 You can push it, you can have it also. You can have it on your face. I am very happy. That's a great suggestion. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Hi, welcome. My name is Adam Belcore. I'm an associate producer here at Goodman, and I'd like to welcome you to today's artist encounter. We're thrilled to have you. You, of course, make the work at Goodman possible with your support by attending. There's also a great group of sponsors that have made this production and this event possible, and I wanted to first start off by acknowledging them. The Goodman Theatre Women's Board is our major production sponsor. The Edgerdon Foundation gave us the new American Award. Mayor Brown, our corporate sponsor partner. Time Warner Foundation leads supporter of new play development. Elizabeth F. Cheney Foundation, major supporter of new play development. The Davey Foundation, major supporter of new work development. The Glasser and Rosenthal Family, supporter of new work development. Harold and Mimi Steinberg, Chair of the Trust, supporter of new work development. The Joyce Foundation, and finally American Airlines, the official airline of the Goodman Theatre. Thank you to all of them. A couple of things. Today's talk is being live streamed on Howround TV. That's howround.tv. And so that is what the technical equipment is here that you're seeing. Because of that, we do have microphones, and so when we get to the question and answer portion of the session, if you would like to ask a question, please step up to the microphone. We have two available that will be put out at that time. And without further ado, I'd like to introduce our panel on my left, Director Robert Falls, playwright Rebecca Gilman. And finally, I will turn it over to our moderator, Steve Edwards. Enjoy. Adam, thank you so much. And thanks to all of you for being here, especially on this frigid afternoon. I think that those of you here in person with us deserve an extra round of applause compared to those who might be comfortably watching we're in a fire place on a live stream. How many of you by chance have had a chance to see Luna Gale yet? I know we're just early, but actually a fair number of you, more than I would have expected. So that's great. What we'll try to do for those of you who haven't seen the play yet is talk about it in a way that will inform your viewing experience and provide additional context but won't spoil anything for your time when you actually sit and see the performance in person. For those of you who ask questions later on, keep that in mind as well. Not everybody has seen what you've seen. I had a chance to see it last night and thought it was phenomenal. And one of the things I was looking forward to was a chance to be able to talk to Bob and Rebecca about this. In part because of the themes that it evokes in this play, not just the basis in the child welfare system, but themes around judging, themes around faith, around perseverance, et cetera. But I want to begin with the two of you before we go to the play by talking a little bit about your collaboration. This is now, what, this is your fourth production? This is the fourth production we've worked on together on the seventh that we've done at the Goodman, with Rebecca. And you wrote in the, sort of your notes in the program that you say, you know, that you've had the chance obviously to work with a number of playwrights and work on the works of many others. And you say that there's none whose work I admire more than that of Rebecca Gillman. Bob, why do you admire her work so much? I find in Rebecca's work just an extraordinary sort of passion and social engagement, which I think is very unusual in contemporary writing that she has the ability, which very few writers do to sort of intermingle the personal that the characters that she creates are extraordinary identifiable, very flawed human beings as great characters and drama should be. But there's a political sense in all of her writing where she's writing often about social circumstances, social systems that people exist in that's impossible to separate them from the environment they exist in. And this goes back to the first play that we commissioned at the Goodman spinning into butter, which takes place in a university situation and involves a case of racism on college campus and is a very I think very moving but also very, very funny play a sort of almost campus comedy with various serious overtones to a play that was produced here, Boy Gets Girl, which I did not direct again, which is set in the world of sort of journalism in the Upper West Side of New York City and starts out as a play about stalker, but I think is much more a play about gender and a woman's relationship in the workplace. And I what I admire about Rebecca is the way she can create a multitude of voices. Her earliest play that I was familiar with, which was very much about poor people about serial killer in Alabama, a play called the Glory of Living, captured the despair of poverty and other plays we've worked on have captured a very specific voice of lower middle class, Midwesterners and I find that very unusual and very exhilarating to work on. So just as a playwright I've been drawn to her for the variety of her subjects the passion of her subjects the multitude of voices that she creates and I should also say we have a lot of fun when we work together which cannot be underestimated if you're going to be in a rehearsal room and you're going to be working in previews for a long time. It's fun to be able to laugh and to sort of dig in and sort of be able to talk honestly together and feel that you've built a working relationship. You know it's a very complicated relationship between playwrights and directors because you have to collaborate and it's clearly the playwrights play that you're presenting but directors also generally have strong egos and strong points between the two of you and there's always going to be and I think at its best a creative tension between two people trying to do the best work but sometimes it works better than other times and I just feel very pleased to have been able to do these foreplays with Rebecca so that's kind of a long answer to your question. There's a lot there that I want to pick up on but let's stay with this last point between the two of you as you come with a play or maybe you come with an idea for a play how does it work? Just the other night Bob and I after the show he was giving me a ride home and I said you know you put up with more shit for me than any other director sorry, pardon my French but what I think is what I love about a relationship and the reason for that is and this is true in the way that Bob works with actors too is that Bob completely respects and trusts the artist that he works with and so while he's directing he's also giving everyone freedom to invest authentically in what they're doing and bring any idea or any notion into the room and there's never a sense of always a sense of exploration and I feel that he trusts me and expects me enough that I have the freedom to sometimes be a pain in the butt and I guess I always trust Bob's instincts and I always find that we have the same questions and that we're picking up on the same moments, it's not working and that when Bob looks at the language of my plays I know that he instinctively hears it the way that I do so that even if an actor doesn't access something quite yet and isn't quite realizing it the way I hope they hear she will I rarely even have to give the note to Bob I know he's going to hear it too and that he's probably at some point going to correct it if the actor doesn't do it first but he always gives the actor the opportunity to do it first so I think everyone feels that they own their work in his rehearsal room and I've worked with a lot of really wonderful directors and terrific relationships with them but in terms of the way the two of us work together I feel that it's I just feel that there's just more room for exploration more room for questioning more room for insight and I love the place that Bob directs there on my plays so much and what I think he always does is he takes a text and he realizes it which is incredibly hard to do and he realizes what's written on the page people don't know just how hard that is and then he brings another vision to whatever he's directing that's not a vision that's imposed it's not like oh I came and I reconfigured this or I took something that didn't work and jammed it on top but he somehow finds another level of experience another level of expression or visualization that again comes from some I think really terrific organic plays and makes whatever it is really breathe and really be alive what are the conversations like as the two of you both decide that you're going to work on a particular play and as you go through the process of realizing it to the form now take us inside what you guys are doing you're meeting on a regular basis you know for coffees you're sort of putting the finishing pieces on are you talking to Bob is it kind of an idea for a play here's what I'm thinking what happens there when the goodness gave me commissions the great thing about it is they say go write a play and that's it so I just go and I write what I want the only time that that wasn't true was Bob came to me with the idea of doing a modern day adaptation of a dolls house and a lot of people come to me with ideas for adaptations I don't always respond but that one I really did that was a great idea but then that was it he said let's do it and I went away and I wrote that adaptation and I brought it back and so there was again I was free to go and do whatever I wanted to do with it and then when we're working on other plays we generally we generally have the script in front of us and that's when we start talking about it there's often been less so now than in the past where we would have these conversations about what your ideas were you might have two or three ideas that you were working on simultaneously and you might say this play I'm thinking about and this play that I'm thinking about and I'll say well we'll sort of have a conversation of questions and answers and try to if I can help hone in on what I think a play might be we sort of had a it's true but if we've talked about it often it says for example well I'm working on a play about capitalism and baseball it's about baseball and money and the way players and owners and it's about money and baseball and the play turns out to be like 700 pages long and you're still working on it and then the next two weeks later you'll come back with a completely new play that you wrote in four days that is a play that in that particular case was about sort of low level massage parlor prostitution and a young police officer but it was actually ultimately about money and capitalism and the exchange of people in a profession and that's happened a couple of times where you you know the long Louisa May Alcott family play you worked on turned out to be what ultimately boy gets girl so a play well seems and I have no idea what's going on in your head but that you might want to tell me you might want to tell us all right now I'm very stubborn I won't give up and I'm worried the same old forever and then I write seven other bad pages and then somehow I figure it out it's not a good working process I've gotten a little bit better I think I recognize the the stupid path I'm taking earlier before page 700 but what happens generally is you know we'll have it sort of depends on each play you know this one was a little funny because I love this play from the moment I read it I really really responded and I thought it was really quite complete I mean there have been some other plays we've worked on that were not as fully realized in an early early draft that I have read and this one I thought was very very realized and had even had a workshop at another theater with another director and a full cast and what I have and what I like to do then is just have a series of questions where I'm trying to understand the play where I feel I need to really sit down for a number of hours and just say I don't really completely understand this and it may be something as simple as I don't understand where Tipton is in Iowa and why Tipton or I don't understand why a character is doing this at that moment I'm pretty good at the psychology of human beings but sometimes I just don't understand any clarification so this was a case for example when we were very busy and Rebecca was very busy and we actually met much later in the process than we normally would but it usually involves one or two or maybe a couple of sessions where we just kind of go through the play together and I will also be I will sometimes now that we've worked together enough the word that I would say which is a hard word and it's hard for people in the theater maybe anybody in any form jobs you have is trust and one of the things I love about working with Rebecca is I think we trust each other enough that we can be honest with each other and I will sometimes say I don't get this at all or I don't think this works or I don't think this is good and and that will lead to a discussion and similarly what I love about Rebecca is there are playwrights quite frankly who you don't really want to be in the rehearsal room all playwrights should be in the rehearsal room and all playwrights that's the first right a playwright has when they create a play is to be in the rehearsal room to have approval over design casting, collaborate with the director but sometimes there are directors who are just not good with people they may be great with words playwright tuning what did I say directors well there are actually a lot of directors who are not very good many directors are not very good with people either but there are some playwrights whose just energy just doesn't fit the working relationship in a room and it's almost better if they're not around and with Rebecca similarly I think she has a great ability to talk to actors and communicate with actors and also to say to me the same way I can say I'm not sure if the scene works on paper but she can say I don't know if the scene is working on its feet and that may very well be my work or probably is at that point something I am doing to misinterpret or to cloud in some way the intentions that Rebecca has let's talk a little bit more about Luna Gale you've talked a lot in other contexts about the inspiration or this piece which comes from the PBS front line and the documentary and the title of it is Failure to Protect and I would love for you to talk as much about that particular piece and how it connects as you feel comfortable with but I'm curious to know you're watching this documentary what was it that struck you about the story that unfolded and made you think there might be something here to explore I was struck it was a documentary about social workers in the state of Maine and there were multiple cases that they were working on and I was struck by a couple of things one thing I was struck by was there was one case where a woman had a live-in boyfriend and her daughter had accused or said that the live-in boyfriend was sexually abusing her and the woman didn't believe that her boyfriend was doing that and basically the social workers laid out a series of things she would have to do in order to keep the custody of her daughter and her other two children and I felt that when I was watching it that I didn't know if I believed the daughter and I felt that the social workers were bullying this woman and that they were taking a sort of a sort of patronizing tone towards her maybe because of her class and because of maybe education and I was sort of blown away by the amount of power they had over this person's life and then at the end of the documentary they were absolutely right and that their bad instincts about what had been happening in the house were all true, were all accurate and I thought, wow, if you've been observing dysfunction, familial dysfunction for that many years you probably kind of come to know even if you can't prove things and the other thing I was struck by was that there was a panel discussion at the end of the program and there were a lot of policy people talking about the ways in which the child welfare system works and somebody made the point that this is the only real sort of broad system that the government has in place in our country to deal with poverty and that by the time you get into the child welfare system or the foster care system every other social safety net has broken for you and has failed you and you're in a moment of crisis that's really hard to get out of and that rich people don't ever have this happen to them rich people may have similarly equally dysfunctional families in which people are sexually abusing their kids or abusing or whatever but they don't end up with social workers at their door because they have a variety of other ways to address the problems so that's what struck me about that document what did you do maybe I should pause here to say for those who aren't fully aware this is a play that takes place in Venezuela as we open on Lunagale we see a couple in a waiting room waiting for their daughter Lunagale they're using meth and a social worker sort of comes in now to begin a conversation which really propels the action and motion and all of the themes that come into it the scenery set design this is a land of quick trips and coming-goes those places that if you spend any time in the rural Midwest you've come to encounter them in small towns and highways what did you do to research these worlds of meth users and social workers and the rural Midwest to try to bring this to life I lived in Cedar Rapids for about six years so that came naturally to me and then my sister when I was living in Iowa was training to do a family counseling and she had shadowed a social worker and gone on family or home visits with her and had told me some stories and this was 25 years ago but they had really lodged in my head and it was what had struck me about those stories was the amount of the distance that was covered the amount of time spent driving from home to home going into somebody else's home and judging somebody else's life and their house from a quick visit and I thought if you put yourself in that situation if somebody came into my house this afternoon what would they think I put the garbage in a bag but I stuck it by the back door because it's too cold I didn't want to take it outside because I have garbage in my house and so those were the sorts of things she said you go into a house and your first impressions are not always accurate but the social worker has to make decisions based on this small amount of material and then I just did the meth addicts came from I sprang my ankle in Oregon and I went to an emergency room and Eugene and I was in this little room with these kids who were meth addicts and the guy was passed out and the young woman was all hyped up talking to her drug dealer on the phone and then her phone rang and it was someone who was calling her to ask her some question about their kids it was like their babysitter or her mother I thought who was taking care of their children and I was like wow you have kids and then she suddenly became very confident on the phone and gave very clear instructions to whoever it was about what time the baby should be fed the baby should be put down and there was a formula and a refrigerator and how to heat it up and I was like what are you a good mother even though you're a crazy meth addict so that sort of propelled the story of the play and unfortunately it's really easy to find a lot of information on meth but there's a really great book called Meth Lant that I read about the meth epidemic in Iowa too Bob you know I've talked a number of times in the past about the kind of research you do before moving into a production of the way you actually fill the box literally and figuratively with ideas and photos and risks and things that might help you think about how to realize this what were you turning to think about how this play should be realized on stage well I was working and I always work with an extraordinary group of designers and sometimes they're the same designers sometimes they're different but it's a very close relationship I'll have very early I start very early in terms of researching which means gathering photographs and listening to music and just pulling together documentary sources this was a little bit unusual for me because I don't do that many plays that are actually set completely in the contemporary world usually I'm doing measure for measure for example is the last play I did which was simultaneously for me about 17th century London and 1970s New York so this is the rehearsal room actually and no matter if it's that play or this play we fill that whole back wall behind you you can actually almost see with photographs and images and newspaper articles we just sort of fill it with visual images and in this world it was a play of institutional mazes it was a play about people who get caught up in environments under fluorescent lights the scenes take place in offices they take place in the basement waiting rooms in court rooms with coat machines and vending machines it takes place in sort of a crappy play room where social workers are able to look behind mirrors and see how adults or parents are interacting with children and so you start to develop a sense of the world with the designers and in this case it was trying to make a very, very real world a very, very honest world and so you just sort of gather lots and lots and lots of information and then I worked with the cast in an extremely detailed way on exploring the world of the play in terms of creating character biographies in terms of having them bring research it's not all about me actually as much as encouraging the cast will get assignments to the two actors who are playing meth addicts to bring in like a half hour 45 minute presentation about what they've learned about meth or to ask people to bring in several of the characters in this play are fundamentalist Christians it's sort of sketchy in the play it's never really laid out the specific church that it might be but we ask those actors to do a great deal of research themselves on fundamental fundamentalist Christianity and to sort of bring it in for discussion so a lot of the rehearsal is sort of discussion based and research based and sort of building the world of the play visually as well as historically and specifically for the actors I was just going to say one great thing about the research casted this time was the Jordan Baker who plays Cindy she did the research on what hospital her character might work at and Cedar Rapids I didn't think about it she came in and she talked about the two hospitals and she picked a hospital she thought it was the right one near the house where she thought she would live and then I had to do a rewrite on the scene of the play and I went well I knew where she worked and it's now in the play that she works at St. Luke's hospital that her daughter took the baby to Mercy hospital and there was it turned out this child protection center at St. Luke's hospital in Cedar Rapids and I was able to use that so their research ended up informing the text of the play which is really great so we have this world of our system, the social worker and we have this other world that you just alluded to Bob with Evangelical Christians, Fundamentalist Christians um faith in that context but I would argue that faith in other context faith in the system working out faith in somebody making the right decision and taking a fork in the road that would lead them to a healthier life is all part of this play too um why do you think about faith in this play and the role that it plays and their understanding of the motivations and the risks and the way people sort of encounter the challenges that life is throwing at them I looked at all the characters as having a great need for something that would give them comfort and hope and I sort of went character by character and asked what is available to them and what have they turned to and with the young people they turn to drugs and with the three characters who are Evangelical Christians they turn to their God so it certainly is Caroline in the place since she's the protagonist my question was where does Caroline put her faith and she happens to be at a moment in her life or faith and everything she's worked for and everything she's been doing in her own power to make a positive change in the role of really being sort of really challenged and deeply questioned so that for me is the open question of the play is where can Caroline find faith or where would she put her faith and tell us more about Caroline, how would you describe her she's a social worker who has 25 years worth of case experience she's a case worker for 25 years which is unusual which says to me like she's incredibly dedicated to her job and I think she's really incredibly smart and confident and she cares but she's also completely burned out and in a place where she doesn't know she can affect positive change anymore and she's very guarded I think so I think part of the journey of the play is finding out who she is without her telling us that's part of the play of course it goes back to my first statement that Rebecca clearly writes this extremely well researched world of the economic world of these characters and social system very much so in this play but then it's very much about real people very complex human beings and one of the things I love about Rebecca's work is that she gives a voice and dignity to a variety of people in conflict and certainly our hope is that the audience is constantly sort of off guard on who you might identify with that you know you might think our protagonist as is usual is the hero of the piece but the protagonist in this play as in most of Rebecca's plays end up making some terrible decisions often as human beings do I don't think there are any villains in this piece I think that people believe in what they believe people are passionate about what they believe in these people are human they're surviving all of the people in this play are really struggling in many ways with the issues of faith they're struggling economically they're struggling in our current world just to keep their heads above water and I think that there's a very very strong plot in this play where you get very involved with the conflicts between these people and you know we may start out thinking we know who two teenage methodics are and we may be very judgmental of them and then we sort of learn that they're quite different than you might think they are but yet certainly not heroic in any way still very very complex I think that I always use the word morality or moral in Rebecca's work but it's a very moral universe where she's really trying to give dignity to human beings in a very complicated situation and making very complicated moral decisions about things you have an uncanny ability for this I mean in your other work I think about spending it about her blue surgery to turn the, keep turning the prison to see the motivations and the action of the play through the eyes of each character in ways that give that person a more of a three dimensional characterization I mean that's one of the things I love about your work where does that sensibility come from for you as a person as a player the ability to sort of try and understand and give some dignity to every player involved thank you first of all I don't know I don't know the answer is that an upbringing thing? you know it may very well be I mean if you want to be a playwright one of the joys of being a playwright is that you get to write from every character's point of view and I feel like if you're not fully inhabiting every character's point of view then you're giving a short shrift to somebody on stage I never want to do that I did I grew up in Alabama and my mom was a Southern Baptist my dad was a Jew from Boston and it may be that put me in a position of not exactly knowing where I fit in and maybe absorbing a little bit more than participating so that might be it and I had sort of invidious class origins as well we were in a very small town probably the most well off people in our small town and this year as I started going to a school in Birmingham, Alabama which was much larger I was suddenly the poorest person in my school and so I think it may be that that sort of ambiguity has made me but I don't know I don't feel like I can lay claim to any particular like superpower or anything all of that though brings to mind something else which my wife and I spent some time talking about last night and I'd be curious to know what the conversations you had about this so often times when we talk about one of the central questions in this play which is underlying all of this is sort of the fate of the baby and who makes a good parent that's one of the central questions here what is good parenting when this surfaces in broader society often it's somebody's reaction to a new story or something they deserve somebody else in the neighbor and often it's sort of filtered through a very obvious class race or ethnic prism sometimes a religious prism as well in this play though we're talking about everybody in the play with one exception is from the same race from arguably I think the same class there might be some subtle differences there so we're all playing on roughly the same you've sort of removed these other variables that might affect one's perception the cultural relevance how conscious of a decision was that in either the writing or the casting or the talk as you produce this play I think that's a good question I think that for me I knew that I wanted you know I don't know that I consciously thought about removing filters that would affect people's judgment in that way I knew from way back the world I wanted to write about and you know I made it sound simple like oh I saw a documentary and then I sprained my ankle and I wrote this play I mean I've been working on this play on and off for probably nine years so yeah it was originally a play called Snake Tank just to go back to the things you've never seen probably really happy you never had to see that I liked that title though for another time and it was really bad but um so I sort of have always known that it would be in Iowa and that I don't know why I've always known that but I just knew that it would and Iowa is in you know Iowa so there's a there's a homogenous more homogenous population so I'm not really answering your question but you do I mean I'm sort of picking up a little bit on what Steve said that I think that one thing that distinguishes your plays and I think your writing is a very distinct class consciousness that you are writing generally about people who are voiceless at times I mean there are other plays where people are very very articulate even in a hyper articulate world but it seems to me that you I don't think it's any accident for example that for a number of years Rebecca was affiliated not only with the Goodman but with the Royal Court Theatre in London which has always been one of the more politically conscious theatres it's not the single most politically conscious theatre in the English speaking world you know the play that began John Osborn's career and Carol Churchill and a lot of what we call political writers and I think that political writing is almost a no-no today you know people use that phrase and it sounds very negative if you're writing in a polemic or a way but one thing that I admire about Rebecca and I think underlines your humanity is an identification with characters who are often you know of what whatever someone might say a lower class or underprivileged people or in many ways just dignity to the voices of people who live here in the Midwest you know as opposed to every play you see which takes place in rather expensive New York apartments dealing with people on the Upper West Side which seems to make up about 90% of the new plays that I read you know and a play that Steve referred to that I love the play called Blue Surge which was about you know what happens when a young police officer meets a massage parlor worker in a place we never quite defined it like Kenosha, Wisconsin or Aurora or something you know starts out seeing to be a play about sex but it's a play about class it's a play about economics and I think that's sort of there's a sort of humanism secularism that undermines a lot of your work which I think is rather unusual let's take questions from those of you so if you do have a question for Bob or Rebecca we just ask you come up to the microphone so we can capture you both audio and visually on the stream yes go ahead step on it to the microphone my question is did you want to have this play premiere in the Midwest like Chicago specifically was the location important to you I I did and I it's funny I also I haven't played this opening in St. Louis in March and I really it's set in Wisconsin and I'm really happy that it's opening in St. Louis and I really want to see it done in Wisconsin I I love Chicago I love the inner Chicago I love working with the Goodman so that was my first choice for sure and I was very delighted and I was very delighted that you wanted to direct it what other questions do you have don't be shy we're actually taking some questions via Twitter and so I have one from someone on Twitter that asks the names Kevin Hool and he was asking Bob and Rebecca have you ever had any disagreements that you were unable to resolve about staging our text good question it's a good question I think I'm getting off hand what usually happens is Bob says something to me and I get really stubborn and I'm like no no it's great I don't know why you're saying that and then I go away and I go oh he's right and then I feel really chagrined and then I fix it and then I come back and the thing I did is tons better than what it was before and then everybody's like that's really good and then I go we'll do like if Bob credit mistake I haven't seen that problem myself and then I usually go Bob was right well you're being very nice that's not always the case trust me you know it's part of it for me it's just I try to throw out a lot of thoughts and the idea is to say you know all I can do is say here's a couple things I think and hopefully not hammering too badly sometimes actually as a director I have a conversation almost every night you're sort of I'm sorry if I'm being a pill and I'm like I'm sorry if I'm being a bully so that conversation comes up but it's a good question because I can't think of one right off the bat and usually that is the case I mean if you're going to collaborate generally you just don't want to carry a grudge around for the rest of the production you know one of the better instances of that is the process of casting which is very complex and we've been on the verge of that every once in a while where casting is very very complicated and it means that we'll see a bunch of actors for any given part and I may respond stronger to a particular actor than Rebecca may but I'm not going to push that actor unless Rebecca feels strong enough about that actor and sometimes we have a discussion or maybe try to talk each other it's always great when it's just a given you see an actor and you go great but there are often cases where you know she sees the character it took me a long time actually in this play if you've seen it to understand Pastor Jay who's the pastor who appears in the play of Cindy's pastor and I just did not have an image of that person I just did not understand enough about an evangelical church I just couldn't see it Cindy is the grandmother of Luna Gale Cindy is the grandmother of Luna Gale and it becomes ultimately a battle in the play between Caroline who generally is advocating for these two young recovering addicts for most of the play Don't spoil money Oh that's not spoil money There's still a lot of choices and to say there's stuff going on but Pastor Jay is a very strong advocate for the grandmother of his baby and I just have no idea how to go with it and it took a while for the two of us to arrive at who we think is the perfect choice but I think that's an example more and although I also know that we've never left a rehearsal room going that would just be awful I really said I have to have this actor and Rebecca never really believed in that actor I don't think we can continue very well and I will say that if it comes down to it and Bob has some note or suggestion and I say that's not how I see it or that's not what I want to do he he knows it's my text well I should also always say that I mean we're making it sound like a collaboration and certainly putting a play together is a collaboration but it's really about Rebecca's play it's about any playwright's play you know sometimes I will take far more interpretive liberties is the wrong word because I think I'm trying to come if I work on a measure for measure or King Lear I'm trying to bring what I believe Shakespeare was trying to do in that particular play and it may get filtered very specifically through my perspective but when I'm working on a new play with a writer it's the writer's play and even though I may ultimately say you know I don't think this is a broad sense and we never have this if I were to say I don't think this scene works and Rebecca says well I feel very comfortable and happy with the scene that's the way it is you know it's Rebecca's scene and again I've never really ever felt that a scene hasn't worked that we've worked on and I would never not listen to you but so you together but it is the playwright's work particularly when you are presenting a play for the very first time which is a very very important thing it's truly the director's responsibility to the playwright to give them the best possible production. To what extent do you visualize the characters in your own mind as you're in the act of writing and visualize what this world looks like do you mean physically? just in your own mind you're starting to shape it out and does that create problems? I don't ever I think early on maybe I might have had notions of what the people look like but the first time you have an audition for a play you realize that that's not a consideration you're looking for the best actor unless it's three tall women and you really need tall women you're not ever going to cast based on appearance normally when I'm writing I don't see the characters I am looking at what's happening from their point of view I'm looking out through their eyes so I don't think too much about what they look like what are the questions you have yes ma'am and the picture there what does all that mean metaphorically you know I would love to say something really brilliant here but it doesn't really mean anything I thought about these two kids and what they might name their child and there's the children's book Stella Luna about the bat and I thought that they probably really liked that book so they named her Luna after that and Gayle just sounded good I guess but Bob really loved the name and the play originally had another title which was The Disregarded which is from a shameless heening poem the really informed I'd love for you to read that it's a wonderful poem and it's a wonderful you do understand where the title The Disregarded comes in relationship to that play the poem is called Mint and it's about it's about a family that has a Shamitini's family I'm assuming but anyway it's about this clump of mint that grows at their house that looks like weeds but they cut every Sunday and so the mint also spells promise and newness in the backyard of their life but the last stanza is what the smells of mint go to the fenceless like inmates liberated in that yard like the disregarded ones we turned against because we'd failed them by our disregard and I felt like that last bit thematically for me in formal but it wasn't a great title for a play so Bob and I had a long discussion about it and he just felt like the baby was the I thought Luna Gayle was beautiful entirely different thing if the play was called like Laura Jensen you know it's just a perfectly lovely name for any Laura Jensen's out there but I thought it was something very beautiful and mysterious about the name Luna Gayle and that it didn't necessarily instantly say name of a child which I thought gave it a sort of mystery and I sort of love the image because of course that child never appears in the play the baby is 6 months old and the baby sort of makes an appearance in the play although you actually never see the child and the child is not really heard from but I just thought it was a very beautiful and mysterious name for a play and that image I think kind of speaks well of it we have a head up over here yes have you come forward to the microphone have you come forward and then once she has a question too we can take a few more questions here I also wanted to spend a moment asking about two other characters we haven't referenced yet so we'll save that for a second I just wanted to make a statement because I really appreciated this play social work plays such an important part in all our environment this was about a child but my father had a social worker enters the whole town in Iowa except it was Wisconsin and in three minutes tried to define that he was mentally incompetent to drag him from this country home that he loved so I think we all need to be advocates for seniors and for children and this play was very meaningful and I sure thank you for it oh thank you what do you hope that this is always I think a question that writers and others sort of record from at some level but you've done a play about a very very important issue in society one that's often not in the full frontal view of the population as a whole what do you hope a play like this sort of puts into this course for either I guess I mean broadly speaking for me I don't want to tell people what to think about the characters or the play itself but broadly speaking I think that there are a lot of people who going back to the poem in our world who we disregard who we simply don't see and I would hope that the play would spark people to think about their responsibility in the world that we live in to essentially take care of each other take better care of each other and I work with a couple of organizations that really pay attention to people who are economically at the bottom of the economic ladder and are sort of falling through the cracks and that's the night ministry that gives free medical care and food to 5,000 homeless people in Chicago and then they run shelters and they're these organizations are out there and the other is the ACLU which right now has a sort of curatorial or custodial role rather over the department of child and human services here in the city of Illinois because the kids in foster care were not being kept safe the way that they should so these are the kind of organizations that will file class action suits on behalf of people that I think we don't even think about their existence so I think there are tangible ways that you can help people even if you personally don't feel like you can go out and save the world or save the children or whatever I think there are organizations in place that deserve our support and I didn't mean for that to turn into public services I'm sorry let's take one other or two other questions here yes pleasure of experiencing your other place but I'm very curious and we're going to see this coming Sunday hi but I'm curious about your previous plays is judgment and religiosity does it always come up this way or is it special in this case I don't, it's not in my other works I think it came back to the essential question I started with which is where we put our faith so that's why it's important this play but more than anything else I've written and let's take another question anybody over here I have another yes let's do another social media question Eunice asks she would love to hear your thoughts on the parallels between religion and drugs as placeholders for self fulfillment that's a great question when I was doing some research for the play because sometimes I'm really stuck as a writer and some google things to pretend that you're working or pretend that you're writing I googled the phrase meth and Jesus to see what would come up and what came up was a map a map of stereotypes of the world in which they divided all of the world into and then they would put a label so in the United States the west coast said something like Republicans and pot smokers or something it was something like that and the entire midwest was this big pink section and it said meth and Jesus and that was the stereotype map for the midwest and I thought well someone out there has been making a connection that I think intuitively I was making and I think that I was trying to look at again where we find our sense of worth or where we find comfort in the world and sometimes I think that the two seem like equally viable solutions to people Bob let me close with a version of a question I just posed to Rebecca a minute ago about the unique role that theater can play as an art form in bringing to life complicated and important social issues you know Rebecca talked about the documentary that inspired her to begin down this path my colleagues, former colleagues at WB EZ and sometimes I've been writing a lot about recent issues inside DCFS but what is theater as an art form as an experience have to play in the public conversation well that too is a great question when I struggle with all the time in the selection of plays you know I think the very best plays are essentially politically based and that can take place even in a family play a play like Long Day's Journey Tonight in many ways about capitalism it's about capitalism, it's about religion it's about many things and so I mean the greatest experience I have in the theater is when audiences come out arguing about play and sometimes they're arguing directly with me or they're arguing with each other before they go to dinner and what is completely depressing to me is when they come out not talking about anything other than where they want to go you know because I think that the theater more than any other form could engage you in conversation I mean I think that what makes the theater exciting is that you are in the presence of people and I could go on and on I mean that there is a sort of sense of of coming together you know in whatever social world you know it could be a church or it could be some sort of meeting or it could be some gathering to have a conversation that is important and I certainly believe that the plays that I like the most are the ones and I think they're essential I think the theater should be a forum I mean I once heard a quote and I don't know who it was from it was attributed actually to a director I know named Peter Sellers who always said that being awake in the theater is always good practice for being awake in the world and I think that's actually pretty accurate well this play gives us much to think about in the days and months ahead I want to thank Bob Falls and Rebecca Gilman for Linda Gale, thank you all and thank you all very much for being here I hope you enjoy the performance for those who are headed that way and be safe, have a nice day thanks again