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[0:00] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Hello, and welcome to The Drama Book Show. My name is Mark-Eugene Garcia, and today's episode is gonna be a little bit different. It's just me, and we're gonna jump right into the event.

[0:29] Mark-Eugene Garcia: We had an exciting event with Carol Rocamora a while back on Crisis: The Theatre Responds. I'm gonna give you a little bit of information about the book, and then we're gonna jump right in.

[0:40] Mark-Eugene Garcia: We're looking at a book today that doesn't just examine theatre. It really examines its role in the time of crisis. It looks back over a hundred years and explores how playwrights have responded to some of the world's most pressing crises in the times of World War II, the AIDS epidemic, systemic racism, the refugee crisis, and have been risking everything to do what William Shakespeare called holding the mirror up to nature.

[1:08] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Now, we have right for the panel, the event was led by Carol Rocamora, and had featured playwrights like Keith Hamilton Cobb, Antoinette Nwandu, and Eleanor Burgess. And each one of them describes how their work dives into the courage and urgency and the innovation that divides theatre at its most vital. So, I'm really excited for you to hear this, and let's just jump right in.

[1:32] Carol Rocamora: Right, to the book, and then we'll turn it over. I think we're expecting one or two other playwrights, Keith, and so we'll turn it over to you because you are the heart of the book, of course. So, I have great news for you about this book. I, first of all, the word crisis, I, Peter Brook once said that the moment he finished a book, it was out of date. This book is already out of date because we don't have the crises that are happening right under us, but I think if I can convince my publisher Wordville Press to do another edition, we'll have plenty to add. But, what I've done is write a book that is not, this is the best news, this is not theatre criticism. This is theatre celebration. This is paying attention to dozens of writers over the past hundred years from four different continents who have done what Shakespeare's Hamlet told them to do, which is what? Everyone know the quote from Act 3, Scene 2?

[2:32] Carol Rocamora: Everybody knows. Go on, Buster. No, Keith knows.

[2:37] Keith Hamilton Cobb: Hold the mirror up to nature.

[2:39] Carol Rocamora: Bravo, Keith, to hold the mirror up to nature, and the age and time, I don't know why Shakespeare said his form and pressure, its form and pressure. But, in other words, that is the sacred mission of the theatre, and the question of my book is, has the theatre lived up to it? And the answer is, you bet, absolutely.

[2:58] Carol Rocamora: So, the book, as I said, looks at dozens of writers over the past hundred years from four continents who have been selected for the risks they have taken, including Keith and others who will be here tonight, I hope, both artistic and personal. In your case, Keith, it's a double, since you appeared in your own play. The courage of their convictions, these are the criteria that I set forth to include them in the book. The depth of their dedication, the power of their voices, the strength of their artistry, the impact of their appeals, and the urgency of their work. They're to be commended for three things, for capturing our attention with provocative new forms, certainly when you hear about Keith's, I never saw a form like yours until I walked into the Cherry Lane Theatre in 2019 and saw that marvelous play with you in it, which I thought was going to be a solo piece, and then it wasn't. We'll tell everyone about that later. These writers in this book are to be commended for heightening our awareness to the urgent issues of our times, and for playing a role in provoking change.

[4:07] Carol Rocamora: So, these works of these writers have been produced, of course, over the past hundred years, if you will, on Broadway, off-Broadway, American Regional Theatre Network in London, all over the UK, throughout Europe, and in some cases, around the world.

[4:24] Carol Rocamora: Let me go very quickly through chapter by chapter. I wanted to begin by going back to the 20th century for inspiration, and who comes to mind when you think of the three, sorry, they're all white, males, I apologize, not my fault, but three great writers, one German, one South African, and one Czech, can you guess, because of their response to crisis in their countries, changed their countries.

[4:55] Carol Rocamora: Germany, World War II, obviously, Brecht, of course. So, Brecht wrote six anti-war plays in exile, which enabled him to come back after the war. They were all produced here and elsewhere in Switzerland during the war. After the war, he came back, he established a theatre, and, hello, there's another one of our famous playwrights who are in this book. Is that you, Antoinette?

[5:22] Antoinette Nwandu: I don't have my glasses on. We have two stars of the show who are going to talk to us, so I'm going to talk very fast. I'm so thrilled to see you, but come on up closer. All right, so that's Brecht. Who's the other from South Africa? Who's the hero from South Africa?

[5:37] Carol Rocamora: Atlaf Fugard. Atlaf Fugard, who defied his government's rules and established a biracial theatre company. What was he responding to? What crisis in?

[5:48] Audience: Apartheid.

[5:50] Carol Rocamora: He worked tirelessly and toured with this company, got arrested, his passport was revoked, etc., etc., but together with Mandela in 1991, they changed their country. And I have to feel that it's as much about the theatre as it is about Mandela. Don't quote me on that.

[6:08] Carol Rocamora: The third is who? Václav Havel, of course, who wrote 11 full-length plays and seven one-act plays that were immediately banned. He was silenced. It's an interesting word the Czechs use. They don't use banned, they use silenced. And you're Jonathan, right? Are you Jonathan?

[6:28] Jonathan: I am.

[6:30] Carol Rocamora: He was silenced. He was imprisoned. And nevertheless, he continued to write. And guess what? His plays were produced underground or overground in the Czech Republic, in pubs, in people's living rooms, in backyards, etc.

[6:49] Carol Rocamora: And what happened? After 20 years, oh, and in foreign countries, his three theatres, the Public Theatre, the Bordeaux Theatre in Vienna, and in London, it was the Orange Street. Thank you, the Orange Street. Thank you, dear. It was the Orange Street Theatre who produced his plays while he was in prison. And what happened?

[7:12] Carol Rocamora: He became the president of a new democracy, the Czech Republic. And it's because of his courage, his response to communism and the theatre. So that's chapter one. I'll go fast. There are nine chapters. Chapter two, the 1990s, new crises, new forms. What were the crises of the 1990s? Obviously, AIDS. Who responded to it and changed American theatre and Broadway forever? Tony Kushner. So he's in this book.

[7:40] Carol Rocamora: Two other crises. What happened in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, and in Los Angeles? And who responded to a racial conflict in those two cities? Anna Gersmith. So she's in chapter two, and she responded by creating a new form called what? Verbatim theatre.

[8:01] Carol Rocamora: She went into these crisis-torn communities and interviewed hundreds of people. This is in 91 and 92. And what did she do? She didn't cast. Actually, she tried it with a couple of her plays. She would cast a lot of people, but then she'd say, no, thank you. And she ended up playing all the roles herself. So they called that form verbatim theatre. And that was also used by a very brave theatre company called the Tectonic in the 1990s, who was also mentioned in this book. And they responded to what terrible event in Wyoming, in Laramie, Wyoming in 1998? Gay hate crime. Yes. So three crises in the 90s, AIDS, urban unrest, urban violence, and gay hate crime. And the theatre responded in all these instances. Okay. Third chapter is devoted to one playwright whom I call a prophet. Who wrote a play called Far Away in 2000? A British playwright.

[9:04] Audience: You bet.

[9:04] Carol Rocamora: This is an example, and I devoted a whole chapter to her. She's the only author I devoted the entire chapter to because she had not only the ability to respond to crisis, she also predicted it. So in her incredible, which is over two dozen plays written from 1972 to today, she's still writing and she has plenty to write about, she responded to the following issues, gender identity, femininity, feminism, environmental pollution, climate change, cloning, and the age of the internet. She responded to, what did she predict? In her play, in her 2000 play Far Away, she envisioned a world at war, a global conflict, which of course came true in the next decade.

[9:56] Carol Rocamora: We have playwrights responding to 9-11. The Guys, Ann Nelson's The Guys, do you know that play? There's Omnium Gatherum by Teresa Riebeck and Alexandra Gersten, Vassaleros response. This is all, this is the fourth chapter, 2000 to 2010. All these wars happening, conflict happening all over the world. What was happening in Central Africa? Danai Gurira responded with Eclipse. And of course, Lynn Nottage responded with Ruined. And I think she won a Pulitzer for that. Yes. Yes. What other wars? Oh, 9-11. I mentioned that. Israel-Palestine. There we go. Here we go again. But Carol Churchill, and you should look up this play. It's not, obviously not here, but perhaps, I don't know if you sell it because you can get it on the internet.

It's called Seven Jewish Children, a play for Gaza in response to the 2008-2009 Israel-Gaza conflict. What else? Oh, have you ever heard of the Tricycle Theater's play, The Great Game, Afghanistan? That was in response to the endless war in Afghanistan. Nicholas Kent, the artistic director there, commissioned 12 plays.

[11:16] Carol Rocamora: Oh my goodness, here comes another playwright, Eleanor Burgess, who's also in this book. So we're up to three. I'm going to talk fast so I can get off the stage and you all can get on. But anyway, so you have four, you have a dozen plays in chapter four responding to global crisis in the first decade of the 21st century, plus two plays about PTSD. Did any of you see something by Stephan Wolford called Cry Havoc? Of course, that's the quote from Julius Caesar, Marc Antony, Cry Havoc, and Let's Slip the Dogs of War. An actor, what do you call it, a veteran turned actor did a compilation of all of Shakespeare's speeches about the fog of war and the result, resulting in PTSD.

[12:10] Carol Rocamora: And he has from the Greeks on, excerpts from Shakespeare and the Greeks, also in a play called Cry Havoc. And then Julie Taymor directed another one by George Brandt called Grounded. Did you see that brilliant one-woman show down at the Public starring, gosh, help me out, Eleanor, Anne Hathaway.

[12:32] Eleanor Burgess: Yes. Also in chapter four. So chapter five, now we have, we're in the rest of the book is the response to crisis in the last 20 years. Chapters five through nine. Chapter five deals with what the New York Times, Ben Brantley's New York Times called the bravest underground theatre company on the planet. And that was, have you heard of Belarus Free Theatre Company? If you don't, travel and buster, you're so lucky because you live in the UK. They just did a piece at the Barbican. Of course, they're in exile now. They were created in 2005. It's an incredible story.

[13:48] Carol Rocamora: Get the actors between 2005 and 2007. They would get them out of the country and they would come to the UK and they'd perform then at the Young Vic. They'd perform at La Mama. They'd perform at The Public and Under the Radar. And when Lukashenko caught on, he expelled the artistic director, the husband-wife team, and they got a home away from home at the Young Vic. And they directed their company, who's still back in Minsk, via Skype. And they still got, smuggled the actors out. And in 2015, they did a 10-year retrospective in a two-week, they did 10 years, 10 plays at the Young Vic and elsewhere. And Lukashenko expelled the entire company in 2020. And now they're living in the UK and in Poland and they're performing at the Barbican.

They just had a huge production last month. So that's, talk about profiles and courage. This goes for Keith and Eleanor and Antoinette, to the writers who are in this book. It takes a lot of courage to respond to crisis and write these plays. Yes? Yes, it does.

[15:06] Carol Rocamora: Okay. Chapter six, response to racism. This is really interesting. In the UK and the US, what I found, please correct me if I'm wrong, that the responses, recent responses to, I would say, since Black Lives Matter, to racism in this country fall in three categories. One is the legacy of racism. Do you know Octoroon, Brendan Jacobs, Jacob Jenksons' Octoroon? Of course, yours, Antoinette's, is the next category, response to police brutality. Antoinette's brilliant play about which you will talk in a few minutes called Pass Over. And then the third category of response to racism, of course, is Keith's play, response to the whiteness of American theater. And Keith's wonderful play, The American Moor.

And these writers, if I talk fast enough, we'll have a minute to talk, more than a minute to talk about their works. But isn't that interesting? Other books that are included, Suzan-Lori Parks, who, of course, has been writing about racism for years, wrote Father Comes Home from the Wars. It's a nine-part project that she's still working on. Did anybody see Ain't No Mole? On Broadway last year, Jordan E. Cooper's hilarious. Oh, the other thing is using humor as a weapon or as a way to reach audiences and bond with them. That's in particular American writers writing about racism, such as the case with Brendan Jacobs Jenkins and Jordan E. Cooper.

[17:02] Carol Rocamora: In terms of the, I don't think you all, have you heard of authors Clint Dyer and Roy Williams? They are a pair of collaborators. Clint Dyer is now the Associate Artistic Director of the Royal National Theater. And they wrote a tetralogy of plays called Death of England about racism in England. So that's chapter six, chapter seven. And I mentioned Keith's play about which he'll talk in a minute. Chapter seven deals with what crisis, crisis of refugees around the world. Oh, first the crisis of immigrant identity. You have works like, do you know Ayad Akhtar? He was invited tonight. Wonderful Pakistani American playwright who wrote Disgraced in 2014. It won the Pulitzer about his protagonist's efforts to assimilate in this country and the tragic consequences of a first or second generation Pakistani American who attempts assimilation.

By the way, there are, and I mentioned them all, there are writers from, there are, in our American dramatic literature, writing between 2010 and today. There are Vietnamese American voices, Chinese American, Nigerian American, Ghanaian Americans, Zimbabwean American and Cambodian American. So the response is robust. Of course, we always want more.

[18:46] Carol Rocamora: One of the writers who couldn't be here tonight, do you know Mfoniso Udofia? And David, thank you so much for putting her plays out there on the, and Mark, and did I thank, I didn't thank David and Mark yet for inviting us. I will admit it. Mfoniso is a writer of Nigerian descent, she's Nigerian American, and she's written a nine-part cycle called the Ufot cycle, which was four parts of which were premiered at the New York Theatre Workshop in 2017, 2019. So you can see all different, the writers in response to crisis use all different forms. For example, tonight, you have Keith and Antoinette, both drawing from classical inspiration. Keith from Shakespeare, yes. And Antoinette, can we call back at a classic?

Sure we can. Yes. Okay. So all different forms. What's so exciting about these responses to crisis and Eleanor, a two-character play that's going to, that'll blow, if we read it tonight, it would blow the Drama Bookshop apart. We don't want to do that. Yes. Okay. A different, just a four, just two characters and what they can do.

[19:38] Carol Rocamora: Okay. Now, have you all seen The Jungle? This is addressing, oh good. As St. Anne's, did you see that? These are two magnificent works. How am I doing on time, David? I'm okay? Yeah. Just go like this. The hook, bring in the hook. Okay. I think two of them, besides the works of the three authors we have tonight, of course, there are two extraordinarily powerful responses in this case to the refugee crisis. One is a play called The Jungle, which you saw at St. Anne's. I'm sure you saw it, Jonathan. The Jungle was the name of a refugee camp in the north of Calais, France. You know it, Buster? Okay. It was there from 2014 to 2015 and two British, Joe Murphy and Joe Robertson, two British directors heard about it.

They went to the camp in North, in Calais, northern France. There were, I think, immigrants there from 10 different Middle Eastern countries, 2014, Syria, et cetera, et cetera. They started a theater there. When the camp was dissolved, the French raised it, R-A-Z-E-D, in 2015. These two British directors took three of the refugees and they started a theater company. They got more actors in London and they put on this production called The Jungle about the refugee camp in response to the refugee crisis. Marvelous. It was at St. Anne's a couple of years ago.

[21:15] Carol Rocamora: The other one, how many people have met little Amal? Let's see, hands. Okay. It will change your life. She's still around. Do you know her, Mark? Do you know her? Okay. David, did you see? Oh, you saw her here. Yes, in Bryant Park. I saw her there, too. Okay. What is little Amal? Go ahead, since you're the boss here, Mark. Yes. It's a 12-foot high puppet built by the Handspring Puppet Company that built War Horse. Okay. This is the brainchild of this brilliant man named David Lann, who used to run the Young Vic. The idea was to take a little girl who was a character in The Jungle and create a puppet out of her. She's 12-foot high. Her body is made of cane and there's a puppeteer inside her on stilts.

She's part of a three-part project called The Walk. This is a play. The first one lasted five months and it was live from Gaziantep, Turkey to Manchester, England. The puppet walked. Obviously, they had to pack her up and take her on boats a couple of times. She walked through eight countries, 5,000 miles. There were over 100 events that David Lann and his administrators, his colleagues, organized. There was no narrative. A lot of people gathered in these public spaces didn't know who she was.

[23:02] Carol Rocamora: Did you know she was going to be there when you saw her? I didn't see it live. I saw photos after the fact because I knew people who were there. Yeah, sure, we all did. The first trip she made was in Europe. That was in 2021, from July to November. Five months, 5,000 miles, eight countries. The second trip she made called The Walk was Little Amal Walks, New York. She walked five boroughs here, September, October of 22. Mark and I saw her in Bryant Park. What do we do? People were weeping. There's no speech. Did you cry? I cried. You always cry. It's theater like you've never seen. In other words, the whole purpose of this book, and I'll turn it over, I promise, in two more minutes to the distinguished visitors, the distinguished playwrights rather who are here and in this book. The point of this book is why we love the theater so much. Why we believe in the theater so much is our ability to respond as Keith reminds us to hold the mirror up to the issues of our times.

[24:14] Carol Rocamora: All right, by the way, I'll skip. I promise. Oh, no, Crisis of Education. Where's Eleanor? The Crisis of Education divides into two categories. Of course, Dominique Morisseau's The Pipeline and Anna Deavere Smith did Doing Time and Let Me Down Easy. No, that's health. You're right. Here it is. Here it is. Notes from the Field, Doing Time and Education. That's Anna Deavere Smith's response to the crisis in education. The Pipeline, which is youths from high school straight to prison. By the way, Buster, did you see, do you remember the Papa Tango Company in London? They put on a play. It's extraordinary. I saw it during the pandemic online called Shook. When you go home tonight, look up this play, S-H-O-O-K. It dramatizes a class in a prison of five boys who are 15 years old in the UK, all of whom are fathers. What is the class on? How to diaper and care for a baby. You never saw it. Talk about weeping. It's extraordinary.

[25:37] Carol Rocamora: Eleanor Burgess, our wonderful playwright, wrote on another, responded to another problem in our educational system, which is what? Political correctness in our elitist institutions, which is going on now in another way. You could almost write that play and change the cast a bit, yes, with the current crisis. Eleanor will talk about her play in a minute. Chapter 8, Crisis in Education, Crisis in the Environment, five different plays I discuss here. One of them, Carol Churchill, again, the prophetess, in 2016, she wrote a play called Escaped Alone, which foresaw what? The pandemic. She prophesied the pandemic in 2016. The ninth chapter of my book is dedicated to plays written during the pandemic, all different forms.

Do you all know Richard Nelson's Apple Family Cycle? He resurrected that and put that on Zoom. Do you know Jessica Blank and Eric, her husband? Jensen. Thank you, Jonathan. Sorry, my notes are here. They wrote a piece, they did a verbatim piece called The Line. These two intrepid docudrama writers, when the pandemic hit, they went into the hospitals and interviewed first responding healthcare. Actually, my husband is a hero. He's sitting right there. He went into the hospital too during the pandemic and interviewed them and then did a verbatim presentation online.

[27:17] Carol Rocamora: David Hare was just at the public. Did anyone see that? His monologue, wonderful monologue called Beat the Devil about his own experience with AIDS, COVID, I beg your pardon, COVID. And then the extraordinary work by Simon Stevens, a British writer called...

[27:35] Carol Rocamora: Blindness, which was at the Daryl Roth Theatre in, I think, May of, yeah, 21. No, sorry, the summer of 21. Maybe it was the, yes, I have, it's in the book, where he tells the story of a town that goes blind. It's a metaphor, of course, for COVID. And COVID was still raging here. And they did it in the UK. They did it at the bridge in August of 2020. Buster, can you imagine when Fines did it then? Okay, before I introduce our truly honored speakers, I'd like to say that, as Peter Brooks says, this book is out of date already. There are so many crises to which we hope our writers present and those not present will respond in the future. Certainly, we're going to have more responses to issues of racism in America, to the refugee crisis, and to our planet in peril, the environment.

But if I can give you a little prediction of my own, I think we will have, we will look forward to plays being written, and we will get them, about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. How could people not write about that? About the Russian-Ukrainian conflict, about our divided America, the rise of the far right and authoritarianism, gun violence, women's reproductive rights. These are issues I really believe we will see more and more on the stage in years to come. No, now, I'm sure that writers are, in fact, Keith and Eleanor and Antoinette may be writing about those topics now. Gender identity, Asian, anti-Asian sentiment in this country, anti-Semitism in this country, the tragedy that just happened in Burlington, Vermont, anti-Muslim sentiment in this country, and plays about artificial intelligence.

So, no matter what, we will hold, keep, the theatre will keep holding that mirror up, and as Natalia Kaliada, the Artistic Director of the Intrepid Belarus Theatre said, we must have change, or what's the point in living? So, without further ado, I would love to call up, and may I, will you permit me, dear playwrights, to call you up in order that, to be fair, in order you appear in the book, but not in order of preference. Okay, Antoinette, you're up first.

[30:09] Antoinette Nwandu: This is Antoinette Nwandu, who, last time I saw her, she had a beautiful... I did, yeah. Yes, she wrote an amazing play called Passover, which was inspired by... It was, I mean, it was, I started writing it when the Trayvon Martin case was, when George Zimmerman was at trial. That was the moment that I was just like, enough.

[30:36] Carol Rocamora: So, that's your response?

[30:38] Antoinette Nwandu: Yeah, when I knew that he was going to get off, I was just like, okay, enough, but it's a mashup of Beckett's Waiting for Godot and the Exodus story in...

[30:50] Carol Rocamora: Can I put you on the spot and ask you if you saw the new one on Google?

[30:54] Antoinette Nwandu: No, I haven't done Godot for a decade. Yeah. So, her protagonists were named Moses and Kitch.

[31:02] Antoinette Nwandu: Yes. And there were two young men sitting, not on a roadside, as Beckett's leading goer, but where were they sitting? They were sitting under a streetlamp in like a...

[31:10] Antoinette Nwandu: It actually was a roadside. It was a deserted urban... They were just like on a street corner. And when Spike Lee directed it, he put a street sign so that it suggested... He put it in Chicago. It very much was a... Apparently, there was some statistics that there was a street corner in Chicago at 64th and MLK was the most deadly street corner in America. So, that's where he set it when he was rendering it on TV.

[31:36] Carol Rocamora: Yes. And you gave him permission to do so?

[31:39] Antoinette Nwandu: Yeah. Did you set it in Chicago originally?

[31:42] Antoinette Nwandu: No, it's set in nowhere. So, every time people perform it, now they think it's their place. It was performed in Toronto and they're like, that's right. And I'm like...

[31:51] Carol Rocamora: It's like you're supposed to make it personal.

[31:53] Antoinette Nwandu: So, Moses and Kitch are your Didi and Gogo. They're sitting on a roadside and what are they waiting for? Not Godot to come, but...

[32:02] Antoinette Nwandu: No, they're just waiting for the night to pass because they know that every night, another of their black friends gets killed. So, they're literally just trying to make it through each night. Yes.

[32:10] Carol Rocamora: And Passover, the River Jordan.

[32:12] Antoinette Nwandu: And yes, and Passover to the... So, it's the idea of we're waiting for the angel of death to pass over us. But then we're also waiting to pass over the River Jordan. So, like the Bible verse where Moses is told you have to pass over the river, is we have to... After we've been passed over, we have to then pass over.

[32:30] Carol Rocamora: Yes. And who shows up? It's not a two-character play.

[32:33] Antoinette Nwandu: No, it's a three-character play, but it's a four-character, three-actor play. The first person that shows up is like a wealthy white man who invites them to sit and eat and enjoy his spread. They have this picnic together, which is everybody's favorite scene. And then after he leaves, that same actor comes back as a police officer who's a lot more menacing. So, it was just like, that was the big... One of the big aha moments for me is that if you have that, those two characters who seem to be very different people doubled, then it's two sides of the same coin.

[33:02] Carol Rocamora: Absolutely.

[33:03] Antoinette Nwandu: It's either soft power or it's hard power, but in both cases, it's a power source.

[33:08] Unknown speaker: Did you have a question, sir?

[33:10] Antoinette Nwandu: Can you comment on changing the ending?

[33:12] Antoinette Nwandu: Yes.

[33:13] Antoinette Nwandu: My husband, I'll never invite him again.

[33:15] Carol Rocamora: That's great. That's great. That's great. So, yeah. So, when the play premiered at Steppenwolf, it was the summer after Trump had been elected. And so, that ending was incredibly... I felt like that ending was a hammer. I wanted to hit people over the head with the evil of this power. And that's the version of the play that Spike filmed. So, that version is forever recorded there. And then in the summer of 2018, when it came to Lincoln Center, I knew that the New York audience was very different than the Cubs Chicago audience, I think. And so, I made the ending more of a shiv than a hammer. And that's the ending that's published, so people can read that ending. And then when it reopened Broadway and we'd all been inside for COVID, I was like, I'm not gonna put a lynching on a Broadway stage as the first playback.

The first playback, Passover, since the pandemic. If I knew now, I wouldn't do it. And it wasn't... Everybody was like, it was for the... I was like, I do not want to sit in a rehearsal of the play that I wrote. So, what are we going to do? So, I asked some really great dramaturgical questions and I was able to change the ending again, but that ending is now off limits for anybody to perform or read.

[35:07] Carol Rocamora: It's off limits, why?

[35:09] Antoinette Nwandu: Because the world doesn't deserve it. And I'm just really angry.

[35:12] Carol Rocamora: Oh, it's a happy ending. Everybody...

[35:14] Antoinette Nwandu: Yeah, it's a happy ending. And I don't want people to only put out that ending and think that, oh, the problem's been solved. It was necessary for that moment, but now everybody has to produce the Lincoln Center version all over again. So...

[35:23] Carol Rocamora: How about that?

[35:24] Antoinette Nwandu: I say a lot of no's too.

[35:26] Carol Rocamora: So again, see, crisis, new forms. This is a play and the ending of which is going to change. It's not more of a change. I told people they could do it maybe in rep, you know, the happy and the sad, but nobody wants to do that.

[35:39] Antoinette Nwandu: So, I want to ask you a question specifically about the play, but it's a more general... It has an application more generally, which is, how long did it take you from gestation? I want to react to this crisis to production and more general...

[35:56] Carol Rocamora: So that's a practical question, but if you can also answer. Part of the issue of responding to crisis is that it takes time. I'm asking whether it takes time to absorb, to digest, to say something intelligent or artful about a crisis. So anyway...

[36:10] Antoinette Nwandu: Yeah, it took me like four and a half years. I also have a terrible process. So it took me almost eight or nine months just to realize that the play that I was writing was not set in the antebellum South. Because my...

[36:27] Unknown speaker: Say that word.

[36:28] Antoinette Nwandu: Set in the antebellum South. I was doing all sorts of research for... I was like, this is going to be my slavery play. Yes, you are. And then the characters kept talking like my students and that was not my plan. Yeah, so my process is terrible. It takes me a real long time to write. So it took me four years, but maybe somebody else can do it in four months.

[36:46] Carol Rocamora: You mentioned the three lines of the 20th century.

[36:49] Antoinette Nwandu: Yeah.

[36:50] Carol Rocamora: But in each case, I'd like to put this as a question rather than...

[36:54] Antoinette Nwandu: Sure, sure.

[36:55] Carol Rocamora: But this was their sort of lifelong...

[36:58] Antoinette Nwandu: Yes.

[36:59] Carol Rocamora: It wasn't a crisis they were responding to, it was a continual...

[37:02] Antoinette Nwandu: Yeah, yes.

[37:03] Carol Rocamora: I could change the...

[37:05] Antoinette Nwandu: Continual situation.

[37:07] Carol Rocamora: And I was just wondering how easy it is for theater to respond to crises in time to make a difference.

[37:13] Antoinette Nwandu: Ah, did you read Seven Jewish Children or hear it when it came out?

[37:17] Carol Rocamora: Seven Jewish Children.

[37:19] Antoinette Nwandu: Okay, she wrote that in response to what's happening right now. The first... One of the Gaza, the 2008, it was December, six week war, December 2008 to January 2009, Israel versus Gaza. Carol Churchill sat down four days after the first truce and wrote this... Go home, please, read it on the internet. It's seven pages long and it takes seven minutes. It immediately, she took it to the Royal Court and they did a reading of it and people were furious. Let's see, the BBC, 60 people wrote a protest letter saying it was an anti-Semitic rant. So that is an immediate response to a crisis with immediate consequence. The public, Oscar's board, wouldn't allow him to read it. It ended up being read at the New York Theater Workshop.

[39:02] Carol Rocamora: The more you know.

[39:03] Antoinette Nwandu: What? I know. And you know what happened? The New York Theater Workshop had to hire three, what do you call, psychologists, mediators, who expected there would be fights in the audience. We were so shocked by this play, we didn't know what to think. So there is an...

[39:20] Carol Rocamora: Ask Carol Churchill.

[39:22] Antoinette Nwandu: That would make a good... I can't really speak, so let me just put it as a question. Are the plays that last, we still do Brecht, it really is a question. Are the ones that have a very loaded phrase, but artistic merit, the ones that just stayed over a long period of time, are there any examples of shows that responded like you're talking about and that made a difference and that had artistic merit?

[39:44] Carol Rocamora: The whole kitten couple together.

[39:46] Antoinette Nwandu: Mother Courage.

[39:48] Carol Rocamora: Mother Courage. He wrote that in 41, the war was still going. Well, 39 to 41 took him two years. The war was still going on. Trouble is, he had to wait till he got to Switzerland to produce it. So it produced, it was produced after the war. But those six plays that he wrote in the United States, Fear and Loathing in the Third Reich, Mother Courage, then Caucasian Chalk Circle. What are the other three? Someone help me.

[40:17] Unknown speaker: Six anti-war plays, five of which are not set in Nazi Germany, which is why I love...

[40:22] Carol Rocamora: The three playwrights who are here tonight did not set their plays. They will last. Keith will be up in a minute. Eleanor will be up in a minute. They will last. I hope. Oh, for sure. At the end of the day, I'm the biggest arbiter, I think. And there's been lots of Beckett jokes. Did you see...

[41:23] Carol Rocamora: The picnic basket that Mr. Lucky brings in a picnic basket in When You Figure Dough, and he eats the whole thing himself. In Antoinette's play, Mr., whose name becomes Master later, brings in a bottomless... It's a trompe l'oeil, the French call it trick of the eye. There was no bottom to the picnic basket. This food kept on coming up. It was hilarious. It's absolutely wonderful. So there are all kinds of... I say that it will last as long as Beckett's waiting for your dough. Me too. I say, you guys, what do you say? They're going to sell your play. Thank you so... Any questions for this wonderful playwright? Now, if you can go to Lincoln Center for free and see this play... Yeah, it was recorded. The Broadway production was recorded at Lincoln Center, so you can definitely still... Yes. Okay. Thank you so much for coming. My pleasure.

[42:21] Keith Hamilton Cobb: Okay. Monsieur Keith Hamilton Cobb wrote a jaw-dropping play, which I saw at the Cherry Lane in fall of 2019. It had previous productions or workshops, and it starred this gentleman himself. And it was inspired by Shakespeare. Are you referring to Othello? Shakespeare's Othello? Yes, sir. One of the inspirations. The bigger inspiration was us and our struggles with being human and education and making good theater and the discussion on racial biases in this country that we cannot ever have because it's too inconvenient where they all collide. Shakespeare is just a bystander. Yes. So the conceit, the mise-en-scene, the context is amazing. You go into the Cherry Lane Theater, and an actor is sitting on the stage, in this case, this actor, and he's pacing very nervously.

And there's some kind of a set. It looked like a Greek tragedy. It was torn down. It was... What did you call it? When they strike a set, and they hadn't built the next one, so it was in between. This actor is very nervous. What it turned out is this actor is doing what? About to do what? He's waiting to audition for Othello, the role of Othello. And he is brilliant, and he's talking to us and talking to us, and we figure, wow, a one-man show, and then what happens? Then the director shows up.

[44:08] Carol Rocamora: Actually, he was... Sitting here.

[44:10] Keith Hamilton Cobb: This is worse. He was sitting in the audience next to me all along. Go on. The director, an actor playing the director, and what does the director do? And the audition for this actor begins, and the director, who is about half the actor's age and white, begins to tell him how he would like to see the Black Warrior played. And in the five minutes of audition, the actor on stage has an hour and a half in a monologue, and that is the stuff of the play. Fabulous. Absolutely fabulous. And at the end, what I love so much about your play, Keith, if I may call you Keith, is you aren't angry. You beg the audience, or you beg the director. You say, see me, hear me, talk to me. Those are the three lines that stick with me.

I want to just thank you for including me in the book. This came out of the blue, from Lucy George, and she sent me the book, and I just... It's very validating to be seen, and that's what the play was about, right? And so I'm just grateful. I didn't expect to be speaking. I expect to be sitting back there listening to you, but thank you.

[45:28] Keith Hamilton Cobb: Oh, it's our honor. I hope you'll be able to see it. Are you going to do it again?

[45:33] Carol Rocamora: That, too, is at Lincoln Center. They made a copy, so it's in the archive at Lincoln Center if you want to go. You can see the Cherry Lane. Wonderful. We should do a field trip, David.

[45:42] Keith Hamilton Cobb: We should organize a field trip. It really is... I could not believe that we were listening to this brilliant actor talking to us on the stage, and suddenly we're sitting next to the director, and then there's this... And it is excruciatingly painful, the interchange between this actor and this director, which, if I may, leads us to a very similar... Eleanor's play, a rather similar exchange. Can we invite Eleanor to join us?

[46:16] Carol Rocamora: Of course.

[46:18] Jim: Yeah. Oh, Jim, you had a...

[46:20] Jim: I just want to say, as a white person, seeing what you were going through, it was like opening our eyes, like, what the hell are we thinking? We're supposed to interpret what it's like to be a black warrior, so it really struck home to us, I think, sitting in the audience, the blind spot that we had.

[46:47] Keith Hamilton Cobb: I appreciate you saying that. That, too, is very valid. It must be working.

[46:52] Carol Rocamora: Definitely. Are we okay?

[46:56] Eleanor Burgess: It's amazing, Eleanor, how some of the themes that... Many of the themes that Keith wrote about, of course, you wrote about in your amazing and powerful play called THE NICETIES. Where does your play take place, and what are the niceties?

[47:14] Eleanor Burgess: My play takes place at an elite Gothic institution in Connecticut. Anyone can guess which one that is. It's in a history professor's office. It's a conversation between a white female American history professor and a black female college student about the student's paper, and the student's paper is about the American Revolution, and what begins as a conversation about the niceties of academic work unpicks, I hope, I think, when you have an unjust foundation, how impossible sharing a reality can be, and sharing a democracy, and sharing facts, and sharing niceties of exchange, and then what you do when you realize how far apart you really are, where you go from there. It's a violent play without... And there's no physical violence. Did I say it right?

[48:17] Keith Hamilton Cobb: Tiny touch of physical violence, but it's intellectually violent.

[48:20] Eleanor Burgess: Yeah, intellectually, it's scary, very much in the way that your play was scary, too, that you see your director saying things, what is he saying? And the professor, the white professor, is trying to say the right thing, and it's all wrong. Yes?

[48:36] Keith Hamilton Cobb: We called it like an intellectual horror theater.

[48:38] Eleanor Burgess: Yes, intellectually, yes. But think of the courage it takes to write these plays. I just have to say that there's an edge to your play, unfortunately, because of what happened to one of the actors in it.

[48:54] Keith Hamilton Cobb: Oh, yes.

[48:55] Eleanor Burgess: I haven't been able to... I mean, it's hard to separate.

[48:57] Keith Hamilton Cobb: ...the play since then.

[48:59] Eleanor Burgess: Yeah.

[48:59] Keith Hamilton Cobb: I can't separate the play from what happened.

[49:03] Eleanor Burgess: Speaking of crises, because there's another crisis in America, the brilliant lead actress who not only premiered the role, but did four productions of it, Lisa Baines, was killed and hit and run in New York City.

[49:17] Keith Hamilton Cobb: In front of the Juilliard School. Right after the cast and the director and I reunited over drinks, she was leaving, but we hadn't seen each other throughout the pandemic after spending a year together, and she was leaving for a gathering and was hit by a motorized scooter and killed.

[49:36] Eleanor Burgess: So I haven't seen or read the play since then, and I probably never will again. Lisa's performance was recorded by MTC for a Zoom production during the pandemic, and I think that educational institutions will get to use it, because colleges use the play a lot. But I haven't returned to it.

[49:59] Keith Hamilton Cobb: I think there's a, somewhat to your question, I think that there's a frequently an intersection between a personal crisis and a public crisis, and that Lisa's a separate personal crisis, but I don't know. I don't want to, certainly can't speak for Keith Rushmore, but I think frequently something has been personally boiling for a playwright for a long time, and they write the play out of something personal, and then it may intersect with a public crisis.

[50:23] Eleanor Burgess: I taught American history for a while, and so I was having trouble, and I was having trouble after something that happened to, I went to Yale for undergrad, something happened at Yale, and I was having trouble processing all of that, and that happened, and then I think when Trump got elected, and when, I wrote it after, Garner's death happened after George Floyd's death, and people returned to the play, but I hadn't written about those things. I'd written about my own personal crisis that I had, and then the play happened to come out at a time that, but I've been preparing my whole life to write the play. I wonder if that might be true.

[51:01] Keith Hamilton Cobb: Absolutely.

[51:01] Eleanor Burgess: The other writers, it's not that you respond to the crisis, it's that your whole life you've been simmering, ready, and then when the crisis hits, you've been preparing that whole time.

[51:14] Antoinette Nwandu: To talk about that, because it's personal.

[51:16] Keith Hamilton Cobb: Exactly.

[51:17] Antoinette Nwandu: I read somewhere that you, Moses and Kitch, your characters pre-existed, you're seeing Waiting for Godot, no?

[51:27] Keith Hamilton Cobb: Yeah, no, the characters definitely predated. I saw the production of Waiting for Godot with Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen, and I remember that was already a year into writing, and I knew that my characters were becoming contemporary, and one of the reasons why I just, I love Beckett, I did my undergraduate thesis on Beckett, but I couldn't stomach it anymore, because I was like, these two motherfuckers are complaining so much, but at least they got to get old. All my characters have to be young, they don't get to have the ability to sit and complain, but I definitely agree with what you were saying about the personal crisis, because I was teaching on public speaking.

[52:10] Antoinette Nwandu: I'll give you a crisis.

[52:10] Antoinette Nwandu: I'll give you a crisis, and I was teaching, because in my play, famously, the N word is said 500 times, and the F word is said 300 times, so there's not a lot of dialogue besides that. There is, you've got to find it. But I was teaching public speaking, and so I was torn between taking the academic stance, and telling these students, you cannot say these words in a college classroom, but then it's like, you get to these students, and you say, I want to hear your voice, and I want to hear your ideas, so they come up, and they trust me enough to actually speak, and they're going to speak the way they speak, so it's just, do I shut them up, and follow the rules, or do I, so I started having this thing in my classes, where I was like, look, as long as you're not betraying yourself, or me, or disrespecting anybody else, then you can say whatever words you want to say, and then I started really getting into the poetry of the language, and then it just took over from there, even though I didn't know that's what I was doing, so it was definitely the crisis of, I'm a writer who just teaches public speaking, what the fuck is going on with my life, I need to do something.

[53:17] Keith Hamilton Cobb: I think there's a, speaking to the gentleman's earlier question, about the time it takes for the theater to react to crisis, what seems to be getting talked about here is that the artist reacts to crisis, or their work is born of crisis, and it may be a slow burn crisis, over a great period of time, and then there's the play, the American theater, the industrial complex, as I call it, tends to co-opt crisis, so it will take a thing that seems to be of the moment, and make it, if it can be turned into something that makes money, it does that, i.e. Broadway, or whatever else, there's a great deal that wonderful playwrights are writing, born of crisis, speaking to crisis that never gets seen, because it has not come at that sort of kismet moment. It's not a cool crisis.

[54:12] Antoinette Nwandu: That's right, so it can't be used, so I'm not sure that the American theater complex gets any credit in this process, it is not reacting, it is a money game, more often than not, and that's the tragedy of our American system, because the work is there, right, the response...

[54:29] Carol Rocamora: By the way, the title of her book has a double meaning here, putting crisis in theater could be the crisis in theater, not just the theater's response to crisis, but theater's response to the crisis of theater.

[54:47] Keith Hamilton Cobb: Yeah, and you can go way down that rabbit hole, if you keep...

[54:51] Antoinette Nwandu: Because I believe that the industrial complex is a crisis in and of itself, the American theater industrial complex, and how our theater gets made, and what gets shown to the public, and why, and how it gets exploited, and what doesn't get seen, and who gets the money, it's a huge crisis, and it's a bad business model to write plays about that.

[55:11] Carol Rocamora: In this book, who address the whiteness of American theater, you've got Jacqueline Sibley's Drury's *Fairview*, and Alicia Harris, her plays. I'm not saying maybe you shouldn't record this part. Keith was living it. He was living the crisis because he's a working actor. And that humiliating, am I right? You live through that humiliating scene yourself. So maybe you could help me afterwards. We can change the title. Buster is here from Wordville Press. We'll think of a new title. But maybe it's been a crisis all along, but it took Keith to say, whoo, look here, see me, hear me, talk to me.

[56:22] Eleanor Burgess: Can I ask a question?

[56:23] Carol Rocamora: Please.

[56:24] Eleanor Burgess: We're all, and probably most of the people here, because we are here at the Drama Bookshop. We had this theatrical orientation, but most people see movies now and see TV. And so the question of people not in this shop would be, why plays? You see, it gets so few audiences and part of the crisis of theater now is that fewer and fewer audiences are showing up, which is why there's so all these layoffs. So why is it the theater specifically as a platform is the right medium in which to respond to crisis?

[57:05] Carol Rocamora: Because nobody could do Little Amal on a film. You cannot experience what you experienced when you see Little Amal. You saw her. Did you cry? I cried. It's just overwhelming. In other words, as the theater, as society advances, we find these three plays, where did they come from? They came from three writers and thinkers who experienced this and found a new form for it. Little Amal came from somebody who said, people aren't coming to the theater. Or people who live in remote parts of Greece or remote parts of Staten Island can't come to the theater. So I'll bring Little Amal to Staten Island and show them, the residents, what the refugee crisis looks like. So we rely on the writers and the directors and the producers to think of new forms.

[58:00] Carol Rocamora: Look at what Ann Deavere Smith, she did. She totally, she created a new form out of nothing. Out of her, out of what she saw was something urgent. She felt the urgency of, my God, how are we going to make people understand what the Jews in Brooklyn and the blacks in Brooklyn are doing to each other, right? In the Crown Heights, that tragic, right? Sorry, I talked too long.

[58:33] David Rigano: Off of what you just said, I also think you can't put a character next to an audience member on film. You can't change the ending as the world changes on film. But I do think that film and TV are also responding in the ways that they can. So I think people write for their medium and then they do it in the way that only their medium can.

[59:02] David Rigano: Also, I don't mean to be a stupid idealist because I agree with you about the American theater and it's deeply flawed and so flawed. I will laugh at myself for being such a stupid idealist. But I think that there is something extraordinarily special about theater that I feel every time I go, if the last place on earth I turn my phone off and pay complete attention to other human beings, like when I'm watching a TV show, I'm sending emails while I'm watching a TV show. I don't give myself over to that experience very often. And every time I go see a play, I give myself over to that experience. And I think that therefore has, I pay closer attention to plays than I do to my children on an hour-by-hour basis.

[59:47] Eleanor Burgess: And you had to get a babysitter to come tonight.

[59:49] David Rigano: Yeah. I'm neglecting my children right now. I don't think we do that for very many things anymore. We never just give other people our attention and listen for two hours anymore. That's not how conversation functions. And so I do think that if anything can really move people in a deeply memorable way where they are shaken and they will assimilate what they've heard and learned, it will sit with them and it will move them, I think that the theater has an unusually high potential to do that.

[1:00:20] Eleanor Burgess: I also work in film and television because I need health insurance and money for babysitters to come to theater. And that's an even scarier industrial complex in terms of how much money something has to make in order to be worth them making it and how censored you are. How many voices.

[1:00:37] David Rigano: How many voices are in the room and how censored you are. And so I do think there's an immediacy to theater where if anyone can really move me and shake me and mess me up forever in a wonderful way, it's a play, I think.

[1:00:48] Eleanor Burgess: I think I go to the theater for that. You can be entertained with so many things, but I think that one of the reasons that we do theater or we go to it is for that enlightenment, is for that voice that we don't get to hear on a regular basis is, okay, cool, there's this new show that's going to talk about this that no one is talking about, so I'm going to wake up and experience that. And there's something very special to that being. We need that enlightenment.

[1:01:18] Carol Rocamora: Absolutely.

[1:01:19] Eleanor Burgess: And that's what theater will do for us.

[1:01:20] Carol Rocamora: I look at, sorry.

[1:01:21] Eleanor Burgess: It raises, that discussion raises so many other questions that certainly we don't have time for, but the most salient, I think, is who gets to see it, right? I was doing *American More* in Cleveland just after the pandemic, and the young black men in Cleveland are killing each other in the streets every day. And their mothers have 400 channels of television that they pay whatever for. So even the black theater saying, this is a thing, come see this, they don't, they weren't, arts and schools abandoned them when they were in kindergarten. So they don't really know what that form is, and nor do they have the wherewithal at this point. They're in crisis. They're not going to come sit in the theater and watch me bullshit for an hour and a half.

So the immediate question is, as wonderful as theater is and can be in all the ways that you've just described, you've just described, who gets to come? Where do you get to expose that in a way that isn't part of the complex that's selling you, selling you to people with $100 for a ticket?

[1:02:33] Keith Hamilton Cobb: One place where theater is growing is in the prisons. And it's interesting enough that it's having some wonderful effects on getting people who have been screwed up in their lives an opportunity to learn about themselves and interact with others. And it's really had a tremendous positive effect. But I had a question for all three of you. Given the attention span of Americans, it seems like most theater has to be 90 minutes or less. Does that something that affects you when you're writing at this point?

[1:03:04] Eleanor Burgess: I never let the audience affect me when I'm writing.

[1:03:13] Keith Hamilton Cobb: Then how come your plays so good?

[1:03:16] Eleanor Burgess: I've also written a few stinkers. No, I just think that if, like storytelling is in our DNA, and if a story hooks you, it's going to hook you, right? Like people always say the attention span, whatever. And then I just sit there and watch a three-hour Marvel film, and those films are back. So I think if people are hooked by it, and sometimes people are going to be hooked by things that I don't understand. So I just have to, and I do think that being a theater practitioner in the 21st century is an exercise in hope. And I think that hope is a practice even on my worst days. And I completely echo and hear everything that Keith is saying. When I was teaching at BMCC, I had New York City kids who were raised, born and raised in New York City, and I'm taking them to Broadway, and they're like, we didn't know this was here.

We didn't know what this was. We saw the lights, but what is this? We didn't know what this is. I'm taking these kids to their first show, and they're just like, we didn't know this was here. So it is heartbreaking, but I do think that, yeah, as cliché as it is, it's any time you can bring people together and make them shut up and think and feel, I think there has to be an exercise in hope there.

[1:04:29] Keith Hamilton Cobb: I say that as I'm regretting TV.

[1:04:32] Eleanor Burgess: Speaking of hope and attention spans, my new play is coming out in April at South Coast Rep, and it's my longest play yet. So it's *The Foolish Hope*.

[1:04:43] Carol Rocamora: What's it called? What's it called?

[1:04:47] Eleanor Burgess: It's about Jesus.

[1:04:50] Keith Hamilton Cobb: Really? Wow.

[1:04:53] Eleanor Burgess: But I found it very liberating to take up that amount of space.

[1:04:56] Keith Hamilton Cobb: Yeah, I get two hours and 15 minutes. I get two and a half hours. I have that much time to talk to you. I'm very over-responsive to audiences.

[1:05:06] Eleanor Burgess: I'm so amazed by your sense. I love that. That's amazing. You're a real artist, and I'm a hack. Constantly, what will the audience think? What will they think of me? But it's been very liberating to be like, I have a big story to tell. I don't have a small story to tell. I have a big story to tell. So sit back, because I'm telling the big one. I guess when you decide to tell a play, you make the play about Jesus.

[1:05:28] Keith Hamilton Cobb: I shall take up space now.

[1:05:32] Carol Rocamora: If you want to have hope, if you want to have hope, come into this bookshop during the day. It is crowded, young people, and they're hanging out, and they're having a great time. And this is the Drama Bookshop. This is not the film something.

[1:05:49] Eleanor Burgess: I also wanted to say, and we are.

[1:05:51] Carol Rocamora: Oh, sorry.

[1:05:52] Eleanor Burgess: No, we took the time because it was worth it. But I also want to say, one of the things with theater is that you can publish these, and someone can do it again and again and differently, and you can get these plays right here at the Drama Bookshop.

[1:06:05] Carol Rocamora: And we are back.

[1:06:07] David Rigano: Crisis Theater Summons. It's a reminder that theater isn't just about performance. It's about response. Over generations around the world, artists have met crisis with storytelling in bold new ways and a belief that there is a transformative power of the stage. What are some of your favorite shows that are a response to a certain crisis?

[1:06:32] Keith Hamilton Cobb: You know, I'm a musicals guy, so I immediately jump into *Ragtime* or *Red*, which were formative pieces for me, but that delved into race and class and what America could be, or an epidemic and queer culture that opened a door for me to express myself. There's so much that theater can say that connects us to each other or to a specific crisis that we need to look at and acknowledge. Yes, theater can be fun and comedic and joyful, but it's also heartfelt, and it also forces us to look at things and look at each other. It's unique that we're all breathing the same air, we're all experiencing the same thing, and we, as an audience, are complicit in the storytelling. We decide that what they're doing is real and it makes us look at our own lives.

And so, a book like this really brings out that connection and hopefully inspires artists out there to continue that trajectory and continue creating art that makes us think and makes us feel and makes us look at the world and at each other.

[1:07:44] David Rigano: Now, for our next episode, we're going to stay in this world of crisis because we're going to deal with a post-pandemic story but also delve into a little bit of a personal crisis. Because we're gonna head to the Steppenwolf Theater Company with *Between the Lines*, a behind-the-scenes look at a bold post-pandemic return with a new adaptation of the sequel and one man's unexpected journey back to acting after more than three decades.

[1:08:08] Eleanor Burgess: Oh, I adored that event. I am someone who is also stepping onto the stage after quite some time away. All of those excited nerves are there, but it's really wonderful to hear his story. So I'm so excited to share that with you.

[1:08:25] David Rigano: So remember, follow us on Instagram at @Dramabookshowpodcast. Follow our Eventbrite at @Dramabookshop. Give us some likes and some subscribes and some stars and all those fun things. 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.