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[0:06] Sean Chandler: Hi, everyone. I'm your host, Sean Chandler, and you're listening to Your Program Is Your Ticket, a discussion of smaller theater works and the people and organizations that make it happen.

[0:15] Sean Chandler: My guests today are the brilliant team of the new play Astoria, written by esteemed playwright Richard Ploetz and making its debut at Theater for the New City here in New York. Astoria is the story of Michael who, while caring for his recently injured grandmother, chronicles his family history in the form of a play. I am super excited for this interview, so let's bring him on.

[0:39] Sean Chandler: Hi, team Astoria, and welcome to Your Program Is Your Ticket.

[0:47] Richard Ploetz: Thank you. I'm happy that you're here, too. Thank you for being on the show.

[0:50] Sean Chandler: How exciting. You're going into a new play, and I believe this is the very, very first production of the play. Wow, that's always fun.

[0:56] Richard Ploetz: It is. It's getting in and sort of sussing it all out and hearing it aloud the very, very first time is such an exciting thing to happen, especially for a playwright. I can't wait to talk to you about that, Richard, because we have the playwright here. Before we get into that, before we give you the very, very first question directly, let's start with this side of the room and have you introduce yourselves to our listeners. Tell us a little bit about your background, who you are, and what you do, who you play, what your function is with Astoria.

[1:45] Mark Finley: Hey, my name is Mark Finley. I am the director of Astoria. I am excited to be working with Richard for the first time, although we go way back. This is my second production here at Theatre for the New City. The first one was a little while ago, but I'm happy to be back and working off of Broadway again. Thanks.

[2:06] Rue Starr: Okay. Hi, my name is Rue Starr. I play Helen, and the whole play takes place in my apartment. I feel really lucky that I don't have to move around too much because I'm the old lady in the play, and it's amazing. It's my dysfunctional children that get to make a lot of trouble for everyone, including themselves. I also have been in another production at Theatre for the New City once before, and it's really this place, if these walls could talk, there would be, you would have podcasts infinitely. Wow. This place has so much history. It's really a legendary place, and I'm so thrilled to be in Richard's play, and it is kind of cool, like you said, for the first time ever it's happening.

[2:57] David Leeper: Very nice. My name is David Leeper. I play Michael in the play, and this is my second show here at Theatre for the New City, and I've worked with Mark, our director, quite often, and I'm thrilled to be working with him again, and I'm honored to be part of Richard's amazing play.

[3:24] Gary Ray Bugarchich: Excellent. Hi, I'm Gary Ray Bugarchich, also known as Gary Ray, and I'm playing two neighbors. I'm playing Otto and Mr. Codura in the show, and I'm very, very excited because it is a new play, and it is a family drama, and one that I'm very, very, very familiar with, where I also, in my own life, have an elderly mother that I speak to every day on the phone. So let's go from there.

[3:56] Steve Halk: Okay. I'm Steve Halk. I have worked with Richard a couple of times here at Theatre for the New City as actor and director, so it's a bit of a homecoming for me. I've known Mark for a long, long, long time, but we haven't worked together in quite a while.

[4:19] Mark Finley: Yeah, one time before.

[4:25] Steve Halk: One time before, and a couple of readings.

[4:29] Steve Halk: In the play, in Astoria, I play Walter Turner. I'm Helen's son and Michael's father, and as Helen said, there's some unresolved conflicts, some long-held incompleteness, shall we say. I live in France now, and I have come back to Astoria to the apartment where I grew up, where Helen still lives, for the first time in 10 years. So it's a very fraught type situation, as families can often be.

[5:05] Richard Ploetz: Hi. Richard Ploetz. I wrote The Damn Thing, and it goes back quite a bit in time of an earlier piece I did, actually with my actual grandmother, called An Ordinary Evening with My Grandmother, which we played for three days at the old Theatre Genesis over on St. Mark's Church. The recordings, well, it's autobiographical for sure. When I first came to the city in '76, my grandmother was living alone in her apartment in Queens in Astoria, and I would go over weekends, and she would very often prepare a chicken dinner, and we would talk. I realized she was the last living member of my family, and she had the stories. So I would bring a tape recorder over and leave it running while we had our meals and eatings, and that's one of the scenes in the play.

And it's literal. I mean, what you guys are saying, you know, ooh, soup, a little barley in there. I don't see barley. Yes, it's there, is verbatim from the tape that I made 40 years ago, and used in that original performance piece that I called An Ordinary Evening with My Grandmother. So there's a lot of family history in it, including Hans the Nutcracker, who I'm not sure whether he's going to actually be in the play.

[6:52] Richard Ploetz: I've ordered another Hans after seeing the original fall out of the rocker and thinking, oh my God, his head fell off. So this is not a character in the play. Is this a meaningful prop?

[7:06] Mark Finley: Yes.

[7:06] Richard Ploetz: Yes. Okay. So this was, the earlier sort of impetus for this was a play called An Ordinary Evening with My Grandmother.

[7:24] Mark Finley: Yes.

[7:24] Richard Ploetz: Okay, so I got that right, right? And she was actually in it. She sat in a rocker on the stage, and she wasn't supposed to do anything, but she would catch eye contact with the audience members and, hello, how are you tonight? And she would do little improvisations like that, which was really charming. Gave me the willies.

[7:44] Sean Chandler: So you're doing this play, and your grandmother's on stage in a rocking chair, and you're performing the story, and then just sort of, every now and then she would insert conversation with the audience?

[8:04] Richard Ploetz: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I had a few particular lines that I asked her to memorize, and she said, yeah, I could do that. I was in the play as a little girl, the farmer's daughter, remember?

[8:17] Sean Chandler: Yeah.

[8:17] Richard Ploetz: And so, yeah, she was, for an 89-year-old woman, she was a bit of a ham, and she enjoyed her time on the stage.

[8:25] Sean Chandler: Oh, well, at that point, she's like, I'm just going to do whatever I want. I don't care, right?

[8:31] Richard Ploetz: Yeah, exactly. My grandson is the playwright. If you have any issue with me doing this, then talk to him.

[8:36] Sean Chandler: That's really lovely. I think it's neat that you took an interest in her life and her world, and I'm sure that she got a kick out of it, too. What was it like to just hear her tell all these old stories? Was there something that ever came up that you didn't know that shocked you? Because I've done something a little similar to this. I started writing a play with my sister about our grandmother, and we went and sat, and we had a tape recorder, and just asked her a bunch of questions one afternoon. More than once, both of our jaws hit the floor when she would just start, because she was older, and she was like, I'll tell you whatever you want to know. I don't care. Did she say anything to you that surprised you?

[9:33] Richard Ploetz: Well, yeah, and it's become one of the themes or issues in this play, is she had my dad, and then she had his sister, who was mentally defective, and was put in a home upstate, awful name, Letchworth Village, for the mentally defective, right? It's hard to hear that. And that was a family secret, and when I was making the recordings, I kind of tried to get her to talk about Dolly. That was the name they had tagged her with. Her name actually was Helen, too, like the mothers, which doesn't come out in our play, but she had either a deliberately vague memory of her daughter, or just didn't want to talk about it, and was able to evade it, which that ambivalence comes up in the play, too, where Helen kind of avoids talking about Dolly, and Michael is kind of, who was she?

Did she die out there? And he goes after his father, who was her sibling, and he says, she must have died up there or something. We never found out, and it was always a kind of secret in our family, so that came out during these, or failed to come out during these lunch and supper conversations I had with her that I taped.

[11:20] Sean Chandler: Wow. What made you sort of take it from that? By the way, I want to let everybody out there in podcast land know, as Rue said, we are in the complex of the theater for The New City, which is a theater complex. It has, I don't know how many theaters, how many theaters? Four theaters in here, so if you're hearing people around, that's because it is an active theater space, and that's something that's really cool about New York City. There are quite a few of these, and I've often mentioned that on my podcast. We'll be sitting in a rehearsal room, and I'll be recording an episode, and somebody will be singing opera, like full tilt boogie, like bellowing Carmen two rooms down.

[12:11] Richard Ploetz: Oh, if you hear that, that's what's happening. So you know, there's theater talking to you, folks. So we, I want to know, like, sort of like, when did this plague sort of like go? This is a terrible way to put this, but sort of on ice for a while. And then, then you or has it always been like, have you constantly been rewriting it ever since you wrote An Ordinary Evening with my grandmother? Or have you did it sit for a while? And then you came back in?

[12:54] David W. Leeper: Yeah, it's a long and kind of complicated history, I guess. Both Mark and I are members of Emerging Artists Theater. And we did a different version of it. It was called Graham's play at that point. And it was quite different from what we have now. And we did a stage reading of it just to hear it. And that was 2008 or 2009, maybe. And Paul Adams, who runs Emerging Artists Theater, didn't have the wherewithal to produce it. It's fairly complicated. It was more complicated then, and so it kind of went on to the back burner. And then in 2023, we did here, and actually in this very Chino theater, the country play, Historia is a prequel to the country play, it didn't start out to be, but it's I said, the country play is Michael has become a retired professor, and he's retired to the country to try and write his memoirs and is having a devil's time of it. And Marie Claude shows up. She's Walter's wife, and Walter, I believe, is dead at this point.

[14:37] Richard Ploetz: So it's, is it? I think I remember, David, for those of you out there in podcast land, if you don't remember, David is actually my husband. So I know how lucky am I? Come on. I know. I know. I know. And I think I'm saying this because I think you told me that it was a trilogy. It's going to be a trilogy, right?

[15:10] David W. Leeper: Well, conceivably.

[15:12] Richard Ploetz: Okay. So it's a goal, right?

[15:15] David W. Leeper: Okay, the next play, if I get to it, would be probably 10 years in the future from this play. So, and this is set in 1980, right? Yeah. So, yeah, but nothing, I've sort of sketched ideas of who might be there and so on and so forth. And, but, but at this point, I don't know.

[15:43] Richard Ploetz: I hear you. I hear you big time. Okay. Now, Mark, I was under the impression that only because I don't, I didn't get pulled into this until David was asked to join, to audition for the cast. So I didn't, I wasn't aware of the fact that you had history with the play a little bit. So my question was, I'm asking you to talk about your directorial vision of the piece. How did you picture it in your mind when you first read it and how has it grown and changed as you put it on its feet in the theater? That is a way bigger question now that I know that you've gone back, I don't know how many years or versions of the show.

[16:27] Mark Finley: Well, Richard and I have known each other for a long time, but I've never actually had a chance to work with him. And when Richard was originally looking for folks for this, he asked me for a lead actor. I immediately thought of my friend David. So David got on board and then it got cast and then there was a cast change and then a director change and I happened to be free and I read it and I was like, I think I could do this one. And I was free to do it. So again, I'm psyched to finally be working with Richard. What I like about this piece is it's kind of meta. We're kind of watching a play that's being written as it's going along. So I've tried to rather than like the script itself, it's got little pockets of realism.

It's got, like you said, it came directly from dialogue. So, you know, little pockets of actual naturalism. But it's not, the whole style of it is not naturalism. The whole style of it is not realism, because the main character is trying to make sense of the story to me, is trying to make sense of the story as he's telling it. And since it's referenced, since he is writing a play in the play, I was like, well, why don't we make it like it's a play? So as the script describes the set as being minimal. So we've got little, the playing areas are little kind of drops of realism on sort of a minimalistic set with a projector in the back, where another big element of the script is the characters look at pictures of people that we're talking about.

And we use the screen to, so the audience can see what the actors are looking at, rather than fill in every single prop, every single teacup, every single scrabble tile. Those are mimed. But when we don't, when a prop is important or unavoidable, we're using it. But again, since we're doing a play, the prop table is visible. So an actor will have, be using that prop in the scene. And when the scene is done, he'll just walk off and put it on the table, rather than tracking a whole life for that inanimate object. And again, I'm going off. What I like about it is it sort of allows the audience to fill in the blanks. And I sort of like that as an audience member. I like to work a little bit and find my truth in the story.

But the characters are interesting and flawed enough that I'm following them. And they do change in sort of a segmented timeline, not just an A, B, C, D type thing. That's a long answer to a long question, so there you go.

[19:45] Richard Ploetz: Yeah, I mean, it feels like when it takes this long from, hey, Mark, here's a project that I'm kind of interested in. I know we go back a long time, rather than, Mark, we want you to direct this. And then you start building the piece in your head, the physical piece of it. It's been in there for a while.

[20:10] Mark Finley: Oh, yeah. And what's a real blessing to me is these guys. These actors are so great. And Sydney is fantastic. Everybody's coming to it with a real creative spirit. We're all sort of getting together and building the play together. And I think the play really allows itself. It's porous enough to take that. And Richard is kind enough to let that happen. I think it's sort of built into what he's doing. You guys are a real gift, and I don't say that enough. So now it's recorded forever. So there you go.

[20:56] Richard Ploetz: That stays. That stays. Even if it's not directed at me, I'm going to have that little sound bite. People don't know this, but when I get a text on my phone, it's Mark Finley saying the word line. Line? He told me a story about somebody who would call line a lot, and that's the way it sounded. So it was like, do me a favor and say that into my phone. And then David turned it into my ringtone and all of that.

[21:32] David W. Leeper: So David gets to listen to me all day long.

[21:35] Mark Finley: Exactly. So you know I can do it.

[21:38] David W. Leeper: Yes, I can.

[21:39] Mark Finley: It's one of my very, very absolute favorites, Mark's story. So I'm intrigued by the screen is for the audience to see what the actor is looking at.

[21:57] Richard Ploetz: Right.

[21:58] Mark Finley: I feel like that goes back a little bit to, remember when Sunset Boulevard was here with Nicole Scherzinger and they had the cameras? Is that sort of what's going on? Is there a camera that's rolling?

[22:11] Richard Ploetz: No, we've got a projector and we're using some of Richard's family photos. Again, this goes back to the realism thing. If you're doing a scene realistically, one character hands another character a picture and says, look at this, and describes it, that's realism. But if the same thing happens, hey, look at this person in the picture, and then what they're looking at flashes up behind them, then the audience can share in that experience. And they don't have to just imagine what's on that piece of paper.

[22:48] Mark Finley: It's funny, you were talking about Sunset Boulevard. When I was first thinking of it and read the script, I was going way back to Glass Menagerie. My father was in love with long distances, and in the Williams script, there's a picture of the father comes up on the back wall. So it's a long theatrical history that we're stealing from.

[23:10] Richard Ploetz: You're just building on.

[23:11] Mark Finley: Right, right. Good people borrow.

[23:14] Richard Ploetz: You're just another layer of genius. Just another layer of genius on top of genius.

[23:19] Mark Finley: Right, right. Genius sandwich.

[23:22] Richard Ploetz: I'm writing that down.

[23:25] Mark Finley: Or a sundae sandwich would have another layer on top.

[23:32] Richard Ploetz: All righty. Excellent. Well, I think I have an idea of what you're doing, but it's just a general idea, and I believe that the people out in podcast land know what that is too now. And if not, then they need to come and see the show anyway, for themselves, and then see the presentation, because Mark does some really cool stuff on stage. I know, because he's directed my stuff before.

[23:58] Richard Ploetz: Okay, so let's move on.

[24:00] Richard Ploetz: Actors, it's your turn. Now, you've already talked about your characters a little bit in your introduction. What qualities do you, as real people, connect with with your characters? How have your characters surprised you as they've grown in performance development?

[24:23] David W. Leeper: Similarities, and did you think that you had those similarities at one time and then that changed? Or, I don't know, I know very little. David usually lets me read the plays, but this one I didn't read, and he didn't ask me to do lines with them, which I'm always happy to do. So I don't know very much about it. I know you all know more than I do, which is probably the way it should be. So, Roo, why don't we start with you? Give us a little bit more background on your character and tell us how you connect with her.

[25:02] Roo: Sure. Well, Helen kind of reminds me of my mother and my grandmother, and they did not get along. I feel like my grandmother is, you know, Eastern European, grew up in the Lower East Side. My mother was born in the Bronx. It's like, it was my father's mother that she reminds me of, except my mother's mother does say one word that is in the play that I don't know. I'm not gonna say it, but it's about like Star Garden. My other grandmother did use that word, but my other grandmother used a different word. What is Star Garden? It's a Chinese restaurant we all love. We had Chinese food all the time. But my mother just passed away recently.

[25:45] David W. Leeper: I'm sorry.

[25:45] Roo: And she had dementia, and Helen has dementia. So a lot of times I'm visualizing how my mother was these last few years or months, and Helen reminds me of it. Sometimes I feel like I'm just gonna start crying with some of the things that she does. My other grandmother did not have dementia, but she was cold-hearted. People said us as grandchildren didn't always feel that way, but my parents did and still talked about it till the very end. Like one thing that kept my parents together for 70 years was that grandmother said, "Your marriage won't last because your wife comes from a broken home." And just to shut her up, they made it last 70 years, and that was like what fired their marriage. But I feel that that grandmother has a little bit of Helen in her because sometimes she gets a little snippy, and I don't think she means it.

It's just generational, and I see how my grandmother was that generation of Helen. My mother wasn't, but my mother had dementia, so she's like a real combo of those two women. And by playing her, I feel them so much, and this story is about the past and New York, and it just brings me down that Alice in Wonderland hole into the past and seeing how it was because we have a lot of old photographs that we've been uncovering the last few months. I have kids; I'm a grandma too.

[27:29] David W. Leeper: No, you're not.

[27:30] Roo: Stop that! I am! And my children have been hanging out with grandma, my mother, lately, and my daughter just said, "Look what I found!" And she just sent me pictures of my parents from like the 50s that look a lot like these pictures. So it's just very, very profound and very, very inspiring to go back in the past to learn about the reality of these people. A lot of things are not intentional, but it's just the way things are.

[28:06] David W. Leeper: So you connected with her more like in a, I'm gonna suck sort of like a third-party way. She reminds you of somebody, Helen is her name, right? And she reminds you of elders from when you were younger, and that's sort of what, because of my mother recently, and so that's sort of what you're molding her on. Has it taught you anything about those two women that have you in thinking? Because I know actors are always thinking about their characters. I know because I read one.

[28:41] Roo: Did it make you realize, "Gee, I never realized that about her. I never understood that," or maybe it's making me forgive my mother a lot with the dementia. My mother would constantly in the last few months talk about all these people that died, and she was like, "How did I not know they died?" Like she's like, "Did this one die?" And we're like, "Yes," like her cousins. We never knew a lot of our family. Our family all went to California or they all went to other places, and we didn't know them. My mother keeps thinking of all her cousins from when she was a kid or family members or wives or whatever, and she's like, "I didn't know they died." People die in this show, and Helen is like not believing that they died, and I definitely know she's not, she doesn't remember her dying.

It's stuff like that. It's just really like, it's very realistic, even though it's an abstract kind of show, as Mark was saying, but there's a lot of reality, and I think a lot of people experience a lot of these things that are not discussed or hidden under the rug. Every family has a secret. I don't know, we didn't have that specific one, but we have plenty of those, good say if not many. And I just feel this show really is very honest in children, parents, aging, secrets, the whole gambit, and I love New York.

[30:31] David W. Leeper: Wow, that's a lovely answer, and it's nice that, I love when art has that effect on people. It means that the script is edifying. It's uplifting you; it's changing you. It's affecting you in an emotional way, and that's, I always think a good script should entertain, educate, and edify, and it sounds like your script does. Richard just said earlier how those lines are really Helen. That makes me even happier now. I really, really, really, really want to do her justice.

[31:05] Roo: Well, good. It's nice to hear.

[31:15] David W. Leeper: Excellent. Okay, David, dear, yeah, you are next.

[31:25] Mark Finley: It's interesting connecting to this play. It's interesting parts. What I've never had before, it's not linear to me as an actor to be able to take it apart, look at the scenes, figure out what my goals are in each scene, to connect with the actors in every scene. Part of my role, I'm observing, part of it I'm writing, creating, but it's made me look at how we can't, as people, write our story as much as we want to, and as much as we think we can have that control, we don't. It's predicated by the people around us and the people in our lives, and we're called upon to do things we sometimes don't want to do. This character is very unlike me in that I feel like he avoids that responsibility, whatever it is, and feels put upon by it and sometimes makes choices that aren't the best choices.

But yet at the same time wants to connect to that past to answer those questions, to figure out who he is and where he's going. We all look at our past to get those answers, and I do that right now. You know, I have an aunt, my mom's sister, who's very far into dementia right now, and indeed I have all the old family pictures, and I look at them, and I think very much like I do in this play. I look just like my great-uncle, exactly like him, but I know nothing about him. I see these pictures of these Romanian immigrants, and I'm like, "Who are they?" But yet because they did that, I am here today. And I think that's what's really interesting about this play, and I find it a really challenging emotional journey to maintain in this show because I'm very moved by Helen and my father, even our neighbor and my girlfriend, who's not here, very Ruth.

[33:14] David W. Leeper: So I find it a really interesting thing, and I find myself getting lost observing in a scene and realizing how it's watching your history kind of roll out affects you and how you can't change it and the things you can do in your life to change it. So it's really interesting. It's a really, really interesting, moving play to be part of.

[34:03] David W. Leeper: Has it taught you anything about what you're dealing with with your family? I mean, are you going to approach your aunt in a different way when you see her, or does it just sort of, does it make you happy the way that you're treating her when you do see her? I mean, are there any judgments that you're holding against yourself at all?

[34:30] Mark Finley: I think if anything, it makes me regret the fact that I didn't spend more time talking to her about her past when she was cognizant of it. My parents have a very different opinion of my aunt because they have a different experience with her than I do. So I do regret that because I don't think she could do that now as opposed to even just five years ago. So that drives me a lot in this show in terms of asking those questions and wanting to know those things, and if I get them or I don't, how that sort of propels me forward. I think a lot of times as our elders get older, we have to give ourselves some grace. We have to say, "A for effort" sometimes because there's only so much that you can do.

You're you. Sometimes you have to say, "I tried," and that's got to be good enough because the other person maybe doesn't have the capacity to respond. So I think putting forth the effort is, you know, what is the line from Star Wars? There is no try, only do. I think in this case, let's throw that line away because try is okay. And if you're trying, then you're reaching out and you're doing your best.

[36:01] David W. Leeper: Knowing you, of course, I think you've done a tremendous job with her. So just, just if I'm gonna, you know, bring my own personal life into this or not to you when your husband's sitting right over there. Okay, Gary doing double duty here as two characters. Yes, but I don't want to get into that. You don't know what I want to say is that Mark's done a very good job of describing the conceptual approach.

[36:35] David W Leeper: For the play. But without confusing people, the dynamics, the family dynamics of the characters and the dialogue, there's an authenticity to it that everyone can really relate to. And I mean, there's no doubt in my mind that audience members are going to watch this thing and hopefully forget they're watching a play. They're going to be absorbed into this thing because the dialogue is so realistic. And these actors I'm working with basically reach that dynamic in such beautiful ways and, you know, very visceral and emotional. And it's great. And there's no doubt that my friends are going to love it. So there you go. And many of them are very theater oriented. So that's where I'm going with this.

[37:32] Sean W Chandler: Well, why don't you at least tell us the names of the two people that you play and then so we know a little bit more about your function.

[37:38] David W Leeper: Sure. Otto is a neighbor of Helen's and he is a bachelor who's of Greek descent. And it's funny that the way that I was brought into this production because I played a Greek in Crete back in April in a musical called The Spirit of the Game. And from what I understood, you guys had a little trouble finding a Greek person and someone that you spoke to Bambi, I think, Bambi Everson. And she said, well, my friend just played this really well. And you contacted me and it was great because yes, he's Greek, but I didn't have to have an accent. So that made things very, very easy.

[38:27] Sean W Chandler: So you're an accentless Greek in this show.

[38:27] David W Leeper: Yes. A story of Queens. All right, cool. But very, very fun. The character is very animated and takes care of Helen as a neighbor would, you know, where she doesn't have family right close by. And the other character is Mr. Koturo, who is a Polish man who lives upstairs. And he's very, this guy is really animated, but he's in one scene. And I think, I think the audience is going to enjoy his little scene in there.

[39:07] Sean W Chandler: Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Let's leave a little mystery to this, can we?

[39:07] David W Leeper: Sure. Thank you.

[39:15] Sean W Chandler: Something tells me that there's a lot, a lot of mystery left in, I haven't covered, I haven't nearly covered what, maybe 8% of it at the most?

[39:23] David W Leeper: 7 and a half.

[39:23] Sean W Chandler: Okay. Then Steve, let's have you cover off on the other, what? 93%? Can you do that?

[39:31] Steve: Yeah. If I'm doing my math correctly? We have time. Walter Turner fascinated me from the first time I read the script and Richard had reached out to me to see if I might be available, interested in auditioning. Cause I know Mark doesn't cast people without an audition. I don't think most of the time that's my impression. So I, and even though we've known each other for a long time, I thought, no, I mean, you know I don't see much connection myself, personality wise with Walter, but I think that there are some things that I don't even know about myself that sometimes come out in my acting that like, oh, I'm not the, I'm not the person that I know myself to be in everyday life. And sometimes something more true.

[40:34] Steve: I connect with a character because this character pretty much speaks his mind and is not afraid to disrupt, is not afraid to offend. And that's not my MO. You know, I'd much, would much, much rather keep things on an even keel, but there are times when something just comes out of me and I realize, wow, I've had, I've had really strong feelings about this all along. And I didn't even realize it myself. He's an actor. Walter, as much as made of his having been a fairly successful community theater actor in Albany, New York and done a lot of shows. And in fact, Michael says your, your greatest role ever was Willy Loman in Death of a Salesman, the prototypical father. And here we are in a father son relationship drama.

And that, that moment always comes to a little surprise to me. Like, oh, you, because I'm, I'm basically think Michael resents me and looks down on me and blames me for things that have happened in the past. Doesn't really respect me. So when you say, wow, that was your greatest role and you, with such sincerity, it's a wonderful moment, you know, cause any actor loves to be praised.

[42:04] Steve: And, and I'm now living, Walter is now living in France with a French wife and not doing any acting and claims not to miss it, but you never, you never really get over it. It's always there. It's always, always there. So and whether the antagonism such as it is, I mean, that's maybe too strong a word. You know, what an actor does, you look for the, for the highest possible emotional stakes in any situation, right? You look for the need, the, the unexpressed emotion that has been again, like there, and you didn't, maybe didn't even realize it. And with some plays that's appropriate in some plays, it doesn't really live there. So I think in a way I'm still finding, we're finding where those, the emotional stakes are for Walter.

[42:54] Steve: I have come back from France for the first time in 10 years, essentially to say goodbye to my mother, who is probably going to die very soon, but also to my son, who I may never, it almost seems like a foregone conclusion that I'm never going to see you again. And we really need to have this out. I really need to connect with you about who I am and who you think I am and who you are and who I think you are before I go back to France and we never see each other again. That might be too, you know, reading too much into it, but that's the kind of thing I look for. And I think maybe that's part of what Walter does as an actor, go to that high stakes situation right away, high emotion situation when, when that isn't really appropriate in everyday life. If we approached everything like a high life and death situation, we'd never, we'd never get anywhere.

[43:57] Steve: We'd never do anything. You know, we, so I don't know if this is making any sense at all, but it's a great process to be in, to observe myself. And if, and if Michael, David, as Michael says, stop acting, just be yourself. What does that even mean to someone? Does that mean to Walt? What are you talking about? I'm not acting. This is me. But somehow it comes across to him as, it's phony. If that's what it, if that's what he means by it, being an actor, it's phony. And as an actor, the last thing you want to do is be phony, but there are people who are phony. So being phony is being, is being truthful about that person. So finding whatever that alchemy is, is a fascinating aspect of this character for me.

[44:48] Sean W Chandler: Wow. That's great. That's a, it sounds like you're learning a lot about yourself. A lot of things that you didn't necessarily know and, and, and knowing where to peg certain emotions and feelings and stuff. And, and it's, it's, it's very fascinating.

[45:07] Steve: I'm a Virgo, therefore I analyze. And yeah, and that's any piece of theater or that I take on, I try to dig down into it to find what, whatever we call it, subtext or backstory, the underlying con, it's almost always conflict. It's almost always a crisis of some kind. And so what's the crisis personally for Walter and for this, for this family, you know, and I, it's the degree of that crisis is always, is different from play to play. And I think we're finding, finding what the particular balance is with this play of, one thing I loved from the beginning is that it's so personal for Richard with his family and all of these very authentic, these memories of you have as they were mostly of German heritage. And that was so strong in their household. Whereas in my household, we, you know, we didn't ever talk about any, anybody really beyond our great grandparents. And there was only one of those that I ever met or even knew anything about.

[46:21] Sean W Chandler: Wow. Geez. It sounds like your play is not letting anybody off the hook at all. Before we get into the, we wrap things up with some housekeeping. What would you all like audiences to take away from the play? We'll just go, we'll start with Mark.

[46:39] Mark Finley: Oh, great. We've got about, we've got about eight, 10 minutes left. Okay. Just so everyone knows for time management. What I want the audience to take away from the play is, I really liked the notion of the main character trying to make sense out of his life by examining the past, you know? I guess if to put a moral on it, I think it's important to recognize your past, but not let it devour you, you know? I also like the notion that you can't, I always say you can't see the parade because you're in it, you know? You can't really write the story, your own story, because it involves so many other people, you know? Does that make any sense at all?

[47:55] Sean W Chandler: It does. It does indeed.

[47:55] Rue: Yeah, I kind of, on that, I feel like with family, sometimes you get like, you can't take it as personal as you do. Or like, just because they're not acting the way you want them to be, it has nothing to do with you. Like, everyone is who they are anyway, like, but we take it so, so much, because like, why are they not understanding me? Or why are they acting like that? Or what? It's really not personal. Everybody is just the way they are. And if you can just love them the way they are, and not be angry, upset, wishing they were different, and all those things, like, just.