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[0:00] Mo Brady: You're listening to The Ensemblist, the only podcast that shows you Broadway from the inside out. Welcome, I'm Mo Brady.

[0:12] Mo Brady: Welcome back to the re-release of The History of the Ensemble, our second full season of The Ensemblist. Back in 2016, co-creator Nika Graf Lanzarone and I took a deep dive through the history of the ensemble, exploring how the Ensemblist experience has changed and been changed by some of theater's most influential musicals. This week, we're heading back to 1984 to take a look at one of Stephen Sondheim's greatest artistic feats. A dramatic reading from wikipedia.org.

[0:45] Mo Brady: Following the failure and scathing critical reception of Merrily We Roll Along in 1981 — the show closed after 16 performances — Sondheim announced his intention to leave the musical theater to write mystery novels. And though a citation is needed for that wikipedia post, nobody would be mad if we got a Stephen Sondheim mystery novel. No, seriously, nobody would be mad. Continuing, he was persuaded by James Lapine to return to the theatrical world after the two were inspired by A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of Le Grand Jatte, the masterpiece of the French pointillist painter Georges Seurat. Lapine noted that one major figure was missing from the canvas — the artist himself. This observation provided the springboard for the creation of Sunday in the Park with George, and the production evolved into a meditation on art, emotional connection, and community.

[1:30] Mo Brady: That was a very nice reading, Nika. Can you stay for the dance call?

[1:33] Nika Graf Lanzarone: Yeah, cool, thanks. What time will it be over? I have to see if I can come into work late.

[1:37] Mo Brady: Clearly we're talking about the Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine masterpiece, Sunday in the Park with George. The original Broadway production opened in 1984, playing 604 performances over the next 17 months. In addition to winning the Pulitzer Prize for Drama, it won the Drama Desk and Outer Critics Circle awards, but notably lost the Tony for Best Musical to Le Cajafou, a very traditional musical despite its homosexual protagonists. In his New York Times review of the 2008 Broadway revival, A Transfer from the Meunier Chocolate Factory in London, Ben Brantley wrote, quote, "The great gift of this production, first staged in London two years ago, is its quiet insistence that looking is the art by which all people shape their lives." Coming off of Chorus Line's 1975 Pulitzer honor, it looks as though art about artists is becoming a trend for the Pulitzer. Stay with us.

[2:33] Mo Brady: Our first guest has the distinct pleasure of appearing in a staggering 18 Broadway musicals, including the original production of Sunday in the Park.

[2:49] John Jellison: Well, I'm John Jellison. I live in Hell's Kitchen. Sunday in the Park with George, I was the man with a horn, and then I was a man with a bike, and I was a guest in the second act, and my main function actually was to understudy Jules and the soldier.

[3:03] John Jellison: John believes that while Sunday's plot focuses on two men named George, its themes serve as a rumination on the importance of art on our humanity. The larger issue was really about the creative process. Now, just in terms of nuts and bolts about it, it was about two guys named George. The first act, the guy named George was George Seurat, who was a painter who used pointillism, which is a kind of painting in which you put dots together, and you look at the dots, and it might be a green and a red and a blue, but when you look at it from a distance, it might be purple. So that was the first guy in the first act. The second guy was also a guy named George, who our conceit was that he was like the great, great grandson of the original painter.

[3:48] Mo Brady: Broadway historian Jennifer Ashley Tepper joins us again to give some context on Sunday in the Park's original production, particularly the role of the show's quote-unquote ensemble.

[3:58] Jennifer Ashley Tepper: In act one of Sunday in the Park, the ensemble plays people that are in George's painting, people who he immortalizes. So all of the people that we are looking at decades later actually existed, and that's who the ensemble embody in act one. And then in act two, they become the people in the museum that the painting is hung in. So we kind of see how those two worlds interact through the ensemble. What's interesting about Sunday in the Park is that this was around '84, and so at that time, Broadway shows were becoming smaller. I mean, they were slowly becoming smaller throughout the 20th century, but this cast was so compact that there was certainly no ensemble that wasn't named or that didn't have a significant role to play.

Even in Chorus Line, we talked about, you know, there are those dancers who cover the main roles who are cut at the very beginning. This didn't even have that. In this, there were ensemble members, but they had distinct characters. They all had lines. They all had personalities. It was a different kind of ensemble.

[4:53] Jennifer Ashley Tepper: Many actors who have performed in Sunday don't feel the show has a true ensemble. John gave us some insight on his theory why.

[5:00] John Jellison: If you look at the painting, no one is looking at one another when they're all on the island of La Grande Jatte. So they all have individual stories that we sort of follow. We look at the soldier. We look at the celestes, all of these different people who you see in the painting. We follow their journey. And what happens at the end is that George Seurat brings them all together and creates from all the parts this beautiful whole of this afternoon on the island of La Grande Jatte. Ultimately, there are numbers in which the entire cast sing. And to a certain extent, a lot of people are involved with putting it together. But I was thinking about, for instance, Oklahoma. You know, they all sing about the land.

And in Sunday, they're not singing about anything because they're all sort of in their own worlds. So it's not an ensemble like the first that I mentioned. In Sunday in the Park, the characters don't have a commonality. They are all sort of lost in their own worlds. And it's only George Seurat who brings them together. But that's the difference, I think, between a regular ensemble and Sunday in the Park with George. We constantly see their troubles. That's what they sing about. That's what they talk about.

[6:04] Jennifer Ashley Tepper: Much like a chorus line, Sunday in the Park was developed with many of its original company members in the room, which Jen believes allowed the actors to have an effect on how characters developed. So it was very unique the way that Sondheim and Lapine worked with their ensemble in that because they wrote Act One first and presented it publicly first, they got to know the ensemble members in the room and these artists that they were working with. And so that influenced how they wrote their characters in Act Two. And that's another way that the workshop process influenced the ensemble, because now you had these ensemble members participating in the collaborative process, whereas before you might have had a finished script, cast the show, gone out of town, and ensemble members still had influence.

You know, you might change a line, you might have something that developed out of town because a certain actor was playing it, a certain ensemble member. But this was really the ensemble members in the room creating, and this show being written on more specific people that weren't necessarily the leads, but were the people in the ensemble.

[7:05] John Jellison: But there's George and there's Dot, and we follow their stories. I told you about when there was applause after It's Hot and It's Monotonous. It was after that that James said, we have to make this more linear. It's George's and Dot's story. Because until that time, all these ancillary characters had more to do. So a lot of their stuff got cut away. The Celestes had more, the Soldier had more, different characters had more to do.

[7:26] John Jellison: Sondheim Park with George is very unique in that it's based off of this painting and this real-life person who existed. And it's educational about people that really existed, but more than that, I think it's educational about art and about how art gets made, and how art's legacy is carried on, how we see pieces of fine art and also other pieces of art throughout decades long after the creators are gone. It speaks to that as much as it speaks to how art is created.

[7:51] Mo Brady: On his way to start rehearsals for the Huntington Theatre's 2016 production, our final guest, Adam Chandler-Berat, stopped by the studio to give us some insight on why he was so looking forward to working on the piece.

[8:02] Adam Chandler-Berat: My name is Adam Chandler-Berat, and I live in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. I am about to play George Seurat in Sunday in the Park with George at the Huntington Theatre in Boston. I mean, the show resonates with me in really, really profound ways as a person who makes things for a living, and the lifestyle that that requires you to have as someone who loves art and appreciates art, and also just as a human being walking through this world and having a passion and figuring out how that sort of relates to other people.

[8:46] Adam Chandler-Berat: I remember in a road trip I had during Rent with some of my cast members, we were going up to a cabin up in the Berkshires, and I remember we played Move On, and we were all sobbing in the car together because I think the link between artist to artist in that show is very obvious because of how honest it is about all of the things that it means to make art and why we do that, but also just as a human being, part of its success and part of why it won as many accolades as it did has to do with how far-reaching and deep-reaching the themes in that show are, and the sentiment in Move On I feel like is something that we can all really relate to as human beings, and feeling stuck, and dealing with grief, and being lost, and finding your home again, whatever that means.

[9:41] Adam Chandler-Berat: Adam and Jen agreed that by focusing acutely on the artistic experience, Sunday in the Park with George found a way to speak to larger accuracies about humanity. Art so often deals with the things that human beings aspire to, and practicing art often relates to what human beings try to practice, and that show and how it deals with remaining present and being in the moment is really addressed in the show through art, but really like through what it means to be a human being on this planet for a really short amount of time. It's about process, it's about being, and art is about being, and art is a way of being. So there are so many things that I feel like whether you're doing it consciously or not, have just become a part of the fabric of theater from these shows, and they all borrow from each other too, right?

Like it's a conversation, it's ongoing. Sunday in the Park with George, there is so much about the way that the world changes around you, and about that building over there used to be a tree, and it speaks to the evolution of American cities in that way. So there was a lot that Sunday in the Park with George did that was very specific, but that spoke to much larger truths about America.

[11:02] Adam Chandler-Berat: Sunday in the Park with George is able to shine a light on the artistic process in a way that makes its themes universal. However, this was not the typical Broadway fare for the time. The shows that were around when Sunday in the Park was around, I mean it was right around Cats, it was right around La Cage a Faux, it was this very serious-minded musical that I think the committee would have seen as saying something very serious about American life, while other things were a little bit more frilly. This atypical approach to storytelling seems to be exactly why it caught the eye of the Pulitzer Committee. It is the best of this wonderful American form called the American musical, and that's why it fits, and it doesn't feel foreign, doesn't feel French.

It feels like an American musical about a very sophisticated topic, and when you think of the best of a form, whether it's a play or a musical, you look for the best, and Sunday takes the musical form, and it adheres to all the rules of a musical form. So I think that it exemplifies the best of a really remarkable form called the musical theater. They used this American form, and they wrote this absolutely glorious piece. It was chancy, was not necessarily commercial. They didn't care about that. They just dug down deep to the bottom of their souls and tried to create this whole piece. It's still the most proud thing I've ever been a part of.

[12:25] Mo Brady: Special thanks to Adam Chandler-Berat, John Jellison, and Jennifer Ashley Tepper for allowing us to re-share their stories this week. The Ensemblist was produced today by me, Mo Brady, and Jackson Klein. There are two great ways you can be helping The Ensemblist right now. One is by leaving us a rating and review on Apple Podcasts, and the second is by becoming a Patreon member, which you can do at patreon.com slash The Ensemblist. Please follow The Ensemblist on Spotify, on Apple Podcasts, or at our home of bpn.fm, as well as on Instagram, where we share the stories of talented artists working through the coronavirus pandemic. Thanks for listening. Until next time.