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[0:01] Taylor J. Williams: So, yeah, you have, like, Sunday in the Park with George giving way to TICK, TICK... BOOM! giving way to Title of Show, you know, and I think that it's the same sort of thing, and it's really great to contextualize these pieces in those senses, like, where people are being inspired, because I think it helps new artists to say, okay, cool, I can pull from those, and as Sondheim said, like, let it come from you, then it will be new. You can take those and digest them, and then go create whatever you'd like to create, and it's still valid and worthwhile and, you know, special.

[0:31] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Welcome, everybody, to A Musical Theatre Podcast where we discuss the cultural and emotional impact of some of our favorite musicals in theater history. My name is Jeffrey Scott Parsons. You can call me Jeff.

[0:54] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Today, we are discussing the musical TICK, TICK... BOOM! which was a listener request from Karen and a few others, I believe. I'm so grateful we're covering it, because it's a show that I think most musical theater lovers at this point have seen as a movie and not on stage, despite it having a really fascinating creation process. So, we're going to talk all about that, and here to discuss it with me is a big old musical theater fan and new Tony nominee. Congratulations, Taylor. He was just nominated for Best Sound Design of a Play for his work on Ain't No Mo'. He's been involved in the creation of so many musicals, it's almost impossible to name them all, but here's a few. Big breath. Hamilton, Be More Chill, Beetlejuice, Frozen, Moulin Rouge, King Kong, The Lightning Thief, War Paint, A Bronx Tale, Bright Star, Anastasia, On Your Feet, Spongebob, The Revivals of the Color Purple, Falsettos, Once on this Island, Sunday in the Park with George, and that's just a few! Needless to say, we've got some things to talk about. Everyone, please welcome the amazing Taylor J. Williams! Yay!

[2:02] Taylor J. Williams: Thank you very much.

[2:03] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Taylor! I'm so grateful you're here and you're joining us from Australia. What the crap are you doing in Down Under?

[2:11] Taylor J. Williams: My wife and I decided to circumnavigate the globe. We've been putting off this trip to Antarctica since before the pandemic. It just keeps getting delayed and delayed. And this December it is finally happening.

[2:23] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Like the actual continent.

[2:25] Taylor J. Williams: The actual continent of Antarctica. So we decided, you know, wouldn't it be crazy and totally stupid if we went to all seven continents in one year? And my wife said, yeah, it would be really stupid. There's no reason to do that. And I said, yeah, but should we do it anyway?

[2:40] Taylor J. Williams: Maybe we should do it, right?

[2:41] Taylor J. Williams: Maybe we should do it. So this is our sixth continent so far. We started the year in Brazil, ended up in Cape Town for a little while in South Africa, went up to Budapest, out to Cambodia, saw Angkor Wat. And here we are in Sydney for what must be a record, like only one week. I think it's pretty stupid of us, but we had to get back home somehow.

[3:01] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: That's incredible. OK, we didn't talk about this. I had no idea. What are you doing while you're there, number one? And number two, what have you learned from this this year? Because that is a lot of mileage.

[3:15] Taylor J. Williams: It is. What I'm doing here is meeting and talking with people like you, Jeff. So thank you for that. The Internet's amazing that we could do this from around the world. I love that. Sort of reeling from the new news about this Tony nomination. I was in Cambodia. We were watching it on our iPads and it was like four in the afternoon. So it wasn't that like, oh, I got messages from my friend. I woke up and a slew of text messages from my management team.

[3:43] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Right. Exactly right. So, yeah, that's what I'm doing. Trying to get some sightseeing in, getting some new tattoos, as you do. Been getting one on every continent.

[3:52] Taylor J. Williams: That's so fun.

[4:23] Taylor J. Williams: You know, as they call them, you know, and so, yeah, it's just sort of nice to stay alert in a different way.

[4:31] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: We call that high entropy. That's really cool. You know, I feel like every episode now, I used to talk about my mission every episode and now I talk about Hawaii every episode. But coming here to Maui, I didn't realize how much of my life was Western. And I don't know if that makes any sense. But there were things that were part of culture that I just assumed were kind of universal. And that's so ignorant to say, but just coming here, I was like, oh, dang. Yeah, I guess not everybody cares about ballet. Like, yeah, I guess not everybody knows what musical theater is or thinks that it's relevant. Like those types of things. And it's not about like not enjoying it or not having a taste for it. It's just like it's not culturally relevant at all. That's been mind opening for me. But then to go to every continent, I'm sure that's even crazier.

[5:28] Taylor J. Williams: I don't know. Do you find that like, oh, gosh, how do I how do I say this? Like that seeing that perspective where music theater isn't everything that it is, you know, how we grew up or professionally like changes your appreciation for it.

[5:42] Taylor J. Williams: I feel like if I grew up loving musical theater, like loving it, addicted to cast albums, addicted to old records and videos, you know, movie adaptations of musicals. And I feel like I had a healthier relationship, a healthier professional relationship with musicals. The more I like reminded myself, OK, it's OK to like analyze the work. It's OK to be a fan, but it's OK to like be into other things also. Do you find?

[6:05] Taylor J. Williams: Yeah, for sure. For sure. Well, now I'm going to talk about my mission. One of the things that I learned being a missionary for my church was that I always wanted to look for what I had in common with other people, more so than like, knock, knock, knock, join my church and be considered a right person. So I was always looking for ways to like make a connection with people. And it's I think it served me well. I'd like to say it's one of the few good decisions I made in my early 20s. But the same goes with this kind of musical theater tradition that you're talking about, where all of a sudden I realized how important storytelling is. And that's the end. Every culture, whether it's through hula or some other form, has a form of storytelling as a way to explore humanity.

That's it's just completely universal. And if we can connect on that level, all of a sudden you start seeing all of the little like synapses in the brain start clicking. It's not about people breaking into song. It's about people telling a story and using music and dance to do it.

[7:12] Taylor J. Williams: That's so powerful. I was in a car with Shelly Williams, original cast of AIDA. She's now directing. Really amazing artist. And she released a kid's book. She wanted to inspire her daughters. And I was just talking with her. I was like, how do you do it? How do you go from being a theater performer to now being a writer? And how do you know how to switch lanes? And she said, Oh, I wouldn't know how to switch lanes. I just had to realize that it's all storytelling. Storytelling is what I do. So now if you want the story on a page, that's fine. If you want the story on a stage, that's fine. But storytelling is this fundamental thing. And that has been resonating with me for the last couple of years since she said that to me. And I look at everything now as storytelling.

[7:54] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: And I mean, that's really cool coming from what you do in the theater, which, by the way, is incredibly diverse, like the kind of skill set that you bring to different musicals, some of which I don't even understand. So, can you help me understand what it is you do?

[8:11] Taylor J. Williams: So generally, I'm a music technologist. But if you were to open a playbill, that credit might show up as keyboard and synthesizer programmer or electronic music designer, or recently, co-sound designer of Ain't No Mo'. So they're all to me different flavors of storytelling with technology and music, in a nutshell.

[8:35] Taylor J. Williams: So, yeah, I mean, I started performing at a young age. My mom had me in pageants. I was doing music theater as an actor, and went to American University for that. But I was also playing music. And I was also trying to do my own key changes. I had a lower voice. And so I wanted to understand how Sibelius…

[8:53] Taylor J. Williams: Take it down.

[8:54] Taylor J. Williams: Right?

[8:55] Taylor J. Williams: We don't need to be in the rafters.

[8:58] Taylor J. Williams: No, we really don't. You know, like, Norm Lewis and, you know, Stokes, Brian Stokes Mitchell, who's also from San Diego, they go about as high as, like, I ever want my instrument to go. And so, yeah, I would change keys. Like, I auditioned with Gethsemane from Jesus Christ Superstar, and there's no way I'm doing that Ted Neely stuff, but I really wanted to do that moment. And so I was like, all right, let me fire up Sibelius, and I'm not paying somebody else to do this. And I dropped it down, you know.

[9:22] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Yes! Oh my gosh, that's amazing.

[9:25] Taylor J. Williams: So, technology and music have always been sort of hand-in-hand for me. And I worked as a music director for a little while in the D.C. circuit, moved up to New York to do that. And I was taking this master class. Joe Church was going to show us how to conduct from the piano, like, original music director of The Lion King, Joe Church. He's an amazing composer and great guy. And then there's this extra, there are a couple extra master classes that they were offering that day. And Jeff Marder, who's an amazing pianist, amazing person, just all-around human being, and a keyboard programmer. He did Newsies, Aladdin, and a few other shows. He spoke to us about what it is to program keyboards. And I said, oh my gosh, that's a job. I had to do that in D.C. anyway. Like, I had to lug my keyboard onto the Metro to get a gig. So, like, this is great. Somebody has to pay me to do this.

[10:14] Taylor J. Williams: And so I've just sort of carved a lane in that.

[10:16] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Wow. So, and, like, your publicist sent me all these, like, cool photos of you with just, like, kind of some sick company. So, I mean, Sara Bareilles, Lin-Manuel, and all kinds of people. So, how intimately do you get to be in the creative process? And kind of how long is that period of time with them? Is it pretty short? Because, I mean, I would feel like that's the only way that you could do six shows in one season.

[10:46] Taylor J. Williams: Yeah, yeah. So, I might come in just before we have band rehearsals. So, while the cast is, after the show's been written, for the most part, aside from those rewrites we've all heard stories about, the cast will start rehearsing. And around that time, the orchestrator will start to get charts. As they're set in rehearsal, they'll be released to the orchestrator and the copying team, and then they'll come, you know, down the stream to me. At which point in time, I have to figure out what are the sounds that need to be created, how to serve the show and the band. And then I'll go into the theater for tech, be part of band rehearsals, and make changes throughout the preview process and stay around for openings. So, it could be one to two months, depending on the show, depending on where we're putting it up. And sometimes it's very intimate. Like, when we did On Your Feet, we had so much of the Miami Sound Machine there as part of our band.

[11:37] Taylor J. Williams: Mind-blowing for synth people. Are you kidding me?

[11:41] Taylor J. Williams: Right. Clay Oswald, he's one of the original music directors of the MSM, and wrote some of those great hits that Gloria Estefan has. Killer player, had his own recording studio. You just sit there and you learn, you know what I mean? He says, here's the sound that needs to go in there, and can you help me build this sound?

[11:58] Taylor J. Williams: Yes, sir.

[12:30] Taylor J. Williams: And that was part of like the sound of her youth. And so she'll make those requests. And that's the kind of thing that might end up on my table to solve and figure out. And so then like, what did you just like, go to your MIDI or Google like, how do I find, you know what I mean? Like, how do you find a sound that matches that? I have no idea. I think in this case, her daughter got involved. Her daughter was at music school and happened to have access to a sample of that. But it could be any number of things like William David Brone, Bill Brone, we were doing a show at Radio City Music Hall. And it was one of the Rockette shows. And he asked for a racket. I'm like, like a tennis racket, like a batten racket?

Like a tennis racket, yeah. Like a lot of noise, I could do that. And it turns out it's this old like sackbutt bagpipe-y instrument. And there's like two recordings you could hear of it ever from some like museum of instruments, Budapest or somewhere, I don't know. So you listen to it and then you're like, oh, okay. So it's really just like an English horn and a kazoo at the same time, like a really crappy English horn. And once you hear that, you could start to build proxies and, you know, Bill, like his protege, Christopher Yankee, they just want like something that fills that space and tells the story. They're less concerned with like the esoteric instrument name. They'll give it to you because it helps you, it helps to guide you. At the end of that, just come in with something that's going to serve the piece in that place and they'll be happy.

[14:06] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Oh my gosh, that's so cool. Like the more I hear about these little details and like there's an artist behind all of them. Don't you find that so inspiring? I just think it's so cool.

[14:08] Taylor J. Williams: 100%. I love it.

[14:13] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: That's amazing. Congratulations. So one of the shows, one of the many shows that you've worked on was Tick Tick Boom at City Center Encores, which was done, oh, when was that? I don't have it up.

[14:23] Taylor J. Williams: 2013, I want to say.

[14:23] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Yeah, I think you're right. So for those who may not know, City Center Encores will often, I mean, at this point, who knows what their mission statement is, but they tend to revive shows that don't get a lot of love. And sometimes they make Broadway transfers, like in the case of Chicago, maybe the most successful, right? But in 2013, they did Tick Tick Boom starring Lin-Manuel Miranda. And also I think Karen Oliva was in it, right?

[14:53] Taylor J. Williams: And Leslie Odom Jr. I don't know why I said Jones. Yeah, but Leslie Odom Jr. Obviously an amazing cast there, but it's of course no secret to us now what a fan of Tick Tick Boom Lin-Manuel is. So it makes perfect sense that this was happening at that time. It was just what last year, maybe the year before when Tick Tick Boom the movie came out that was ultimately directed by Mr. Miranda himself. So can you talk to me a little bit about this whole experience? Because when you go back and listen to the off-Broadway cast recording for the Tick Tick Boom, and we'll get into all of that about how that came to be, it's definitely like a small sound, right? It's a small off-Broadway sound. It's also very specifically set in 1990. So what did you then have to bring to it?

[15:52] Taylor J. Williams: So for the Encores! production, we were keeping everything. We were trying to give people a chance to see what it would have been like to see it in 2001 under Scott Schwartz's direction. It was first put together. So we actually had the same drummer, Clayton Craddock. We had the same bassist, Conrad, came back. I believe Chris Fennec, the music director for the overall program, was the music director at that time, and he was the one playing keys. I could be wrong about that. But it was really about, let's make the show what it is. So it's the same small four-piece band.

[16:31] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Oh, wow. Okay, cool.

[16:31] Taylor J. Williams: And for a little while, we tried some updated things, you know, like the delays that you hear in real life. It was, could we make these a little more modern? But then Stephen Arimas, the original arranger and music director of the show, once it became the three-person David Auburn piece as we know it, came and heard it and just felt that some of those things didn't need to change. It was really right to present it as it was. And I think that that was the right choice also, because there was already a new perspective on it. We had a different director than originally. There was a different choreographer. It was in an encore setting, which is going to be a little different than a more permanent, long-running production of the show. So it was really about preserving and recreating, which is a really special thing to get to do sometimes. There's a lot of pressure in it, but there's a lot of freedom in the boundaries of it. It's beautiful.

[17:27] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: And now that I hear you talk about it, I think that is when Jonathan Larson shines the most, is when he's such a symbol of a specific time and a specific energy and even belief system that he almost only makes sense in his time period. And that's not to say that he's not universal, because he is, and it resonates with me deeply, but he is of his time.

[17:53] Taylor J. Williams: Yeah, I think he was so aware of, and by the way, this is where it gets like, oh my gosh, the pressure of talking about John Larson as such a rent head and a massive fan. It's like, how do I bring together everything that I've felt and thought and read about him over the last 25 years? But yeah, there's—

[18:09] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: I didn't know that you were such a rent head.

[18:11] Taylor J. Williams: Oh, big time. I met my wife, Compulsive Bowlers and SightForRent.com. We met at the closing of the rent tour in DC 20 years ago. So that show, I remember, I was working on Motown and I went, I'm sorry, I'm totally rambling. I was working on—

[18:24] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: No, please ramble.

[18:25] Taylor J. Williams: I went up to Kevin McCollum one day and I was just like, Kevin, my name's Taylor. You don't know me. I'm just working in your pit. But I am a massive, I was a massive rent head. I was trying to say was, I didn't want to totally out myself as not belonging. He was like, oh, me too. And I was, oh, it just set me at ease. There's something about everybody who's worked on that show for so long that they really believe it. There's not like this, oh, we're supposed to be, you know, seasons of lovey. No, no. I think everybody that has been a part of that show, it's very real. And that was actually, I think the first time I tried to pitch him on, to your point about Jonathan, maybe shining most in this four piece band setting.

I tried to pitch him on doing a large orchestration of rent for the 20th anniversary. I was like, you know, in the rent Bible, that big coffee table book with the silver duct tape border, you know, I was like, it's on page 58. He talks about how he wrote it. You know, and I just totally like when I geeked out, and he was like, that's great. Anyway, I can help. Let me know. Send me an email. And I don't I'm not taking credit for it. But now this is actually happening in DC this next year, or later this year or something like that. They're doing a full orchestration version of the show as a concert. And I like I'd like to take a little bit of credit.

[19:39] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Yeah, you know, because there's always been strings in it. There's always been these big moments. And while it does work as a rock band, as a five piece, I think it's really exciting to just think maybe maybe it can be changed in a way that's not rent remixed in the West End in 2006. You know, there's a different way to hear it in a newer way just to keep not to keep people engaged, but to keep it in front of people so that it can stay alive and that legacy can remain.

[20:05] Taylor J. Williams: I love that. I love that. And also to a point revolving around your sound design experience, like that has changed so much the technology of how you can play and hear music in a musical has changed so much even since rent was first came about. Right. So let alone earlier than that in the 80s when like having rock music on stage wasn't even possible because how on earth would you be able to hear the actor? You know, exactly right.

[20:31] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Yeah. No, rock music was sort of a I don't want to say a joke on Broadway, but it was a gimmick first and foremost. You know, you have promises promises doing the the pop thing, the commercial pop thing on a Broadway stage, which great score, but like it was definitely new. It was one of the first time since we ever used and you had like Bye Bye Birdie doing like the pastiche Elvis thing, you know, it wasn't rock and roll.

[20:57] Taylor J. Williams: Right. Right. It wasn't until hair where we like see people saying, let's just bring in these instruments we use in the studio or on the rock stage into the theater. And that's part of what makes it such a seminal piece of work. And part of what makes it the thing that Jonathan keeps referring back to as far as a milestone and the kind of sound that he's trying to to get to and create, because he's doing this at a time when we get all these Euro shows coming over, these mega musicals are starting to take over the phantoms, the Les Mises. And those are OK. It's OK to have those, but it's also OK to have this, you know, this American art form being driven by American styles.

[21:31] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Absolutely. And also, I would add to that, going back and looking at hair, not really so much of a linear plot line in terms of storytelling. And I think that that is because of approach and style and all those sorts of things. But I also think that there's some technicality to it as well. If you're going to be playing these instruments and, you know, having the kind of sound that they went for probably can't tell as complex a story. And by the time Jonathan Larson comes around, I think he's trying to go a little bit more story driven.

[22:05] Taylor J. Williams: Yeah. Yeah, I think that's right. Which I which I find really inspiring. It's also interesting because now I'm going back. Oh, my gosh. Our second episode of a musical theater podcast was about Rent. And I sat down with my my good buddy, Kelly Dorney, who's another just like white person from middle of nowhere who somehow like got obsessed with rent in their teenage years. And I just found that like so profoundly moving that we could have found rent in our in our different ways. But in that conversation, we were talking a little bit about the rent haters, which is to say, like, there is a milieu, there is a certain attitude towards rent where it's like pay your effing rent. Right. Stop whining. We all have to pay rent. Get over it. And that is suspiciously missing from our perspective on hair. No one's saying like, cut your hair, you're going to get lice. And but that's the truth. That's the dang truth.

[23:09] Taylor J. Williams: So I'm like, why is that bias not the same? Because if we're being super honest here, the generation that created flower power is also the generation that created the greed that was so crazy in the 1980s that it gave birth to a bohemian generation that were complaining about paying skyrocketing rents in New York City.

[23:33] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: I will snap to that. One hundred percent. Let's let's be honest. I think I think that we talk about Vietnam coming into people's living rooms. We know that we know that John Kennedy died. MLK was assassinated. We know that Bobby Kennedy was shot. Like I think there was so much turmoil that was shocking to people that people had been able to ignore and sort of close their eyes to with the three martini lunch and everything we see in Mad Men and Revolutionary Road and all that world that I'm sure there were here. Don't get me wrong. But it's easy to like lean into flower power and say, OK, cool. It's the antidote to this this horror. Meanwhile, you've got rent coming on the heels of greed is good from Gordon Gekko.

You've got I mean, Jonathan Larson in rent, you know, like was the yuppie scum stomped, you know, not counting the homeless, how many tickets were comped. Right. And so you've got this idea of a yuppie, which we're only just now able to contextualize. There was a new documentary recently called something about the 80s. There was like a five part thing narrated by Rob Lowe. And I think like it's possible to look at how marketing changed and how the idea of having things was good and being a certain kind of man who wore a certain kind of deodorant. And, you know, friends is coming around and you sit around drinking these eight dollar lattes at places that used to be bars. That's changing. So interesting.

[25:00] Taylor J. Williams: It's like, as clear and evil. You know, there's a reason we keep coming back to World War II movies, right? Like, it's easy to see America as, as hero, as like... As good, Nazis bad. Exactly right. Even though it's far more complex than that, you don't have to engage with the complexity. And I think by the 90s, it's a more nuanced division that's happening in the world between the haves and the have-nots. And you've got the AIDS, you know, epidemic happening at the same time. On top of it all. And we're, we're rejecting that and not helping and help, you know, like, yeah, there's just a lot going on in the world, I think, at that time. So it's easy to, it's harder to know on which side you want to stand. You could either fall in love with the romanticism of Rent, or you could be cynical about it.

[25:43] Taylor J. Williams: Ooh, we've, I think, built so much great context around this area, around this arena. We know what's happening in terms of rock musicals. Once we get to the 80s, we know what's happening in terms of the British invasion. We know what's happening in terms of the AIDS epidemic that's taking out so much of our musical theater landscape. To the point that, with the exception of these huge blockbusters, like Cats, Les Mis, Phantom, and of course, other great American musicals like Sunday in the Park with George and Le Cajon Full, there are seasons in the 1980s where, like, best actress in a musical and best actor in a musical were completely eliminated, not because there wasn't anybody worthy of it.

There just weren't any actors in those roles. There weren't roles to be nominated. So the landscape is not great. You've got somebody like Jonathan Larson, who is trying to bring something new to the art form, and is just getting the door slammed in his face every freaking time. He starts pretty early in the decade trying to adapt George Orwell's 1984 into a musical. They say, no thank you, which is so sad. Then he has to kind of pivot, and it's inspired by 1984, but it's not the actual musical adaptation of it. He calls it Superbia, and he spends most of the decade trying to get this thing off the ground. Do you know Superbia very well?

[27:20] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: I couldn't say very well. Mark Eden Horowitz, who I think you've had on the show.

[27:25] Taylor J. Williams: Yes! Amazing historian of the Library of Congress. Exactly right. He is a friend of a friend, and so when the Larson papers were first being sorted through, they still weren't actually an accessible volume. He invited me to come in and sort of start looking through them. Hot dang, that's so cool.

[27:43] Taylor J. Williams: It was really cool to look at those back in 2008, 2009 maybe. It was really cool, and I got to read things about Superbia that I hadn't seen before, but I don't think I went as deep as Lin-Manuel Miranda will have, and Steven Levinson, when they were putting together the film, and really got to go in and listen to things or play through things.

[28:05] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Yeah, find excerpts and things that they could use.

[28:08] Taylor J. Williams: Yeah, I know J.P. Morgan saves the nation a little more. I'm just kidding. I don't know J.P. Morgan saves the nation, but yeah, Superbia I know but don't know. If you go to Wikipedia and try and read a synopsis of Superbia, it's tough to get through, because it's pretty dense sci-fi. He's created this world with new names, and you kind of have to understand the technology and the world building behind it. I mean, with a 2020 perspective, you're like, dude, no wonder this thing didn't fly. It's way too out there. It's also probably way too loud to get produced. I think they even talk about this in Tick, Tick, Boom, that it's too big for off-Broadway and then too weird for Broadway. It's just not working.

Jonathan Larson pours all of this frustration and angst about this into these one-man show performances that he starts doing at the end of the 1980s. Once again, it's all informed by his experience with Superbia. At first, it's called Boho Days. He's performing it in what they kind of considered to be rock monologues. One of his childhood friends helps mount it. It kind of starts getting a little bit more steam, certainly, than Superbia ever did. Then they workshop it a little bit more, and it becomes Tick, Tick, Boom. The whole concept behind it is that Jonathan is approaching his 30th birthday in the year 1990, and there's just this Tick, Tick, Tick in the back of his mind. He's running out of time.

Nothing's happening, and the inevitable boom is waiting to take him out. This is what ultimately leads him performing this randomly. It's what gets him Rent. Honestly, truly, it's what Jeffrey Sellers, who is, I think, one of the original producers, sees, and it makes him a believer in this man, in this great artist. That's kind of the end of Tick, Tick, Boom in that incarnation. Once Jonathan Larson moves into Rent, that, of course, takes up most of his time, and then he tragically passes away right before opening. Rent becomes this mammoth hit, which I can imagine him maybe having... I don't know. I'm just interested in you being a Renthead. How do you think he would feel about the mainstream, almost commercial success of Rent? Do you think there would be a little bit of push and pull with him about being happy about it, or do you think it would just be a fulfillment of dreams, period?

[30:50] Taylor J. Williams: I think it would have been a fulfillment of dreams, period.

[30:53] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Good. I want to believe that, too.

[30:55] Taylor J. Williams: Yeah. It brought to so many people, you know, I don't want to say the grunge of something musically or to even describe Alphabet City that way, but it brought something that wasn't standard fare on Broadway to Broadway.

[31:09] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Yeah. Once again, reached me in Farmville, Utah. You know what I mean?

[31:15] Taylor J. Williams: Yeah. I think it's a huge success, not just like, oh, okay, 17 years and, you know, tours and languages and recoup. No, but I think it's... I imagine he would view it as a personal triumph. And right, Lisa? With the huge success of Rent, of course, everybody wishes that we had 14 more Jonathan Larson musicals to celebrate, right? Unfortunately, they just don't exist. So, what the original producer of Boho Days decided to do was reach out to author David Auburn, who is probably most famous for writing Proof, the Pulitzer Prize winning drama Proof, which was also turned into a film. I think the film is Gwyneth Paltrow. The original Broadway was Mary Louise Parker. Anyway, great play. He comes in and they work together to make Tick, Tick, Boom into an actual show with three people, a band, kind of expanded a little bit so that these monologues become a little more scene like. And when does Tick, Tick, Boom open off Broadway? Is it really in the 2000s?

[32:19] Taylor J. Williams: Yeah, I think it's April 2001.

[32:22] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Yeah, you're right.

[32:23] Taylor J. Williams: Because I think like April 25th and the cast album came out on 9-11, like literally September 11, 2001, it was released.

[32:31] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Oh, gosh.

[32:33] Taylor J. Williams: So, you know, tragedies, not like, you know, tragedy strikes Jonathan Larson, happened to all of us, and certainly people in the city. But talk about Tick, Tick, Boom, you know?

[32:40] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Talk about the timing, yeah.

[32:42] Taylor J. Williams: That's insane. It doesn't like transfer to Broadway. I don't know if it was ever going to. It's not, that wasn't the landscape of Broadway at the time. This was pre...

[32:55] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: A title of show and story of my life.

[32:57] Taylor J. Williams: Yes, exactly. You've read my mind. Yeah, this is pre-title of show. But it's a pretty sizable hit off Broadway. It wins Outstanding Musical from the Outer Critics Circle. It also introduces everybody to Raul Esparza.

[33:13] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Right.

[33:13] Taylor J. Williams: I think Louder Than Words becomes a pretty well known Jonathan Larson song because of it.

[33:20] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: When did you hear it?

[33:22] Taylor J. Williams: It must have been the fall of 2002.

[33:26] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Okay.

[33:27] Taylor J. Williams: So I got my hands on the Rent cast album in 1997. There was a young woman named Danny, who was like a stage manager at my youth theater, who was like, you have to listen to this. And she was so kind to like, let it out of her hands and let me borrow it. So you know, about a year after the show had opened on Broadway, but I didn't actually get to see the show until it came to the San Diego Civic Theater in 2002. And I was out rushing all night. And you know, when you're there in the rush line, it's like a little community. It's a really wonderful thing.

[34:06] Taylor J. Williams: That's so true.

[34:07] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: And Kevin Spencer, who's playing Roger, came out and like had a bottle of Jack Daniels. We sat there like, you know, just having a good time. And everybody, you know, there's this like, how much do you know Rent? How well do you know Rent? Like friendly competition or like, you know, but there was also the after hours conversation was what other shows do you know? It's like, oh, but do you know Songs for a New World? Oh, but have you listened to Wild Party? You know, which version, you know? It's all these music theater nerd, you know, I don't know, trade secrets or something. And Tick Tick Boom was one of those shows that I'd already heard about at that time. Because I remember being able to be in on that conversation. So yeah, around that, I think.

[34:39] Taylor J. Williams: I don't remember when I first heard it. I've never seen it on stage. I definitely saw an illegal recorded version of it, which inspired me greatly. But then yeah, it wasn't until we did this Encores! production that I saw it and then the Keen Company production afterward with Nick Blamire, George Salazar and Sierra Renee.

[35:00] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Oh my gosh, that's cool. Can you tell me a little bit? Where is that company? I don't know them.

[35:04] Taylor J. Williams: Yeah, so the Keen Company is based in New York. And it was the first proper off-Broadway revival because the Encores! one, whether or not you consider it an off-Broadway revival is TBD, but yeah, the Keen Company one, it was at the Acorn Theatre on Theatre Row. So right there on 42nd Street. And Nick Blamire was born to play Jonathan Larson, like in the same way that Lynn was so perfect and in the same way that Andrew Garfield was so perfect. I guess it's not Jonathan Larson, it's just John or Johnny, you know, in the script. But this character is like this perfect icon of struggling artist on the precipice of sellout, you know, and I'm putting strong air quotes around that. I don't think that choosing comfort is selling out, but choosing to stop focusing on your art primarily so you could meet your other needs or choosing to stay in that struggle, believing in your voice and waiting for other people to hear it.

And yeah, so Nick Blamire was just so perfect. And George Salazar was heart-wrenching as his friend Michael, who's based on Jonathan Larson's real friend Matthew O'Grady. It was just a really beautiful thing. And you see how sarcastic the script is and you get things that don't always shine through in the cast album, which when you go back and watch clips of Jonathan performing this as Tick, Tick, Boom, you know, a concert with Roger Bartz singing in the background, his friend Roger Bartz. It's a movie. I'm so happy.

[36:32] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Yeah, exactly right. But it's like you feel his spirit is very much with us and with the show and alive because it's just captured so well in the vibe and the general energy of Tick, Tick, Boom.

[36:39] Taylor J. Williams: Absolutely. Well, I read the script in preparation for today, so I'm really excited to go through it with you and so everybody can kind of get a taste of what the stage version is like.

[36:50] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Yeah. You ready? Let's dive in.

[36:58] Taylor J. Williams: Let's dive in. Okay, so this opening number, which, by the way, can I just say like I've already stopped. I've already put a pin in it. The movie is wonderful. Yes, it's wonderful. And I just have to give like props to Lin-Manuel Miranda because if you if you're a little over it by now, like whatever, that's your opinion. But the fact of the matter is, is that he had this huge mega success with Hamilton and then followed it up by proving that he could make companies a lot of cash.

[37:30] Taylor J. Williams: In the form of Moana and Encanto. And so with that kind of success, you essentially get an opportunity to do whatever passion project you're really interested in. Like, you're going to be able to find funding for it. And what he picked, what he decided to do was to direct his very first feature film, and that it was going to be based on an off-Broadway musical that nobody has seen, and it's called TICK, TICK... BOOM! and it is wonderful. And the fact that that happened, that it was successful, highly regarded around, you know, Oscar season, I find I almost find that more impressive than Hamilton. Because like, who cashes out that check in that way? It's really beautiful. You know, Lin said in an interview somewhere, he said it was the only film I was already ready to direct.

It was something I knew so intimately. It was something I had lived. It was something that, you know, felt so close to home. You know, he talks about seeing Rent when he was 17 for his birthday. And I think that he just, I can't speak for him, but is, you know, so drawn to Jonathan Larson as a figure in the industry, as a trailblazer. And so I think it makes sense to me that this is what he would have directed first. Yeah, also point out those people who are over him or have whatever they have to say about him, because I'll take them on one by one. I mean, really, like, you can't be around the power that is Lin-Manuel Miranda and not feel good. Like, there's nothing that makes you say, Oh, God, I'm jealous of him, or I'm mad at him, or there's no overhype.

Like, he is that good. I remember when we were doing a Hamilton workshop, which happened the same time we were doing this Tick Tick Boom. Like, we were literally going back and forth. Oh, my gosh, that's so overwhelming to me to even consider. Yeah. And we were, I was riding the elevator with John Kander, who he's doing New York, New York with now. And John just, like, is gushing about, about this kid, you know, like, you know, he's older than me, but like, to Johnny is not and so he's just gushing about him. And it's wonderful. And then when we're doing this, we would go over to city center and be working. And Jeanine Tesori just can't stop talking about Lin's use of assonance. And like, and he really is the nicest way to say a dork, like he would he would stand on stage while we were checking and he'd be lighting something.

And Lin would sit there and come up with these sentences. And then he would like, analyze them. So he was talking about like, how could he get the past pluperfect? You know, like, he's just sitting there like, analyzing grammar. Oh, my gosh, while working while while working his way through the show mentally. So yeah, nothing. I mean, he's nothing short of amazing. And that he pulled this off and so well, like, there was definitely trepidation for me. Not because I didn't trust him or his vision or whatever. But just yet again, Jonathan Larson means so much to me also. And I think so many people feel a strong connection to him or protective ownership of him and his work since he passed on. But you know, you see that, that first trailer with Andrew Garfield jumping in the pool during swimming, which he added, you know, to the piece.

And you're like, okay, he's going to do this well. And then you see the film and it just, it just lifts you up. There's, I can't find anything to be mad about. No, no, truly, truly. And it's this beautiful chain of our musical theater heritage, because you see how much Sondheim was an inspiration to Larson. Right here off the bat, the song is called 3090, right? And there's something company-like about this all taking place on his birthday in the way that Sondheim, you know, has Bobby obsessing over a birthday. So you feel the little seeds of Sondheim in Jonathan Larson. And then you go to something like In the Heights and listen to Blackout and you hear the seeds of Jonathan Larson and Lin-Manuel. And then he's like making a movie that's paying homage to them both. And like, it's just, it just feels like this quilt that I love so much.

[41:36] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: I think that's a great way to describe it. I'll shut up. I just want to, one thing, I think that is what keeps this art so interesting. Like, and it's what makes it possible for like artists to go forward and create knowing that they're on the shoulders of giants. Like I've always said that like Colored Lights by Kander and Ev from The Rink gave way to Metal Lark from Baker's Wife, which is Sun and Moon, you know, from Songs for a New World. They are the same story. It is, it is a, it is just a thread. I'm paralyzed. You know, I'm paralyzed. This is, this is the best thread. This is the best thread I've, I've ever felt. Say it one more time. Yeah. Colored Lights from The Rink. Colored Lights from The Rink.

Metal Lark from Baker's Wife. Metal Lark from Baker's Wife to Sun and Moon. Sun and Moon from Songs for a New World. Yeah, yeah. Stars in the Moon. And so they're all three digging into the same thing, writing for strong female voices and this idea of love or, I mean, it's, you know, the Casablanca question. Beginning, middle, end. Beginning, middle, end. Right. And it's just such a beautiful exercise for them as writers. And they've become such mainstay cabaret songs for the very same reason. You're, you're exactly right. Here, this opening number, 3090, John, once again, feeling the inevitable tick, tick, tick, needing to give birth to something. In a way, it's almost like a, like an artist, a biological clock, right?

Yeah. Gotta give birth to something. And in the stage version, there are only three people. There's the, of course, the actor who plays John. He only plays John. And then there is a female and a male actor who then play all of the other characters. Their main roles are Michael and Susan. Susan is the longtime girlfriend of John. She's a dance teacher, famously teaches ballet to rich people's untalented children. And then Michael, who used to be an actor, childhood best friend of John, but has since like gone into the marketing world and now has a beautiful apartment in BMW, not unlike, and three belts, three Gucci belts, not unlike say Benny in Rent, if we want to make that comp, but Michael hasn't sold his soul in the way that you might say, like Benny's an antagonist much more than Michael is in this piece.

So these are the three main characters. But if we ever talk about another character in the show, they're being played by one of those two actors. Anything else we need to say in setting this up? Oh, John is working on a musical superbia. I wonder why. And he's getting ready for a big workshop. That's an industry workshop. He's trying to get his agent to invite some VIPs. So hopefully it'll get some, excuse me, it'll get some traction and get something going. Am I missing anything here at the top? No, I think that's it. I mean, style. I mean, yes, it's the eve of his birthday, as you said. And stylistically, we see a lot of comparisons with Rent, just like references to the Wizard of Oz, which we get in Lovey Bohem.

And definitely building this, this Larson world. It's interesting that the version of this show that we have preserved came after his passing when we could look at his, his masterpiece, as opposed to the other way around.

[45:01] Taylor J. Williams: Oh, I think you're right. There's something inspired about that, isn't there? I like that a lot. So after this opening number, kind of the main tension from it within the romantic relationship in the show, is that Susan wants to settle down, like there's a possibility of her getting, getting a job, is it upstate or in Connecticut or something like that?

[45:24] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Yeah, I think it's upstate. Upstate?

[45:26] Taylor J. Williams: But yeah, it's essentially about leaving, leaving the city. Right now, she's a bus and two trains away, which in New York geography is, you know, she might as well already be in Africa. But they live in the same, they live on the same island.

[45:40] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: It's the same island, but it couldn't be further away.

[45:42] Taylor J. Williams: It couldn't be further away. But she's somehow wanted to talk about moving further away still. And John, I mean, he's not making his living, I say in quotes, as an artist, like that's not how he's paying his bills. But he is so kind of, it's complex. He's, he's tied to that area. He wants to be an artist living in that area, even if it means like taking a shower in the kitchen, you know, and, and stirring your soup while you're on the toilet, like, you know, those hallmarks of bohemian life in New York City, he's very proud of it, and doesn't want to leave despite also being at his breaking point. So it's not just like he has a nagging girlfriend, like he is reacting to something within himself as well of like, maybe I should just throw in the towel.

Right? I think he gives, does he give a list of all the things in that opening monologue of what it is to be turning 30? Yeah, older than Napoleon, when he did something probably extremely impressive at the time, older than Sondheim, when he had his first musical, like, he's comparing to all these things. So I think that biological clock you're talking about isn't just the arbitrary number of 30. But it's again, all those markers that he grew up seeing as accomplishments of people before him.

[47:03] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Yeah, I think his brother in law is a screenwriter, right? And this is like successful. So it's not just like selling out to, you know, go work on Wall Street. It's also this feeling that like, why are artists succeeding? And I'm not right on a script he's been working on for only a month, you know, another script that he's been working on.

[47:19] Taylor J. Williams: Yeah. Oh, my gosh, which is very real. I think it's so easy to, I mean, I think it's getting better. Now. I don't know, I'd like to hear what you think. But while entertainment can be a little bit youth obsessed, I feel like I'm constantly reminded of these stories of, you know, actors who've been working as you know, artists their whole lives, and then all of a sudden get a big break at 60. And that's when their Oscar nomination comes. You know what I mean? Like, and also because of the pandemic, the shame around needing a survival job while you're also being an artist, or I even don't like using that I want to take that back, incorporating other types of employment in order to be an artist. I think the shame has been decreased around that.

[48:01] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Yeah, I would agree. I think the thing that's, I don't want to say missing, I don't know, I don't know where it's shifting right now. But is the idea that the only way to be successful as an artist is to be is to be on these huge projects, these, you know, these mega million dollar paychecks. And I'm so grateful for the teachers that I had at American University, Carl Menninger, you know, sort of dispelled that idea of the starving artist as an idea to romanticize. And thank you, you know, talked about, it's okay to to go and work either, you know, a supplemental job or to take the theater job that might not pay all of your bills or everything, but allows you to continue to work on your craft and the thing you're passionate about.

And I think that's how I went from being an onstage performer to primarily doing sound and music related things. I might turn back around and decide to, you know, pay for some headshots and get back on stage at some point in time. That's just not where I am today. But like, I don't write that off as like, oh, I failed. It's too late or yeah, it's never too late. You know, you could always sit down and write a song. If you're a composer, you could always, you know, whatever it is, go take a dance class. And if it turns into something that that gets you accolades, that's fine. But accolades certainly don't have to be your metric of success.

[49:18] Taylor J. Williams: Yeah. So let's see. Susan looks hot in a green, green dress. We know that.

[49:26] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Which is cut from the film.

[49:29] Taylor J. Williams: Too bad.

[49:30] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Yeah. I mean, it's a fun song, but I think it's like an energy. Okay, we had 30 minutes slowed down. It's a hype song. You know, like this whole show, it sometimes feels like you're a good man, Charlie Brown, how it's like, it's like Charlie Brown's life in the course of a day, but we're going to go through like several holidays and, you know, end up looking at the stars, you know, wake up for school, end up looking at the stars and everything that happens in between could be read as one day, even though it's the course of a year.

[49:54] Taylor J. Williams: That's so true. Yes.

[49:56] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: And I think this is just sort of that, like, you need to sugar pick me up later, you know.

[50:00] Taylor J. Williams: You're talking with your friends. You're working about this. You know, it's like a song cycle with a script in some ways.

[50:06] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: You're absolutely right. Are there any specific songs within those little pieces? You mentioned the Sugar one because I guess Jonathan Larson was obsessed with Twinkies. So there's this kind of cute ode to Sugar helping him through life. I see nothing wrong with this. I see no faults. What else though? The Therapy song. If you want to know how I fight in a romantic relationship, that's probably like word for word something that I've said. It's really, really funny. I don't even want to try and like spell it out. But the dynamic of you said this, and I know you said this. But what I'm trying to say is that you don't know that I know that you said this.

[50:47] Taylor J. Williams: Right. It's a tangled web. Communication is everything, whether it's a story or whether it's an impersonal one-on-one. Yeah, it's a funny song. I love it.

[50:55] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: It's a great song. Oh, of course, we got to talk about Sunday. Hello. Sunday is this ode to, of course, the gorgeous Sunday from A Sunday in the Park with George. But he has repurposed it to be about Sunday brunch at the diner that he's working at. And it's absolutely brilliant. A great parody of a song, but isn't making fun of Sondheim. It's making fun of his own life, right? And so like the knowledge of him being a musical theater writer is where the humor comes from. I don't know. Did you ever have those moments in your life? I remember working at Restoration Hardware. Do you remember Restoration Hardware?

[51:35] Taylor J. Williams: I do. Yeah. Like a pottery barn?

[51:40] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Yeah, my first iPad cover was from Restoration Hardware.

[51:43] Taylor J. Williams: Oh, so it was a fancy schmancy leather bound one.

[51:46] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: It was a birthday gift from my in-laws.

[51:48] Taylor J. Williams: They got good taste. It was a good job because I had a manager who would just call me up every two weeks and be like, what shifts do you have available? When can you work? And so it worked really well with my auditioning and performing and stuff. But I would not be lying if there were days where I was in the stockroom folding towels for four hours and thinking about what I would say in my Tony speech. Have you ever had experiences like that in your life?

[52:15] Taylor J. Williams: Oh, too many of them. Yeah. I used to work at a Subway sandwich shop. I was a sandwich artist. And so, you know, when I saw Fly By Night, I was like, okay, this is me. There's a sandwich making song in there. But yeah, that and restaurants. I worked as a banker. So you know the grind of that.

[52:36] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Yeah. And it's, you know, that's I folded clothes at the Gap or it was Old Navy, I guess. So, yeah, whatever got the bills paid, I did. And it wasn't until somebody offered me a job playing piano like at a banquet that night. She was like, I need you to play at last and one other song. And I literally quit like I just I went up to the restaurant and I was like, I'm not coming in tonight. If I do this forever, I'm not going to put my energy into playing piano. And I just didn't go back.

[53:07] Taylor J. Williams: Wow. Okay. That was the bakery. That was it was a place called Uncle Julio's Rio Grande Cafe or something like that was a Mexican restaurant in Rockville, Maryland. And yeah, I went that night, got paid really well, had a really nice dinner, accompanied a really nice singer. And, you know, I'm very happy and I didn't work in restaurants ever again until I got a job in a restaurant when I moved to New York, which is to say, you know, this big punctuation was just a semicolon.

[53:40] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: You're killing me today. That big punctuation was just a semicolon. That's poetry, dude.

[53:45] Taylor J. Williams: Thank you. Okay. Sunday. But I will say what's cool about Sunday is that whereas in the Sondheim, in Sunday in the Park with George, it's the day off. And we, you know, we know we sing about it being the day off. And so everything is a lift and it's Sunday in the blue, right? It's going up here. It's Sunday. It's going down. And so there's like interesting. What a great that's a great know how intentional that was. But like there's something about, yeah, I'm here in this soul sucking place. You know, that's why you're just a waiter. You know, it's you see everybody else sort of putting John into a hole that he doesn't want to be in. He sees himself as a creative. And so this is a chance to get everybody else's perspective.

And I will say one thing that I don't think made it onto the cast album, but I think there's somebody who does like a very posh, pretentious accent with like, I'll have the salad niçoise or something like that. There's like a, you know, a very sassy attitude. And in the script, I don't know if you caught it. It's actually meant to be pronounced Nikoise. It's one of those like people who just misplaces it. I'll have the salad Nikoise and some holly bread. I just think that that's such a beautiful little detail.

[55:00] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: That's hilarious. Yeah, it was probably just taken out for the album. Like they didn't even know how to say it.

[55:06] Taylor J. Williams: Yeah, it would have been too hard to convey that joke. But yeah, it works well on stage. Let's talk about Michael. We've talked a little bit about Susan wanting to move upstate. Talked about John, obviously. Michael has his great apartment. But like we said, he's a little bit more sympathetic. And he has this beautiful song called Real Life, which is stunning. What's he exploring in the song? Would you mind kind of taking us through that?

[55:29] Taylor J. Williams: Yeah, so John has just driven Michael to Newark Airport, which is a joke that goes throughout the show. It is nice BMW that, you know, will heat your butt. You know, it's got heated seats. You can't go back, you guys. Once you have heated seats, I'm sorry. You can't go back. And so it's this weird like soliloquy that happens with John just sitting there. Like I know that he's singing also, but it's like not their goodbye before he gets on the plane or goes into the airport. And it's got like just all this imagery that like sunlight through the window across from your bed, heartbeats of the children asleep in the next room, all these like little things that you might appreciate if you're aware of your ticking clock.

You know, we see this happening again in Without You in Rent. And you see the imagery that so beautifully lit as Colin saying goodbye to Angel. And so if you know, the better you know that show, the more you sort of know what's about to come in Michael's life. But yeah, he gets to he gets to sort of deliver this heavy question. Is this real life without us really knowing why? It's not until later that he reveals to John, spoiler alert, that he's sick. And by that, he means that he's HIV positive. And that that's sort of as a refocus for John and what it actually means to. I don't think he's self-absorbed, but we see him at this point where he's really focused on superbia. Will my agent get people to come? Will it change my life? And this just sort of helps to like really throw things into perspective.

[57:06] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: That's cool. What I appreciate about both this show and Rent is that him writing from true life reveals to me how Jonathan Larson believed in the importance of diversity because he had an incredibly diverse array of friends, gay, straight, every color of the rainbow. And this was honestly a little bit before even, you know what they talk about in the script, how like John is annoyed by political correctness. And isn't that interesting how quickly we forget what political correctness used to mean?

[57:34] Taylor J. Williams: Right. Like it used to be the complete opposite, that it wasn't politically correct to talk about diversity and the need for to take care of those afflicted by the AIDS epidemic and all of these sorts of things. And yet through Jonathan Larson's writing, you see what he believes, even if he's not outright saying it simply by the presence of the characters there.

[58:01] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: I don't know quite how to ask this to you. So I'm just going to ask it in your field, are there many people who look like you?

[58:09] Taylor J. Williams: No. No. I mean, that's what I thought. Yeah. In programming, absolutely not. There is one other person I could think of immediately that is not a white Jewish male. And his name is Hiro Aida. He's a wonderful programmer and he's from Japan. There are others in the UK, maybe globally, it looks a little different, but on Broadway, no. And in sound design, there are a few black sound designers, but not many. And that's part of what made Ain't No Mo' such a special experience for me to get to have my first sound design credit on this very black show. But the cool thing is, I'm just going to send some flowers to Jonathan Deans right now, four time Tony Award nominee Jonathan Deans, who is just a sound design superstar.

Better than his technical skills, it's his emotional and human skills. He brought me into this show after reading the script. He's a white British American sound designer, but it wasn't like to be a token piece. It wasn't, you know, he never tried to like stipulate the rules of my contract or tried to hide me or take my black ideas and discard my black body. One hundred percent. He said, we are collaborators. I want you to be a part of this. I don't want to fail to overturn a stone and not serve this piece as far as black culture, which is so important to the show. So I need not to be the only one doing this. But it is not that I'm asking to borrow or to steal any of your blackness in order to elevate myself.

You know, he pulled up a chair, he made the table a little bigger and we shared everything. Lennon and McCartney style, you know, something he designed on his own or if it's something I designed on my own, it is our co-design. And it was really a wonderful collaborative process. And I think like the way forward, because now I'm a Tony nominee and that means that I might have a little more cachet when it comes to saying, oh, this this black designer that I met, this queer designer, this female designer, this, you know, there's somebody else that I see that is talented. I can say, let me hold the door open. Let me send the elevator down, something like that.

[1:00:14] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: So, yeah, that's so inspiring. That makes me feel very hopeful. Thank you for sharing that.

[1:00:21] Taylor J. Williams: Thank you for asking. So back into the story, we can now go to Superbia, to the workshop. Yeah. In the midst of this kind of struggle between him and Susan deciding what their future is going to be, he kind of just starts developing, if not a talent crush, then maybe full on feelings for a girl who's playing one of the roles in Superbia. Her name's Caressa. And this is when, and I think that this was a move by Mr. Proof, David Aubourn. Now we get to kind of implant some songs from Superbia into Tick Tick Boom, because that show probably is never going to be done. But because of Tick Tick Boom, we have more breadcrumbs to kind of see what was in it. One of the songs that she sings is called Come to Your Senses.

Great song, kind of a powerhouse song. That performance is what allows us to believe that the workshop is a success. And not only is it a success, but there are some people who show up, including his agent, who he doesn't even recognize at the beginning, because it's been so long since he's seen his agent. He's like, who's that lady? Oh, yeah, that's my agent. And his idol, Mr. Stephen Sondheim even shows up to the workshop. And I think that it implants in him this false sense of hope that he's going to wake up the next day and there's going to be all of these job offers and a producer is going to say, we're taking it to Broadway. And that's not what happens. He talks to his agent, and the agent's like, it was wonderful.

It was so great. Everyone I talked to says that you're the future, you're a great talent, and they can't wait to see what comes next. And that's tough, right? That's some tough feedback for someone who's just poured so much of their life into one show. And he's definitely feeling bad for himself. In the process, he also decides to try his hand at the whole marketing job and takes Michael up on this offer to go into his work and see if it works for him. It very,

[1:02:30] Taylor J. Williams: They're trying to come up with the name for this fat substitute. And he, being a lyricist and a good writer, immediately comes up with quippy things, and they're like, actually, this is more of a think tank. We don't need your ideas, which is just hilarious. So Michael's like, Why did you botch that for you? Why did you batch that for me? And this is when he finds out that Michael is actually sick. And in their own way, they're asking this question, What do you do when you only have so much time in your life? Same question, two possibly different approaches. Michael wants to feel comfortable with whatever time he has left. And Jonathan is thinking, I can't leave this artist's life, right? I gotta keep going and make something.

The show ends at his birthday party. Everybody's able to come and support him, which is lovely. In the process of the love and the congratulations is a phone call from Stephen Sondheim, whose name he can't even utter, you know, right? You know, in the script, it's spelled S-T-E line, like dash, S-O-N, dash, like he can't even say the name.

[1:03:56] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Which is not uncommon to the way in Jewish tradition, you wouldn't write out God, you would write G-D, you know, like, it's the same thing.

[1:04:04] Taylor J. Williams: We don't say Jehovah, right? Or Yahweh, we can't say it. That's hilarious. You're so right. But Sondheim himself calls, which I believe actually happened, right?

[1:04:15] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Yeah, it's a real voicemail. That's, I think it's part of the rental package on the show. If you do the show, you will get an audio file so you can have that as part of your production.

[1:04:25] Taylor J. Williams: That's so beautiful. Oh my gosh. And he just basically says, I was so impressed with you. I'd love to get lunch and talk about the future. You know, like sometimes those little gifts, those little tender mercies are like all you need to keep you going.

[1:04:42] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Yeah. I think Jon reveals early in the show, that all he wants to do is, is wake up every morning and write something, you know, like, and I want to do that every day for the rest of my life. So I think we know that we're sort of watching somebody just struggle with how do I sustain this thing that makes that keeps me alive, that sustains me, you know, and we just have to watch him go through this, this hero's journey, in order to get to the point where, okay, this person that I've been putting a lot on has said, I like it. The workshop went well, but that doesn't solve everything. So I'm going to keep going, you know, one more foot forward. And as audience members, we know that that means he's going to work on rent. And in the process, also, do JP Morgan saves the nation.

[1:05:29] Taylor J. Williams: Where's that thing? When is that getting a recording? Does it have a recording?

[1:05:35] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: I think there's, in somebody's personal archives, there is, there's footage, they definitely did photos, Ben Brantley did a review of it. So like, this was, you know, this, oh, my God, yeah, it's in the old New York Times archives, the year before they digitized everything. And a friend of mine, Tim Cusack was one of the dancers in it. So he got to work with Jonathan, literally the year he died. So yeah, it's, it's an interesting little piece.

[1:05:58] Taylor J. Williams: I bet. I bet. Interesting guy, interesting artists. So the show ends with the song called louder than words. Why do you think we end with this song? Because in many ways, the words are what were so important to him, this voicemail, right? Just the kind words, the motivation to keep going meant so much to him. So why do they sing, you know, actions speak louder than words?

[1:06:27] Taylor J. Williams: From a purely marketing standpoint, I think it's the almost gospel rock song that's closest to seasons of love. And in this short piece, you know, it's nice to leave on that uptick. But aside from that, I think it's just, it's not just what you want to send people out singing, but it's like, that's such a great question. And I'm like, grasping at all the reasons that that could be the way to end the show.

[1:06:53] Taylor J. Williams: I think maybe I would like the song more if it was called cages or wings. Yeah, yeah. Because I think that that's kind of the little nugget in there that brings us back to the story so much is that, is that it's ultimately like we have a choice, we have a choice to do with the time that we have. And what is that choice going to be? Are we going to live in a cage? Are we going to use our wings? And I guess depending on what motivates us, it's still our choice. Nobody can take that away from you, not even a disease, you still have the choice of what you're going to do with the time you have left.

[1:07:33] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: I think that's a beautiful interpretation. I agree with it 100%. I think that that is what the song gets at. I guess I don't think that the title needs to change. And I think here's why. In the film, Lin does a great job of having Andrew Garfield as John bike past silence equals death, you know, that that slogan about to not speak out about the AIDS, you know, pandemic. It's as he's running, it's right after he's found out from Michael that he's sick, and he's, you know, just fleeing the situation doesn't know what to do. And we also hear that in La Vie Boheme, you know, end up fight AIDS. It's about it is about action to him. So I think, I think more context. Yes. Yeah, there's something in Jonathan Larson that was I could sit here and write something pretty, I can go work in marketing and do chops too.

I think writing the kind of musical he was writing that ended up being rent was an active revolution. It wasn't just the words in it. But it was the defiance. It was the I'm not going to give up. I'm not going to be caged. I'm going to take the next step forward. That step is the action. You know, I think that might be why.

[1:08:40] Taylor J. Williams: Yeah, I love that. That's beautiful. Thank you. Oh, my gosh, this was so much fun. Gosh, 90 minute show. And you know, we, you know, talked as long as somebody could watch all to somebody could have watched the entire show and the amount of time that we've been talking about the podcast. Thank you so much, Taylor for doing this with me. What I almost see tick tick boom now, as being not only a reflection of the time, but this beautiful encapsulation of what it meant to be an artist like Jonathan Larson in that time, because he was not an Andrew Lloyd Webber. He was not a Stephen Sondheim. He was a young kid in this very precarious decade. And I'm so grateful that he was able to like give birth to something with that experience, because it's singular and representative of, I'm sure many people who felt exactly the same way. And I can also see myself in that and find empathy, not only for what it is to be an artist, but to be living at that time. But what do you see as the footprint of the show?

[1:09:51] Taylor J. Williams: It's not often you get a musical autobiography, right?

[1:09:54] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Mmm, that's a good point.

[1:09:55] Taylor J. Williams: Some people are very, you know, there's biographies, there's musical biographies, but Rent does a better job of looking at the city around it, right? You know, Times Square being filled with needles and you know, all this other stuff, right? This show does such a good job at looking at the artist at this time. And I think what's comforting about it in a lot of ways is that there hasn't been so much change in terms of that personal struggle. There's something universal about John, because we all reach this precipice where we have to decide. And I'd like to think that the more universal that is, the more specific it can be to people. And that will inspire other artists to say, okay, I can go forward or other people out of arts, maybe it's a politician, maybe it's a teacher, maybe it's anything to say, okay, cool, I could struggle between, do I stay in the classroom, even though it's very difficult right now, and I'm not getting support from the school district, or I'm, you know, or do I go into private industry where maybe I can make more money?

Do I become a lobbyist for teacher America or whatever? I don't know. And for some people, that'll be the right choice. And for others, it'll be a struggle. But the joy they'll get out of staying with their students might be what's right for them.

[1:11:04] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: So yeah, and bringing us back around. Oh, absolutely. You did because that brings us right back around to what we were talking about at the beginning with storytelling. We each have a story. And when we can see our own story reflected back at us, even if it's a composer, and we're a teacher, I think it helps us to write our own story. And I mean, that is what the last song is telling us, like, go live your story.

[1:11:31] Taylor J. Williams: Yeah, and that's the important thing. When you say write your own story, like not everybody's a writer, you don't have to be a writer. Like, we tell ourselves stories every day, every day when we wake up and look in the mirror, and it's negative, or it's positive, we choose to tell ourselves stories. And we rehearse those stories. You know, if you could say I love yourself 10 times a day, that's a story you're writing for yourself, and your brain is going to remember it. And that's that's a whole other podcast we can get into. Yeah, we are all storytellers. I think that that's a, like you said, it's a uniquely human power. But it's a it's a global human power.

[1:12:04] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Yes. Oh my gosh, this is awesome. Thank you again. As always, if you have recommendations for shows you'd like us to cover on a musical theater podcast, you can always email me at a musical podcast at gmail.com. Don't forget, we're on social media. We're on Twitter, Instagram, TikTok. You can follow us there. Although like after talking about tick tick boom, I'm like social media is the last place I want to be right. Thank you, Jonathan Larson. Because Superbia, honestly, if you look at it, it may have predicted social media. Anyway, what else do we have? We have Patreon exclamation point where for only $1 a month, you can receive bonus exclusive episodes specifically for you. We also have our Tee Public Store, the profits of which we donate to Broadway Cares Equity Fights AIDS.

Oh my gosh, I'm so grateful for you all. And if you want to give us some love with a nice reviewer rating, I won't be mad about it. Anyway, I appreciate you all. Hey, how do we follow you? And what are you up to now? I mean, besides traveling the world?

[1:13:02] Taylor J. Williams: Yeah. TaylorJWilliams.com is a great website, by the way.

[1:13:07] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Well done.

[1:13:08] Taylor J. Williams: Well, thank you. It's being redone. Now that I'm a Tony nominee, I'm supposed to have a Tony nominee's website, I guess. I don't know.

[1:13:16] Taylor J. Williams: And I music directed, co produced the music of and orchestrated this musical that's going to the Fringe, the Edinburgh Fringe in Scotland. Oh my god, this August, it's called Chris Kirkpatrickmas. We did it at the Hollywood Fringe last year. And it's like a wonderful life and a Christmas carol. But with Chris Kirkpatrick from NSYNC as the central character, sort of looking at how life could have gone differently and why, you know, he's estranged from some of the other members of the band now. Not actually, there's no shade. It's such a beautiful, loving piece.

[1:13:48] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: I'm so excited about this. Why is the Edinburgh Fringe Festival like the best Fringe Festival? And it's clear over like, why is that so strange? I mean, because they can be a little shady at times. And like, they're so legit. It's so great. Anyway.

[1:14:03] Taylor J. Williams: Yeah, so that's, that's there. So I'm on Instagram, but people can find me. They'll find me.

[1:14:09] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Well, enjoy. I'm so glad the Tony Awards are back on. Best of luck to you. Congratulations on a wonderful season. I'm so glad that Ain't No Mo' Got So Much Love and Remembrance. This has been a great conversation. I am ready to fight to live my day and you take a nap because it is an ungodly time of morning in Australia.

[1:14:32] Taylor J. Williams: Well, thank you for having me. This has been very special for me. And it's been lovely chatting with you.

[1:14:36] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Thank you, everybody out there. Have a great day. And remember, actions speak louder than words.