Episode 645 - Annie Baker
Guest:Lock the gates!
Marc:All right, let's do this.
Marc:How are you?
Marc:What the fuckers?
Marc:What the fuck buddies?
Marc:What the fuck nicks?
Marc:What the fucksters?
Marc:What the fuck is going on?
Marc:Okay.
Marc:You can let your kids listen now.
Marc:I hope your commute's going well.
Marc:Your bike ride's going well.
Marc:If you're swimming and listening, that's interesting.
Marc:Perhaps you're in the shower, in the bathroom, or cleaning something.
Marc:I hope it's all going all right.
Marc:And thank you for listening to my show in your cubicle, trying to look like you're working.
Marc:Glad to be here.
Marc:Today on the show,
Marc:The amazing Annie Baker is here, Pulitzer Prize winning playwright of The Flick, which is currently running at the Barrow Street Theater in New York.
Marc:I saw her other play, John, a big fan of hers.
Marc:And I believe this marks the first time we've had a playwright on the show.
Marc:Also, Australia, not excited about flying there.
Marc:It's going to happen.
Marc:I'm coming.
Marc:When you're listening to this, I may be suspended in the air, moving fast over water.
Marc:A lot of water.
Marc:Not my favorite thing.
Marc:Don't know.
Marc:Look, it's going to be what it's going to be.
Marc:I'm going to get there.
Marc:It looks like Sydney and Melbourne are okay with the ticket sales.
Marc:Should be about 1,000 or so folks at each one.
Marc:You can still get tickets.
Marc:You can go to wtfpod.com slash calendar for tickets.
Marc:Brisbane.
Marc:We've accommodated the lack of ticket sales by moving to a smaller venue right within the same structure.
Marc:So you don't have to do anything too extreme, but it'll be nice.
Marc:It'll be better.
Marc:It's going to be OK.
Marc:It's better than canceling.
Marc:Looking forward to being there.
Marc:I'm going to be funny.
Marc:I'll probably be tired, loopy.
Marc:Why?
Marc:will not have a clear idea of where I am or what my body clock is doing, but maybe something interesting will come out of that.
Marc:Maybe I'll have an emotional meltdown on stage in Australia.
Marc:God knows I've done it before, but that was decades ago.
Marc:It'll be compelling.
Marc:Might not be the show you expect, but we'll make something of it.
Marc:Won't we, Australia?
Marc:I believe we will.
Marc:I had a therapist back in San Francisco when I lived there in the early 90s, a guy named Jonathan Rosenfeld.
Marc:And I've quoted him here before.
Marc:He once said to me that... I don't remember exactly what the context was, but I never forgot it.
Marc:He said, there's no such thing as boredom, only fear.
Marc:And that thing is sort of... I've kind of like rolled that around in my mental mouth for a long time, you know?
Marc:Kind of sucked on that with my brain for a while.
Marc:And it's always up there.
Marc:And I thought it was very...
Marc:provocative and insightful.
Marc:So somebody had told him that I'd said that or I'd quoted him on the show and he reached out to me through the direct message function on Twitter.
Marc:We were actually able to have dinner the other night.
Marc:He was here in L.A.
Marc:on business.
Marc:I hadn't seen him in over 20 years, really.
Marc:It's probably been that long.
Marc:And when I was seeing him as a therapist, he was just this
Marc:Just working on his Ph.D.
Marc:seemed like a fairly a bit of a dark dude.
Marc:I felt like we had common things.
Marc:We shared a disposition, but maybe that was just part of him enabling me the benefit of transference for the sake of therapy.
Marc:So it's kind of weird to see this man who was my therapist, not that much older than me so many years later.
Marc:And he's sort of gone beyond therapy, did a lot of work with family therapy and setting up a new style of family therapy practices over the years.
Marc:But this is the thing.
Marc:This is the thing.
Marc:After we talk for a while, he tells me that meditation changed his life.
Marc:And I've heard this a few times and it's not specific.
Marc:It's not, you know, it doesn't need to have a label in terms of, you know, what brand of meditation, but meditation as a practice changed his brain changed his life.
Marc:So I downloaded a meditation app and maybe I'll get to that.
Marc:I know it's just about breathing and sitting still and turning off your brain.
Marc:I think I'm capable of that.
Marc:My intellectual brain doesn't think there's any benefit to it.
Marc:But why not just try it?
Marc:I think I've tried it a few times in my life.
Marc:But I'm really hearing some good shit about this.
Marc:So look forward to that.
Marc:The possibility of a meditated Marc Maron.
Marc:How is that even fucking possible?
Marc:Jesus, man.
Marc:Look.
Marc:Here we go.
Marc:Let's talk about this.
Marc:About the...
Marc:The Lorne Michaels interview looking for some sort of closure or acknowledgement, justice, whatever it may be.
Marc:I realize some of you are new to the show and you might not understand why having Lorne Michaels as a guest on my show or me talking to Lorne Michaels is as important as it seems to be.
Marc:Here's the deal.
Marc:Almost since the start of this show, I've talked about the SNL audition I had with Lorne.
Marc:All right.
Marc:This was like 1994, 95.
Marc:It played a big role in my psyche and it served as a point of connection for me and a lot of people that I've had on this show.
Marc:And what I mean by that is I've had a lot of people who have been on SNL or have auditioned for SNL, and I am constantly looking for information about Lorne Michaels.
Marc:I had this one meeting with him so many years ago, and it's defined my entire sense of the man, and I'm looking to put him together as a human being through the stories of others, and I'm always looking...
Marc:For bad things, I'd like to sort of hang a certain amount of evil and sensitivity on the man.
Marc:Or at worst, a bit of a mind fucking.
Marc:This has been hanging over me for decades.
Marc:And the first time I talked about it, it was all the way back in episode 45 of this show of WTF.
Marc:I told the Lorne Michaels audition story for the first time at the urging of my guest, one of the founding members of the Upright Citizens Brigade, Matt Walsh.
Marc:And this is a clip of Matt provoking me to tell the story.
Marc:that has become sort of an obsession and a signature and a underlying theme of the duration of this podcast.
Marc:So this is Matt Walsh and myself on episode 45 of WTF.
Guest:You have a great Lorne Michaels story.
Guest:Have you told it on air?
Guest:I don't know if I've told it here.
Guest:Do a quick tell.
Guest:Just real quick.
Guest:That's one of my favorite stories of yours.
Guest:I'm pimping the host.
Marc:Oh, okay.
Marc:So what happens is, you know, I audition for SNL.
Marc:They make me jump through a few hoops.
Marc:You know, Marcy Klein sees me do stand-up, and then she wants to see me again.
Marc:She brings Lorne to the comic strip.
Marc:He sits there and watches me do stand-up.
Marc:And then they take me to the studio.
Marc:It was Conan's studio, actually, and do a screen test with me.
Marc:And then I have a meeting with Lorne.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:And, uh, and the thing about the meeting with Lauren at that time, I was smoking a lot of pot and I was reading one of Bruce Wagner's books, you know, and he writes about Hollywood and I was really sitting there cause you sit for hours and it was just me and Tracy Morgan who had, who, because it was, he was meeting Lauren that day too.
Marc:And his hair was so shiny.
Marc:Like you, like he looked, you know, like it was like perfect.
Marc:Like gelled or?
Marc:Yeah, it was just like a perfect black natural fro and just glistening.
Marc:Now, was this as a writer or performer?
Marc:Performer, right.
Marc:The idea was that they were going to use me on update because Norm was on the fence or something.
Marc:But I'm reading this book, and I'm high.
Marc:I'm a little high because I could not not be high for some reason.
Marc:You know how you do that when you smoke pot?
Marc:You're like, I smoke pot pretty much every day, but I don't want to smoke a lot today because I got this meeting.
Marc:But if I smoke now, I still got three hours.
Marc:To come down.
Marc:Yeah, that shit.
Marc:To level off.
Marc:So I'm a little high.
Marc:I'm reading Bruce Wagner's I'm Losing You or something.
Marc:And it's all dark and weird and about Hollywood.
Marc:And now I can't tell the difference between the book and what's happening with me a little bit.
Marc:And I waited like three hours and I go in to see Warren and he's sitting behind his desk.
Marc:And Higgins is there, the head writer.
Marc:And there's a picture on his desk, you know, pictures.
Marc:And then like on my side of his desk is a bowl of candies.
Marc:And he sits me down and he goes, literally, like one of the first things, it was when we were doing, I think, Luna, at the beginning of Luna, and there had been press on it in the New York Times.
Marc:And Lauren says, you know, I don't know what you think you're doing down there below 14th Street, but it really doesn't matter.
Marc:And I'm like, hey, okay.
Marc:How you doing?
Marc:And then all of a sudden, Lauren just stops talking and starts looking at me right in the eyes.
Marc:And I'm looking at him.
Marc:And Higgins is actually like, what the fuck's going on?
Marc:He goes, you can tell a lot by a person's eyes by looking into them.
Marc:So it was really fucking weird.
Marc:And I start talking about the original SNL, like, ah, I was a big fan.
Marc:He goes, well, there's been plenty of good casts.
Marc:That was not the best one.
Marc:I'm like, wow, this is not going well.
Marc:And I keep looking at this candy, and I'm just sitting there, and I'm a little high, and this is weird as fuck.
Marc:And then he sits back, and he does this sort of pondering thing.
Marc:He's like, you know, comedians are like monkeys.
Yeah.
Marc:You know, when people go to the zoo, they look like the lion because it's scary and the bear is intense.
Marc:But the monkey makes people laugh.
Marc:So I said, you know, as long as they're not throwing shit at you.
Marc:He just like looks over, you know, he doesn't do anything.
Marc:And then like I, I reached for a candy.
Marc:For Jolly Roger candy.
Marc:It was Jolly Roger.
Marc:And I go down, like I reach the candy, I take it up, I unwrap it.
Marc:And right when the wrapper starts unwrapping, Lorne shoots a look at the writer, at Higgins.
Marc:Like it had been decided.
Marc:Like that candy was somehow connected to mine.
Guest:That was the moment.
Guest:And you felt that was real.
Guest:Because I believe that.
Marc:I was a little high, but I somehow failed the test.
Marc:It was all hinging on the Jolly Roger candy.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And I left there just completely mind fucked.
Marc:And they left me dangling for weeks.
Marc:But in retrospect, from what I understand, I was just being used to scare Norm.
Guest:Oh, really?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But I like to believe that if you didn't take the candy, you would be on SNL today.
Guest:That's a better story.
Yeah.
Marc:Now, that story has remained very consistent in my mind over the years, with the exception of the fact that I meant to say Jolly Ranchers and not Jolly Rogers.
Marc:What is Jolly Rogers?
Marc:Jolly Ranchers.
Marc:That was what I was trying to say.
Marc:And the fact is, I guess I've always wondered what it would mean if I got some answers about that story.
Marc:Now, obviously, there's a little paranoia working.
Marc:Maybe.
Marc:I don't know.
Marc:It's been very easy all these years to give Lorne Michaels this sort of Buddha slash sorcerer slash mythological power because all I've had to do is think about it.
Marc:My life could have gone in a completely different direction.
Marc:had it gone the other way.
Marc:So there was different periods of obsessing about it and wondering about it and reading the mystical implications, the things that transcended coincidence into almost magic.
Marc:And now the thing is, now that I have these answers, do I want to share them?
Marc:Because as I said, this is an arc, man.
Marc:in my life, on this show, you know, what happens after that?
Marc:What happens after I share them?
Marc:Okay, well, we'll see what happens, folks.
Marc:Okay?
Marc:We'll see what happens.
Marc:OK, so now Annie Baker, I'll tell you, man, her plays blew me away.
Marc:I saw both of them.
Marc:I was turned on to her by Scott Rudin, who sent the show an email.
Marc:And it's my understanding, if I understand Hollywood history, if Scott Rudin sends you an email or perhaps would like you to do something, it might behoove you to look into what he's asking you to do.
Marc:And I was blown away.
Marc:He was right.
Marc:Annie Baker is a phenomenal talent.
Marc:And I saw both plays that I could the flick and John when I was in New York with Brendan McDonald.
Marc:And I was I was I loved both of them.
Marc:And so it was a really exciting thing for me to talk to a Pulitzer Prize winning playwright who is not what I expected.
Marc:It's interesting because plays can be very cryptic and very abstract.
Marc:And her plays are no different than that, where you sort of wonder, like, why decide to do it this way?
Marc:Or where did that come from?
Marc:How do you know when something like this is done?
Marc:So it was very exciting for me to talk to a playwright.
Marc:And it was even more exciting that that playwright was Annie Baker.
Marc:So this is me talking to Annie Baker in New York City.
Marc:I went to the shows.
Marc:Scott Rudin reached out to me personally, which is scary.
Marc:I don't know what your experience with him, but for me, I don't know him.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:And I got an email from Scott Rudin saying, you know.
Guest:Yeah, it's sort of titillating and scary to see his name in your box.
Marc:Sure, sure.
Marc:Like, what I do, is this the end?
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Wait, there's nothing.
Marc:He can't hurt me.
Guest:Or maybe it's my big break.
Marc:Right.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You're like, maybe he's going to cast me in a movie.
Marc:I think I'm that I think that boat sailed for me but um but he was in sort of excited for me and you to talk and then he sent me a bunch of your plays with a little card I think it said um compliments of Scott Rudin like a card yeah I got I've gotten one of those yeah it's really exciting it kind of is yeah but if it weren't for Scott Rudin I can't believe he sent you my plays
Marc:How did he find you?
Marc:What's your relationship with him?
Marc:Because of him, I saw your plays and I'm aware of you.
Marc:I don't live in New York.
Marc:I'm not a huge theater head, so I wouldn't have known.
Marc:So how'd you meet Scott Rudin?
Guest:I'm trying to remember how I'm... I think he is sort of like an all-seeing eye
Guest:And I like I think my second or third play in New York, which was actually like a tiny play with like 75 seat audience and like West Village and like a church.
Guest:It was at this place called the Rattlestick Playwrights Theater.
Guest:And it ran for like four weeks and like could barely people fit people into the theater.
Guest:But he like somehow saw, you know, he saw it because he's Scott Rudin.
Marc:Right.
Guest:And then called me in for a meeting.
Guest:And then I've sort of known him ever since.
Guest:so you went in for the meeting yeah and was it scary were you like intimidated were you like whatever no no i i'm actually like i i'm not when i'm not being recorded i'm weirdly not that nervous or intimidated by people there is something i'm like more it's like i'm
Guest:I'm way more scared of being permanently recorded as an idiot, but just being witnessed as an idiot for one afternoon by Scott Rudin wasn't so bad.
Guest:He was like, would you ever let me make a movie?
Marc:A movie.
Marc:That was the first pitch.
Guest:Of that play.
Guest:Which one?
Guest:The one he saw?
Guest:This was my play, The Aliens.
Guest:And I said, no.
Guest:And then he was like, okay.
Guest:And we sort of eyed each other.
Guest:And then we've had a relationship ever since.
Guest:But he's so smart.
Guest:He's like the smartest...
Marc:Yeah, he's done some great stuff.
Guest:He's the smartest producer out there, I think.
Marc:What was The Aliens about?
Guest:The Aliens was about kind of the town I grew up in and all the weird bearded guys who would sort of like hang out near the trash cans where I grew up.
Guest:And...
Guest:It's like the townies, for lack of a better word.
Guest:Where'd you grow up?
Guest:Amherst, Massachusetts.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:So it's like a college town in western Massachusetts, and it's like a lot of... It's a weird mix of people, and there are a lot of guys in sweatpants with guitars and beards who are pseudo-homeless.
Marc:But college-y somehow.
Guest:But a little college-y homeless.
Guest:Yeah, collegey homeless who like came to this town because it was like a fun place to be.
Guest:And there was, there's like huge, there's like a big heroin problem in Vermont and western Massachusetts right now and I was interested in writing about that.
Marc:Jay Mascus is from there.
Marc:You guys buddies?
Guest:Oh, no.
Guest:Right.
Guest:He's from Northampton.
Guest:But he like I was.
Marc:His dad was a dentist.
Guest:His dad was a dentist in Northampton.
Guest:But I that was he was just like the cool, awesome story when I was a teenager.
Guest:I was like, maybe you could become J. Mask.
Guest:Like there's like a few people from that area.
Marc:So you sort of you were you were you were not a mainstream person.
Marc:You were already from the get go.
Guest:Yeah, I was like artier than I am now.
Guest:I was like all the way.
Guest:You know, I was lonely and sad and I didn't have anything to do.
Guest:So I was like crazy arty and like angry and I thought I was smarter than everybody else.
Marc:Because you were surrounded by college kids too, so you could be that person, right?
Guest:Yeah, a little.
Guest:And I just like...
Guest:there's really nothing to do but get mad and drive around with your friends at night.
Guest:And then there's cool guys who seem really cool because they're in their 30s and you're 17 and I started hanging out with them.
Guest:They have drug problems and they write their own music.
Marc:So when you were 17 you were hanging out with the guys at the trash can?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Because they were the real thing.
Guest:Yeah, well when I was kind of like a pretty good kid
Guest:kid like nerdy with glasses and like um and then when I was 16 I like dated a cute townie guy and he introduced me to like the whole world of like people who have like drumming circles next to the pond in the middle of the night and stuff
Marc:The post-hippie do-nothings.
Guest:Yeah, and everyone's shrooming.
Guest:And I got into that crowd.
Marc:Dreads and smells.
Guest:Yeah, dreads and smells.
Guest:But it was kind of an amazing group of people, and I got really close to them.
Guest:And then years later, you'd hear that people had died.
Guest:And it's just a really specific world that I hadn't seen portrayed before.
Marc:Wait, you have siblings?
Guest:I do.
Guest:I grew up with an older brother.
Guest:That's important.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:How much older?
Guest:Three and a half years.
Guest:That's enough.
Guest:Yeah, which is enough for him to introduce me to cool music, but also hate me.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Well, that tension is necessary.
Guest:He hated me, and he thought I was dumb, but I was a good pupil.
Marc:Right.
Marc:So in those moments where you actually connected, it was around him showing you cool stuff.
Guest:Him showing me cool stuff and cool music.
Guest:And I remember when we were younger, he and his friends would be playing video games.
Guest:And I was in love with that.
Guest:I was in love with all of his nerdy, nerdy friends.
Guest:He's nerdy too?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:We were both super nerdy.
Guest:But his group of friends said that I could come hang out with them if they could use me as a footstool.
Guest:So I would like, I remember as a kid, like just like lying, like crouching in a little ball on my, on the floor of my brother's bedroom and them like resting their feet on me.
Guest:And I was like, this is great.
Guest:How old were you?
Guest:I get to hang out with these guys, you know, probably like eight and they were 11.
Marc:Borderline abusive.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I was telling that like, it was like a cute story and then your face like fell and you looked, you looked troubled.
Marc:Well, if you were 12, it would have been a problem.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:11 and seven and eight.
Guest:Okay.
Marc:It's cute.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:What'd your, what'd your folks do in Amherst?
Guest:My mom growing up was a therapist.
Marc:Oh, really?
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:What kind?
Guest:Well, she worked at a clinic in Northampton for mostly children who are abuse survivors.
Guest:And then she was also like going back to school while she was doing that job and trying to get her PhD in psychology.
Guest:and i remember once like the husband she was like testifying in court for one of the abused kids and like the husband uh showed up in our backyard like threatening us like there was some she was like part of that world right um and then so my brother and i lived with her and then my dad lived in new york city actually here yeah still no he lives in dc when they get divorced six you were six yeah are your parents still together
Marc:No, they're still alive.
Marc:Not together.
Guest:Every episode I've listened to of your show, everyone's parents are divorced.
Guest:I'm keeping, it might just be a coincidence which ones I really, I'm like, are we all from divorced parents?
Yeah.
Marc:Some peoples are still alive, but yeah, I think most people in general, in a certain world, the parents are divorced.
Marc:It seems pretty common.
Marc:What effect it has on these all changes.
Marc:My parents didn't get divorced until I was in my 30s.
Marc:So it's really, yeah, it's hard for me to figure out.
Guest:Do you feel like they should have gotten divorced earlier?
Marc:I don't know.
Marc:You know, like, probably.
Marc:I mean, there was so much weird self-involved lying going on.
Marc:Like, I didn't know until later.
Marc:But I don't know that I really felt that connected to them in general.
Guest:So when you were 15, if someone was like, are your parents happy together?
Guest:You would have been like, I don't know.
Yeah.
Marc:Yeah, because I just never really saw them as parents.
Marc:They were just these people that I grew up with.
Marc:They seemed to have some problems, and they needed a lot of attention.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Right.
Marc:Well, what's your relationship like with your parents?
Guest:um my mom and i are really close is she still doing therapy yeah and she's um she started teaching psychology after she got her doctorate up in new hampshire and she just she like just retired two months ago she and i are really close we were like too close when i was a kid sure like now i feel like it's really good we're like friends she was leaning on you when you were a kid
Guest:Well, I actually just think it's that thing when you're a single parent, especially after my brother went to college.
Guest:It's just like a 15 year old girl and a 50 year old woman like living together and you're both single.
Guest:It's like it's just really intense.
Guest:Like we were just like a couple.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And we I mean, I like I don't know who I'd be without like staying sitting at the kitchen table with her like really late at night and like talking about everything.
Guest:But so that's like a huge part of my life.
Guest:And I wouldn't.
Guest:ever take that away but I am like that's great like we talked like my friends would hear the kind of conversations I had with my mother and just be like what but that's good but I mostly good you know like occasionally you don't want to hear about everything and I think as a kid I always asked a lot of questions and I was very curious but I always I was the kind of kid that like asked the question that you I didn't actually want to know the answer to like
Guest:You want your mom to talk about sex to a certain point.
Guest:But she's a therapist.
Guest:She's going to lay it out.
Guest:She laid it out.
Guest:She laid it out big time.
Marc:But not just the biology of it.
Marc:No.
Marc:Too much information.
Guest:Too much information.
Guest:And looking back, you're like...
Guest:But yeah, she's cool.
Guest:So it's a boundary issue.
Guest:She's a cool lady.
Guest:The two of us had some boundary issues.
Guest:And I hated all our boyfriends.
Guest:I was like a jealous husband.
Marc:Oh, really?
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:What's your dad do?
Guest:He's done a lot of different things.
Guest:He's an environmentalist.
Guest:That's sort of what all his jobs have been related to.
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:I meet people whose parents told them that they were going to be great artists when they grew up or that they could...
Guest:like you can do anything, which I'll probably tell my kids.
Guest:But there is a weird entitlement, I think, to people who knew they were going to do great things.
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:I never had that.
Guest:I was sure.
Guest:I've only met a couple.
Guest:I was like, I'm just trying to avoid being homeless in the gutter.
Guest:So that makes me very happy.
Guest:I'm always very grateful that I get to be an artist because it's legitimately a pleasant surprise.
Guest:I did not think it would happen.
Marc:Did you have jobs?
Guest:I had so many jobs and I was just sure that that's what I'd be doing for the rest of my, I was totally resigned to that.
Guest:And I was really good at finding jobs.
Marc:I was doing jobs.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I was like, I'm going to have a series of jobs and I'll try to find it by the, you know, I'll try to have a job that doesn't make me want to kill myself and I'll have that job and then I'll die.
Guest:And that was it.
Guest:That's what I get.
Marc:That was the dream.
Guest:That's what I get.
Guest:That's what you get.
Guest:Yeah, and that's what most people get, you know?
Guest:And so I am really lucky.
Guest:But I had tons of jobs, and I was really good.
Guest:It's weird, because I'm really lazy and ineffective in lots of areas of my life, but I've always been really good at finding jobs.
Guest:So I was like...
Guest:I'm working in the bakery after school when I was in high school.
Guest:I was like the youngest person there by like 15 years.
Marc:Making bread and muffins?
Guest:I just like sold cookies at the counter.
Guest:Oh, you didn't get to bake?
Marc:I didn't get to bake anything.
Marc:But were the bakers there?
Guest:The bakers were there.
Marc:How great is that to work in a place where they bake?
Guest:It was great.
Guest:And then if a cookie breaks, you get to eat it.
Guest:And then I'd just be breaking cookies when they weren't looking.
Guest:And I was just babysitting all the time.
Guest:I just was always working and always saving money.
Guest:And then I worked throughout college and had a million different jobs.
Guest:Were you writing in high school?
Guest:I was writing, but I wasn't showing it to anybody because I also I was writing short stories.
Guest:I wrote a play But and I like submitted it to some con, you know some student play con in the high school.
Guest:Yeah, like a short play and then I What's the opposite of submitting I rescinded it like the night before I was like actually never mind and I and then I like took it back because it was so bad and you know I was really self-hating and Hated everything I wrote and sort of did it in secret and
Marc:Why do you think you were self-hating?
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:I do think it's partly like having an older brother and a father who are really into movies and books and talking about...
Guest:um all that stuff I do think I do think that I oh and I I don't know I always felt like anything I produced wasn't as good as I knew something I didn't I always held myself it's like I at 15 I still
Guest:I held myself to the standard I hold myself to now, which is like I want to make something really good.
Guest:And it's so painful when you're 15.
Guest:And would my brother like it?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I'm a stupid 15-year-old, so I can't do it.
Guest:But I never had the thing where I was like, maybe it's really good.
Guest:I always knew I was like an idiot now.
Guest:high school student and it's so painful right and so then all the high school students who were like doing stuff and thinking it was good I like couldn't identify with them but I mean I still feel that way actually I'm still like I haven't like this is terrible what I'm doing like what's wrong with you idiots that you think this is like yeah I'm not I'm not just being self-deprecating I am like
Guest:And there's a kind of like actually... You know you won the Pulitzer Prize?
Guest:I did, but I had the same feeling where I was like, this?
Guest:I could do so much better than this.
Guest:I mean, it's actually very egotistical.
Guest:It's actually kind of like, I could be so much better.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Did you rescind the Pulitzer?
Guest:Yeah, I sent the play where I'm like, I think you guys...
Marc:You're really not that good.
Marc:I want to take the play.
Marc:I don't know who submitted this.
Guest:That's I would have if I could have.
Guest:Seriously.
Guest:Yeah, seriously.
Marc:But probably for there's probably a broader series of pressures and reasons than just being a 15 year old.
Marc:yeah no clearly it's like still going on for me now but but now sort of like um you know the the expectations or or or the what you would see as expectations once you win something like that which is a pretty big fucking deal yeah you're sort of like oh my god no now what
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Although I feel like my own expectations for myself have always been so high because the people have asked me, they've been like, do you feel pressure now that you won this award to like, you know, the next thing you do has to be really good.
Guest:And I actually feel like the amount of pressure I've exerted on myself is so high my whole life that it's like it actually doesn't.
Guest:I don't feel like I'm already like crippled under the weight of the pressure I put on myself.
Marc:Because it's interesting about self-hatred.
Guest:I don't know why that's funny.
Guest:Keep going.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:No, it is because some people have it.
Marc:And it's a really hard thing to shake that type of judgment on yourself.
Marc:And some people don't have it.
Marc:I don't meet a lot of people that, you know, are necessarily really confident, but they don't do the thing where they second guess everything.
Marc:And even when they have success, they're like, no, it's okay.
Marc:You know, that thing, that there's no moment of relief whatsoever.
Marc:or sense of accomplishment that would, you know, give you the self-esteem, even for a minute, that was sort of like... Well, it's so... The self... Because I don't know.
Guest:Like, I don't hate... If I think about it, like, I don't hate myself.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Like, I like myself okay.
Guest:Like, I actually think I'm, like, a pretty good friend and, like, a pretty good girlfriend.
Guest:Like, I'm not great.
Guest:You know, I'm like, okay.
Guest:But I'm like, I don't beat myself up about it.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Well, actually, that's not true.
Guest:But I don't... It's different.
Guest:I'm like... I'm like...
Guest:I would want to be friends with me.
Guest:Like I'm a nice lady.
Guest:But, but, but then when it comes to like making art, it's like, that's a whole, that's a whole different story.
Guest:And that is about like, what's the point?
Guest:It already, it just feels like such a indulgent, um,
Guest:thing to be able to do and so many people on this planet like don't get to do that and don't have the opportunity to express themselves creatively for their job i mean it's so crazy that we get to do that so then i do feel this like enormous pressure and enormous amount of i don't know if it's self-hatred but just like maybe it's self-hatred but just like i better fucking make this really amazing and then when it's not really amazing i feel like shit
Guest:I don't know if that's self-hatred.
Guest:Do you hate yourself?
Marc:I do it in a very specific way.
Marc:Generally, I think I'm okay with myself, but I do have weird body issues for a dude.
Guest:Wait, what are your weird body issues?
Marc:I just always feel like I'm doughy.
Marc:you're not you don't look doughy see now it's gone for a second see what you did thank you this interview's been great for me but have you always felt that way though you've like since you were a kid you were like i'm doughy so like it was yeah yeah that was her way that she bonded with me her lack of boundaries was concern for me being fat oh and were you ever fat
Marc:chubby but like every kids chubby right yeah she fucked me up for good yeah but it's deep yeah yeah but like in terms of professionally I never think I put the right amount of time into my bits I don't think that my comedy is as strong as it could be I'll compare myself to other people yeah like my friends who are you know either more successful or who I think are more more funny or more you know have a structure like that my process is my process anyone's processes whatever
Guest:Right.
Marc:But I always think if I was a little more disciplined and I didn't write like that, then I'd be much better.
Marc:But does it stop me?
Marc:No.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I definitely feel like I don't work hard enough.
Marc:Right.
Marc:You perpetuate it.
Marc:It's our way of motivating.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:But when your parents got divorced, did, was that, did you, are you friends with your dad?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I mean, I didn't really, he didn't, I grew up with my mom more.
Marc:Right.
Guest:But yeah, we're friendly.
Guest:It's cool.
Marc:But you didn't feel like, you know, it was your fault and all that shit.
Guest:Totally.
Guest:wasn't my fault no you know I was young enough that I don't remember I definitely was like depressed and sad about it I think but I think worse than actually your parents getting divorced for me I shouldn't speak for other people for me worse than the divorce itself because my parents like shouldn't have been together was like very clear it was one of those divorces were afterwards you were like I have no idea why those two
Guest:my whole life's been a lie and would have ever gotten together they're so different like even just the two of them talking in the room at like a high school graduation yeah seems surreal um but i think harder for me was like um the whole like parents dating other people thing and like people coming in and out of my lives and like my parents marrying people and then
Guest:They were just like single people in the 80s.
Marc:Right.
Guest:So a lot of people coming through.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:There were a lot of people coming through on both sides.
Guest:And that was the hard part.
Guest:That's the thing where I look back and I'm like, oh, that sucked.
Guest:Like having to meet people and get to know them and like being asked questions.
Guest:to consider them your family and then them like disappearing when your parent breaks up with them like that whole thing fucked with my head and I think if I ever have kids that's the thing I would really want to try not to do if I ever like got divorced would be like the whole the whole like bringing introducing your kid to people you're dating madness thing but hard to avoid too
Marc:It's interesting, and I'm sure you've made the connection, that trying to figure out what a relationship is and whether they're possible and whether you can have one that'll stay is some theme you work with.
Guest:In my work?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Is it?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I guess.
Guest:The play you saw last night, John, was the first play where I'd ever really tried to tackle a romantic relationship.
Guest:I think I've always really avoided that.
Guest:And that was my first play where I was like, I want to write about the mind fuck of being in a relationship in its last stage.
Marc:But last stage of three years.
Guest:Last stage of three, yeah.
Guest:Like a young relationship with young people.
Guest:Young people when you shouldn't be together, but you're like working really hard and you don't know yourself well enough to know that you should just leave.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And that whole thing.
Guest:And then you think there's something wrong with you and that whole cycle.
Guest:I was interested in writing about that, but I...
Guest:That's another thing.
Guest:I really hesitated writing about it because I do think so many plays and movies about relationships, there is a point where I'm like, why do I care?
Guest:It has to feel a little universal and not just about two people in love and breaking up.
Marc:I didn't feel that that was the...
Marc:primary story, but the idea of what is permanent and what is, you know, unconditional and what is, you know, bigger than us and what stays throughout.
Guest:Well, that's the hardest thing for me about becoming an adult was this whole idea.
Guest:Like, I think I would have fared.
Guest:That's not true.
Guest:I'm going to say something that's not true, but I think I would have fared better in like one of those societies where you like married your first
Guest:girlfriend or boyfriend and then you're just like stuck with them and you're not allowed to get divorced I don't actually wish that's what had happened but but I the whole thing where like you could fall in love with people and even live with them and like have Thanksgiving with them and then break up which is kind of what being in your 20s is about now killed me like I couldn't believe
Guest:Because I'd grown up with that and I didn't want to do that.
Guest:Painful.
Guest:Yeah, and just ludicrous to me, like bringing someone in that close to you and like trying to make someone family and then it failing and then you never see each other again.
Guest:And I would try to be friends with all my ex-boyfriends because I was like, how can we not be in each other's lives anymore?
Guest:You know, I was like, it was very, very hard for me to accept the idea that like people leave your life sometimes.
Marc:It's horrible.
Guest:And that you can, like that I would initiate that, that I'd be the person who would end something also killed me.
Guest:Like I couldn't, like I could, that was, I'd feel like that was like my most self-hating moment was like in my mid twenties when I was like, I'm hurting people and ending things.
Guest:And, and that really killed me.
Guest:And I do feel like that's related to like being a child of divorce.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:People coming and going.
Guest:I just didn't want to do that myself.
Guest:And then of course I did.
Guest:How can you not?
Marc:No, it's impossible not to.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:And still honor your feelings unless you just luck out.
Marc:But I think it's interesting that the idea of... It's not the society you talk about where you're supposed to be with the person that you... I mean, the idea of marriage is sort of that.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:But there was no reason that you would ever believe in it given what you grew up with.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:It didn't seem rational.
Guest:Yeah, I wanted it very badly though.
Guest:Like I loved the idea of like...
Guest:meeting someone at 18 and being with them for the rest of your life.
Guest:I was like, that sounds great.
Guest:That sounds so stable.
Marc:But you'd have to turn a lot of your brain off
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Marc:And suck up a lot of things where in the culture we live in as ideas about individuality and psychology evolve, we've grown to try to service ourselves more than others in relationship and protect that.
Marc:I don't know.
Guest:No, that's the hardest thing.
Marc:It is the hardest thing, and it's all about compromise.
Marc:I'm older than you, and I've been through a couple marriages and some painful shit, and I don't like it, and it's really kind of awful.
Marc:But I'm just realizing now as you talk about it that if I look at the two plays I saw, this idea of...
Marc:of grieving absence of somebody for whatever reason and the loneliness of longing and then also the sort of the weird painful loneliness of losing or deciding to not be with somebody you loved is like that's a human thing.
Marc:Everybody has that.
Marc:They're just walking around at some state of heartbreak.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Managing heartbreak.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I never wanted to betray anybody.
Guest:That was always my thing.
Guest:Like as a teenager and someone in my early 20s, I was always like, I don't I'm never going to betray anybody.
Guest:But like, of course, we just go through life betraying everybody all the time and ourselves.
Guest:And it's just a matter of like managing it and talking about it and like rationalizing, rationalizing it and trying to minimize it.
Marc:Mm hmm.
Guest:But I just never wanted to make anyone feel bad or betrayed ever.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And then I, of course, the sad thing too is when you also like have that goal, then you end up betraying people left.
Guest:And like, then you're just like not in touch with your desires and then you screw lots of people over.
Guest:Well, that's the trap.
Guest:And then, and then, yeah.
Marc:And then you're hard on yourself.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:And then you get to honor that.
Marc:Like, I'm not good.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Well, I figured it all out.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So when did you decide to pursue theater for real?
Marc:I mean, why did you go to college?
Marc:Like you were working and doing your jobs and breaking cookies.
Guest:Right.
Marc:And you know, you didn't have a big plan for yourself.
Marc:Did your parents say like you should go to college or were you sure?
Guest:Oh, I totally wanted to go to college.
Guest:Like I loved reading and I loved art and I wanted to get out of my small town and I wanted to move to New York City.
Guest:So I was super excited about going to college.
Marc:But you wanted to move to New York City because of college or just because there was something here that you had decided you wanted?
Guest:There was something here that I decided I wanted.
Guest:What was that based on?
Guest:My dad living here, I visited him here.
Guest:I liked it.
Guest:I liked going to see movies at Film Forum.
Guest:i wanted to like work in the theater somehow so you did i moved here yeah right when i moved here while i was my freshman year of college i was like a stage manager at la mama which is actually like two blocks away from here um and i just immediately started so you knew theater was it i was super into theater and i was like i want to be involved in this somehow and were you acting you were acting in college in high school in high school i was acting but i never wanted to be an actor because i'm a bad actor
Marc:What were you doing?
Marc:What kind of acting?
Marc:What plays?
Guest:Well, I was the star of my high school musical my senior year of high school, Guys and Dolls.
Marc:You did Guys and Dolls in high school?
Guest:I did Guys and Dolls and I was Adelaide.
Guest:And that was still the high point of my life.
Marc:To this day?
Guest:To this day.
Guest:was cause I got to like wear tiny sparkly hot pants and like fishnet stockings.
Guest:And I remember like the woman who was supposed to choreograph my dances, like got sick or something like the gym teacher or whatever.
Guest:And so I like choreographed all my own dances and like got to wear a blonde wig.
Guest:And it's the,
Marc:Bigger than the Pulitzer.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:No question.
Guest:I was happier then.
Marc:Really?
Guest:Well, that one experience was really, really great.
Guest:It's great.
Guest:It was totally great.
Guest:And I remember when it was happening, I was like, I'm never going to get to star in a musical and wear tiny sparkly hot pants ever again.
Guest:Again?
Guest:This is it?
Guest:This is it.
Guest:And it was.
Marc:Oh.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:You know, there's still time, Annie.
Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:No.
Guest:Well, I'm saying it on your podcast in case someone's doing a production of Guys and Dolls somewhere and wants to cast me.
Guest:I'm available.
Marc:I'd watch the email box.
Marc:Okay.
Marc:You're going to get some weird, were you serious about the Guys and Dolls?
Guest:And I'll say yes.
Marc:But I can't do it for scheduling reasons.
Guest:I'll clear my schedule.
Guest:Oh, no, no, no.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:All right.
Marc:So you come here and you went to where?
Guest:I went to NYU.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:And I studied a lot of stuff.
Guest:I studied playwriting though.
Guest:I studied.
Guest:Undergrad.
Guest:Undergrad.
Guest:I studied religion.
Marc:What school?
Marc:You're in Tisch school?
Guest:Tisch, yeah.
Guest:I studied playwriting at Tisch.
Marc:But you're working at La Mama as a stage hand?
Guest:Stage manager.
Guest:That was like one of my many jobs.
Guest:All my jobs were very close to here actually.
Guest:I worked at St.
Guest:Mark's Bookshop.
Guest:oh yeah when else it's gone i know but the la mama thing i mean what was your experience in taking theater in up to the point of you coming here there wasn't a lot which is one of it's still like very mysterious to me how i ended up being interested in theater and doing theater and then the fact that i'm going to play right now i don't totally understand i mean there's like high school theater and i had a great high school drama teacher yeah who showed me lots of good plays yeah
Guest:um but i don't i don't know why i liked it so much and i don't know why i was so drawn to it um i don't i still don't totally understand it to go back to the beginning of our conversation yeah i it's um it's always just been like a mysterious thing and i've always been very drawn to it and there wasn't like a moment when i was like i love theater i want to work in theater and so much about theater drives being
Guest:insane like it's sometimes it's kind of a nightmare um and i i feel like when you do theater you're not really part of the larger cultural conversation like it's like it's like a weird business um and and so i still like like i woke up this morning and i was like why do i do like i just was like i
Guest:I got the email that the computers went out last night and there were no sound cues for half the show and I was just like, why did I do this?
Guest:Why did I choose to work in the most flawed, ephemeral, out of your control medium?
Marc:Well, it's not always out of your control.
Marc:It's actually more than most contextually very in your control.
Guest:Kind of, but something always goes wrong.
Guest:Like it really, it's sort of like you can't, it's sort of impossible to have the perfect show.
Guest:Right, because you have actors, you have other elements.
Guest:There's so many things that can go wrong.
Guest:And even if someone sees a really good show, like the next night someone sees a show where there's no doorbell ring.
Guest:And...
Guest:I mean, that's like really beautiful.
Guest:Like there's something really beautiful about that.
Guest:It's human.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And like you, I'm a huge perfectionist and you can't ever hit perfection in the theater.
Guest:Like it's like, it's a crazy goal because, and you can find the perfect cast, but someone always drops out like two weeks before a rehearsal.
Marc:And also somebody could, you know, space out.
Marc:There could be weird moments where it's sort of like.
Guest:People forget their lines every show.
Guest:That's just the way it goes.
Marc:Are they going to get back on track?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It's just what happens.
Guest:Like people.
Marc:Well, that's sort of exciting.
Guest:Yeah, but it does.
Guest:It's like this crazy emotional roller coaster.
Guest:And watching my own plays, I am like this is a nightmare and like the greatest adrenaline rush ever.
Guest:Like there's something really it's like both at the same time.
Marc:That sounds great.
Guest:Yeah, I mean, kind of it like it is you're like living when you watch your own play and someone forgets their line, but then like remembers that five seconds later, like you are like the highs and lows are very extreme.
Marc:Yeah, it's like reading a comment section.
Guest:It's just like reading a comment section.
Guest:Nice one.
Guest:I did that this morning.
Guest:I read the comment section for some review in the New York Times.
Marc:But wait, we got to go back here because something must have happened.
Marc:Let's try to identify into theater.
Marc:No, but like, you know, the mom is very specific.
Marc:I have to assume like a 19 year old in that.
Guest:I didn't know what it was.
Guest:There was like a sign on it.
Marc:No, I know, but once you're in it, it's one of the great sort of bastions of experimental theater.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:And is that the right use of the word bastion?
Marc:I was really impressed that you said it.
Guest:I don't know, but it sounds really good.
Marc:I think it could be used there.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Bastion.
Marc:I'll look it up later.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:but but i have to assume that coming out of what you came from even you know being relatively hip kid that something must have happened there like because i know i don't go to a lot of theater because i can't bear bad theater and i don't i don't seek it out i don't seek theater out yeah unless somebody tells me i got to see it there are plays i've seen in my life that have changed my life like what well i think that like
Marc:the thing that really blew me away about theater was just how like strangely human it was, but just once removed like that, that you would have somebody right there, you know, talking at this pitch, you know, see spit and, and it's its own universe, but like I could touch him.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:You know, and that, that connection, I saw a weird amateur production in Albuquerque, New Mexico of Sam Shepard's tooth of crime.
Guest:Oh yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:and it's that's an epic play yeah it's sort of about the music business and you know there were people i knew in it because i was a kid that like i got a job across from the university when i was 15 so i was very entrenched with art and older people and doing art and being an artist and all that stuff so this guy i used to work with at the restaurant judd he directed and put up this
Marc:to the crime at this like kind of weird theater space and the dude who played crow was this painter in town like so it was this yeah this vortex of all the local arty people that i kind of knew and i i don't know that i could wrap my mind around the play really uh but i was just sort of amazed at the commitment of it all and and of the spectacle of it all and of the language of it all
Guest:and it's so vulnerable too like i feel like being in a play or putting on a play is like the most humiliating vulnerable thing to do and then yeah that is but there is something like that's also then really when it works and you're in the audience and these people are being so vulnerable right it's like really you can get like a high off of it well not just a high but it's like it's it's
Marc:So vulnerability in a space where it's permitted and allowed to be connected with by an audience or others is sort of an elevation of the human spirit.
Marc:It's sort of why we're here in some weird way.
Marc:It's a part of being human that gets very distant from a lot of people.
Guest:yeah and it's an interaction like even though the actors on stage are pretending you aren't there like you know they know that you're there like you're everyone's like aware and it is some kind of weird just like human interaction and that's I think one of the things that keeps bringing me back to it because I do find that like
Guest:most human interactions kind of suck and and like don't have a lot of meaning in them and there's a lot of depressing small talk and like a play is an opportunity to like be in a room with a lot of people and talk about important things or like things that matter to people and get really vulnerable with each other.
Marc:Right but that's interesting that you say that because of like the type of conversation that
Marc:that is the flick was mundane conversation on the surface in a way.
Guest:Yeah, that's true for part of that play.
Guest:Yeah, they are just like shooting the shit.
Marc:Yeah, and this whole idea about the requirement of an audience
Marc:in theater and in that relationship the fact that you created this this set that was unchanging and it was a movie theater where the seats actually reflected the seats of the theater yeah that you know that that sort of demands attention i don't know you know how conscious the playwright is of what that might mean
Guest:That was like the first thing that came to me when I started writing the play.
Guest:Like that was my idea.
Marc:That it was going to be set in a movie theater.
Guest:With like the fourth wall being the movie screen and like a face off of like audience seats.
Guest:Like audience, like a full audience facing an empty audience on stage and like theater versus film kind of in the physical space.
Marc:Which sort of provokes the question as an audience member.
Marc:Like, you know, I guess the most innocent one is like, are we the movie?
Marc:And what are our lives?
Marc:What is this saying about us?
Marc:Who are these people having this small talk on stage?
Marc:Just sort of like co-workers at an old movie theater just trying to feel each other out and position themselves in this small world.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:What was your intention of it?
Guest:I mean, I'm so bad at talking about my intentions.
Marc:And I don't think you should have to.
Guest:But what, I mean, I did, it was actually just an experience I would have going to the movies.
Guest:It's like I would go see a really crappy movie.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And then it would be over and I'd stay till the end of the credits because I just kind of liked that.
Guest:It just kind of, it gets weird and quiet and awkward and like the weird flashes of light that happen at the end of the credits and the special thanks and the, and then I loved the moment when the lights came on and the ushers came through and started like shit talking each other and sweeping up the popcorn.
Guest:Like that transition was,
Guest:from like the magic like time machine of the movies into the like crazy present tense like fluorescence fluorescent lights on like some guy in a polo shirts like sweeping up popcorn that to me felt like so profound and I still couldn't really tell you like I couldn't be like well it's profound because right you know like but to me that moment and that transition
Guest:like I wanted it to be both a tribute to the movies like the power of watching a movie and how jarring it is when a movie's over and a tribute to like theater because actually when you're sitting in those audience seats and then the ushers come through you're kind of just like watching theater like they're kind of like performing for you a little when they sweep when they know you're still there so that whole thing was like felt like super potent to me
Marc:And this sort of these characters, which are familiar to any of us in a way, either because we've had jobs like that or we've lived in towns like that, where you have a guy like Sam who is stuck.
Marc:And because of that, he's become this sort of senior employee.
Marc:There's a sadness to that guy.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Not unlike the guys at the trash can, I imagine.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Where they seem to have missed or sort of overdreamed themselves into a paralysis where they're not going to ever leave.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Or I also just feel like most jobs in this country suck.
Mm hmm.
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:I feel like we forget when we achieve our dreams and get to interact with other people who have achieved their dreams that most people don't get to have the job they'd really like to have.
Guest:Most people don't get their dream job.
Guest:I'm saying really obvious shit, but it's that thing where I still think about that all the time.
Marc:Or they might not know what it is.
Guest:Or they might not know what it is.
Marc:They're just surviving because they don't know how to manifest
Guest:you know like you said their creativity or because maybe their life has cornered them into a situation who knows why maybe or just like class in this country absolutely and i just like uh like the guy like that guy in the play just like didn't get to go to college and um i don't know i guess i do i wanted to write about that too
Marc:When you write plays, you recognize Shepard when I said it.
Marc:At some point, whether you know why you got into it or not, you had to reckon with what was going to become your life.
Marc:You had to deal with theater.
Marc:You had to educate yourself.
Guest:yeah although I was just gonna say although I'm not like I actually um I'm not as well read in theater as I should be like I love theater I go see theater all the time I love a lot of I like love certain playwrights and really studied them but I like um I mean I like I got really into Chekhov for many years and like read everything he ever wrote what was it about Chekhov that that compelled you
Guest:specifically just how messy it was how I mean just going back to vulnerability how like scared and vulnerable everyone in his plays is and how the conflict in the plays isn't like because when you take like a playwriting class in college they tell you that like it's like a bad acting class it's like what do you want
Guest:you know like this character wants this thing and like this character needs to want like something different and then they like have to duke it out and i always hated that kind of writing and i feel like checkoff plays really inspired me because they were like that person doesn't know what they want that person doesn't know what they want they think they're projecting like this onto that other person and now they're both feeling really lonely in the same room together
Guest:And that was really exciting to me.
Guest:And like his plays always felt so much more entertaining to me than plays that had like a really action packed plot or something.
Guest:But that said, like, I actually I hate reading plays.
Guest:I really I love seeing plays.
Guest:It's like my favorite thing to do.
Guest:But I really hate reading them.
Guest:And I'd much rather read a novel like any day of the week.
Marc:Sure.
Marc:So Shakespeare?
Guest:I like, well, I like Shakespeare because I was a high school theater nerd.
Guest:So I kind of know a lot of Shakespeare because I was like in Hamlet when I was 15 and I like took a Shakespeare class and got really into it.
Guest:So that was like, I think if you're a high school theater nerd, you get to know Shakespeare.
Marc:Okay, but what did you glean from him as a person who writes plays?
Guest:Oh God, you know, I've never actually thought about like what...
Guest:what shakespeare taught me um it feels like a part of my it's so funny it like feels like a part of me because i was so young you know i was like in merchant of venice when i was like 12. um i had my first kiss like doing merchant of venice yeah with this like cute older boy um did you feel it
Guest:Oh, I was so into it.
Guest:And he was I was like a really unattractive, like 12 year old.
Guest:He was not into it.
Guest:And I think he actually asked the director to cut that.
Guest:They ended up cutting the kiss from the show.
Guest:But there was one glorious rehearsal when we got to kiss.
Guest:And I was super, super excited.
Marc:Did it hurt your feelings when they cut?
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:Totally hurt my feeling.
Guest:I was like, is it?
Guest:And then you just I'm still unforeseen tragedy of Shakespeare.
Guest:Just telling you about it.
Guest:I'm like, is it because I was a bad kisser or is it because you were 12?
Guest:Or is it because they didn't want it in the play anymore?
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:Anyway, Shakespeare, I don't know.
Guest:So it felt sort of ingrained to you?
Guest:Yeah, those plays just feel like part of the...
Guest:culture in a weird way on those stories.
Guest:The cool thing about those plays is how little you need to do them.
Guest:I feel like if you go to most plays in New York, including mine actually, you have these incredibly expensive sets that are trying to represent what a living room looks like or something.
Guest:It's really depressing and a lot of money is spent on it.
Guest:I think doing Shakespeare in high school
Guest:And I feel like a lot of high school kids have this.
Guest:It's like a way to like get that.
Guest:All you need for theater is like a high school gymnasium.
Guest:And you know what I mean?
Guest:And like two props.
Guest:And you can like do a really good version of Hamlet.
Guest:And then and each every scene like takes place in a different place and people are like running around and there is it's like super.
Guest:They don't make very good movies.
Guest:I mean, with some exceptions, but they're so theatrical.
Guest:But I'm kind of pulling that out of my ass as I talk to you.
Marc:Why not just consider it thinking out loud and trust it for a minute?
Marc:All right.
Marc:I'm not pressuring you.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:No, it's just that thing where... I'm sure you have this all the time.
Marc:I pull a lot of shit out of my ass.
Guest:Yeah, and you listen to yourself or read yourself in print and you're like, I just made that up to have something to say.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Or you were just saying something.
Marc:You hadn't thought about it before.
Marc:But I think that what you said... Because I have a hard time with Shakespeare and I just...
Marc:had Ian McKellen give me a lesson in it face-to-face.
Marc:He did Shakespeare for me, right, looking at me.
Marc:And it was sort of mind-blowing.
Marc:And I get that.
Marc:I'm not going to get anything from reading it.
Marc:Those days are sort of behind me.
Marc:But if it's played with feeling and focus, that the language connects on an emotional level, even if I don't understand it.
Guest:Yeah, it kind of like zaps your brain, that language in an amazing way.
Guest:I also think Shakespeare should be performed in smaller spaces, which I actually think is why a group of high school students doing Shakespeare can be the best way to see it.
Guest:Because, or sitting at a table with Ian McAllen, because I do feel like they do Shakespeare in these like huge hoity-toity venues.
Guest:There's an affectation.
Guest:Yeah, and there's a lot of pomp and circumstance around it.
Marc:About honoring the Shakespearean method as well.
Guest:Yeah, and people have weird pseudo-British accents when they do it, even when they're American.
Guest:There's a lot of pretension around it, and I actually do think that doing it in a small space without a lot of... But you took to it.
Guest:I did take to it, yeah.
Marc:So, okay, so you did, you were into Chekhov when you got to college.
Marc:And you put up a Chekhov play too, right?
Guest:Yeah, I adapted Uncle Vanya a couple years ago.
Guest:Was that a great experience for you?
Guest:It was a great experience.
Guest:And we did it actually in a tiny, tiny space.
Guest:So no one was farther away from the actors than like you and I are from each other.
Guest:And it was in the round and everyone was sitting on the floor.
Guest:And we just used all my favorite actors in New York.
Guest:Who?
Yeah.
Marc:Let's give them a little love.
Guest:Reed Burney, Mike Shannon, Georgia Engle, who was in John.
Guest:Yeah, I love her.
Guest:Maria Dizia.
Guest:There's nine people.
Guest:Matt Mayer, who was in the flick.
Marc:Yeah, he was great.
Guest:A lot of really great people.
Guest:So you've got a crew.
Guest:I got a crew, and I got my crew to do it, and they were amazing.
Marc:And what did you want out of that?
Guest:I kind of wanted exactly what I got, which was that was actually the most fun I've ever had watching my own work because it wasn't really my work.
Guest:Like it was an opportunity to write and change words around and be kind of a perfectionist with a play I already knew was really good.
Guest:So that whole thing we were talking about of like feeling like a failure and feeling like you didn't make the thing you want to make.
Guest:I just tried to do a really, really loyal translation of a play that I think is amazing and cast really good people in it and work with a really good director and really good designers.
Guest:And it was super gratifying.
Guest:Did Sam Gold direct it?
Guest:Yeah, he directed it.
Guest:where'd you meet him a great job um i met him in 2006 just through mutual friends like his girlfriend who's now his wife was my friend and thought we'd work well together and the guy i was dating at the time was his friend and you know it was like that weird thing where people are like you guys should meet and talk and then we did so in starting to write plays
Marc:like how many are not, are sort of just sitting on your computer still?
Guest:There's like three or four just sitting in my computer.
Marc:Big plays?
Guest:Big plays.
Guest:One was an attempt to write like my worst nightmare of a play, which was a like two person play about a romance with a lot of nudity.
Guest:Cause I always feel like people really exploit stage actors and make them take off their clothes all the time.
Guest:And I'm friends with a lot of actors and it,
Guest:It's just a really intense thing to ask someone to do.
Guest:So I wrote this play that was like an almost nude, two-hander play.
Guest:I'll never show that to anybody.
Guest:That was like a personal challenge.
Guest:And I have some play I wrote that was kind of an attempt to write about me and my mother that didn't work out.
Guest:Those are the two that come to mind.
Guest:I wrote it, I haven't looked at it in years.
Guest:It just didn't find itself.
Guest:It didn't find a higher meaning
Guest:there wasn't like i didn't i never cracked the like thing above the family drama and i think at some point i got nervous and tried to add a lot of like plot and action i remember someone like running out of the room and getting a gun you know um it was really bad and well do you think that some of that like when you say you you crack the the wall or the ceiling of the drama that's just something you feel
Guest:Yeah, that's like an intuitive thing.
Guest:What's that?
Marc:That's the gift right there.
Guest:Well, that's the thing you're moving towards is that you could write about something very small, like someone sweeping up popcorn or like a couple in a bed and breakfast and that somehow if you do it the right way.
Guest:It like achieves some larger spiritual meaning that you actually can't articulate or else it wouldn't have that resonant.
Marc:And you can't really explain it.
Guest:And you can't really explain it.
Guest:And that's what makes it work.
Guest:And then sometimes you just write a play and you're like, this is no larger spiritual meaning.
Guest:It's really just about these people saying the things they're saying.
Guest:And it's like not profound.
Guest:And I don't know why.
Guest:And usually it comes from me trying to be like it's that if you try too hard to be profound or if I have like too big or if I'm too sure of what I'm doing, I feel like that can actually like cripple the thing and make it then mean nothing.
Guest:Right.
Guest:You have to like.
Guest:I hope that the transcendent thing happens.
Marc:I imagine the thing about you and your mother is probably too personal for you to find that thing.
Guest:Maybe.
Guest:I really admire people who can write straight autobiographical stuff.
Guest:I'm sort of glad I can't do it because I feel like my family would be really mad at me.
Marc:I've done it.
Marc:They'll be mad at you.
They'll be mad at me.
Guest:But I've actually been lucky enough that like my plays really aren't based on specific people or things that have happened to me.
Guest:And I actually I that's that's not really because I'm trying to protect anyone.
Guest:It's actually just because I need a kind of distance from it.
Guest:Like I don't think I could ever write a character based on either of my parents entirely.
Guest:be too self-censoring yeah I'd be I or even if I did just like left I'd be too angry or it'd be the opposite I'd either like be too easy on them or be too hard on them I mean I think that's how we feel about our parents we like excuse weird behavior and then are weirdly hard on them for other behavior and I feel like to write a character I need to feel just 100% empathetic towards them but also have like a kind of cold critical distance and
Guest:i just like don't know how i could ever write a play about either of my parents that had that kind of appropriate objective right distance and and then you don't have the freedom to to build a relationship that's completely new with the character you're getting yeah yeah and i feel like i'd have some weird agenda writing a play about someone i know like i'd be trying to prove some point yeah and you don't you don't feel like you have an agenda
Guest:No, I definitely do not have an agenda.
Guest:I mean if I have an agenda It's like I don't want to make plays like all the crappy plays that people who have seen I mean, it's so crazy like I meet so many people who are like, yeah, I don't really like theater and I guess my agenda is to like make plays that those people might like and
Marc:That was a conversation we had.
Marc:I feel like I should at some point, but I don't want to lose this thread, talk about the basic plots of the two plays because most people don't see plays.
Guest:Most people don't see plays.
Guest:Or they see plays, but they see their town production of Toothed Crime.
Marc:Or go to a big Broadway thing.
Guest:Or then they go see Wicked, yeah.
Marc:the flick it takes place in a theater you know all in mostly during lights up when these ushers and the projectionists and that job kind of alters a bit uh you are cleaning up and the characters are um rose avery and sam and i think i saw it right the original cast right yeah yeah those three yeah they're still doing it for a couple more weeks
Marc:Now, in building these characters, where did you know?
Marc:Because there's something I did read in one of the earlier plays that I didn't get to finish.
Marc:But in the beginning of the play, you sort of created a glossary of absence.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Marc:that there was a glossary of what the different silences were required that you ask them, whoever was producing the show, to utilize this key of pause, silence, and there was a few, there was like four.
Guest:Yeah, I don't do that anymore because so many people told me that I seemed like such an asshole.
Guest:Like so many people were like, we've bought your book of plays and you have this thing at the beginning where you tell people exactly how long to pause and...
Guest:It seems really, but it is, and I also feel like people know my work well enough now that they sort of know not to speed through it.
Guest:But sorry, I interrupted you.
Guest:Where were you going?
Marc:No, no, no.
Marc:But to me, that's sort of a type of awareness that, you know, you obviously see those periods of silence as being as important, if not more important, than the actual dialogue.
Right.
Guest:Yes, definitely.
Guest:Definitely.
Marc:Why?
Guest:Well, I feel like the reason, well, it sort of goes back to the reason I hate reading plays is because I feel like 80% of theater is like the way it looks, the physical objects on stage and like the bodies moving through space, like the way someone crosses their legs or gets up and walks across the room.
Guest:And...
Guest:that's like so much of the play to me and i'm so much more in i think i am really interested in movement and silence like movement happening during silence um and yeah to me that's just as important as the dialogue and the play so so there are certain directors out there this is like a big thing in british theater where they like cross out the stage directions they like don't look at them
Guest:It's just the dialogue.
Guest:And that to me is crazy because I'm trying to orchestrate like a whole event where like the way you push up your glasses is as important as the thing you say.
Guest:And I feel like that's true in real life.
Guest:Whether we know it or not.
Guest:Whether we know it or not.
Guest:And so I try to be super specific about that in my stage directions and in the play.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Well, I think it's really effective because what's interesting is I know that there was some controversy here in New York about people not liking the flick.
Marc:And, you know, previous to it winning any sort of awards, where it was put up originally, there was some backlash from theater goers.
Marc:And I was just in a room full of a lot of theater goers.
Guest:Right.
Marc:Right.
Marc:And these are not people that I would hang out with, and many of them are much older than me.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:And I know who they are, and I don't want to stereotype them, but there is an expectation to what theater is and what it's become.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:It's become this strange kind of almost...
Marc:How do I want to say this cultural responsibility of a certain generation of people that totally that's a holdover from a different time and their expectations are outdated and sometimes specific.
Marc:And it's not so much that they necessarily like mainstream things, but they have a definite idea of what theater should provide for them.
Guest:Yeah, it should be like people talking really loudly and like debating issues in a really obvious, clear way.
Guest:And the play should have a really clear message that you take home with you.
Marc:But also that that experience of theater is sort of not unlike a movie in a certain way.
Marc:They want to be taken away.
Marc:for for a couple of hours with this spectacle yeah and and you actively fight that by by use of silences and also by use of breaking the fourth wall or suggesting that fourth wall is uh you know a movie screen that there there's a there there is a an engagement that's required that is not specifically a spectacle
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Well, it's like, it's like, I don't want it to necessarily be a spectacle, but I also want, I want to figure out what is so special about theater because I actually think, um, you know, there's all this worry in the theater community about like, is theater dead?
Guest:You know, people have been talking about this for like 75 years.
Guest:But, um, so I just think it's funny that people keep worrying that theater is dead and no one's going to go see theater anymore.
Guest:But I feel like people react to that by trying to make stuff that's like more entertaining and like more fast moving and like more glitzy.
Guest:And for me, I feel like the thing theater does, you can like slow time down and we can all be in the room together.
Marc:Right.
Marc:I didn't just to tell you, I did not feel that either play was long.
Guest:Oh, that's great.
Marc:At all.
Marc:I don't know why.
Marc:It must be why you're good.
Guest:Well, a lot of people like complain about how long they are, which is really interesting to me because there's movies that are longer.
Guest:There's other plays that are longer.
Marc:That's great.
Marc:And I'm not like a theater going person.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:But I did not.
Marc:And I, you know, and I see a lot of live shit.
Marc:I've been a comedian for a million years.
Marc:I don't sit still well.
Marc:I can't handle a concert, even if it's the fucking Rolling Stones for more than 45 minutes.
Marc:I'm ready to get antsy.
Marc:But I did not feel the time.
Marc:And I don't know why, but it was good.
Marc:And also, I think what you're talking about is this insecurity in...
Marc:show business industry in general to create a pace and an experience that, you know, they're always overcompensating out of complete insecurity of how to keep people engaged and whatever.
Guest:Now, theater is a little different, but it's... No, I think it's very similar in that way.
Guest:And this, like, thing where during previews before the plays open when you can still make changes, you know, I have playwright friends where they'll be like, oh, people didn't laugh enough.
Guest:I have to, like...
Marc:change the thing or someone walked out I have to make the play shorter and then I feel like that really fucks people up and makes bad theater well it's not that's not supposed you're not supposed to do a what do you call it a test group yeah exactly I mean you can have previews and stuff and there's no I don't think there's any rule in theater like if you're a playwright and something isn't effective you're a director and you talk about it or you decide to do something but not to accommodate laughter necessarily yeah although I think a lot of people work that way
Guest:I think that is, there's just so much fear.
Guest:I mean, there's fear in like any art form and any medium, especially anything live is like the scariest thing ever.
Guest:But I feel like theater people are like extra scared and extra worried.
Guest:And it's like a weirdly conservative medium.
Marc:Well, that's because they're pandering to a subscriber base.
Marc:They're 90.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, but then it feeds itself because then when you pander to those people, then interesting young people don't come and then it just gets worse and worse.
Marc:No, absolutely.
Marc:And I think that the difference between how what you do makes its way to Broadway if it ever needs to be there.
Marc:It seems like the theaters that I saw these plays in was a great place to see them.
Marc:And once the expectations of ticket sales and all that stuff comes in,
Marc:Even Barry Child couldn't survive on Broadway when he did it.
Guest:Yeah, and I kind of think it's just unconscionable, and this is not against anyone who has anything on Broadway, but I kind of think it's unconscionable to charge more than $50 a ticket.
Guest:I mean, I think it's kind of unconscionable to charge $50 a ticket, and any more than that is just crazy.
Guest:It just becomes some... I don't understand what it is when you're paying $150 to see a Broadway show.
Guest:That's just not a world I'm interested in at all.
Marc:And also, I think what you're interested in is really what theater is supposed to be, is that it seems like your struggle with your characters in creating these plays is to sort of, you know, you may not know how it's going to happen, but to sort of elevate the...
Marc:the you know the richness of of of you know what what it's supposed to be to feel human and to have your soul connected to something if you believe in framing it that way yeah and and you know finding it through the characters that you do and i think that that is what you know why theater was vital to begin with it was to reconnect us with our humanity isn't that right yeah
Marc:So it's sort of lost that focus.
Marc:And it sounds to me like you want to return to that, you know, and bring in the generation of people that has no experience or desire or necessarily interest or information about what theater is.
Guest:Yeah, and I think that's great.
Guest:You know what I mean?
Guest:Once a woman came to see one of my plays who had never seen a play before, including when she was a kid.
Guest:She just was like, this is the first time I've ever sat in an audience and watched actors on a stage.
Guest:And I was like, that's my ideal audience member.
Guest:I want to make something that works for that person.
Guest:That's just super interesting to me.
Guest:And how electrifying, if the play is good, that must feel to someone who's never seen that before.
Marc:What's the biggest struggle that you have in making a play whole?
Guest:Like when I'm writing it or when I'm in production?
Marc:One thing I noticed last night was that a consistency of character within a character, both emotionally and psychologically, I always find that fascinating.
Marc:Because when you write television, a lot of times they're just writing joke to joke.
Marc:But you know what I mean?
Marc:It really doesn't matter.
Marc:You know what I mean?
Marc:Once you get it, the character's broad a lot of times.
Marc:But so when you have the time to do what you do in theater, that the idea...
Marc:that in, say, John, that the Elias character's childhood kind of makes sense with who he is as an adult in terms of his emotional issues and psychological issues.
Marc:And it's consistent.
Marc:And it adds up as a human person.
Marc:How much of the work is about finding that consistency in having that character be psychologically and emotionally sound as the one you want to create?
Guest:Are you conscious of it?
Guest:A lot of it's unconscious.
Guest:A lot of it is just like when I'm writing it.
Guest:And realizing that something I've written somehow isn't true to that character and then having to cut it.
Guest:Is that intuitive?
Guest:It really is.
Guest:I am really slow.
Guest:And before I actually start writing the play, I take notes for years.
Guest:I say I have like 100 pages on my computer of notes about every single play I've ever written.
Guest:And a lot of that is character.
Guest:It's not character like...
Guest:Why does he do this?
Guest:He does this because X. But it is just details.
Guest:Like, oh, he went to this summer camp and this thing happened to him when he was a baby and it's his first memory and this and this and this and just crazy, super, super specific details about their lives.
Guest:And that sort of...
Guest:Once that document is really long, that's sort of in a weird way the template for the play.
Guest:Like then I sort of know everything about this person and then I put them in a situation and see what they do.
Guest:But there's very little planning about what's going to happen in the play and very little planning about like are they going to behave this way because of that.
Guest:There's very little.
Guest:I think my plays are very psychological, but I try not to be overly psychological while writing them.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Just because I feel like in real life we do stuff that's like everything psychological, everything's related to our childhood, but in a very like sneaky, weird, crazy way that we can never really put our finger on.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And when we think we're like getting to the root of it, we're like farther away than we ever were.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Because if you get something intellectually, it doesn't mean that it's connected or you can do anything about it.
Guest:Well, that was my fear of therapy for so many years was just that like by talking about my childhood and being like, yeah, that's why I couldn't commit to that thing or something that actually I would be farther away from the answer and farther away from self-knowledge than ever before.
Guest:Just because like the second you pin something down like that, it's probably wrong.
Right.
Marc:Or it doesn't necessarily mean you're going to be able to access your vulnerability in the future to write that course.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I just believe the self is such a slippery, ever-changing, viscous, weird, unknowable thing.
Guest:And I think it's really dangerous to just be like...
Guest:This is who I am.
Marc:And so I do do that as at a fear.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And just like needing a sense of direction.
Guest:So I think when I'm writing the play, I feel like it's going well when the character like does something that I didn't know they do or that I would have never have predicted they do or they say something totally out of character.
Guest:And then I think in the end that can feel more like a real person because we do that all the time.
Marc:So you let them do that on the page and it's that excitement of discovery that comes from writing.
Guest:Yeah, that's the best.
Guest:That's when I know it's going well is when I do feel like there are these crazy figments of my imagination that have taken on a life of their own.
Marc:Well, let me set up the other play that I saw, which was John.
Marc:This takes place at a bed and breakfast in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania.
Marc:A couple comes and they deal with it because there's so many comedic elements at work all the time in both of your plays.
Marc:that are that it's a rare type of comedy it's very hard to do and it's not and it takes a weird confidence and commitment that you don't really see because you know the emotional depth of of what you do as a playwright it sort of relies on on i think you could traditionally call it the slow burn uh-huh yeah
Marc:You're a master of the slow burn.
Marc:And that's an amazing... I don't think you incorporate it as a device or you're conscious of it.
Marc:But because things get sparse dialogue-wise, when you do hit the closure, whether it's funny or it's painful, the punchline is built up
Marc:through such a deliberate, and I don't want to use the word plotting, but a spacious kind of setup for a beat.
Guest:Right.
Marc:And in both shows, in a couple of areas, that payoff blows the whole fucking thing open and makes the experience that you've just had all the more relevant.
Marc:It happens with Sam a couple of times in the flick, where just something comes out of him where you're like...
Marc:What is that?
Marc:Right.
Marc:That that's what he's been holding in.
Marc:That's what's really going on in that guy.
Marc:And I guess I'm just praising you.
Guest:But but it's really nice.
Marc:But in John, it's a much more complicated psychologically.
Marc:And I think more complicated emotionally.
Marc:And there are themes that are, I'm not going to say more sophisticated, but your imagination has gone to a different place with that.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:and the women characters like there's this weird undercurrent through the whole thing it just takes place in in this bed and breakfast and there's a young couple who's you know sort of in the last legs or trying to salvage their relationship and he's a childhood civil war geek and she's along for the ride and they go to this woman's bed and breakfast and it's classically you know the intrusive sort of weird boundaryless bed and breakfast owner yeah
Marc:And then she has a friend who's this, you know, slightly, you know, very intense, angry, blind woman who has her own story.
Marc:It's weird with plays.
Marc:I'm like, no spoilers, but I can't really describe it.
Marc:That's what's happening.
Guest:Well, and I think that the second you really spend your, this is something I spent years doing, like if you spend your time trying to figure out what other people are thinking, you will go crazy.
Guest:Like there is a kind of madness and we were all doing it all the time and that's why we're all kind of crazy.
Guest:But like if you really go full throttle like I'm going to spend all my time trying to figure out what the person I'm in a relationship is and is in with this thinking or I'm going to try to figure out what that person like you do.
Guest:There's like a real madness in that.
Marc:No, it's horrible.
Marc:It's because you're usually wrong.
Guest:yeah you're there's no way to be right and then occasionally we like our intuitions are completely correct but but we don't know what people are thinking we might have like thoughts about what they're doing but that was something i wanted to that was like a form of madness that i wanted to tackle with like a character who actually was um who had at one point in her life gone clinically insane
Marc:Because, like, I fucking get hung up on, you know, the poetry of what makes, you know, theater and specifically what you're doing and specifically in that play compelling is that you loaded that one up.
Marc:You know, the flick was, you know, pretty sparse.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And, you know, you were really relying on revelations of the characters to sort of drive the emotions of that thing.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:With John, you're setting it at the site of a massacre, a Civil War massacre.
Marc:You have this environment in this bed and breakfast that suggests an almost mythological universe.
Guest:Definitely.
Guest:And I'd never done that before.
Guest:That was like a weird challenge to myself.
Guest:Because I have always written very sparse plays with very realistic settings.
Guest:Very neutral spaces.
Guest:And I also have written plays much more about men than women.
Guest:I wrote a play once that was like an all-male cast, which was The Aliens.
Guest:And I feel like the flick is actually really about the guys.
Guest:And I love writing for men, actually.
Guest:It's really fun.
Guest:But I was like, why am I not writing for more women?
Guest:It was sort of a question I was asking myself and I was getting really interested and just sort of I was like a really weird sort of supernaturally obsessed kid.
Guest:Like I really did feel like all my stuffed animals were alive and watching me and that crazy stuff was happening that I didn't understand and that...
Guest:My parents were atheists, but I was like, there's definitely someone up there controlling this.
Guest:You know, I was just very – my mother always was like, you would be a religious fanatic if we'd let you.
Guest:You know, like I built weird little shrines in my room.
Guest:And I just – and I started – with this play, I really wanted to go back and investigate that because it's very, like, uncool.
Guest:Like, I felt like I was – before I was sort of, like, writing a play that – with these sort of, like, cool, dingy sets about, like –
Guest:I don't know that there's a kind of like dry, kind of like witty coolness to what I was doing.
Guest:A detachment.
Guest:Yeah, and a kind of detachment.
Guest:And I was like, I want a play where like a woman's getting her period the whole time.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And people are talking about going crazy and there's like dolls everywhere.
Guest:And they're like, that lady might be an angel.
Guest:And...
Guest:people like talk about God because I don't feel like people, I don't know, I do feel, and maybe I'm crazy, but I do feel like we're all wandering around, like wondering about God or if we don't call it God, like the divine or fate all the time and no one's talking about it.
Guest:We don't know how to talk to each other about it.
Guest:Like we don't know how to have those kinds of conversations.
Guest:and so i did i was like i'm just gonna write something that's like over the top like femi over the top like just people like talking about god the whole time there's gonna be magic but maybe like it's not real magic like who the fuck knows because i kind of feel like that's what life feels like to me anyway um and the one dude in there is going to be this sort of like emotionally stifled
Guest:Well it's funny that dude is like anyone in that play is me it's that dude like it's so funny so much of me is in that guy and so much of my history and my life is in that guy so it's always so so I was like I want to write a play that's like dealing with like feminine archetypes but like I'm the dude like I'm I'm gonna make myself the dude yeah um
Guest:But yeah, I also got really into reading all these psychologists at the turn of the century who wrote about religion.
Guest:And I read this one thing.
Guest:One of the things that inspired the play was this thing I read that dread is the first step in religious development.
Marc:I'm there.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:I'm on the precipice.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And I was like, oh my God.
Guest:Because as a kid, because I wasn't religious and my parents weren't religious, I was like...
Guest:always scared and always creeped out.
Guest:Like I always felt like there were ghosts and witches and like something, like a hand was about to come out of the ground and grab me.
Guest:And I never knew why.
Guest:And I like, until very recently, I was very confused about why I was such like a scared sort of superstitious kid.
Guest:And I feel like in a way it was my, in like a very secular household, it was my way of trying to access the divine, like something bigger than myself.
Guest:But I feel like when you're a kid and,
Guest:with atheist parents like the way you do that is almost like through the spooky that's true horror through demons through horror movies through scary movies and that's your way of feeling like oh man maybe there's something bigger than me that i that we can't totally figure out right and mysterious and and and and unknowable
Guest:Yeah, the mysterious unknowable.
Marc:Yeah, the sad thing about dread being the sort of precipice of spiritual awakening is also the precipice of a lifelong anxiety problem.
Guest:Right.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Now, how aware are you of getting the laugh in comedy?
Marc:I mean, do you know you're writing comedy?
Guest:No, that's the thing.
Guest:Like, every time... Like, after every play goes up, I realize it's funny.
Guest:But...
Guest:I think it's funny because I'm really bad at being intentionally funny.
Guest:It's just like beyond me.
Guest:Like I could never write for a sitcom.
Guest:Really.
Guest:Like I could never write for it.
Guest:I think I'm funny, but I have to be totally relaxed and totally serious, actually.
Marc:Like writing a play.
Guest:To be funny.
Guest:Yeah, I have to be alone and not trying to be funny and not thinking about anybody else.
Guest:But every time, like with John, I was like, this is my not funny play.
Guest:And then it's like getting all these yucks when it goes up.
Guest:It's weird.
Guest:And then the laughter always surprises me.
Marc:But the flick you knew was funny where it was funny.
Guest:No, I write it.
Marc:Then what is your relationship with Sam Gold then?
Marc:Somebody is...
Guest:Well, I always give him the play and I'm always like, this isn't funny.
Guest:This is my not funny play.
Guest:And then he's always like, you're wrong.
Guest:It's going to be funny.
Guest:And then it is funny.
Guest:I mean, it's it's I think it's not funny when I'm writing it.
Guest:But then when we're rehearsing it, I am like hyper specific about timing.
Guest:Like I drive everybody crazy.
Guest:Like I'm like, if it's not funny, if you like.
Marc:You know when it's supposed to be fun.
Guest:Yeah, and I have my very specific sense of humor to like there's a kind of laugh that I hate like I don't just want laughs and Actually, you don't want punchline laughs.
Marc:You don't want turn a phrase laughs.
Guest:I don't want punchline laughs and I don't want like That's clever
Guest:Yeah, I don't want that's clever laughs.
Guest:I want it to be about like I want I want every laugh to come from a place of like humiliation and recognition The laughter like I say this on stage sometimes I said there's no laughter like the laughter that should be crying Yes, and my favorite kind of laughter is like to like Sometimes in the whole audience laughs raucously.
Guest:Yeah, I'm like no I fucked up cuz cuz like I everyone thinks they're supposed to laugh right now, right?
Guest:But my favorite is when like one lady in the fifth row just like barks with laughter and everyone else is like, what is she like?
Guest:I like when it's like when I feel like it's individual people having individual experiences.
Guest:I don't really like the like 300 person crowd.
Marc:Believe me, I'm right there with you.
Marc:I've designed my stand up, so it's only for a few people.
Guest:That's the way I like it.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:See, this is what makes what makes it great and white when people miss it because they're too worried about their watches is that you have a very specific style and timing.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:And you know how to honor it.
Guest:I do feel like I know exactly, for good or bad, whether you like it or not, I feel like I know exactly how it should be.
Guest:And the thing I want it to be is totally unexplainable.
Guest:And I think one of the reasons... I'm not that crazy about the flick anymore.
Guest:I mean, I'm not that crazy about any play I've written three years later, and I'm not bashing on it.
Guest:But I think it ties...
Guest:I started realizing my plays were a little too neat and I felt like they were kind of like tying themselves up in a little bow at the end.
Guest:And with this new one, I really was like, I want it to be a mess.
Guest:Like I'm going to be intentionally make this play like kind of in the end, make no sense and make total sense at the same.
Guest:Like I feel like half the people in the audience will be like that added up to nothing.
Guest:And half the people will be like that made total sense.
Guest:That was completely cohesive.
Guest:But I really want to stop trying to explain anything to anybody.
Marc:Well, that's good.
Marc:Well, that just means that for the fight you're fighting for theater and for yourself is to continue growing as an artist.
Marc:So that's good.
Guest:Hopefully.
Marc:So are you finding that the people you want to come to the shows are coming?
Guest:No, not always, to be honest.
Guest:I feel more and more like I have an audience and some people know my work and come see it, but I still feel like there's a lot of rich, old people who come see it and then hate it.
Guest:It's that weird thing where they buy all the tickets and then they fucking hate it and walk out halfway through.
Marc:Well, that's so funny, because I think it's necessary what you're doing to keep fighting this fight, and it's great that you're getting the attention
Marc:and the uh awards and whatever because that will enable you to do that you will you will have to be reckoned with by those people and if they don't want you then fuck them then maybe the other people will come in yeah but the fact that theater owners and the theater industry is is you know uh trying to accommodate them by apologizing for you is fucking heinous and that's not what art is about so i think that i think the pulitzer is going to buy you a few more plays
Guest:That's good.
Guest:And, you know, the theater I'm working at where you saw John has this cool initiative where they only charge $25 per ticket, which just makes me feel better about doing theater in general.
Guest:Like I always felt weird doing a play somewhere where they charge like $70.
Guest:I was like, how are you going to get young high school students to come see this?
Guest:And Signature, my next two plays are going to be there and all the tickets are $25.
Guest:Oh, great.
Guest:And that's just like a game changer.
Marc:Right.
Marc:That's great.
Marc:So you cut that deal and it's just a matter of getting the word out.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Okay, now let's come back to Scott Rudin and Faustian deals.
Marc:Now, do you want to write movies?
Guest:So I've written movies.
Guest:That's how I've gotten my health insurance since 2008.
Guest:I was just hired.
Guest:They'd be like, we need a rom-com about this.
Guest:Scott, was it Scott?
Guest:No, no, you're a girl, write a rom-com.
Marc:This is how they room playwrights.
Guest:Yes, this is how they ruin playwrights.
Guest:And then I actually had a total breakdown a few years ago and I was like, I can't do this anymore.
Guest:Like it's paying my bills, but I'm so unhappy and I'm doing a terrible job.
Guest:Like I'm not actually good at writing bad movies.
Guest:And I actually had a conversation.
Marc:So you were doing rewrites?
Guest:I was I was actually doing like someone would have an you know that thing where they're like we need someone to write a movie based on this property we have for this property yeah we like bought this foreign movie and we need you to do it you know blah blah blah but then I had a whole thing where I was like I can't do this anymore um
Guest:I quit, like I'm just gonna leave the industry.
Guest:And this is why Scott Rudin is amazing.
Guest:I had a meeting with him and he was like, why don't you want to write movies anymore?
Guest:And I was like, cause I'm done.
Guest:Cause I write shit.
Guest:They hate it.
Guest:Then I get fired off the job.
Guest:Like I'm miserable.
Guest:I have to find another way to do this.
Guest:And he was like, well, if you could do anything in the movies, what would you do?
Guest:And I was like, well, I'd write and direct my like own weird movie.
Guest:where I had total control and I didn't have to like outline it beforehand for a bunch of dippy people.
Guest:And he was like, great, why don't you do that for me?
Guest:And I was like, what?
Guest:Well, I'm just, you know, and then it is my like self.
Guest:I was like, but I'm just like this young woman, like who would hire me to do, you know?
Guest:And he was like, well, you should have told me, like, I didn't know you were interested in directing.
Guest:Great.
Guest:Like I'll pay you to write a script and you can be attached as director, write whatever you want.
Guest:You don't have to tell me what it is.
Guest:Like, just go do it.
Guest:Shut up, you know?
Guest:Are you doing it?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Good.
Guest:How's it coming?
Guest:That's why he's cool.
Guest:I mean, what I've written so far I hate, but I'm going to try to get there.
Guest:Like, I really, really do want to.
Guest:I am knowing I can direct it is like a game changer because I am so hyper specific about everything that screenwriting isn't a good profession for me unless I'm directing it.
Marc:Well, this sounds exciting.
Guest:So he's got my loyalty for that one.
Guest:That's great.
Marc:Well, congratulations on everything.
Marc:Thank you.
Marc:It's nice talking to you.
Guest:Congratulations to you.
Marc:That's very sweet of you.
Marc:Thank you.
Marc:Are we good now?
Guest:Yeah, we're good.
Marc:That's it.
Marc:That's our show.
Marc:What an amazing talk I had with her.
Marc:I love her.
Marc:I love her work.
Marc:You should go see her plays if you can.
Marc:You should see more theater in general.
Marc:I should see more theater in general.
Marc:Oh, you hear that familiar buzz?
Marc:I had to warm up the dirty old man to do my ending licks.
Marc:Go to WTFPod.com for all your WTFPod needs.
Marc:Get on the mailing list, check the calendar, check the episode guides, get hooked up with Howl.fm.
Marc:Over there, get the Howl app so you can get that WTF archive.
Howl.
Guest:Boomer Lives!
Guest:Boomer Lives
Marc:Straight telly into the dirty old man.