This transcript was automatically generated and might contain errors.

[0:01] Michael Ritchie: Welcome to 30 to Curtain, a Center Theatre Group podcast.

[0:07] Michael Ritchie: I'm Michael Ritchie, Artistic Director of Center Theatre Group.

[0:11] Michael Ritchie: For each episode of this podcast, we talk with some of the talented artists working across our three stages.

[0:18] Michael Ritchie: The Ahmanson Theatre, Mark Taper Forum, and Kirk Douglas Theatre.

[0:23] Michael Ritchie: Our guest on this episode of 30 to Curtain is Neil Pepe, Artistic Director of the Atlantic Theatre Company, and also the director of A Play Is a Poem, a new play by Ethan Coen, currently making its world premiere with us here at the Taper.

[0:39] Michael Ritchie: Neil has worked closely with many of today's leading playwrights, including David Mamet, Martin McDonagh, and Harold Pinter.

[0:47] Michael Ritchie: He's led the Atlantic Theatre Company since 1992.

[0:51] Michael Ritchie: I'm happy to call him a great friend and colleague, and I'm thrilled that he's back directing with us, having previously joined us on Mamet's two unrelated plays and Romance, and later on Frank Gilroy's The Subject Was Roses.

[1:07] Michael Ritchie: It's a privilege to sit down with Neil and talk about this new work from Ethan Coen.

[1:12] Michael Ritchie: I hope you enjoy this conversation, and I look forward to seeing you at the theater.

[1:17] Michael Ritchie: All right, we'll get to the play eventually, fairly quickly. But first, let's talk about our relationship.

[1:21] Neil Pepe: Yeah.

[1:25] Michael Ritchie: We've known each other for a long time now, it seems.

[1:28] Neil Pepe: A long, you know, the times it's gone by quickly.

[1:31] Michael Ritchie: I was trying to think, I think the first time, did you stage Man at Speech, See the Plow, didn't you?

[1:36] Neil Pepe: No, that was not my show.

[1:38] Michael Ritchie: Yeah, because it was sometime around that time.

[1:40] Neil Pepe: Yes.

[1:41] Michael Ritchie: Yeah. As that was going up, I came on to do Our Town.

[1:45] Neil Pepe: That was my first one.

[1:46] Michael Ritchie: Yeah, yeah. So I met you early on in those relationships.

[1:50] Neil Pepe: So at that time, I was stage managing and you were acting.

[1:52] Neil Pepe: I was acting a little bit. I was with the Atlantic Theatre Company, and tons of the members of the Atlantic were in the Our Town that you stage managed, including my now wife, Mary McCann, Stephen Goldstein, Jordan Lage, William H. Macy, lots of great people.

[2:07] Neil Pepe: And it was the Spalding, of course, the Spalding Gray one, which was amazing. And it was also for me, you know, one of those productions that comes along now, like you have done hundreds of productions.

[2:16] Neil Pepe: And I always think when I go to my grave, I'll have four or five in my hand that I'll take with me. Our Town is going to be one of them. It'll never get beaten again.

[2:22] Neil Pepe: I will never do that show again. I don't know that I ever want to see another production again because, first, the play is so great, which I didn't realize when I walked in the door. I thought, Our Town. Every high school does it. How good could this be? And then we started rehearsal on it.

[2:35] Neil Pepe: And also the production was so great.

[2:44] Michael Ritchie: Yeah.

[2:45] Neil Pepe: And it was well-received. And then a company of friends that I've had for 30 years that are really tight, some of it because of Atlantic. Your guys were together already. But also, I mean, if you look at that particular group at that time of amazing seasoned New York stage actors, you know, many of whom are now very – people like Franny Conroy, Peter Maloney, Jeff Weiss, who we both knew was an incredible downtown theater actor.

[3:08] Neil Pepe: And then having somebody like Spaulding Gray just bring a kind of contemporary, very real truth to it, it was amazing.

[3:17] Michael Ritchie: It was great.

[3:18] Neil Pepe: It was great.

[3:19] Michael Ritchie: And then you did the film, right?

[3:20] Neil Pepe: I did because my friend Todd Weeks, who's another member of Atlantic, couldn't do the PBS filming. So I came in as the baseball player back when I was still acting, and that was a blast.

[3:27] Michael Ritchie: You were good. I don't know why you stopped acting.

[3:30] Neil Pepe: I pretty much walked away with it.

[3:31] Michael Ritchie: I think you owned that.

[3:33] Neil Pepe: Yeah, that movie. Actually, we were just sitting here talking about Law & Order, and one of the great things about that show since we started out back in the 80s was that at first it was the only TV show shooting in New York.

[3:44] Michael Ritchie: I know.

[3:45] Neil Pepe: And so it used all theater actors constantly. And actually the other night I was – I watch it every night almost. Religiously. It's a sad sickness. But I was rolled over falling asleep, and I heard you on TV, and I popped up, and you were playing a very young doctor.

[4:01] Michael Ritchie: Yeah.

[4:02] Neil Pepe: You were like a Doogie Howser type.

[4:03] Michael Ritchie: I know.

[4:04] Neil Pepe: I probably was early 20s. But, yeah, we all did our stints a couple of times. But the other thing that also happened to a bunch of us when I was still acting is we'd do our stints on Sex and the City, and those were always like really kind of soft boards.

[4:19] Michael Ritchie: So you'd be like – people would go, oh, yeah, I saw you on Sex and the City. I was like, oh, my God. No, please don't. But, yeah, it was great. So many great friends have been on Law and Order.

[4:28] Michael Ritchie: So now we're both artistic directors now.

[4:30] Neil Pepe: Yeah.

[4:31] Michael Ritchie: You running the Atlantic Theatre Company. How long?

[4:34] Neil Pepe: Way too long, Michael. Way too long.

[4:37] Neil Pepe: Since 1992.

[4:38] Michael Ritchie: 1992? Really?

[4:40] Neil Pepe: Yeah.

[4:41] Michael Ritchie: Because you – I went to Williamstown in 96 or 97, I believe.

[4:45] Neil Pepe: But before that you were artistic director of Naked Angels for a little while, weren't you?

[4:50] Neil Pepe: It was an overlapped stint. It was right when they lost the space and they had no money and they had hired me to be the artistic director, but then they had no money to pay me.

[5:01] Michael Ritchie: I know that feeling.

[5:02] Neil Pepe: That's theater, right? That was like when I started. That's how you get into being an artistic director. You do it for no money for a little while.

[5:06] Michael Ritchie: Yeah, do you want to do it for free?

[5:08] Neil Pepe: I was like, well, I'd love to, but I got to work.

[5:10] Michael Ritchie: Nobody else wants to do it.

[5:11] Neil Pepe: Yeah, it's been a long time. So big changes there.

[5:16] Neil Pepe: You remember this because Atlantic, a lot like Steppenwolf, is an ensemble theater, so at that time every year we'd kind of go around, raise our hand, and decide if we wanted to vote somebody new in.

[5:27] Neil Pepe: My predecessors were – Mary, my wife, was the first artistic director for a year, then Clark Gregg for three years, who's now a really successful actor and writer, and then Scott Ziegler, who's directed out here. He was three years before me, and then he kind of burned out, and so I raised my hand thinking that I might do it for a year or two. Honestly, I was terrified of the proposition at that time. I was mainly acting and directing a little bit.

[5:47] Neil Pepe: And then I kept, as I'm sure this has happened with you too, where you get involved, you start planting seeds for the next year with productions and enjoying the collaboration, and it just kept growing.

[6:04] Neil Pepe: So, yes, it was fairly small. I think it was like a $250,000 budget when I walked in, and it was almost unpaid. And now with the school, I think we're between $12 million and $13 million.

[6:14] Neil Pepe: So it's been a long time. It's a really significant theater, an off-Broadway theater. And then the school is an interesting element. There are two things. We have, in some ways, we run the same kind of companies in there, institutional nonprofit theaters that produce both new works and revivals.

[6:33] Michael Ritchie: Exactly.

[6:34] Neil Pepe: But yours has the wrinkle of being both company-driven. So talk a little bit about that, having a company of what? Who's in the company?

[6:42] Neil Pepe: Yeah, and it's kind of evolved over the years, because early on, it was very company-driven. It was really about putting—we were all young actors. We want to put ourselves to work. We were mentored by David Mamet and William H. Macy, and they sort of said when the core group got out of NYU, they said, we've incorporated this name Atlantic. Why don't you guys go off and create your own work? We'll sort of mentor you.

[7:01] Neil Pepe: So early on, it was about putting ourselves to work as actors. Then as we started producing more new work in New York and as we started—and we were all very ambitious, but as we started getting older, some people came out to L.A. to pursue film and TV. So we continued to focus on putting the ensemble members to work, either as actors and directors, and then depending on the needs of the play, if we needed somebody older that we didn't have or we needed more of a diverse pool, we started to diversify the company, both in terms of race and age.

[7:39] Neil Pepe: Now we do some projects that are very ensemble-based, that are either ensemble directors or ensemble actors, and we do some projects that are no ensemble members, depending on the piece and what the demands are of it. So it's kind of evolved, and the school, yes, is a large part of it. We run a big school through NYU. We're one of the studios at Tisch School of the Arts, and then we have a conservatory and a part-time thing, and we do little kid stuff.

[8:06] Neil Pepe: But that's been great, to keep young people coming in, to keep reminding us where we started and the sort of specific technique that Mamet and Macy started, which was all about story and action. So it's kind of that sort of way of operating has kept us on our toes and hopefully kept us as vibrant as we can be.

[8:29] Michael Ritchie: Now, you've certainly grown over the years that I've known you. You have had great success with starting musicals in your space and then having them move to Broadway, particularly musicals, although I know you've also moved plays.

[8:45] Neil Pepe: Yeah.

[8:46] Michael Ritchie: How does that work?

[8:47] Neil Pepe: It's funny. It was sort of a fluke, because I mean, like you, I mean, I don't know. I didn't necessarily get in. I was a musician for a long time, and I always loved contemporary blues and rock and roll, but we were always doing straight plays. And then a project came to us, the Spring Awakening, that they had been working on for a while. We knew Michael Mayer, the director, and I knew Tom Hulse, who was like the sort of nurturing producer because he had done Cider House Rules out here with you guys, and then we did it.

[9:17] Neil Pepe: So they came and said, look, we've adapted Spring Awakening. Of course, we all knew Spring Awakening as the play because it was the one that was banned in Germany for 50 years, and it had all the crazy sexual awakenings. Of course, everybody wanted to do it in high school. So we knew that play. And we ended up doing Our Town.

[9:34] Michael Ritchie: Yeah.

[9:37] Neil Pepe: So we knew the play and loved it, and then they said we're adapting it with this contemporary singer-songwriter, Duncan Sheik, who I knew of at the time and really liked his music, and Stephen Sater, who was a sort of downtown New York playwright. And they had shopped it around for a while, and it was so dark. I mean, the music was amazing, but a lot of people thought it was too dark for Broadway because of suicide and things in it. But Tom and Michael really liked the idea of starting it. You know, the Atlantic in New York, where we are, has a kind of brick church-like space. They loved that, and it just felt like the right fit between what we loved about plays and what we loved about contemporary music.

[10:19] Neil Pepe: So in a way, that's how we kind of fell into musicals. And I think since then, most of the musicals that we've developed have been a combination of hopefully sort of great playwriting storytelling and great contemporary music. We haven't done many revivals of sort of traditional musicals except for Martha Clark's Three-Penny Opera, which was great, and that's always been kind of out there as a musical anyways.

[10:44] Michael Ritchie: Yeah, but it's been fun. So how the hell did we get you out here if you're running a theatre at school and you have a family? I mean, you've been kind enough since – what was it? It was almost your first year, the first time I directed you.

[10:59] Neil Pepe: I think you might have been the first show at the Taper.

[11:01] Michael Ritchie: It was early, so it was Mamet's play Romance. I think you were the opening show for me at the Taper.

[11:08] Neil Pepe: I took a chance on you, didn't I?

[11:11] Michael Ritchie: That was a massive risk. You may still be recovering from it.

[11:16] Neil Pepe: I'm glad you allowed me back out here.

[11:18] Michael Ritchie: No, I mean, it's a thrill for me to work out here, and you're so generous in bringing me out.

[11:26] Neil Pepe: That was such a fun piece and such a great comedy. But I don't know L.A. that well, but I know great people like you who come from the theatre. And it seems like L.A. has such a vibrant theatre scene that some people are aware of and some people are not aware of. So having the opportunity to either work – I mean –

[11:48] Neil Pepe: Now having worked at the Taper three times and having worked at the Douglas once, it's great. And actually, I've also forgotten that the audiences are great. I mean, I find them to be interested, curious, and responsive. And of course, the most important thing, adventurous. I feel like they want to take the ride with you. So it's thrilling for me. And I know Ethan Coen, who's, I think this is his first time, he's loving it. I mean, it's really great.

[12:17] Michael Ritchie: How did you meet up with Ethan?

[12:19] Neil Pepe: So Ethan and I, I think, like you, we all had, you know, friends in common over the years, because didn't Kate, Kate and Fran McDormand went to Yale together. And Fran had just finished shooting Blood Simple, which was the Coen Brothers' first film. Yeah. And then came back to New York. So I met those, Joel and Ethan, before they'd even opened. So whenever that was, so it was a long time. So we became pals early on.

[12:50] Michael Ritchie: No, it's amazing, the history.

[12:51] Neil Pepe: So I knew of them, and I may have met them in passing when Macy did Fargo. Right. And we were, you know, he was still very involved with the company. In fact, when he auditioned for Fargo, he stayed at our apartment in New York. I remember that. Anyway, so we knew each other in passing. He had come to the theater. He was getting into writing some radio plays. I don't remember. He did something, I think it was either BAM or St. Anne's that Charlie Kaufman, Joel and Ethan put together that Carter Burwell, their composer did, and they were radio plays. And I think there were a bunch of famous people like Meryl Streep and Phil Hoffman may have been involved. And then I think they did them in London as well.

So I heard about that and was intrigued. Then all of a sudden, Ethan sent over four one-act plays, which he called Almost an Evening. And I read them, loved them and said, let's do them. We'll do them in our tiny space in New York, the 99 seat. And he said, great. And I said, would you, you know, be willing? Could I direct them? He said, yeah, great. So we had a blast. I mean, F. Murray Abraham was in them and Mark Lynn Baker, and they were just super funny and smart, irreverent.

[13:56] Michael Ritchie: And like 10 or 12 years ago, that was a while ago, right?

[13:59] Neil Pepe: Yeah, I think it was about 11. Yeah, 10 or 11 years ago. And really, but also he sort of, he liked the form. He was sort of messing with the form, which I thought was fine, but he did like the blackout sketches, you know, where he's sort of going from one to the next. And I kept saying, oh, you got to write a full length, you got to write a full length. So he's written one full length that we did that David Cromer directed called Women Are Nothing, which went really well. That was Halle Pfeiffer and Susie Porfar were in that. But other than that, I've directed, this is the fourth set of one acts. And I think in some ways, you know, it's the sort of the most ambitious, but also I love that he goes to so many different places, like we were just discussing, you know, there's form wise and theme wise, there's a lot of different stories and some are longer than others. And some are sort of more, more about gags than others. But really, I think he's extraordinary.

[14:56] Michael Ritchie: Yeah, I agree. And it's interesting because it's a form that I think, you know, back in the 60s and 70s, you probably saw more one acts in New York Off-Broadway than you see now. You don't see it utilized as much. So when this particular set, you know, landed on my desk, I was intrigued to read them. And both to see, you know, what they were like individually. But then what are they like as a package? And that's a whole different thing, because an audience is coming to see an evening of theater, and they're not necessarily well prepared for this form.

[15:30] Neil Pepe: I know. And it goes so many different places.

[15:32] Michael Ritchie: So talk about the five plays just in general of like, you know, how are they connected at all? Is there anything that connects them?

[15:40] Neil Pepe: Yeah, it's a good, you know, I mean, it is a good question. I mean, certainly, as we've talked about there, I suppose you could step back and go, well, there's a certain element of iconic American themes or iconic American stories.

[15:54] Michael Ritchie: Totally. All set in America.

[15:55] Neil Pepe: Yeah. And I think there's echoes, you know, if you've seen a bunch of Ethan and Joel's movies, there's echoes of a lot of, you know, you look at the first one, you think, oh, there's a little O Brother, Where Art Thou? Maybe in there. And then the noir one has, you know, a lot of their films have had a private eye noir stuff. And so there's that, which is just very Ethan. But they are, yeah, I mean, it's a wide variety. And I think also some of it is the stuff that Ethan loves. I mean, the fourth one, The Urbane's, seems like almost either inspired by or an homage to things like The Honeymooners, where it's just that 1950s, you know, great working-class wife and husband who are just at each other.

And it's so funny to watch. But then the other kind of interesting thing we discovered that was very helpful is, it sort of feels like a secret weapon is having the great composer singer Nellie McKay performing, because she has such a great just sense of herself and her music is so pure and simple and great, that she ends up bridging the transitions. And there's just a little arc. She's like our almost MC or lady of song or whatever you want to call her, sort of bringing the audience in. So when Ethan and I were talking about it, it did feel like you were saying, you know, one acts are a form that's not around so much anymore. But even the way in which you wanted to present them almost felt out of time.

Like it could have been almost a vaudeville thing. We want it to be very simple in terms of the scenery and have this, you know, songs in between, which felt old-timey. It felt early 20th century, yet they're still wildly contemporary once you get into the pieces. So yeah, there's some things that don't link them together at all, because they're very different stories. But somehow, if you know Ethan's work, there's a flavor that is wholly his own. And I think that's what I, as I think you would agree, because you produce so much great work, it's always inherently about the truth of the author's voice. And when you find somebody who has a great knowledge of their own voice, and that's to your point, like you were just saying, is, you know, you and I and lots of us who grew up knowing about the playwrights of the 60s and 70s, I mean, a lot of those people that we know, like John Guare and Lanford Wilson, and Terrence and all kinds of people were doing the one act form in the 60s. And it was, it's a cool form.

And to a certain extent, speaks to, and I don't think Ethan would say he knows why he called it a play as a poem. But there's something about a compressed form, that like short form storytelling, like short stories, that is cool. It's unto itself. It's not a novel, but there's strengths to doing it.

[18:47] Michael Ritchie: Yeah, no, for me, it's been highly enjoyable from, you know, reading it the first time to getting it to this point on the stage. And then I think for both of us, it's always putting it in front of an audience.

[18:57] Neil Pepe: Yeah, absolutely. You know, what, what, what happens there? Or what doesn't happen there? So now we've at this point in our conversation, we've been running for about a week of previews.

[19:10] Michael Ritchie: Yeah.

[19:11] Neil Pepe: We haven't officially opened yet. So the first preview comes, it goes up. You and Ethan and other members of the team are sitting in the house watching it. And then there's another week before an official opening and critics and when the show is essentially baked, at least for this run. So what happens for you and everyone else between that first preview in front of an audience and what's going to be on Saturday night when we open?

[19:38] Neil Pepe: Yeah. I always find it really exciting and to a certain extent, terrifying, but you also get used to that. The first time you put it in front of an audience, you learn so much because you're sitting in a rehearsal room for three and a half weeks. And especially for the stuff that are comedies, you know, you can read a script for the first time and think, oh, this is really funny. When you repeat it 80 times, all of a sudden you go, is this funny at all? Or does anybody get this? And I'm sort of watching it going. The third week is the worst week of your life. The third week of doing it. Nobody laughs. The actors hate it. They're like, you're not funny. I suck this novel.

[20:14] Michael Ritchie: Right. Exactly. And they keep relying on you to laugh and you're like, I'm not going to laugh again because I've heard the joke too many times.

[20:17] Neil Pepe: And so there's really a question of whether the homework that you've done in rehearsal is effective. And so hopefully the best case scenario is you put it in front of an audience and they follow it, you know, and you learn what story points they follow. You learn what they may or may not find funny. And especially with some of the denser pieces. I mean, the tough case, the Private Eye one, there's a lot of, you know, just the facts, ma'am, information that comes out. And you're in rehearsal going, I don't know, is that funny? And then all of a sudden they followed all of these, you know, strange plot points that go on, which is great. And then even in At the Gazebo, which is a sort of dense, rich, southern antebellum piece, almost, you know, feels a little Tennessee Williams-like.

And that too, which is very sort of, the language is very rich and sometimes complicated. But finding a way so that you need to, I mean, the audience is kind of the final collaborator in the process. So you need to know, are they finding a way in? Are they there with the story? Are they listening? Because, you know, sometimes when it's not a comedy, you just want to know, are they in there and following all that? So it's been a great process so that you get in first performance, you learn a lot, you rehearse during the day, you make technical adjustments, you tighten, you change. Ethan's been making little adjustments to, you know, jokes, words. Sometimes you'll go, oh, we're overplaying that or we're not allowing the audience to discover that.

So it's really a process of adjusting the storytelling. I mean, I suppose it would be similar to the editing process in a movie, but it's great. I love that, as I'm sure you do, about live theater, that you're, you know, you throw it up there every night and it's a different audience and you start to get an idea of, it's not that you want the audience to react the same way every night.

[22:16] Michael Ritchie: Right. Nor do you want them to tell you what it's supposed to be.

[22:21] Neil Pepe: Exactly. But what you just said, it really strikes me as pure. They're the final collaborator.

[22:27] Michael Ritchie: They are. They are.

[22:28] Neil Pepe: And it's that funny thing. Somebody told me a story. They had some little theater company in San Francisco early on, and they did a production of Waiting for Godot. And they were out there one night, they started acting, and all of a sudden they sort of got this sense. They were like, wait a minute, is there anyone in the audience? There was nobody in the audience. So they started acting. They stopped and there was nobody there. And they were just, what are we doing? Because it doesn't work without an audience. You're just sitting in a room acting and nobody's responding. So it does demand, and it's exciting to have different audiences. And sometimes younger audiences will respond to different things than older audiences.

But it's a wonderful learning experience. And also when you have technical elements that are, you know, I won't ruin it, but there's some sort of surprising stuff that goes on in all these plays, keeping in line with their Ethan Coen style, as like their movies. So we're right in the middle of it. We're just making final adjustments before the opening on Saturday, and really enjoying, you know, the LA audiences, which I think are really...

[23:37] Neil Pepe: I found out about the LA audience is there's no one that comes casually. If you're going to go to the theater, you've got to make a commitment. It's not like you're a tourist in town, they're going to check a box by coming to see a show and you're not killing an evening because it takes an effort to get there. But if you deliver for an audience here, you're really rewarded. And people that go to the theater here are savvy. They go a lot. They don't go once a year. People that go, go. I'm really, as I said to you, I feel like this season that you've got programmed is really, I mean, I admire, I know almost all of the artists and I just think they're really amazing artists. And a lot of them are pushing the envelope in different ways that's fantastic.

So I think it's exciting. We feel good. On paper, it looks great. Doesn't it? You have that moment when you announce the season, you go like, hey, that looks pretty good. And then we've got to do it. That's the balancing act, right? They say, some people are like, oh, you're an artistic director. So that just means you sit over there and handle the art. And I'm like, no, you do the art stuff. And then there's the balancing act, which I'm sure we've talked about a lot in order to survive in this day and age, you have to have your eye on all of it. How to, you know, how to keep things marketing and all that stuff. No, I'd say there are great, great, great parts to this job. Great. But at times it's a job.

There are things that are like, you know, you got to go in, it's time to make the donuts. But the rewards that come from it personally, and, you know, some of it is just, for me, at least the ability to be in the back of a theater alone and just go like, okay, this works. And, you know, creating theater doesn't always work because there are bad or untalented people that are doing it. It's because it's such an amorphous pursuit that it's almost intangible how you get to having multiple people in a creative process to coalesce and then make that bridge from that to an audience. Even after, you know, 40 years, it still amazes me when the show goes up. It's a little bit like, wow. It's true. And I think, I mean, you know, I certainly feel this way about you and I try to do the same, which is, I think we really, you know, it's a joy to be in a room with remarkable people.

And it's also a joy to be in a room and know that you're striving for excellence, but you're also, you want to have a good time doing it. So it really is, you know, all those things that we say that are great about the theater, it really is about community and it's about people coming together to tell the truth. And whether it's, you know, absurd truths or tragic truths or great stories, but there's something about the community and the fact that all of us, you know, here, whether LA theater or New York theater, there's a big community and sharing that with an audience is amazing. But these artists, for me, that's the reason I keep doing it, just hanging out with all these incredible actors and writers and everybody works in theater.

[27:01] Neil Pepe: Yeah, no, it feels like a tribe to me that it's, and somehow I've been allowed into the tribe. It's like, you know, one of those things like, really? Okay, good. Because this is where I want to be. Talk a little bit about the company of actors in these five shows. So how do you, how do you cast five different shows, essentially?

[27:15] Neil Pepe: Yeah. I mean, it's, it's sort of off of that same thing of, you know, if you've been around a little while and you know, certain actors that you've worked with before who seem to be not only are great actors for the material, but have a good sense of language and presence on stage. So a couple of the actors, Joey Slotnick, CJ Wilson, Joey's, Joey and CJ have both worked on Ethan's One Acts before with us. And I've worked with both of them in New York on other shows as well. A bunch of the other actors I've always admired and never worked with, Max Casella and Miriam Silverman. And there's, there's two amazing young actors, Sam and Michaela. And Michaela just got done doing Young Cher, and she's only 20.

She's just out of high school, and she's incredible. And they're both brilliant. And then Saul Ruminek came. And, and I think Jason may have done one of the Cone Brothers film too, but Saul was in A Ballad of Buster Scruggs in the last one. And I knew of their work. And, and so, so it's kind of, you know, Ethan and I kind of finding people that we, excuse me, that we knew through either his work or my work. And, and, and then, you know, it's like we were just talking about, you want to get a, you know, you want to have a party with a great group of people who can sink their teeth into it, and have the skill set to do it, but also are collaborators, meaning that it's very much an ensemble, you know, it's not about, you know, a star vehicle or something.

It's, it's about serving the material. And I think it seems like because it's been a very, you know, starting, starting with you bringing us in, and then everybody at The Taper has been wonderful. So it feels like it's been a very fun, respectful process, where everybody's in it to enjoy it. And we all know, you know, whether we completely succeed or fail, or, you know, we're trying, we're all trying to do the best work we can. And then, you know, as we, as we work on it, but we're having a great time doing it and striving, striving for excellence when we can.

[29:22] Neil Pepe: Yeah, I know. It's a good, it's a really good crowd, really good crowd. Quickly, The Taper. Yeah. Somewhat unusual space in relation to all others around the country. There are other, there are other stages like that. But you know, you're in a round building with a thrust stage. Yeah. And you are directing a comedy. So there are additional challenges for you as a director.

[29:45] Neil Pepe: Yeah. That you won't necessarily have in a proscenium. Which you especially know, being a former stage manager, because it's all that stuff of how you block, and it's very practical things of where, where you're moving the actors, because there's people on all sides, right. So to a certain extent, you have to either keep them moving in a way so that everybody gets a chance to see them from different angles, or if you happen to be like the last piece, a lot of it, this Inside Talk, which is all about Hollywood film people, is mostly around a desk. So you have to put that desk in a place where generally people can see the actors. And you know, if they're going to be still, or they could be even things as subtle in the middle one in the gazebo, they're on a bench a lot of the time.

So I'll say to them once in a while, in certain sections, push your butt back on the bench and the other person push your butt forward. So there's a slight diagonal, just so people can see. And so there's a lot of those weird things, but it's that old adage, which is in a thrust, you block on an X and blocking, as we know, is moving the actors around. But what it means is you play on the diagonal, because when you play on the diagonal, moving in those lines makes it more accessible for people. More people can see it as opposed to a proscenium with a triangle.

[31:12] Neil Pepe: Yeah, yeah. It's a little bit of a choreographic equation. And then in terms of sound, of vocal, is it different in a space like that than elsewhere?

[31:24] Neil Pepe: Yeah, I think it is. And that's that, you know, that's that same thing of like in this day and age. I mean, I've come from the school of thought of, you know, actors should have strong enough voices, whether it's a thrust theater or proscenium. Even if they're pointing upstage, they should have the diction and projection to hit everybody. There's times, both for artistic purposes and sound purposes, where we'll have some sort of well-placed, very subtle micing. Some of that has to do with the needs of the piece. One of the pieces, Nellie's playing piano while they're talking. So we needed to up their voices so they didn't have to. So she could play loud enough and they didn't have to yell over.

But it's, you know, it's a great challenge. I mean, I sort of love thrust theaters. I don't necessarily get a chance to work in them that often, but I think it's exciting because, you know, you're wrapped, the audience wraps around you. So it really feels like we're all in this together.

[32:24] Neil Pepe: Yeah. And I think the audience gets a little bit of sense of that as well, when you can see another portion of the audience. And I think you feel a bit more connected somehow to each other and to the piece itself. So it's a theater that I happen to love. And I had worked a little bit on thrusts. Well, actually, I worked a lot at Circle in the Square. So I was also in The Round. Yeah. And Lincoln Center. And Lincoln Center down at the Mitzi and upstairs at the Beaumont. So I've had a lot of thrust experience. And for me, it is always fascinating to see a company come in and have the director, the designers, and the actors figure it out, sometimes together, sometimes alone. Sometimes you just see an actor on stage learning to cheat just a half, you know, a half bit to the left to know that he's got, he or she has the audience in the palm of their hand.

[33:21] Neil Pepe: Well, and it's funny, you kind of run, you know, as a director, sometimes you'll just be running around the house during the tech rehearsals because you're like, what does it look like from over here? Oh, this is a terrible scene. It was looking so great when I was over in B7. Exactly. And I think that's important because you want everybody, you know, no matter where they're sitting, you want them to have a good time and enjoy it. And there's different cool perspectives, but you want to make sure that you're not, you know, sort of staging against a particular area of seating. So that's a fun and sometimes challenging process. But I always like the trying to figure the equation out, you know.

[34:02] Neil Pepe: Well, I'm really happy that you're here. You know, it's just a chance to work with you, to work with the people you bring on board. It's every time we've done it, it's been a real joy and a success. So this better, you know, continue the string for us.

[34:14] Neil Pepe: Well, it's a thrill. So far it has. It's been great. No, it's really, and I just, I love coming here. And not only because it's been, you know, we have such a great history and I've always enjoyed collaborating with you and everybody here, but it's just, it's great, you know, in some ways sort of introducing somebody like Ethan, who's new to the theatre, to have him have a chance to come out here. I don't think he's ever done his plays. You know, when you called us and said, yeah, I want to do the one acts and we want to do them in the taper. We're like, wow, okay, we're going to do the one acts in the taper. Because I don't know that Ethan's ever done plays in a, in a theatre this big. And that's really exciting. So the whole process, you know, it's, it's a joy to come out here and it's, it's just, it's been fun. And, and, you know, we, the audiences seem to be enjoying it. So we hope they keep coming and having a good time.

[35:06] Neil Pepe: You've been listening to 30 to Curtain, a Center Theatre Group podcast. You can find out more about A Play is a Poem, our organization, and upcoming productions on our website at centertheatregroup.org.