare on Sunset, Psycho Beach Party, Die Mommy Die, and Vampire Lesbians of Sodom, one of the longest running plays in the history of Off-Broadway, and some of the most fun play titles to say out loud if I do say so myself. His play, The Tale of the Allergists' Wife, ran for 777 performances on Broadway and won the Outer Critics Circle's John L. Gassner Award for Playwriting and received a Tony nomination for Best Play. In 2003, Bush received a special Drama Desk Award for Career Achievement as both performer and playwright and was given a star on the playwright's sidewalk outside the Lucille Lortel Theater. Today, Conrad Frank portrays the lead role of Lily Dare in The Confession of Lily Dare, and this is his third Charles Bush role. Conrad is best known for his cabaret work as the contest Katya Shmirnovsky, his monthly cabaret show Katya Presents is now entering its 18th year at Martunis. Whether in couture or pants, Conrad has delighted Bay Area audiences and critics alike for nearly 20 years in such productions as The Rocky Horror Picture Show, Sweeney Todd, Clue, and The Hand That Rocks the Crawford to name just a few. Conrad has also been seen at New Conservatory Theatre Center in Byer and Seller, The Temperamentals, The Divine Sister, Die Mommy Die, and Red Scare on Sunset. And F. Allen Sawyer, director of the production at NCTC, has been writing and directing in San Francisco since 1982. He is the author of Whatever Happened to Sister George, Gross Indulgences, The Trials of Liberace, Hot Pams Homo, Senator Swish, and Lavender Locke Room. This is the fourth Charles Bush play Allen has directed at NCTC, the others being Red Scare on Sunset, The Divine Sister, and Die Mommy Die. Additional NCTC shows include Daniels Husband, Dear Harvey, The Temperamentals, Dirty Little Showtunes, one of my personal favorites, Dames at Sea, and Zana Don't. Recently Allen has been directing and writing gossip filled narration for a series of musicals in concerts such as Hello Dolly, Mame, Hair, and Easter Parade at Feinsteins at the Niko. Allen is profiled in contemporary gay American poets and playwrights from Greenwood Press. We are thrilled to welcome our three special guests, playwright Charles Bush, icon Conrad Frank, and director F. Allen Sawyer, and I'm happy to pass it off to Allen now welcome everybody. Thank you. Thank you, Alyssa. Well, I'm so excited to be here, especially talking with these two brilliant artists. Charles, I wanted to start out just a little bit about your San Francisco history and I wanted you to tell us about the Valencia Rose. Yeah. Well, I'm from New York City I was born here and then I went to Northwestern in Illinois, but I just remember when when Armisen Moppen's first Tales of the City books came out and like so many other people I just dreamed of getting to San Francisco that just seemed like the most heavenly place on earth and my the first 10 years of my career as a solo performer doing these other elaborate kind of solo plays or I played men and women. These very elaborate narratives. And my goal was to somehow get do my act in San Francisco, and I had a friend Deborah Crane who I knew from New York, who'd moved to the Bay Area was working in arts management. And she, you know, really helped me out and she arranged for for one night me to do my show at the theater rhinoceros, and it was a benefit for the Golden Gate Businessmen's Association. She figured that would be a way of you know getting important people to see me. And that night, this wonderful young man Donald Montwell who was was managing the Valencia Rose cabaret and the mission. His partner Jimmy Menace came to see the show, and they thought I was somebody very important. And I didn't want to disillusion them. So, they said they were you know, would I come back in six months or so and and do my show the Valencia Rose and only you know they thought I was a very important New York person and so well you know of course and I, I think I can range my schedule. So, and I got to San Francisco, and the Valencia Rose was just a magical place it was kind of a, I guess I was a cafe and I had been a former Spanish mortuary, and they'd only kind of half renovated it. And the embalming room is still kind of upstairs. And I was, they gave me a room right next door to it still smelled like formaldehyde, but I was in San Francisco. And somehow, you know, I got I was embraced by all the sort of San Francisco press and, and it was my really my first feeling of validation that maybe I wasn't arranged to try to pursue this career in the theater. Oh, it was just wonderful time and so I would go back to San Francisco, over the next three years, no over and over. And so it kind of became a bit of a second home for me those during those three years from 8081 to 84. Great. And Conrad, you're a, you're a Bay Area native but I'm just wondering to talk a little bit about your connection with NCTC and how they helped develop. Sure. Yeah, and I grew up in San Mateo my grandparents had owned part of Joseph Magnon's department store the make up and luggage concessions back in the 60s and 70s. I went to high school at Lake Wilmer Ding on ocean and Geneva. So I think of myself as a city boy although technically I lived in the great city of San Mateo. Anyway, when I finished college I had studied architecture and then gotten a music degree and I was a countertenor and I basically was like I don't, I don't like singing opera this is not really for me. A friend of mine said hey I'm doing a play at this theater the new Conservatory Theater Center and I said well I've never heard of it but that sounds nice. And they said well we've got to, you know, they've finished auditions but they're looking for an understudy for several different roles. I've never understudied for anything in my life but then again I've also never been in the chorus, but I came in and I understudied, and that was 2003, I guess or so. And I immediately sort of got comfortable at NCTC. And then a year or two later I had been asked to audition. I've been flying back to New York to audition for Mary Sunshine and Broadway on Broadway in Chicago. Now mind you I'm all of 20 and change. And so Ed coached me through that audition process, which I did not get. I'm very tall, as Charles will point out. You know, I don't always blend in it's just a natural lady on stage. You know, I can pull it off when I buy myself or with strong actors. Anyway, so Ed coached me through that audition and then afterwards he brought up a program they had a young artist program at NCTC, where they offered to develop this character I'd been doing at martini's for some years and drag, a Conti smirnoff sky, and they basically paid for the development of my first four shows at my favorite basement in San Francisco, putting me with a direct a theater director, encouraging me to actually write material and work with a fabulous musical director. And it's because of those four shows that NCTC produced of mine that I really took my drag performing to a theatrical level, and much of the material that I developed during those years I still use week to week month to month performance to performance. So I'm eternally grateful to NCTC as they are my, my San Francisco home and responsible for much of the work that I've done since then. Now, Charles, you and I came up in a time before the ubiquitousness of VCRs. Did your love of movies come from TV million dollar movie or did it come from revival houses, where did your love of movies come from Movies, television from yeah exactly. There was a lot of network television, you know what in the 60s. You know, there was, oh gosh there was movie greats and million dollar movie and the late show and you know I had this kind of odd child like most of us. I guess everybody has but in my case might my mother died when I was seven, and we're living out in in Westchester in a suburb of New York City, heartstale, and my father. My father's great dream has been opera singer, and it never quite happened and so he had hit a record store in Yonkers, and he loved old movies he was very much that kind of a heterosexual man with stereotypical gay taste. And so in the movies that he liked to watch weren't necessarily you know war films or westerns or what we know as women's pictures, Betty Davis and Greer Garcin as a he would. After my mother died. I was living in housekeeper. And so she took my bedroom. And so, since my father was working all day and then at night was going through the ranks of the women and parents without partners he was at every night. It made sense that his room, I would move into his room they could put double beds in and, and when he would come home after a day at 11 o'clock whatever he'd want to watch TV and I really should have been going to sleep you know and so he would be watching the great show. And that was this great time for my father and I had spent time together. And so I really think I had most of my cinema education was between 1130 and one every night and, as it was at such I was so terrible in school but I don't think it helped that I was up so late watching random harvest and can deal. But you know it was a great you know it was a great thing for me and for father and I. I'm glad your mother managed a movie theater didn't she. She was she was the mute the manager of the Berlin game, the fox and I think it was a fox and Berlin game in the late in the 60s, the late 60s and early 70s. It was one of her favorite jobs actually. And recently she gave me a giant box of movie posters that she apparently took home with her in like 1971, which is very cool and probably what posters what for what. Okay, there's all the all the 60s Disney movies Dr. Javago is in there. Oh, I can't. There are a lot. It's all it's all from this from the 60s from the most of it. She showed it. Yeah, well and also re releases of when movies would be released to be shown for special events. So, and I, funny Lee as well have a father who loves old movies and Barbara Streisand and going to musicals. He cried when he saw this show, which was a testament to all three of us I suppose. But so I also did a lot of my early, my love for early for old for classic cinema comes my dad as well. Going to the Stanford theater on Palo in Palo Alto as a kid or in high school at least, we would go for double features all the time to listen to the organ and watch, you know the shop around the corner or Madamex or Auntie Mame or, you know, possessed. Typical childhood, typical childhood. Yeah. What, tell us what the period of pre code is. I guess pre code is really was, I would say starts the talkies I don't think we ever would consider silent films pre code. It really is that brief period I'd say between 1930 and and 33. Correct me Alan if I, you know, get things wrong, just that the move there was this period where there was great leniency and subject matter and sexuality in the early talkies. And so it was kind of a very special period. And the movies are always, there was a, I think, wasn't there already sort of a bit of a code in place, but then they were being threatened with heavier censorship by like the Catholic League, and all that and so the studio heads. They were so afraid that they, you know, somehow really be screwed up by that and so they decided to police their own movies, and they hired Will Hayes to be this kind of czar of censorship. And it was kind of awful thing it really did drain the life out of American film for many, many years. And, but there's that brief era of movies that are early Barbastan like films like baby face and, and may west first couple films may west career really was somewhat derailed I mean she was first two films of hers I'm no angel and she done him wrong and so racy and so just marvelously alive. And then, when the code came in, she kept going for another seven years but there was always, you know, at the end she kind of turned turned very moral, and she got a little chilly in her postcode films. Yeah. Well, so, so we're here to talk about Lily dare and and Lily dare really. Is that the first of your plays that's kind of inspired by the precode era. I know you've done, you know, the 40s, the 50s, the 60s but have their. Oh, no, no, no. No, I did play called Shanghai moon, which was inspired by the bitter tea of general yen. So that was, that was definitely precode. Yeah, I've gone to the early 30s. Quite a quite a bit. Yeah, but but I love so many my place to come about because it's a movie genre that I particularly love, and therefore, usually a role that I want to play. I just, I always was, I've always loved Hollywood films where the female protagonist ages, and it's a great tour de force for the for the actress as she goes from girlhood to often to old age and there are a number of movies, not just in the 30s but we're, you know, it's provided to women or or Barbara Stanwyck, or Irene done with you know this great chance for tour de force. So I always wanted to do that. And then I just, you know, maybe, you know, certainly, you know, since I lost my mother at such a young age. I've been so attracted to movies, you know, mother love melodramas like Madamex. And I was always kind of, and I actually, I really, maybe the first play I wrote for myself in drag. And I was living in Chicago is called Myrtle Pope, the story of a woman possessed, and I didn't realize till recently that, oh, that's almost a kind of a precursor to Lily, Lily dare there were a number of other similar chapters in her trajectory. But this time around, you know, I thought well if I want to do a play from to go from starts off in young girlhood I better do it now. I'm pushing towards 70. So Conrad when Charles writes a role that starts off as a young girl and and goes through the ages. At six foot how tall are you? How hard is it to play convent girl. I'm six to almost I might be a little shorter now. Very small heels Charles very very small, almost flat. So I don't look as monstrously huge. I do often request that I be seated, just at the beginning. Tell me, you know, when you were visiting me I asked you this question. And I think you were trying to make me feel better so you said, Yeah, so I'm a six feet. I don't know I haven't made what I haven't measured my height for many years, but I'm just over six feet tall, six foot to at least in heels. Small heels, but and then you add a wig. I do add a hat. Just just for for fun and giggles and I am at that point at that moment a mountain of plaid and pom poms but it's glamour. And I think there's a certain level of disbelief that is attained and it's also funny because people will meet me in person and they're like I can't believe you're that tall. But when you just saw me on stage towering over people I'm well proportioned I suppose as a lady. I'm like did you just think that they were very very small I don't I don't know. I think it's all I mean height is what it is I think it's all in body language mannerism and gesture and awareness that I feel like I pull off my 17 year old self or 16 year old self quite well. Whenever I'm in drag and the only drag queen who when you meet me out or after playing a woman when you meet me out of out of makeup is like wow you're so much younger than we thought you were and like, thank you, I think. Charles, in addition to writing a role that you want to play you have a lot. I guess we can call it you have a stock company and and are you also, you know looking for roles I know Jennifer Van Dyke you gave her so many incredible roles in this play. Well, it's it's I've always just loved writing for specific people. It's really started. When I had my company theater limbo and it was like having a movie stock company and contract players and is and so it's been fun for me to, to take people that I adore and you know very talent very talented and and try to often they're they're real big personalities you know what I call their trip. And so I have to figure out a way of allowing them to do their trip, but also stretch it a bit because they can't just play the same exact part. And with Jennifer Van Dyke she's sort of new to my, my world. Well, actually it's been 10 years now. And she's marvelous actress with many classical roles. And she has kind of a. There's a bit of a sort of young Catherine Hepburn kind of feel to her and a little bit of androgynous quality. And so with Jennifer actually I, this is really been the first time that I have actually written a number of trouser roles for her. And that's been very interesting and so when we do Cleopatra, I think she's a person actress who's had a chance to play Octavian and his sister Octavia at the same time. So that that's been really interesting, delving into this that world, but it makes it her range is so wide. And I keep testing it that it doesn't it does make it hard when the play is done. Other theaters. And I think when they read, I would imagine sometimes when somebody just looks in the, in the script and says, wait a minute so you know I can the divine sister. The same actress played, you know the grand dom you know philanthropist and also the little boy, but you know Jennifer the slightly androgynous quality she really could do and she's so game. And then in Lily dare, you know she. I just knew that physically she could embody that she could be the aunt is very gruff older woman, but that she also rather effortlessly could play the young daughter from 20 to 30 or whatever you know it's called for. And it really wasn't an effort back can imagine on paper mystical how the hell did they do that. And Conrad we've sort of developed our own little stock company but with Lily dare. We have Marie was the only one we could bring back and what's what's it like playing against someone that you've played with in this style before. And it's, it's, it's a delight it's always fun to share the stage with someone you know well and having seen the Charles do Lily dare, Marie's a different type than Jennifer is and she really does a marvelous job, pulling it off and she was our Bootsy in die mommy die. And she was Julie's part in a divine sister. She's a very wide range of characters she's played, but it's fun to be on stage with someone you know well and you trust, and you have a report with. Yeah, it's a wonderful feeling. When you do collect a group of people that yes that you all come from the same have the same point of view. It's a lesson that there aren't, you know, going to be trying to steal focus or after themselves or, you know, it's, it's a lovely feeling. And it's also nice, especially doing a work like any of Charles is where it could go one way, but it should go another it's wonderful to have to work with players that already know the feel of the piece that the importance of the drama the importance of the, the serious moments versus the comic moments, when to go somewhere and we're not to go somewhere. And I think Marie does that very beautifully and also never tries to steal from me. That's important. I got an idea from you Charles that when you told me that you'd had Allison Frazier is one of the voiceover actors that had been in the divine sister. So I thought when we did the voiceovers I would get some of our stock company that has moved out of away from California. And some other actors that that I wanted to work with so so it was a nice we were able to record the voiceovers over zoom and we just had this, you know, wonderful, all my favorite actors got to be involved in the play if only as the voiceover so that's wonderful. That was lots of fun. Charles, do you want to talk about specifically some of the movies that inspired confession of Lillidaire. Well, most of them are very obscure. So it's not one of these movie pastiches where you're, you're hoping that there'll be a science of recognition from the audience. I always joke that that I, when I do a genre piece, it's, you know, I do sub genres, not for me, you know, film noir, you know, I just, I do some very obscure collection of movies that. So with this kind of mother love melodramas, I suppose the great prototype was Mademax. And it's amazing that that in the early 30s, you're all these movies that base were all riffs of Mademax, and very tightly that it was always a young a young woman has a baby that for various reasons has to give up. And then the years go by and she has many adventures and and then after the child, whether it's a boy or a girl grows up, you know, she she she make, they must never know her secret that who her identity is because it would sully their, their current life. And then sometimes it usually ends up in a murder in murder. Yeah, actually, she has some have to protect that child. I think there's a line I think I probably cribbed it from one of those movies but maybe Mademax that really there it says that her the only thing she can give her child is her silence. So, yeah, so as Mademax it's a prototype. And then, oh gosh so some of the other movies were, they all have similar titles to the Sin of Madeline Claudette, which is, I guess in a way, maybe the second most known because Helen Hayes won her first Oscar in that role, but still it's not that famous movie. This is Sin of Madeline Claudette, the Frisco Jenny Frisco Jenny we took a lot because, you know, it takes place in San Francisco. What was the confession with something that Madame Blanche the secret of Madame Blanche with Irene Dunn. Was is there another one Conrad that I'm fine. The Audrey has this little bit of Polly Anna at the beginning. Those are other little little colors but as far as the pre code mother love drama so I think those are the big ones. But then if I look through our text chain I can probably find the other ones. There are other other little other moves are not in that genre that sort of affect the performance. I'm going to digress for just a second because you talked about the Madamex scenario and I noticed that my birth mother is on this zoom, and we have just connected a few years ago but you know after many many years, and she is going to come from Minnesota out to San Francisco to see Lily dare next week. And Sharon Cadwell down. Anyway, so everyone who knows that, you know, I've reunited with my birth mother and has come to see the show says, Have you warned her. Have you warned her. Does she know what she's going to be seeing. So, it'll be fun she'll be here in just a few days to come watch it so wonderful. I take it very seriously you know that's that's the thing I guess it separates my genre pieces from maybe some other parodies or, you know, I don't even I never really called these plays spooks, or even satires really because I take the plots and it comes from such an emotional place. We talked about Jennifer van Dyke's actress I work with a lot and number plays now she's either played my daughter or my mother, and I sometimes think I need to I should be paying her weekly well that political fee for you know, psychodrama that I get to act out. When I do one of these plays act out eight times a week just these is rather primal things that mean so much to me and and sometimes it's very painful it's kind of like picking at a scab you know just there's no I'm this motherless child and that's kind of the key event of my of my life. I think my plays and involved reconcile you know the fantasy of of being reunited with with my mother, and I said, it's very emotional and, and, and so I try particularly I think with Lily dare and maybe that this is the most I've dealt into that. There are big stretches that you know I haven't seen your scene, this production but I know like when we did, so it's stretches are very very emotional. And we wanted, and we really wanted to see Carl Andrews who directs my plays in New York. We, we've been playing over the years with how the balance between comic melodrama and genuine dramatic scenes, and sometimes we've failed where we've gone too far one direction. With Lily dare we really wanted to see, could we get the audience to respond emotionally, as if they were watching an actual old movie on TCM. And, and, and I was delighted when, as much as I love hearing the sound of laughter but hearing people sniffling and that was very rewarding. And a lot of comments from audience members is I didn't expect to be touched or moved or and so that's been really, really wonderful for us. And in the process I kept asking Alan I'm like, am I am I going to dark, I've from that you know act two scene to to the end is there's some funny stuff, of course, but it's, you know, it's, it's very serious and it, I'm using my acting. It's, it's just a joy to give some genuine emotion. There's a lot of funny stuff but there's a lot of really moving stuff in both acts but especially around. It's just, it's just an absolute joy to get to sink your teeth into a role that's so meaty and so allows you allows me to do all the things that I think I do best, which is singing and comedy and drama you know it's an absolute pleasure. So, so Conrad you had the great opportunity to go to New York and meet with Charles and I should preface this Charles we did a talk back after the show Sunday and I told the audience that any other actor others and Conrad I would not have trusted to do that because they would have come back and done just a weak imitation of you but Conrad was able to, I think, learn and and still keep things his own but kind of do you want to tell us what that was like working with the play right. I mean it was incredible I was, I was Agnes Gucci to Charles I was sponge and for it all happened very quickly where it was December and you know Charles had offered this and basically he's like oh, I've got some time in two weeks do you want to come out for four days and I was like, yes, yes I will go. And we sat in his beautiful apartment in Greenwich Village for several hours for several days in a row and talked and read through the entire play. We talked about a million other things as well, but it was incredible understand getting to understand where each of these moments come from. And there's so much Charles writes beautifully for himself and he writes beautifully for beautifully for anyone, but there's so there's so much in in the in Charles's delivery of lines that allows that informs the audience of what's really being meant here so there were. It was just wonderful to work through passages being right slow down here here's where we emphasize this is what this really means. And to do whatever I needed to, but with the great. It was an incredible opportunity, of course, sorry, let me just turn that off. Thank you. So I met my office everyone watching. I hope that was not an important call. It was remarkable opportunity and when I'll never forget I just learned so much when not to let the audience laugh. When to not do anything cheap reminding me that you have to act through these moments if you want the full payoff of the piece and it was. I hope I get to do it again. I wasn't going to at one point. You know I wasn't going to actually have the play published or available for other productions because it was so. It was so difficult, you know, challenging. I know I've been doing this for 40 years, but this balance of drama and comedy was very, very delicate. There were moments in the play in New York just that were, let's say Jennifer's character, we get a big laugh. And I could, you could, I could feel that the, and right after that left you go into stretch where it's supposed to be quite touching, but I could feel the audience, expecting that I was going to sort of top her laugh or, or that would make some face, funny to comment on on what she had the outrageous thing that she had just said, but I did I didn't want to go there because then we would, you know, be off to the races and we never get them back. And it took notes such control and, and timing of pausing to give the audience enough time to get okay settle back that. Oh he's not going to go there. You know, we're, we're back in dramatic scene. It was, it was hard, you know, and once, once in a while, you know, you know, it's in lion taming I guess you know the lion roars but you know, there are a few, a few times where people get carried away with with their laughter. And I, and you know, and they didn't take my cue, but but mostly it always worked. But those are things that I you know I wanted to give Conrad and, and I also, you know, my the roles are right for myself. I write so specifically for myself that that when you read the play. People would think I've heard people say to me when they read read my place, you certainly didn't give yourself for a very funny role. I write pretty much straight because I know what I'm going to do I know that on this line I'm going to evoke Betty Davis or here I'm going to get I could get a laugh and some sort of vocal trick of mine and, and so that. It's hard when the plays are done elsewhere. Sometimes the person playing my role does know so so they're not that funny, but but personal Conrad Conrad's very skilled, but also I was able to give him, you know, or show him various actresses that I was evoking on a line where that's where that's where my the laugh comes in, not from what I'm saying. And there were, I mean, incredible knowledge shared just on the importance of honoring the moment in the play, where it'd be very easy to get a cheap laugh out of a moment where that's not what's required there. And knowing that I mean just knowing that the audience may laugh in a certain spot, and that what I say, following that moment has to be dead serious and sincere they're two moments in specific specifically that I thinking of in the play I think Charles knows which ones they are and I think Alan does too I don't want to ruin it for anyone who might come and see it but there. There's a funny sound cue where the audience, depending on how you set it up, could burst into laughter, or be totally still. And generally, we've had audiences that have got that moment, although the other night someone said, audibly from the first moment to kill the baby. It can't be 100% you know, but it was, it was, it was, it was wonderful and, and it was permission I think to really act, or to really be in the moment and the seriousness of the play. Well, I mean, a lot of these moments, there's a big funny moment before, and then you have to bring it back to the seriousness of the scene. And it was wonderful to learn that from Charles and get, yeah, just an incredible experience. And actually, with these plays written for myself. You know, I just want to buy you know a big part is that I want to play that part. I want to play do this Barbara Stanwyck kind of role, you know, and, and sometimes I feel like I have to cut to do that. I have to also have a level of parody to it, but an exaggerate various things but have fun with it, but I, the main thing is, I want to play that role. So so there's going to be stretches where I just get to just to play it. Charles, I heard another interview that you did and I, I wanted to ask you to repeat a story. I think it was a college production of the lady in question, and you asked the actor playing your role, if they'd watch the movies that that you were referencing to remember that story. And not specifically, it might have been at this one university where they brought me out to as a guest and you asked the actor if they'd watched, you know, the specific films. Yeah, and they replied no but I watched Sunset Boulevard. Yeah, that killed me. Yeah, yeah, I think it was the lady in question, which is 40s. Anti Nazi war melodrama, pastiche. Yeah, so I asked this girl, it was based on very specific movies. Yeah, have you watched any of those films because clearly shouldn't have clue. So, oh, well I watched Sunset Boulevard, which does nothing to do with anything that were that we're doing. Yeah. So I think I think part of that visit they got a lot out of me at that university. I was also supposed to do a one afternoon do a reading of any of my plays using a student with me playing my part and the student cast. So we did Lily dare a reading of Lily dare, but I only got to rehearse them that about 15 minutes before the audience came in. And so it was just enough for me to say, just, you know, you got to play it, play it, you know, with a lot of energy, loud, a lot of energy but but you know, be real honest just, you know, do do the story. Okay, so so then. So we did this reading and you know they did okay. And then this one young man figure what role he was playing toward the last scene was being very quiet and so I whispered something in his ear and after it while we were doing the scene, and afterwards a friend of mine who lived in that area came to see this and he said, I was just curious, what did you whisper in that young actor's ear in the last scene. I said, I just said, goose it up you're losing them. That was pretty good. Pretty good note. So I noticed also on this zoom today. We have Tom Judson. He's, he's on page two somewhere, and and that's a perfect segue actually because we've got a couple questions in the chat and I want to remind folks, if you would like to ask a question. If there are fabulous guests today please pop it in the chat. One of our questions came from Jim, who is wondering about how Tom Judson and Charles develop the songs for the show together. Well maybe you just Tom one of Tom speak. I don't know maybe he's not I guess he's not really on the. I don't know if it works that way. Well, I know I'll just say, Tom Judson is great, great friend of mine and we've been, we've known each other for, oh gosh, you know, over 30 years, but we started working together. Because he's really musician and he and pianist and say he's been my musical director for my cabaret act for the past 13 years, and I knew that we needed a couple songs. And so I, and Tom is written many musicals but he's he's very, very good at pastiche. So I said we need a song that when Billy becomes this great cabaret artist and he, I think I said, very, very good, pastiche of Dietrich songs by Friedrich Hollander, and maybe a bit of Fort Vile. And he just went off and came back with pirate Jenny. And it was just perfect. It moves from the tone of, what are some of the Dietrich songs a little bit of black market, and then it kind of gets your lively it's a little bit the tone of the boys in the back room and supremely actable he's so talented. And we were lucky. Tom was in San Francisco, I think for 48 hours. And he spent a couple of those hours coming to the new conservatory and playing the song for Conrad. Well, the, the pirate show is a joy to say it's very Kurt Vile and very D tricky. And it goes to a wide range of emotions and is a fabulous showcase in the middle of the show, just to act the heck out of it and it's just fun to do. And I've also loved doing the other number in the show, which is a shanty an old shanty town from the 1933. No, it's the cut, like the cat with what's the name of the movie. The movie's the right in 20s. It's one of my favorite movies. And Gladys George, one of my favorite actresses plays, I think her name is Panama Smith and she's sort of a Texas guy in a nightclub hostess and the movie goes from the 20s to after prohibition and and she's on the skids and she's singing some sort of gin joint and and she's saying, it's only a shanty an old shanty town. So I've always loved that song from that moment. So therefore when I needed a song that Lily would sing when she's down and out. It's great because it allows you she starts out, you know, singing to the boys in the back and sort of breaks down to do it as a ballad. Right, which was is highly effective, beautifully shows this transition and what Lily's become, you know, after being a cabaret star and a madam, and now sort of down down and out. Tom, did you ever, did you write out a piano transcription of that? Is that what you're singing from? Yes, we were singing from that but the piano transcription doesn't tell you that there's a breakdown so I was looking at it and I'm like, what is happening here? And then Tom's like, oh it's this and I was like, oh, well now I understand. And do you have the, did you, I never asked you, there was a little bit that I wrote in the middle of kind of, you know, a couple lines. I didn't, I don't know if we have. Oh no, I never, I never had, I can add them this week I had to, I broke the line of poker face schools watching them as the same as watching a French poodle dragon milk cart. I did that in the middle. So there's like this really sort of little couple lines of verse that I threw in there. Yeah, there's the verse we have that the, some of you might think my man's a no good fake. Oh yeah that's it, I wrote those. I do that Charles. So when one, when one leases the rights to your play that also Tom songs are are are leasable also so we were able to do that so, so that's good. I have one additional question from the chat, and then we'll start to wrap up if anyone has additional questions please feel free to pop them into the chat. Our next question came from Robin, who says I really enjoyed the wonderful songs, can you speak to what were your musical influences which you've touched on a little bit but if there was anything else you'd like to add. I think I think we answered the we ended up answering. Robin's question. I did take them up a step, Charles. Sometimes I'd lend you to lower register that I use. But it, I think we're still getting the same D tricky effect and it's marvelous. But you don't see you don't sing in your counter. No, no, no, no. You sing in the in the in the second scene. When Lily's doing a little vocally operatic vocally. We discussed it but we figured since Louise is lip syncing to later on. It's, it's funnier that I'm lip syncing to the cadenza of Chichiria Bartoli's Samaria I can't which one it is for my section. Right, okay. I'll do what I did. Yeah. So, before we wrap up. So, a little while ago. Charles wrote a lovely book, a novel, The Horses of Lost Atlantis which I believe is sort of semi auto biographical but now. Now, there's an actual sincerely autobiographical book coming out isn't there. Yes, September 12 publication date although it's available on Amazon for pre order, or wherever fine books are sold. Yeah, I'm so excited about it. I really only worked on the book for 14 years. And it's finally, finally coming out and it was odd because I had in 1996 written this novel that was very much based on how we first did vampire lesbians of Sodom in the East Village and my theater company and how we moved off Broadway, but it's highly fictionalized, but based in and it was quite difficult. This time around, actually trying to write the truth. And, you know, I had told the story so many times and I'd even turned it into Cabaret banter, you know, one of the axatom and I have done. And so now to try to really delve into what was I really feeling what, you know, what is the truth, because frankly, even people in my life who are involved in my theater company has have come to believe the stories in the novel as truth. And I have to remind them sometimes that never happened I just made that up. I'm also confused at this point, but with this new book I really was trying to, to get back and then of course after I, after I finished the book, and it was proofread, it's at the, you know, the publisher, I mean it's being printed out. I went into, I looked into some old drawer here, a forbidden drawer, and, and found eight diaries that I kept during this period that I didn't know, and I haven't dared open them, because I'm terrified that I'll see things they oh no why didn't I put that in the book. I'm trying to believe that it's all for the best that that somehow the veil of memory is is actually better than find new the truth. And Conrad, you don't have a book coming out but you just celebrated a big anniversary. I've celebrated 18 years of my monthly show at martini's, which has been wonderful a chance to go and sing there. You know once a month every third Sunday and I'll be writing a new show with new music for Feinstein's the hotel Nico, which will be September. I want to say fourth and fifth but that may be totally inaccurate it'll be Katia I did it my way, a master class, or new additions to the great American songbook. So I'm looking forward to actually getting to put some pen to paper and write some new material and some new arrangements. And Charles are you hard at work on a new show for Conrad to start and me to direct. I have a new I have a new play that we're going to do in the winter. First, it's a joint production between Marvel's theater in New Jersey called the blank blank and the George Street Playhouse, New Brunswick. And then we go immediately into doing it in New York at primary stages theater company and it's called Ibsen's ghost. And I play Ibsen's widow Susanna Ibsen the week after the great man's state funeral and oh my all things how hell's the poppin. And I will look forward to doing that in a couple of years. Well, that'd be quite a walk is because she's a much older older woman she's it's one of my first to age appropriate roles that have played. Well then maybe I'll play the role and Conrad will direct. I'm fine with that. Whatever your creativity goes will be there for it. I want to give a huge thank you to our special guests this afternoon playwright Charles Bush performer, Jay Conrad Frank and director of Alan Sawyer for joining us here at Mechanics Institute to discuss their creative process creating and delivering the Confession of Lily dear, which is playing now at New Conservatory Theater Center in San Francisco. The last show is June 11. So please make sure that you go and see this wildly funny, absolutely touching delightful creative show at New Conservatory Theater Center. So we are very, very pleased that we had this moment together. And we are grateful to our special guests. Thank you all so much for joining us. Have a wonderful afternoon. Please check out mi library.org to see all of our future events that we offer here on site at Mechanics Institute and virtually for wherever you might be across the country and glow. Thank you again for joining us this afternoon with Mechanics Institute and our special guests, Charles Bush, Jay Conrad Frank and f Alan Sawyer have a wonderful day everybody. Thank you so much. Bye.