This transcript was automatically generated and might contain errors.

[0:00] Alan Seales: Welcome to another episode of The Theatre Podcast. I'm your host, Alan Seales.

[0:10] Julian Harklin: And I'm Julian Harklin, joining remotely today.

[0:12] Alan Seales: And I love that you're joining remotely. You're actually in the middle of traveling, but you're calling in, which is ironic because the episode here with Tony Award Winning Director Christopher Ashley was also done over the phone. He's currently on the West Coast at the La Jolla Playhouse, where he's the artistic director, gearing up for Diana in the middle of rehearsals. He actually stepped out of rehearsal for an hour to give me the phone call. So I thank him very much for that. And just an incredible individual, got his Broadway directorial start in '99, has done so many different genres and types of shows, some of which has a special place in your heart, right, Julian?

[0:55] Julian Harklin: Yes. Back in 2004, there was a show called All Shook Up, which was an Elvis Jukebox musical that Christopher directed. And that was the show that made me fall in love with Broadway. He also did another show in 2007 called Xanadu, based on the '80s movie, which is another favorite of mine. And these were the shows that really kind of propelled me through my teenage years and made me fall in love with the art form. So we have Christopher Ashley to thank for my side of the podcast here, because he is the reason why I love Broadway.

[1:37] Alan Seales: He's done so many shows that I have been following for a long time, and then most recently Come From Away and then Escape to Margaritaville. Come From Away, of course, the musical about 9/11, what happened in Gander, Newfoundland during 9/11, and now it's getting made into a movie, which I'm very excited about. But he was sort of, I guess, unintentionally cagey about details, because there probably aren't that many yet.

[2:01] Julian Harklin: Yeah, that happens a lot of times with musicals turning into movies. But we will get that soon. It was interesting to me to hear him talk about, I guess, how directors get attached to shows. I've talked more with producers, I guess, and producers seem to always have a director that they go to or a group of directors that they know they can trust, they know they can go to. And early in your career, when you don't have that reputation, we don't have those relationships with people, how do you get attached? And it seems like it's almost as hard of work to get hired as a director as it is to get cast as an actor in the same show.

[2:46] Alan Seales: Yeah, directing, especially when you're young, you need to build that reputation. And so, some of the early shows he did had some questionable producers and creative sides attached to it, as he tells the story later. It's a great story. We won't spoil it for you here, but listen for the mafia. And how to react to something unexpected in a hot tub. How to react to a dead body. Somebody knows. Some experience.

[3:16] Alan Seales: So, everybody, please enjoy this episode with Tony Award-winning director Christopher Ashley. Here you go. One, two, three.

[3:30] Alan Seales: Today's guest is a three-time Tony nominee who won the Tony for Best Direction in Come From Away. So far, he's directed nine shows on the Broadway stage, including some of my personal all-time favorites like All Shook Up, Memphis, and of course, Come From Away. He's directed feature films and is still the artistic director of the La Jolla Playhouse. Christopher Ashley, thank you for taking the time to speak with me today.

[3:53] Christopher Ashley: Thank you for having me.

[3:54] Alan Seales: So, I want to start off, of course, where we always start off with this podcast. And I want to talk about your humble beginnings. Where did you grow up and what kind of child were you?

[4:05] Christopher Ashley: Humble's the right word. I grew up in 17 different places before I went to college. So, born in Chicago, lived in North Carolina, had a really thick accent as a little kid.

[4:15] Alan Seales: No kidding.

[4:16] Christopher Ashley: Upstate New York, Portugal, London, Michigan, Maine. Pretty much all over.

[4:20] Alan Seales: Wow. So, why did you move around so much?

[4:23] Christopher Ashley: My parents were young and just getting out of grad school. So, I was quickly divorced. So, I was bopping around between postgraduate gigs. My mom had a grant to be in Portugal for a couple of years. My dad did a teaching gig of trading professorships in London. So, I pretty much followed my parents through their early career.

[4:47] Alan Seales: Wow. What part of North Carolina did you live in? I'm just curious because I lived there too.

[4:50] Christopher Ashley: Durham.

[4:51] Alan Seales: Oh, yeah. I went to college at NC State. I was a Raleigh-Durham kid for about eight years.

[4:56] Christopher Ashley: Yeah. So, Beth Lovell, we commiserated over our Raleigh experience. It was wonderful.

[5:03] Alan Seales: You don't need to commiserate with me. I had a fantastic time in Durham.

[5:06] Christopher Ashley: I guess commiserate is the wrong word. I do like it, but sorry for all North Carolina friends listening right now. I am slightly glad I don't live there anymore. Anyway, so then, yeah, you went to college. Did you – or sorry, you went to college at Yale, but before we get to that, did you go to high school in a couple different places? Or were you able to stick through high school in like all four years in one place?

[5:31] Christopher Ashley: Almost. So, I went to a year of high school at this great place in Ann Arbor, Michigan called Community High. It was very kind of post-60s hippy-dippy. The theater class was called People Piles. It was very get-in-touch-with-your-inner-child. And then I spent three years at Ann Arbor.

[5:53] Alan Seales: Community High sounds like the title of a sitcom.

[5:57] Christopher Ashley: It would have been a really good one. The teachers smoked pot with the students in the fire halls, but you could take as many classes at the University of Michigan as you wanted as a high school student. So, it was great for the self-motivated. And if you were a kid who liked to smoke pot by the gym, that was also a great place for you.

[6:19] Alan Seales: I bet that answers some of my questions later about why you decided to stage Midsummer Night's Dream with all the set upside down. But we'll get into that later on. So, you went to Yale. You ended up attending Yale for math and English.

[6:35] Christopher Ashley: Yep.

[6:36] Alan Seales: So, why did you do that?

[6:38] Christopher Ashley: Lots of theater there, as well. But I was committed to a hardcore academic education while I had the time in college. So, yep. I did both math and English and also probably acted in and directed 15 or 16 shows when I was there.

[6:54] Alan Seales: Oh, so you started directing in college, then?

[6:57] Christopher Ashley: I did. You could even back it up to high school. I think I directed three or four things when I was at Endeavor.

[7:03] Alan Seales: So, I guess when you were involved with these productions, why did directing speak to you more than acting? You just mentioned a second ago you were acting, too. You did both, but how did you know that directing was more for you?

[7:20] Christopher Ashley: I loved acting, and I still love the acting process. It's a lot of why I love making theater. But I was never a very good actor, sadly. I think if I had been a great actor, I might have tried to go down that road longer. But I was always in my head. And even on stage, I was always trying to think about, okay, what should I be doing? What does this look like from the audience's point of view? I was always thinking about the direction, even while I was in the scene. So, it seemed wiser to put myself in that chair. Also, there was so much theater energy when I was at Yale. The Yale undergraduates are putting on plays in the dining halls and in the squash courts. And there's a real precursor movement to a lot of the site-specific theater that's happening now that I love.

There was just theater bursting out of every crevice on that college campus. So, it was a really fun time to be thinking about directing and where could you put a play. I did a pamphlet in the library, the main library of the school. So, all the words, words, words, and all the books were just kind of coming off of the shelves. And that was incredible fun. And there was amazing people when I was an undergrad at Yale. Jodie Foster was there, and director Tina Landau, and Lisa Peterson, and Michael Cerveris was there when I was there. It was a really great group of people making theater.

[8:47] Alan Seales: What kind of show do you put in a squash court?

[8:52] Christopher Ashley: So, probably five squash courts have been converted into little black box theaters where they have a little audience permanently set up in there. And a lot of times you'll do part of the show on the sort of floor and what would normally be the visitor gallery is a second story staging. It actually is kind of perfect for Shakespeare, and it kind of looks like the original Globe a little bit in a micro way.

[9:21] Alan Seales: Wow. Well, I guess it makes sense. A squash court is kind of a white box, but then you just paint the walls and there you go.

[9:31] Christopher Ashley: I actually broke my wrist doing a production of the Scottish play hurling myself from a second story viewing gallery down to the floor. So, I have both good and bad memories performing at squash courts.

[9:42] Alan Seales: Wow. So, what did you actually graduate with? What degree?

[9:50] Christopher Ashley: English with a minor in math.

[9:54] Alan Seales: Okay. So, you did follow through with that, and then do you feel like you were using that? I mean, and I guess I'm leading into a question of what sort of formal training did you get as a director?

[10:01] Christopher Ashley: I do think that math and music have an incredible amount in common. It's amazing how many scientists and mathematicians are also amateur musicians. There's a lot of, I think, sympathy between reading music and solving a math problem, actually. So, I do think that really working on musicals keeps using some of my math skills. I also put myself through college and paid off my high school student loan debts by being a computer programmer.

[10:40] Christopher Ashley: Although, everything I knew about computer programming is in the trash heap now, and every 10-year-old is a better computer programmer than I am now.

[10:49] Alan Seales: What languages did you learn?

[10:51] Christopher Ashley: I programmed in FORTRAN, BASIC, PASCAL, and COBOL.

[10:57] Alan Seales: Wow. Did you ever get as BASIC as ASSEMBLY?

[11:01] Christopher Ashley: A little bit. I took a course, I think, in ASSEMBLY language, and I was early for the hardcore geeks listening. I think I was one of the first people to learn C++, very, very early days of C++, which is actually the only language that people are still programming in, I think. I remember when programs were... The Commodore PET was a personal computer, and you could put your program on a cassette tape, and that was how you started it.

[11:33] Alan Seales: Oh, yeah, yeah. I think it was in elementary school. I did a summer school class of programming, and we would save on a cassette tape every afternoon when it was over. Somehow, mine did save, and I lost my whole rocket ship program that I was making, and I still haven't recovered.

[11:50] Christopher Ashley: Maybe you're going to find it someday. Suddenly, that'll be the new video game of that cassette tape.

[11:57] Alan Seales: I don't think it was a game. It was just learning. You change one variable, and it affects your velocity. It's just things you do for kids. Anywho, okay. So, you come out of Yale with an English degree with the math on the side, and then how did you start getting into professional directing?

[12:17] Christopher Ashley: I was an intern at Playwrights Horizons in New York City for a year and assistant director that year on Driving Miss Daisy, the first production, with Morgan Freeman and Dana Ivey and a really amazing cast. That was very formative for me. I got out of college in '86, so I was one of the early drama league directors, which is a program that's still around and doing great. I had one of those NEA TCG directing fellowships to move around the country and meet people and see what they're up to and observe rehearsals. So, I had a couple of years of grant-supported assistantships before I was directing on my own.

[13:08] Alan Seales: So, you were doing that, and how does that process work to become a director? I've always been curious about this because, as an actor, it's always very apparent. You are sent the script, and you go in. You hopefully learn your lines. You go in, you make your choices, and then you go in, and hopefully, you impress the director, but the director is already there, right? So, how do you get there in the first place?

[13:29] Alan Seales: So, almost always, it's the artistic director of the theatre who's making the choice. If you have a strong relationship with the author on a new play, that's also often a route in. Often, if a director and a writer have gone to grad school together or something, that writer will help create the first opportunity for that director to direct in a professional context. But there's so many different routes into the director's seat as there are people. Whether you come through assistant directing, whether you come through writing, whether you come through acting and then have your first directing job, or just force of will. I do think the people who wind up in the profession are people who are incredibly tenacious and are able to tolerate working in basements and squash courts for a while before it's actually a paying gig. That was true for me, too.

[14:33] Christopher Ashley: So, yeah, you would call yourself a tenacious person?

[14:35] Alan Seales: I definitely think I get an A+. Unlike Trump, I'm going to give myself an A+.

[14:42] Christopher Ashley: You've performed very bigly in your past. I can see that.

[14:46] Alan Seales: I try to perform bigly whenever possible.

[14:49] Christopher Ashley: So, enjoy your confefe and, yes, perform bigger.

[14:52] Alan Seales: I was also, I was very much kind of multitasking. I worked at a bank for the first three years just to continue to pay off loans. A bank that no longer exists called Manufacturers Hanover, doing systems analysis for them. So, I was basically doing an internship during the day and then going to do computer programming at night.

[15:14] Christopher Ashley: Did you have to audition for the internship, or was it just like, yeah, we'll take anybody and see who's good?

[15:21] Alan Seales: I would say Playwrights Horizons at that point was quite voracious for interns to help keep the place going. So, that wasn't, it was a great match, but they were, the door was kind of thrown wide open. Definitely all the Drama League and TCG, there's a lot of application process, and I actually love applications and test taking. So, that was exactly well suited to me.

[15:50] Christopher Ashley: Wow. So, then walk me through the process of how you got your first Broadway show, which was Voices in the Dark in '99, right?

[15:56] Alan Seales: Wow, you have the whole thing in front of you.

[16:04] Christopher Ashley: I do my research.

[16:05] Alan Seales: The first show I did, first full-length show I did in New York was at an off-Broadway theater called the WPA, which had an amazing couple of decades of work. And it was a Larry L. King play called The Night Hank Williams Died. And I think I was 23 when I directed it. And it got quite a nice Times Review and moved to the Orpheum Theater for a commercial run. It was, I think, the show that was in the Orpheum right before Stomp took over the Orpheum for three decades. So, I was a little bit lucky. The first show I ever did was well received, had enough of a life to help pay my rent for a couple of months. And that actually gave me a lot of injection of belief that that career was possible if you stick with it.

[16:55] Christopher Ashley: Right. And how, from a financial standpoint, are directors, I guess the payment for a director, is that a pre-negotiated rate? Or is it like you, like, we hear from actors, they'll get certain, or for film actors, they get points based on, you know, merchandise or box office sales or something. Is it the same with all creatives in the theater as well?

[17:16] Christopher Ashley: It's really not. Although maybe there's people who are getting points on their merchandise, but that's not me. In general, non-profit theaters, regional theaters, off-Broadway theaters have an amount that they can pay, and they pay everybody the same. And there's really very little negotiation. As you start to move toward Broadway, there's more room for negotiation because, you know, if you've earned your investor money back time and again, you start to be, you know, I think worth a little bit more to the producers. But really, until you hit Broadway, there's very little negotiation. It's what's called favored nations, and you take what they have.

[17:57] Alan Seales: Wow. So then how did you get Voices in the Dark then in '99?

[18:04] Christopher Ashley: So I would say that the things that led there, I did a Paul Rudnick play called Jeffrey that was started again at the WPA and went on to the MetaLane and then kind of around the country, and we made a film of it with Patrick Stewart and Sigourney Weaver and Brian Batt from the original production on stage. So that was, Jeffrey was a real turning point for me. And that was the same year I did Anna Deavere Smith's first play, Fires in the Mirror, and a Claudia Shear play called Blown Sideways Through Life. So I started to kind of have an off-Broadway kind of profile, and that was, I think, what jumped me to Broadway for the first time in Voices in the Dark, which was a thriller. Didn't have that much success when it opened, truthfully, but I had a really amazing time working on it with Judy Ivey, who's a fantastic actor, and the writer John Peelmeyer I really love.

There was a moment late in the show that it all took place kind of in a cabin in the Adirondacks where terrible things are happening in a thriller kind of a way, and there's a jacuzzi in the living room, and you know that there's a bad thing that happened in that jacuzzi, but the central character does not know that yet. And then late in the play, she opens the jacuzzi cover, and you imagine what she's seeing, and it's really terrible. So we're taking that moment, and we stop for a break, and one of the investors, who I'm sure had a mafia past, comes up to me and says, can I talk to you for a minute? And I said, sure, and he goes, listen, when you look in a jacuzzi and see a chopped up dead body, that's not the way you react.

He's like, wow, I'm actually in the room with someone who really knows what it feels like to look at a chopped up dead body. So sometimes you never know where you're going to get your inspiration, or you're going to get tricked. I don't know how I would have reacted in that scene. I would have said, okay, so would you like to show us? I took notes. Although finally I realized, oh, well, you've seen a lot of dead bodies, and actually this is her first, so I'm not sure how useful it is, but I was interested in his experience of opening jacuzzis.

[20:20] Alan Seales: That's funny. I've always wondered, too, the director, were you just connected with the investors? The investors happened to be there. So I've interviewed Dori Berenstein as a producer on this podcast as well, and she's given me a lot of insight, the listeners, and insight of what a producer does, and it sounds like the production team hires the director, hires the investors, but as a director, do you get to say, I want this mafia guy to invest in this show, or do you just take what you're handed?

[20:46] Christopher Ashley: I'm usually not picking the investors, although I do think over time you do develop a group of producers who are excited about your work and tend to jump on board, whatever the project is, but it is really the lead producers pick who are the investors more than the directors, even though I now have a field of people that have tended to work on the shows again and again.

[21:20] Alan Seales: Right, yeah, I was just curious. So then you've got Voices in the Dark in '99, then in 2000, Rocky Horror Show.

[21:28] Christopher Ashley: Yeah. And I guess, I don't know, would you call that a thriller? What kind of genre do you call Rocky Horror? Science fiction transvestite rock concert? How's that?

[21:36] Alan Seales: I was a huge Rocky Horror fan as a teenager. I would do the late night Saturday night. I'd bring my water pistol and my toast and my newspaper and my rice and do all the kind of talk show back to the screen. So I pitched myself so hard for that project when Jordan Roth started talking about doing it as a Broadway production, and we had such an amazing time with that cast. Tom Stewart was spectacular in the lead, and there was Daphne Rubenvega and Joan Jett and Jared Emick and Alice Ripley, just like a fantastic, fantastic Lea Delaria, this wonderful, wonderful people. And we did Dick Cavett as the narrator. So it was kind of a demented cast. And we were doing this, having such a good time, good role as far as I was in the original cast of that show.

I think we went on to do five or six different things together. It was running and had opened when 9-11 happened. So it shut down for a while, then kind of came back for a second wave of performances. And I was really worried that the ridiculousness of the Rocky Horror show was going to be badly suited to the moment of 9-11. What we actually found is people were so glad to get out of their homes, sit in a room with other people, and rediscover community together, that it played better than ever after those events, which I think was a lot about how hungry people just were for art and community, regardless of what the story was.

[23:20] Alan Seales: It's really interesting you said that. One of the earliest episodes on this podcast here was I interviewed Nancy Opel, and she told the story of – actually, I can't remember if it was on mic. I think it might have been when we stopped recording. She told this great story about how Urinetown was supposed to open on 9-11. And obviously, they had a whole scene where they were going to throw people – they were throwing businessmen off a building, and they just shut it down. They had to rework that whole scene within the days when theater all went dark. But then what she was saying was similar to what you just said, that when people – they were worried about attendance, but people, they wanted to get out of their house. They wanted to come together and just find something to laugh about again.

[24:06] Christopher Ashley: Yeah. Well, we were also in the middle of – Rocky Horror had already opened, and I was working on three Paul Rudnick one acts down at Drama Department in the West Village. And it was about to open when 9-11 happened. And that, too, we had to really retool it, because there was a scene where one of the actors took the audience hostage in the show, and it did not seem well suited to the moment after 9-11. So we reworked quite a few moments to not be too triggering there.

[24:39] Alan Seales: Right. So then moving on to 2002, The Smell of a Kill. What was that one?

[24:44] Christopher Ashley: The Smell of a Kill was a Michelle Lowe play. Three women – pull that play back out. I actually think that play would, in some of the current conversation about gender in the kind of Me Too world, that play was very much a kind of three women's revenge fantasy against three husbands who are really not behaving well. And a really smart, snappy play. I also had Claudia Shear in it. And through the various workshops and Broadway productions, Katie Finneran did one of them. Jessica Stone was in one of them. It's really, really amazing actresses. And it was at the Helen Hayes where I also went on to do Xanadu.

[25:35] Alan Seales: Mm-hmm. I guess I'm trying to lead up to All Shook Up, which in 2005.

[25:41] Christopher Ashley: Yeah, All Shook Up was – I'd love – I still listen to the soundtrack, actually. And that put Cheyenne Jackson on my personal radar. So I follow him now. But I think, personally, I think I got confused with Good Vibrations. Have you heard that?

[25:58] Alan Seales: A little bit, yeah.

[26:00] Christopher Ashley: Yeah. So, you know, the whole shaking thing. You know, Good Vibrations, the Beach Boys musical, confused with All Shook Up. And I think All Shook Up just, the people didn't want to – thought that was the Beach Boys musical, which, you know, let's talk about box office, wasn't doing well. So I think All Shook Up suffered from that. But it's still –

[26:19] Christopher Ashley: Yeah, no, there was many moments, like the kind of press response to how do they feel about jukebox musicals and musicals that exist, you know, are built around a catalog. There's certainly been amazing instances. I think Jersey Boys is a beautiful, beautiful musical. And there's a bunch of ones that do this really, really well. But they're always a tough sell with the press as well, I would say. And I was really proud of that musical. Like you, that was really my introduction to Cheyenne, you know, as extraordinary and I've worked with several times. It was one of my first shows with Joe DiPietro, who I'm working with right now. He also went on, he wrote the book for

[26:59] Christopher Ashley: I went on to write, together with David Bryan, the book for Memphis, which I also directed. Tony awarded for that, the two of them. We're all sitting in a room now. I just stepped away on a break from rehearsals. We're in our final couple of days in the rehearsal hall on a new musical about Princess Diana. It's very much about the kind of triangular marriage between Diana, Charles, and Camilla, who Charles was in love with really before he met Diana. But in those days, not in any way allowed to marry her. She was already married with children, and not particularly highborn. It's interesting about the impact that Diana has had on that family, that how much has changed since when Charles was making his decision, and now Harry can marry Meghan Markle, right? In America, per se. Wow, yeah. And so the rehearsals are happening in LA, right?

[27:28] Christopher Ashley: La Jolla Playhouse? In San Diego, at La Jolla Playhouse. I'm talking to people from my office, and in fact, all the actors just left on their lunch break, so I see dancer legs leaving in my window. My office is right next to the rehearsal room. So this is a good segue to talk about La Jolla. You were appointed artistic director in '07, so that was while Xanadu was on Broadway as well. And you were, I assume, based out of New York until that point, and then how did La Jolla come about?

[27:49] Christopher Ashley: So they were looking for an artistic director. Des McAnuff had been the artistic director at the Playhouse for most of 25 years. Really, he took two different stints with Michael Greif and Annie Hamburger here in the middle. And when Des left the first time in the 90s, I actually applied for the job because we've been fascinated by La Jolla Playhouse. I love their history. They really started out, Gregory Peck and Dorothy Maguire kind of started it in the 40s as a platform for movie stars to come and do real acting on their summer breaks from shooting movies. And the kind of history of musicals that would go on to have huge impact, like Jersey Boys, like Tommy, early Modern Millie started here, and in my time, Come From Away and Memphis, and I think 30-some shows have moved from the Playhouse to Broadway.

So the mix of those shows that are going to have big impact, and also this very restless, adventurous kind of programming, just the new plays and the really adventurous, formally unexpected plays that have happened here through the years. I just really like that combination. Plus, it's a beautiful place to be. I'm talking to you now, and there's wind whispering through the palm trees.

[30:03] Alan Seales: Do you enjoy living in San Diego more than New York?

[30:14] Christopher Ashley: Oh, the more that is a hard question, because I have an incredible love for New York as well. And I lived there, I think, 20 years before I came out to La Jolla. So I enjoy both in my life, but La Jolla is an extraordinary place. And I guess we're talking in the end of January, beginning of February, and being here rehearsing a new musical as opposed to being in the middle of the polar vortex is fantastic.

[30:39] Alan Seales: You mean you don't like single digits as windchill in the negative 20s?

[30:43] Christopher Ashley: I'm not such a fan. Although I am amazed that if you live in San Diego, you would think, given the fact that it's basically beautiful almost every day, that weather would cease to be a subject. No. Everyone talks about weather all the time in San Diego. Absolutely. It's the tiniest little weather variation, and everyone's talking about it. And you want to go like, why are you talking about the weather? You have none. There is no weather in San Diego. It's always nice. But I think it's a little bit to keep reminding yourself, hey, we're lucky enough to live in paradise.

[31:15] Alan Seales: Yeah. Well, it sounds phenomenal. I've never actually been to San Diego. I've been to the Bay Area, San Francisco many times, LA several times, but San Diego is still on my list. So when I come out there...

[31:28] Christopher Ashley: If you have an open invitation, you could come to early preview of Diana and check it out.

[31:31] Alan Seales: All right. When did they go into previews?

[31:36] Christopher Ashley: We're like three weeks out.

[31:40] Alan Seales: Oh, wow. Okay. Maybe I can make a swing a trip out. We can do some in-person stuff. I'll see what I can do. I appreciate that. So still speaking about La Jolla and now being the artistic director, how does an artistic director... How do you choose your lineup? How do you choose the season?

[31:57] Christopher Ashley: So I have an amazing staff, director of new play development and producing director, and I guess about five or six people in the artistic department who read everything and see everything in the country, which I really admire. I have a real interest and love for new plays and musicals. So in the last five years, everything has been either a world premiere or a second production where the authors are also working on it. So we've really put our resources towards the development of the new and trying to be a cradle for the birth of a new show and exploring artists' voices who hopefully come back again and again. Really trying to be a loyal home to extraordinary artists is a real priority for me.

And we do only six shows a year on subscription. So that's tended to be two musicals and four new plays. And we've got beautiful spaces. We have four performance spaces and it started as a summer theater, but now year round. So it's kind of a jigsaw puzzle of figuring out what's the shape of our season and what new authors do I think have something vital to say to the world right this minute. And trying to make a... create a mix of plays, musicals, big, small, family, politics, serious, goofy, you know, like trying to make sure that every time an audience member walks in the door, they have a really new experience of some kind.

[34:02] Alan Seales: So the physical process to you, I picture like a bunch of post-it notes all over the wall with your yeses, nos, and maybes.

[34:09] Christopher Ashley: I'm sadly very old school. There's not enough computers in the mix, which is funny for someone who started out as a computer programmer. Very three by five cards on a cork board, kind of playing around with the grid and probably start out with... we get, I want to say 5,000 projects pitched our way during the course of season planning. And we kind of boil those down to 80 or 100 projects that seem, you know, the most interesting to us. And then there's a excruciating winnowing process down to just six that we'll actually do. That's the hardest thing about... I mean, programming is incredible fun in every way, except you have to say no thousands of times for every one time you can say yes. And that's frustrating.

[35:05] Alan Seales: Well, that sounds like everything in this business, really. I mean, casting directors and I guess investors are carefully picking what they want to invest in as well. Is the Playhouse, is it publicly funded or do you take private investment?

[35:18] Christopher Ashley: It is a non-profit, 501c3, very much on the philanthropic supported by a mix of what we bring into the box office and charitable contribution from individuals and corporations and foundations on certain plays that have a real more epic in scope. Like Diana, for instance, there's actually sometimes enhancing producers who we will partner with to be able to afford a show on this scale and scope, but very much a non-profit theater.

[35:41] Alan Seales: And with the current Trump administration, I'll go there for a second, and he's talking about potentially cutting the arts, some of the funding to the arts. Is this going to affect you at all?

[35:51] Christopher Ashley: If the NEA was significantly cut, it absolutely would affect La Jolla Playhouse like every regional theater in the country. Even more though than like, I think all of us sometimes get a grant from the NEA. It's not a spectacularly large endowment compared to the gross national product, but symbolically super important to the NEA, right? Like the idea that arts are a crucial part of a richly lived life and that they're going to be part of what we prioritize as a culture, that they're funded in the schools and arts and education. Those are so important to me and I think so important to so many people in our audience and so gently entrenched in the national conversation. I mean, that's the thing that gets discussed, getting slashed every single year.

And it almost doesn't matter who's in the White House. The NEA is constantly up on the chopping block, as is NPR, as is a lot of arts funding at the national level. There's much less state funding than there was once upon a time in America. So, you know, arts leaders like myself, I think, care passionately about public funding of the arts and mostly care that Americans are encouraged to include art at the center of their lives.

[37:31] Christopher Ashley: You know, Q&I and all the people in theater spend their lives in this sort of delightful, crazy sandbox of theater because we think that telling stories matters and that analyzing, discovering, understanding the human spirit and the current moment we're living in and the community that comes together around art, a passion for that is, I think, why most of my friends do it. That's certainly why I'm in it.

[38:08] Alan Seales: It sounds very therapeutic.

[38:14] Christopher Ashley: Yes. I have a friend who's an art therapist and I do actually think that what she does and what I do are not that far apart.

[38:20] Alan Seales: Well, yeah, that actually kind of touches back to what we're talking about 9-11, that people want to come through and come back together and find community and find a sense of belonging. So, yeah, I totally see that. That makes sense.

[38:30] Christopher Ashley: I definitely, when I'm, there's a lot of very political material being created right now by playwrights and I tend to gravitate towards the material that not just identifies a problem, because there's many right now in our world, but also tries to look at how might we bring people together to solve the problems. And I definitely think that that's one of the extraordinary rewarding things about the time I've spent on Come From Away, is it's a story about community and the value of generosity and what it's like to take care of each other. And I think that at certain points in human history, that might seem like an optional message. And I'd say, if you turn on the television news every night, that now seems like a necessary thing to talk about.

[39:31] Alan Seales: I would totally agree with that. And that is, actually, I was going to segue into Come From Away, but you did it for me, so thank you. Yeah, Come From Away, of course, is still playing on Broadway, is doing incredibly well and just started a tour, right?

[39:49] Christopher Ashley: Yeah, we've actually got four companies up and running right now. There's nine of the original 12 actors who are with it at La Jolla, Seattle, Ford's Theatre, and Toronto on the way to Broadway are still in the Broadway company. And there's an all-Canadian acting company running in Toronto. And there's a national tour running around the US and some Canadian cities. And as of three days ago, we just started previews for a West End UK company.

[40:29] Alan Seales: We're recording this February 1st. Through the magic of time travel, this will air later. So, three days ago won't mean a lot. I always use the magic of time travel. It's a lot of fun. Magic of podcast time travel. But yeah, Come From Away, it tells an incredible story. And the first time I heard the concept, I said, well, if they've made a musical out of 9-11, this is going to be really weird. And I went, and again, one of my all-time favorite musicals I've seen, and I've gone back and seen it several times. And it starts, and it's 90 minutes, and there's no intermission, and you barely have a chance to clap.

[41:09] Christopher Ashley: What you've just described is very much what we were going for, which is, I think there's only three applause points in it. Other than that, it really is a train that keeps going. It's about the week starting on Tuesday, 9-11, when America shut its airspace, and all the international flights that were in transit across the Atlantic and the Pacific had to ground somewhere, not in the U.S., and many of them landed in Canada. 38 flights landed in this tiny town in Newfoundland called Gander, which happens to have a big international airport left over from the days when you had to refuel to get across the Atlantic. So this town of 10,000 people suddenly had 7,000 visitors, and it's very much a story about just what happened in that week and how the people of that town, despite barriers of language, race, nationality, religion, really just stopped their lives and took care of these people from away, or that come from away, as they call them in Newfoundland.

I've now been working on that show for, I want to say, five years, and it's one of the richest experiences I've ever had in the theater. It's an amazing story to tell. The true people who the stories are based on really amaze and inspire me all the time, and they're very much with the production. I think Beverly Bass, the pilot, who's one of the people who stranded there, was the first female pilot of a commercial airline in America. She was the first woman who flew for American Airlines, and I think she's seen the show 252 times. I think I've seen it more times, but not that many more. So the actual people are in our lives, and wherever we do it, they can come and are part of the experience, and I've never had that experience before of doing a show where the show and real life keep on interweaving in that way.

[43:19] Alan Seales: Yeah, I talked to Chad Kimball recently, too, and he said something very similar.

[43:25] Christopher Ashley: They're actual friends. The people that they are recreating on stage are actually friends with these people. Yeah, I'm in my office right now. There's a scarf that one of the real people knitted. There's kind of pictures of memorabilia from all the real people, and they're also doing incredible things in their lives, kind of philanthropically and raising money for Gander and for the schools there and the charities there. We had, on our way to Broadway, we stopped and did two concerts in the ice rink in Gander, which they turned into a giant refrigerator on the week of 9-11, and the experience of doing a show about a small town where the entire 2,500-person audience each show was the people of the town, so you're telling their story, and I've never had an experience like that where they went from disbelief to wild laughter to tears, and by the end of the show, about maybe 10 minutes before the end of the show, they just started to scream at the stage. There was this wall of sound coming at the show, and the actors were doing the show back to this wall of sound of appreciation. It was one of the most emotional theater experiences I can imagine.

[44:51] Alan Seales: Wow. Oh, man. Do you have any recordings of this or any footage of it?

[44:57] Christopher Ashley: There's lots of still footage. I guess there's certainly clips from that performance.

[45:02] Alan Seales: I would have loved to have seen that.

[45:07] Christopher Ashley: It was incredible. It was definitely a highlight, and even the follow spots and the backstage sound guys, everybody that you talk to, that moment will come up and everybody will just start to well up because it was just the feeling in that room and the way that a story mattered and was potent in that room at that moment was unforgettable. And it's public now. It was announced back in November 2017 that there's plans to turn it into a feature film, yeah?

[45:37] Christopher Ashley: Yes, there absolutely are. No solid dates yet, but we're working toward a shoot that would do all of its exteriors in Gander itself, which will be really fun to do.

[45:50] Alan Seales: Are you going to do like what Stan Lee did and get the real people to have cameos throughout the background?

[45:56] Christopher Ashley: I cannot speak about the state of the screenplay, which David and Irene have been working very, very hard on this year, but I think the real people will certainly be involved in some way.

[46:12] Alan Seales: I sure hope so. They should deserve to get something. They were incredible people, are incredible people.

[46:16] Christopher Ashley: They're incredible people, and they're inspirational and also friends to everybody who's made that show.

[46:21] Alan Seales: Cool. So we'll wrap up here soon, and before we do, I want to quote you from an interview that you gave to Playbill in March 2018. You said, there's nothing I would want to be doing now other than making theater. I think it's an extraordinary answer to some of the complicated fractures in our world right now. So on this, end quote, on this podcast, we find ourselves talking with, I talk with the guests a lot about the healing power of theater, and you and I even talked about the community and the sense of belonging. What is it that you find about theater that you think is the extraordinary answer?

[47:03] Christopher Ashley: Um, I think actors and playwrights are doing something incredible. Um, the honesty that an actor brings to the table, um, the complete, um, every great piece of playwriting is an expression of that playwright's soul, worldview, and self. So there's, like, everybody in theater is, like, putting themselves completely emotionally, vulnerably on the line, and that's in service of telling a story that's true about people and the world that we share. And that, it's like some Greek, uh, smart person, uh, said what the proper, uh, study of man is man. I'm sure a butcher of that, uh, phrase, but the idea that, like, is there a better way to spend our lives than trying to understand who we are and what we're capable of?

That seems to me like a really high purpose and one that in a world, uh, that, uh, is as frustrating as the one we're living in right now. Um, there's something so positive about trying to understand who we are, um, that I, um, uh, I said it in the quote, but I'll, uh, I'll say it to you, uh, I can't think of anything I'd rather be doing.

[48:30] Alan Seales: What would you like to see come out of the Art Forum in the next few years?

[48:35] Christopher Ashley: Um, well, I, I love the, the immersive and site-specific, uh, work that's happening. We do, uh, at the Playhouse, we do a Without Walls festival, uh, of site-specific every two years, um, and I just think the artists who are, um, challenging the boundaries between the audience member and the artist, that's such great work happening there. Um, and it's not a new idea, right? I mean, the 70s had happenings and, um, there's been kind of street theater and public art forever, but the kind of ways in which the kinds of plays that are getting made, a lot of the impulses that are happening on the internet, this public art, um, it feels like a moment where art is not just for the elites. It's really, there's something radically democratic about it right now.

And I think that's really exciting. Um, I'm just, uh, I'm so impressed by the work that, like when Manuel was doing, like bringing Hamilton to Puerto Rico, both, um, because that's a place that's very meaningful to him. And also we think that there's, uh, funding issues and political questions about Puerto Rico that are worth shining a spotlight on. Um, I think the ways in which the theater is interacting with the exact moment of now, um, is what's most exciting to me and, and the, the, the theaters that are programming plays that have to be done right this year. And that could be really political plays, or it could be a story about a family or a story about a, um, a potent story about an individual, but the idea that theater speaks to now and theater speaks to, um, the future that's just coming into being. That's the work that's really exciting to me.

[50:26] Alan Seales: I love that answer. That's beautiful. So the three standard questions that I normally ask all guests on the podcast here, first one is, what motivates you?

[50:36] Christopher Ashley: Um, telling a great story, telling a story that matters.

[50:43] Alan Seales: And what advice would you give to your younger self and or younger people listening now starting out down a similar path?

[50:49] Christopher Ashley: Listen to yourself, know what kind of stories are important to you and don't let anything get in the way of telling them.

[50:56] Alan Seales: And last question here, if you could only see one show for the rest of your life, but you can see it as many times as you want, what show would you see?

[51:07] Christopher Ashley: Hamlet. Uh, I would say, um, Hamlet. Uh, I know that's like a really, really like old school answer, but I, having done one production of that play, I think I could do a new production of that play every year for the rest of my life and keep discovering radically new things in it. Um, I think one of the reasons that Shakespeare has remained so constantly produced for so many centuries is that there's a, there's a resonance and a complication, uh, and a depth of characterization and metaphor and meaning, um, that is rich to engage with as a director.

[51:56] Alan Seales: Wow. That's good. I thought you were going to say Hamilton, which several other people have said as well, but Hamlet, I would agree. That's, that would be a great one to do.

[52:04] Christopher Ashley: And I actually, I want to throw one.

[52:07] Alan Seales: We could spend the rest of our lives in a repertory between Hamilton and Hamlet.

[52:13] Christopher Ashley: Just the ham theater, but I want to, I want to throw one more question at you real quick that just popped in my head. Um, if, uh, you, is there any actor, actor or actress that you would love to work with that you, that you never have living, living or not?

[52:29] Christopher Ashley: Um, oh my God, I'm giving, I feel like I'm only giving the most standard answers, but, uh, who doesn't want to work with Meryl Streep? I, I never have. And I would, uh, I would consider, uh, myself fulfilled if I did. Also Judi Dench. Those are two actresses that, uh, I think, um, can't do no wrong.

[52:54] Alan Seales: I would personally love to do anything with them as well. So those are good answers. Um, so online, uh, we should just connect with you at La Jolla playhouse.org. And can we make donations on the website there as well?

[53:05] Christopher Ashley: Absolutely.

[53:10] Alan Seales: Cool. Cool. So if you're here, if you listen to this now, we love supporting the arts, love theater, go to La Jolla playhouse.org and please help support. And if you want more of me in the theater podcast, you can find me theater underscore podcast on Instagram and Twitter, facebook.com slash official theater podcast. Of course, listen and subscribe to my podcast. Of course, listen and subscribe via the theater podcast.com. You can send me email feedback at feedback at the theater podcast.com. This is produced by Jillian Hockman. And thank you as always to jukebox the ghost for our lovely podcast music, Christopher Ashley. Thank you so much. I have enjoyed this conversation immensely.

[53:45] Christopher Ashley: Me too. I had a great time.