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Acting Heightened Text: The Basics - With Catherine Weidner

In this episode, we talk with Catherine Weidner, actor, director, educator, and author of Acting Heightened Text: The Basics, about bringing heightened language to life onstage... Read More

From the show: The Drama Book Show!

45 mins
Oct 5

About

In this episode, we talk with Catherine Weidner, actor, director, educator, and author of Acting Heightened Text: The Basics, about bringing heightened language to life onstage.

Weidner’s book offers actors, directors, students, and teachers practical tools for working with verse and prose, from text analysis and playing actions to auditions, rehearsals, rhetorical arguments, and rhyming couplets. We explore how curiosity, rigor, and techniques like “hooking” can help performers make dynamic, textually supported choices and connect with heightened language in a truthful, contemporary way.

Transcript

This transcript was automatically generated and might contain errors.

[0:00] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Hello, and welcome to the Drama Book Show, where we bring you conversations with the writers, artists, and theater professionals whose work helps shape the world of live performance.

[0:27] Mark-Eugene Garcia: My name is Mark Eugene Garcia. In this episode, we explore the craft of working with heightened text and how actors can bring verse and prose to life through a truthful and contemporary approach.

[0:37] Mark-Eugene Garcia: We're joined by Catherine Weidner, author of Acting Heightened Text, The Basics, a practical guide for actors, directors, students, and teachers navigating the demands of dramatic text. Through detailed text analysis, rehearsal exercises, and a three-step homework process, the book offers tools for understanding meaning, playing actions, changes in action, tactics, rhyming couplets, rhetorical arguments, auditions, callbacks, and rehearsals.

[1:04] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Weidner is a teacher, professional director and actor whose work has included the Kennedy Center, Center Stage, Arena Stage, and the Hanger Theater. As a director, she has worked with the Hill Barn Theater, Austin Shakespeare, Nebraska Repertory Theater, and the Illinois Shakespeare Festival. She has also taught with held leadership positions at the Shakespeare Theater's Academy for Classical Acting at George Washington University, the Theater School at DePaul University, and Ithaca College. Here's Catherine Weidner, live at the Drama Bookshop.

[1:33] Catherine Weidner: Thanks for the intro, and this is my real hair. I always like to start off with that. I'm auditioning for a Mike Pence miniseries. Catherine and I met in 1984, not 83, in a Moliere production of Two Precious Damsels Ridiculed in Summer Stock in Ithaca. She was 21. I was 23. The eponymous damsels were so inert on stage, Catherine, who was playing their maid, Marotte, was encouraged by director Lisa Peterson to upstage them. What Catherine did with a piece of black gum to the teeth, a large mole on her cheek, and a moosed-up claw for a hairdo swiftly demonstrated that she would have a brilliant career in the theater.

[2:18] Catherine Weidner: We reconnected after grad school as a pair of surly and seditious interns at La Jolla Playhouse. Catherine was assistant to both artistic director Des McAnuff and managing director Alan Levy, and was always on call, the worst job in the American theater. We shared a car named Otis and a posse of friends and laughed ourselves sick for two seasons. Paychecks were bouncing, so we left La Jolla before they made us drink the Kool-Aid. We have always stayed in touch, and the younger ones among you know that as we age out, you have to hang on to the friends who make you laugh, and knew you when you were young. Catherine is a woman of extraordinary overlapping expertise, teaching text, movement, and acting herself, directing, administrating, chairing, writing, and evangelizing for years for the Bard like Johnny Appleseed on campuses and at Shakespeare festivals all over the country.

I've written plays for her. She is a vivid, I hope, leading character in my summer stock novel Vamp Until Ready, and I married her to Kevin, her husband, who is also a person in his own right. I've seen her light fires with her scansion workshops in my classroom at Swarthmore College and from the director's seat. I think I've even seen her change attire. The officious and irritating chair of the search committee for her eventual hire at Ithaca College asked me at the conclusion of our phone interview, tell me why we should hire Catherine Widener. I recall nearly snorting at the idiocy of her question before I said with as much duh in my voice as possible, because you will never find another candidate who has all of Shakespeare down cold. She knows her shit like nobody else in the country. And now we have the ocular tangible proof, acting, heightened text, the basics. I ask you all to welcome and congratulate Catherine Widener.

[4:39] Catherine Weidner: I'm going to introduce him briefly now, but this is Michael Samuel Kaplan, who will be running our Q&A later, so thank you, Michael, for joining us. Thank you, James. Welcome, everyone. It means so much to me, James, that you're here tonight. Right into the place. You got it. There. Is that better? Yeah? Great. Good. I'm in the red zone now, baby. In the red zone. Thank you, James. It means so much to me that you're here tonight. For the last 40 years, your presence in my life has been a series of gifts. You taught me about discursive energy, the vitality of communication, and it's had a tremendous impact on my work. I see many friends, colleagues, actors, directors, dramaturgs here, also former students who are now friends and colleagues, all of whom contribute to the making of this book. And there's two people here tonight who are also an inspiration to me and have been for all or most of my life, and that is my brother, Ken, and my husband, Kevin. Thank you for being here.

[6:01] Catherine Weidner: Some of you may know my obsession with one particular writer, Robert Caro. I take a lot of inspiration from him, and tonight I'm taking a piece of his advice, give the reader a break. And since this is a reading, it's going to be give the listener a break. Rather than read one long section of the book for 20 minutes, I've chosen a juicy snippet from the introduction and from each of the eight chapters. So this is like the sizzle reel or the trailer for Acting Heightened Text to Basics. Spoiler alert. I'll begin with this short selection from the introduction, and soon you'll be able to listen to the complete audio book, because I'm just finishing recording that in the coming weeks for Audible. This book strives to teach you how to prepare, what to look for, and what to do next that best serves the story. In acting, that means doing the homework, digging into the text in profound ways to extract meaning, and then making choices based on those discoveries.

[7:17] Catherine Weidner: Several students of mine who make use of these tools in rehearsal have found other actors leaning over to look at their working script, then pulling them aside at the end of a table reading and ask, how did you do that? The answer, invariably, is a version of, I just did the homework. For many actors, homework has meant reading the play, highlighting their own lines and memorizing them, and along with whatever clues have emerged as they do so. In this book, working step by step, you will learn how to focus on many other things in and about your lines, how they're structured, what they mean, which words need emphasis, what the character wants, how they plan to get it, what tactics the actor must employ to succeed, what the other character just said, and how you're going to respond to it.

Chapter one is called Demystifying Verse, because it delves into the basics and intricacies of meter, rhythm, and, woo, scary, scansion. There is no right or wrong in scansion. There is scansion that works and that doesn't work. There is scansion that is helpful and not helpful. If you think you've got some challenging scansion, try saying the problematic word or phrase the other way within the context of the line. Some words mean one thing scanned one way. Object. This is a verb. It means to express disapproval or disagreement. I object. It means another thing entirely when it's scanned the other way. Object. This is a noun, meaning a thing that can be seen and touched. It's a valuable object.

Words scan regardless of whether or not they are part of metered sentences or thoughts. The way we actually say the word is what matters most so that its meaning is clear. How the weight of stress falls within a line of iambic pentameter is the puzzle we need to solve when doing our scansion so it can be the foundation of everything we do next.

[9:36] Catherine Weidner: Chapter two, a foundation of meaning in which we make sure we know what our lines mean. At the outset of paraphrasing, the first step is reading the line aloud. The Duke is very strangely gone from hence. What does this line mean? Do we understand all the words? If we throw around some ideas, we might come up with the following brainstorming session for the Duke is very strangely gone from hence. Duke implies a male figurehead, likely inheriting a title over dominion. That's a fancy way to say the man in charge here. Very means to a great extent a lot. Strangely has a little more complexity since it could mean odd but it's very strange and it doesn't seem like he left moving sideways or backwards so perhaps it's more unusual that he left at all and it's very strangely so maybe he rarely leaves.

Gone has a simple definition, not here, no longer in this place, which in Measure for Measure is Vienna. From hence repeats that idea for emphasis, from here. But when I look it up online to check the definition because I wasn't really sure, the word archaic appears and the exact definition from here and it was the third definition down the list. I had to look up archaic as well to discover it means old-fashioned, not in everyday use.

[11:17] Catherine Weidner: That's when I knew I'd found the best definition for the line. Consequently, my paraphrase for this line could sound clinical. The royal man in charge has, under rare and strange circumstances, left Vienna. Or it could sound like we might say it today. The main dude, totally out of character, blew out of town. Perhaps we could merge these two approaches. The governor, uncharacteristically and for no known reason, has fled from Vienna. That's my paraphrase. I know what the line means, and I've covered everything in it. My paraphrase is like a savings account. I have it in case I need it to support me when I say, The Duke is very strangely gone from hence. Chapter Three. Conveying the Ideas. Emphasis on words, thoughts, ideas, and images.

Let's start with some scientific understanding about how thoughts get put into words. How does one person understand another person when they speak? Receiving and processing the idea in order to respond. The brain is the nerve center of this activity. But playing an important role, more specifically, more specifically is a small part of the left frontal lobe called Broca's area, which spontaneously processes and codes thoughts, chooses words, and then sends signals that form speech. Imagine a little chip in your head that spits out the right thing to say at the right moment. The challenge, of course, is not having the words sound like a computer when you say them. To avoid sounding like a machine, humans in all languages make some words more important than others.

These words are called operatives. The operative words we choose emphasize and control the function of the idea. They make the thought happen clearly and effectively because of a specific choice. As human beings with voices and emotions, we use pitch, volume, rhythm to help differentiate important words from less important words, which aids in the communication and comprehension of the idea. Our tool for identifying operative words is underlining them. Very high tech. Did you write that down? In our marked up scripts as the third step in our homework, after scansion and paraphrase, a primary operative word gets a solid underline. A secondary operative word gets a dotted or a dashed underline.

Jamie's like, yeah, with an old-fashioned pencil on paper. Chapter four, connecting to the partner and the situation. Basically, this chapter is a deep dive into script analysis. Unpacking given circumstances, identifying beat changes and conflict or what's at stake. If you're one of the two people on earth not familiar with Lin-Manuel Miranda's musical Hamilton, it's a contemporary example of heightened text in song lyrics. The conflicts include characters at odds with themselves, with others, and with the expectations of society. When the character Angelica Schuyler sings the song Satisfied, we identify with what the character is struggling with and what kinds of conflict are at play, and see how an actor can make specific choices that convey how the character navigates the conflict moment by moment.

Here's the section of the lyrics we're going to explore for conflict. All right, all right, that's what I'm talking about. Now, everyone, give it up for the maid of honor, Angelica Schuyler. A toast to the groom, to the groom, to the groom, to the groom. To the bride, to the bride, to the bride, to the bride. From your sister, Angelica, Angelica. And though it may be sad, to your union, and the revolution, and the hope that you provide, you may always be satisfied. Sorry, I have to stop there. Play the whole thing. Both internal and external forces are at play for her, in conflict with herself, others, and the expectations of society. The actor identifies the conflict, what is the struggle, and makes specific choices for the character.

I have to make a speech. Lean into it. Smile. Pretend to be happy. Make it seem normal. Do what's expected of me. I will honor my sister, celebrate our relationship, and the current moment. But, dot, I will add a secret coded message, though in public, that only Alexander will understand. Its hidden meaning, as I flash back to the moment that we met. May you always, dot, be satisfied. And then the music takes us back. Rewind. Angelica struggles to figure out what to say, to serve the purpose of the maid of honor's speech. Privately proclaim her love for Alexander, and maintain her devotion to her sister. Chapter five. Hooking. Active listening and responding to impulses. This is where the rubber meets the road in my work.

A series of movement exercises morphed into a manifestation of scene dynamics, supporting actors in relying on each other for insights and impulses. What is a hook, anyway? In fishing, it's the thing that catches the fish. In popular music, it's a string of notes, or an opening phrase that hooks you, whether it's written by Marvin Gaye, Lady Gaga, Beyonce, or Beethoven. In acting, a hook connects things, draws you in, and helps you refine every acting choice you make, reinforcing why you do something and what you say next, based on what just happened. If acting were a game of ping pong, hooking is the ball. You have to go where the ball is, not where you want it to be. You deal with what's actually happening.

Hooking clarifies the connective tissue from one line to the next, and actors shouldn't say their next line unless something happens that makes them say it. This is the basis of Sanford Meisner's work that developed into the Meisner technique, a method of repetition that helps actors rely upon each other for what they need in order to proceed. Hooking manifests that Meisner idea further by speaking aloud the unspoken connection, saying what I need or what I get from the partner or the action aloud, and then saying the next line. The improvisational aspect I've added of using impulse and chair exercises builds on fundamental skills developed by Viola Spolin, who believed that everyone, not just actors, has a natural ability to be responsive in the moment.

In acting heightened text, we fold together those two theories and add active listening skills. The result is that hooking brings physical energy to the text and the scene that is dynamic, focused, and partner-centered. Chapter six, playing intentions, actions, and tactics. This is the art needs to imitate life part of the book, to inhabit the text rather than simply to perform it. In life, we have intentions, play actions, and employ tactics on a daily basis. It's how we navigate life's situations. Sometimes in anticipation of a difficult conversation, a jury duty summons, a job interview, we think about our intentions and tactics in advance. How do we try to get the outcome that we want? We may not be writing it down, but in the moment, we play a tactic.

We try something and we pay attention to how it lands. The same holds true for acting, since we're replicating real life in the imaginary circumstances of the play. In the book, Actions, the Actors Thesaurus, an enormously helpful collection of verbs. That's what it is. Authors Marina Calderon and Maggie Lloyd-Williams have amassed an extensive list of verbs that actors can play as actions and tactics using a technique outlined in the foreword by director Terry Johnson. This approach uses a mad lib-like blank space between I verb you as a test of the verb's effectiveness as an action. I challenge you. I embrace you. I humiliate you. I thank you. This volume's treasure trove of verbs is an excellent starting point for how we can incorporate active energy in every beat or shift in our heightened text.

My approach to this brilliant and efficient way to activate a choice is to take the use of actions and tactics further by asking actors not only to identify a verb that suits the moment, but say the phrase aloud and then play the moment. The verb doesn't just sit idly on the page. It leaps into the scene rehearsal with an ignition-like burst of energy at the beginning of a beat or a shift. The script might get marked with actions as such. Iago, attack. How now? Belittle. What do you hear alone? Emilia, challenge. Do not you chide. Tempt. I have a thing for you. Then the actor adds the say it aloud approach, the hook-like approach before they say their line. Iago, I attack you. How now? I belittle you. What do you hear alone? Emilia, I challenge you. Do not you chide. I tempt you. I have a thing for you. The actors are trying out their choices, playing their actions, testing their actions.

[22:34] Catherine Weidner: It doesn't matter what you call it, an action or a tactic. What matters is that you do something. It's great fun to play with actions and tactics, and you can try anything to see if it works. It doesn't work if it interferes with the forward action of the story, or if it makes the next line redundant and unable to be spoken. Chapter 7. Advanced Skills, Prose, Rhetoric, and Rhyming Couplets. A rhyming couplet is two consecutive lines that connect to the same idea or make a particular point, and the final syllables rhyme. Imagine! It is the most complex form of heightened text, and it is seen most often in song lyrics, classical plays, and verse poetry. Sonnets usually end with a rhyming couplet, serving as a final stamp or a flourish.

Rhyming couplets often appear at the end of a speech, like putting a literary bow on a package. They may signal that a character is leaving, or that they're finished with this particular topic or situation. Perhaps the greatest example of a play made up entirely of rhyming couplets is Richard Wilbur's 1955 translation of Moliere's French epic, The Misanthrope, originally written in 1666. Wilbur, a future two-time recipient of the Pulitzer Prize, was on a fellowship to Paris in 1948 in the aftermath of World War II, where he happened to attend a performance of the play at the Comédie-Française. At a loss for how to break through a writing block, he decided to work instead on a translation of the play into English in iambic pentameter, and entirely in rhyming couplets in his spare time.

Since the lines will always rhyme, and the final syllables will almost always be stressed, we must pay particular attention to the line endings and the punctuation in order to discern the length of the thought and the opportunity for breath. The same attention must be paid to the level of emphasis you give the rhyming words. This depends on what they require for clarity of sense. This is very important. Knowing which are the operative words help us make choices about how hard we land on or hit the rhyme. When actors foster this practice, audiences often don't even realize that the play is written entirely in rhyming couplets. They only experience the flourish of where the line, the rhyme, and the laugh land.

[25:34] Catherine Weidner: Chapter 8. Helpful advice for callbacks, rehearsal, and performance. This is everything I've ever wanted to say to actors and directors in this final chapter. I could go on forever. Handling callbacks on short notice is like getting past the ball in a game when you didn't expect it. There's always an oh factor to getting a message that you have a callback. And the first step is to assess how much time you have to prepare once you've seen the expectation of the sides. Nerves come with the territory, but should not be exacerbated by a lack of preparation. Being nervous means that it matters. Being unprepared means that it doesn't. Prepare as best you can with the time you have. My hands shake a little when I'm nervous.

So I print my sides, or my music, on cardstock. Or I staple them onto a manila folder so no one can see that I'm shaking like a leaf. And finally, thank you for your patience, this last excerpt is from a section called Managing Expectations of Yourself and Others. Though this may have little to do with heightened text per se, the advice that follows applies to how we collaborate and communicate within the creative environment. Rehearsals mark another beginning when we bring what we know and don't know into a room to share with others in the same boat. One of the best tools for being successful is to learn how success will be measured and what the expectations are for daily and periodic progress.

Here are three ways you can meet anyone else's expectations in a rehearsal setting and four practices to demand of yourself. Apparently this book has some off-label success in improving relationships and marriages. Feel free to apply these as best you can. Number one, show up on time. Be there where and when you're supposed to be. Number two, know the text. Not just your lines, but the big picture and the nuanced details. Number three, bring ideas and choices based on your homework and yet be willing to try new things. Number four, listen to what is happening around you. The work is continuing even when you are not the focus. Who knew? Stay in the room or on set whenever you can or be offstage and remain aware.

Number five, respect everyone in the room. Each person has a job to do, so respect their contributions and be gracious when mistakes are made. You will make some too. So be accountable and move on. Number six, respond with a positive word or a phrase of acknowledgement every time you get a note. Try, thank you, yes, got it, or heard. One of my former students enthusiastically said, 100% every time I gave him a note. It's Aidan Babbitt is his name, Aidan Babbitt. It made me want to give him more notes because he wanted every moment to be better, more specific and more dynamic. And number seven, lastly, take the note. Just do it. You can talk about it later or not. When I'm directing and an actor wants to talk about an idea they have or about how to play a certain moment, I say, show me what that would look like.

Have the courage to play a different choice rather than spending your time asking permission to try something new. That said, if it's the last take of a shot on a film set and they're losing the light, it is not the time to try something new. Being sensible and taking risks can happen at the same time. Tennis players make great shots, but the ball still has to land in bounds. Thank you for listening. I look out there and I think, you guys already know all this, right? You don't even need to buy them. You can't. There you go. We have a little time for Q&A now.

[30:56] Catherine Weidner: Hey, we do. We have a little time for Q&A. I did okay. We have a little room for Q&A now followed by book signing. And to lead us through, I am honored to introduce my dear friend and colleague, Michael Samuel Kaplan. Don't get up yet. As an actor, Michael has performed in theaters across the country. As an acting, voice, speech, text, and dialect coach, he's worked with performers across the United States and in Canada and Singapore. He currently teaches at University of Connecticut and directs and coaches actors at Connecticut Repertory Theater. Michael Kaplan. Yay!

[31:38] Michael Samuel Kaplan: Thank you, Catherine. Who has questions for Catherine? And yes, we have one in the back there.

[31:46] Audience Member: Yeah, hi. I guess my question is, in a world where the youths of tomorrow, the timies of tomorrow's attention is commanded in a different way through social media. You said it, this is the sizzle reel. You have such a unique energy in the room. You're like in the gym with us every time, every day. Like you're what the student said, you're 100%. So you have this thing that can't be taught, right? This magic that we all know. How do we use that magic to continue to inspire the youths? How do we keep the text? It feels like with my timies of tomorrow that we're communicating in hieroglyphics again via text. How do we keep their passion for the language alive? For example, the word has two meanings, right?

We can't say hold because they don't know. So what do we do about that? So the question is for our listeners. The question is for the youths of today who are so conditioned by social media, how do we keep the passion for heightened text and language alive in the classroom and in the rehearsal hall and in the theater?

[33:11] Catherine Weidner: I'm going to take a little moment. Thank you, Lucy, for that question. It's such a great question and I appreciate that because so many of you are teachers even if you don't know your teachers, you're teachers. Hello, hi. Check, check, one, two, check. Is it on? Yeah, there we go. Good, hi. All right, first of all, I think that's a great question, Lucy. Thank you. I appreciate that. And I'm going to take a page from Michael's class recently which I taught at University of Connecticut in Storrs which was first years. First year actors. And grad students. And a few grad students and we had seniors in there as well. There were, it was all of us.

[33:51] Catherine Weidner: With actors who are auditioning for things that are not bad, especially musical theater. I coach musical theater people all the time, and in your wonderful setup, you did things like dut-dut-dut and not to the grounding they get from breaking down the text. Is it the same approach as for heightened text?

[34:21] David Rigano: Yep. Yep. Flour, eggs, water, brown sugar. It's all the same. Put it all in a bowl. Kiki Lane, who wrote a great blurb for my book, and it's on my website, said, I use operative words, I use hooking, I use everything for everything I do. I get a TV script, the first thing I do is read it out loud. Reading it out loud is a big part of the work. Because of auditory processing and because of visual learners, it helps support so much more than reading not aloud. So I think that reading it aloud and hearing it and then figuring out what is happening in the line and always what's happening when the reader is talking instead of, forgive me, bullshit my line, bullshit bullshit my line. Which is tempting in self-tapes, which is what most people do.

I just did a self-tape that you helped with and I have really learned that I just look at the screen and work off the reader on my self-tapes. I don't use that. It's not a break. It's just, what did you just say? Are you serious? No, Don, no. I just did a Eureka Day audition. I was just like, Don, shut up. I'm not saying that, but I'm playing it. And that's what empty feet are. That's what we're doing when somebody else is talking, but everybody's on stage. All dramatic text is heightened text. The fact that it just uses a lot of Shakespeare and people get scared of that, I can't be responsible for that. But we do it all the time. Tony Kushner was the first one to give me the rights to the Belize speech.

When I said, I want to use Orlando because it's what I've been teaching for 30 years. I've been teaching that Orlando speech since I was 27 years old. I've been teaching that. I want to use Belize. I want to use the Star-Spangled Banner was written for a reason. If you look at that thing in the play, it's a bear. And if you're playing Belize, you look at that and go, wow, it's this long. You've got to line it out. You've got to line that shit out. I played Silda in Other Desert Cities, and the minute I saw the sides for the audition, it was the monologue. I'm like, you've got to be kidding me. I have to do that for the audition? And all I did was say, shut up, calm down, get out a pencil and a blank sheet of paper and start lining it out.

It's your business, the work. That's what Jamie's business is called, the work. And that's what it is. So I just feel like it's absolutely the same for everything. It's the same recipe. You can move things around. You can make some substitutions, but you can't skip. You leave out the baking soda. You leave out the something. You're not going to get the same result. I talk in Chapter 8 about how to combine things. You actually don't have to worry about your scansion. If you've read the scene enough to go, yes, it's totally regular. I don't have to spend two hours scanning this scene. If I just read it and pay attention for a second and listen to it, I can say, yeah, it's all regular except these three lines and this is why. Move on.

[42:29] David Rigano: And I remember that audition. That was a brilliant audition you gave.

[42:31] Catherine Weidner: My Eureka Day audition.

[42:32] David Rigano: For SILDA, too.

[42:33] Catherine Weidner: Oh, for SILDA. I remember that, yeah.

[42:35] David Rigano: How do you remember that?

[42:36] Catherine Weidner: I remember these things. He was my go-to reader. He was always my reader. When we worked together at Ithaca College, we would exchange being readers for each other. We're getting the time signal here.

[42:45] David Rigano: Oh, Matt, one more?

[42:46] Catherine Weidner: One more. So for someone like myself who's not a performer but is interested in learning more about writing text and can find it intimidating, what would you say is the number one thing to sort of get over that fear or intimidation about writing text?

[43:03] David Rigano: I would read the introduction to the book. It's written for you. That's who it's for. It's for people that were terrified of whatever you were told to read in seventh grade, whether it was Romeo and Juliet or Julius Caesar. It's like me. I was told I couldn't sing. Who told me that? Why would somebody tell me that? I've just been believing that for so long. Why would anyone believe anything like that? So I think that some of us had experiences where we didn't see the fire. We didn't see that spark. So it's really just about finding that, and I think you're on the right first track, which is just get it but read it out loud because reading it out loud also helps you hear the words, just like tonight when you hear those words. It's like, oh, I get that. I think you're in a great place to start. Thanks, Matt. And we're going to move now to some books on you, but thank you so much.

[43:50] Catherine Weidner: Thanks, everybody.

[43:52] David Rigano: Thank you so much. And we are back. Thanks for listening to this episode of the Drama Book Show. Coming up next, we'll talk with playwright, songwriter, and educator Ro Reddick about her darkly comedic play Cold War Choir Practice, winner of the 2026 Susan Smith Blackburn Prize. Set in Ronald Reagan's America, this play follows a young girl caught up in family intrigue when her estranged uncle, a prominent black conservative, brings his mysteriously ill wife home for the holidays. Blending music, comedy, espionage, roller disco, cults, and choir practice, Cold War Choir Practice takes us on a very unconventional story of family, politics, and life in the shadow of the Cold War. So remember to follow us on Instagram at Dramabookshowpodcast. Follow our Eventbrite at Dramabookshop. And remember, all the books we talk about can be found here at the bookshop. And so can we. And we will see you at the bookshop.

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