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[0:00] Teresa Attridge: Backstage Pass. We're world class. With even more in store. Get your Backstage Pass. Masterclass. With even more in store.

[0:22] Pauls Macs: Ever wonder what it takes to make a new musical sing? Our mission is to give you an inclusive look behind the scenes.

[0:28] Teresa Attridge: We're interviewing the creatives who are changing musical theater one 11 o'clock number at a time.

[0:33] Pauls Macs: This is your Backstage Pass.

[0:35] Teresa Attridge: Get your Backstage Pass. Get your Backstage Pass.

[0:43] Pauls Macs: Hello, Barnacles.

[0:45] Teresa Attridge: Hello, everyone.

[0:46] Pauls Macs: Oh, wait. Oh, I'm sorry. Is that? Sorry. Someone is. Is that the devil that's joined us? No, just kidding. It's the writers of Call Me From The Grave. Charlie and Harold. Y'all say hello.

[0:58] Charlie Romano: Hello, everyone. So good to be here.

[1:00] Harold Hodge Jr.: Oh my gosh. Amazing. I'm so excited for the four of us slash the five of us. I'm counting the devil to be here today. Incredible. So we can.

[1:08] Charlie Romano: I can feel his presence.

[1:09] Harold Hodge Jr.: I know. You know, usually it's like I feel God in this Chili's tonight. But right now I'm feeling I'm feeling the devil at TGI Fridays.

[1:18] Charlie Romano: But in a good way, like this podcast is going to go really well. I might have sold my soul to the devil before this podcast.

[1:25] Harold Hodge Jr.: And you know what?

[1:26] Charlie Romano: We'll pay for it later.

[1:27] Harold Hodge Jr.: It'll be worth it.

[1:28] Charlie Romano: I'll pay for it later.

[1:29] Harold Hodge Jr.: It'll be absolutely worth it. I already know it. So pals, do you want to go ahead and give our fun little book report on who we've got with us today?

[1:36] Pauls Macs: Absolutely. But I did tell the devil 10,000 downloads at the very least. But Charlie, Harold, welcome to the show.

[1:43] Teresa Attridge: We'd love to introduce you to all our listeners so they know who's in the room with us.

[1:46] Pauls Macs: Charlie, we're going to start with you. So Charlie Romano, who did the music and lyrics for Call Me From the Grave, is a Latin American composer from the Chicago area.

[1:55] Teresa Attridge: As a member of a large family, he is used to sharing everything and spending time with many different kinds of people.

[2:00] Pauls Macs: As a result, Charlie is passionate about telling untold stories beyond Call Me From the Grave, which was a 2021 O'Neill finalist and was a member of the 2023 ASCAP workshop.

[2:10] Teresa Attridge: His recent work includes Onward and Upward, the story of a man who went flying 16,000 feet above the earth in a lawn chair.

[2:16] Pauls Macs: Word Nerd is a comedy about a crossword game show host and his quest for professional redemption.

[2:21] Teresa Attridge: And Video Rental Store, which can be licensed by MCI, is a short exploration of human connection in the face of disaster.

[2:27] Pauls Macs: He is also currently working on Tita, a musical about his Panamanian immigrant grandmother, a hyper energetic polyglot whose life touched countless people across the world.

[2:35] Teresa Attridge: He was a 2021 Jonathan Larson Grant finalist for his work with Will Wagner and recently enjoyed working on Call Me From the Grave at the 2023 ASCAP Musical Theatre Workshop.

[2:44] Pauls Macs: Charlie is a proud member of ASCAP, the Dramatists Guild, the BMI Advanced Workshop.

[2:48] Teresa Attridge: He is also the recent recipient of the Harold Arlen Musical Theatre Award for Emerging Composers.

[2:53] Pauls Macs: All right, Harold, we're doing you next. So Harold Hodge Jr. wrote the book for Call Me From the Grave.

[2:58] Teresa Attridge: Harold is a New York based playwright. As an African-American that was raised in Japan by a biracial military family, he uses his unique multicultural lens to explore the stories of marginalized voices with a particular interest in the stories of people of color.

[3:11] Pauls Macs: Harold brings his passion for activism into his work, often with the goal that his productions will contribute to today's conversation and movement on topical issues.

[3:19] Teresa Attridge: Harold is a founding member and artistic director of The Rose Grew Here, a production company focused on producing original works of minorities, which include people of color, women and LGBT.

[3:29] Pauls Macs: Recently, his show Fancy Maids was awarded Outstanding Play at Ken Davenport's Rave Theatre Festival and has since been published by Stage Rights.

[3:36] Teresa Attridge: Fancy Maids also recently enjoyed a recent New York City run at Soho Rep in August 2023.

[3:41] Pauls Macs: Beyond Call Me From the Grave and Fancy Maids, some of Harold's other writing credits include You Exist Right Now, which was staged in 2016 off-off-Broadway and also in Thailand, and The Boyne Church, which was staged off-off-Broadway in 2015 and went on tour in 2018.

[3:54] Teresa Attridge: Harold, Charlie, thank you for joining us. We're so excited to meet you today and talk with you about your piece, Call Me From the Grave.

[4:00] Pauls Macs: Truly an honor, by the way.

[4:02] Charlie Romano: Thank you.

[4:03] Harold Hodge Jr.: Because holy cow, are the accolades on this stacked.

[4:06] Teresa Attridge: My goodness gracious. I love that on your website you just have like a list of development.

[4:11] Pauls Macs: I think that's so important, especially because I think people don't realize how many rewrites and how much time it takes and how much revision goes into writing a show.

[4:20] Teresa Attridge: And y'all have been working on this for about six years now, right?

[4:23] Charlie Romano: Six years.

[4:24] Harold Hodge Jr.: Yes.

[4:25] Charlie Romano: Six years.

[4:26] Harold Hodge Jr.: I just feel old.

[4:27] Charlie Romano: You know what? Call Me From the Grave is in the first grade. There you go.

[4:32] Harold Hodge Jr.: That's funny.

[4:33] Pauls Macs: That's, I mean, that's incredible. I would love to know how did y'all meet and how did this idea come about?

[4:39] Charlie Romano: The show actually started before Harold and I met. It was my senior thesis at Yale where I'd written with a couple other writers and I was a composition major there.

[4:47] Harold Hodge Jr.: And so I decided I was doing class competitions and I pivoted inside the musical theater, much to the chagrin of my composition instructor.

[4:53] Charlie Romano: We staged it there with a student cast, did a couple readings, you know, worked out beforehand and did the whole thing.

[4:59] Harold Hodge Jr.: It went really well, you know, at Yale, but it was ultimately still a student production.

[5:03] Charlie Romano: And then I knew that the show had legs. The concept was unique and interesting and there was a commercial potential for this show.

[5:10] Harold Hodge Jr.: When I moved to New York City, the previous writers and I parted ways amicably, but ultimately parted ways.

[5:16] Charlie Romano: And I was going to be looking for a new book writer to continue working on the show. I had this collection of songs and the idea.

[5:21] Harold Hodge Jr.: I was asking around friends in New York. I had just moved there summer of 2019 after graduating.

[5:26] Charlie Romano: And I met with a couple people and I wasn't quite sure, nothing had quite clicked.

[5:30] Harold Hodge Jr.: And then I had met this woman named Crystal Skillman, who's a very accomplished playwright and book writer as well, in her own right rather.

[5:36] Charlie Romano: And she had told me, I think I have the perfect person for you.

[5:39] Harold Hodge Jr.: And sure enough, she sent me info about Harold, whom she had met as Harold's instructor or teacher or professor at Pace.

[5:46] Charlie Romano: I sent him the music and we got lunch or coffee in the Bronx.

[5:50] Harold Hodge Jr.: We both live in the Bronx and we sort of instantly clicked.

[5:52] Charlie Romano: And I'll let Harold describe it from his point of view, since this is where he comes into the picture.

[5:56] Harold Hodge Jr.: Yes. So I was initially contacted by Crystal, who was my playwriting professor a few years before.

[6:04] Harold Hodge Jr.: And she had told me, oh, there's this guy writing this musical. He needs a new book writer.

[6:09] Charlie Romano: And so initially, as I've told Charlotte in the past too, I was very, very apprehensive for like several reasons.

[6:16] Harold Hodge Jr.: Because so much of the musical existed already in some type of form.

[6:20] I was like, hmm, I wasn't sure what that process would look like.

[6:24] Charlie Romano: And I had been asked to tweet books before and I just had an experience there.

[6:28] Harold Hodge Jr.: I've had the experience of being asked to become on as a book writer.

[6:32] But really it was like, oh, we want you to just tweak here, tweak there.

[6:35] Charlie Romano: So I was like, I don't know if I want to do that again.

[6:38] Harold Hodge Jr.: So one of the first questions I asked Charlie when we sat down is how much is he willing to change?

[6:43] Charlie Romano: How much is he willing to do? And funnily enough, he wouldn't let me read the original script.

[6:48] Harold Hodge Jr.: To this day, I haven't read what the original story was.

[6:51] Charlie Romano: I have no idea what the story was other than what I could glean from the music.

[6:56] Harold Hodge Jr.: And he was like, I'm willing to rewrite, change, do anything, basically start from scratch.

[7:02] Charlie Romano: So that was definitely cleared up a lot of apprehension.

[7:05] Harold Hodge Jr.: So then I was like, OK, so that was very appealing.

[7:08] Charlie Romano: It won't just be tweaks, it's creating from the ground up and you're willing to start from scratch.

[7:13] Harold Hodge Jr.: And then on top of that, too, I found myself really drawn to things in the music.

[7:18] Charlie Romano: But I also had things that I immediately wanted to like pivot in the story because I immediately had these artistic impulses.

[7:25] Harold Hodge Jr.: Specifically, there was a song that I showed Charlie this where I almost was like, no, I'm good.

[7:31] Charlie Romano: I'll pass because I heard bruises because of what the original lyrics were and what the original function of it was in the story.

[7:37] Harold Hodge Jr.: The reason I wanted to pass it because I was like, oh, I feel like that character should just be so much more.

[7:41] Charlie Romano: And I don't want the women in Robert's life to be a footnote.

[7:44] Harold Hodge Jr.: And I want them to be as three-dimensional as he is.

[7:46] Charlie Romano: Then I was like, well, clearly I have feelings about the story.

[7:49] Harold Hodge Jr.: So I was like, I do want to do it.

[7:51] Charlie Romano: And that's what really drew me in because I was really interested in seeing this was a very familiar time and place for me.

[7:58] Harold Hodge Jr.: My family is all from the deep, deep south.

[8:00] They talk like this.

[8:01] Charlie Romano: They walk like this.

[8:02] Harold Hodge Jr.: I had heard the myth before.

[8:04] Charlie Romano: I've heard this kind of music.

[8:05] Harold Hodge Jr.: I've grown up around it.

[8:06] Charlie Romano: So it felt really at home to me.

[8:08] Harold Hodge Jr.: So I really wanted to make sure that it was done in the most authentic way possible.

[8:13] Charlie Romano: So that was what made me really sit down and be like, OK, I'm willing to.

[8:16] Harold Hodge Jr.: And in that first meeting, I brought all of this up because of Charlie's reaction.

[8:20] Charlie Romano: I knew I wanted to work with him.

[8:22] Harold Hodge Jr.: And I knew we would lock in because, you know, for someone who had spent a year on it before I came on and I'm bringing up all this stuff, they're like, actually, I don't like this song at all.

[8:31] Charlie Romano: And, you know, some people would get defensive, but he was like, oh, actually, I see what you're saying.

[8:36] Harold Hodge Jr.: So what would you do instead?

[8:38] Charlie Romano: And the fact that we immediately started collaborating before we even agreed to, we were already ping ponging ideas back and forth.

[8:44] Harold Hodge Jr.: That's when I knew that it was going to be a good collaboration.

[8:46] Charlie Romano: And that's when I officially decided to work with Charlie.

[8:49] Teresa Attridge: Yes, I love Charlie.

[8:50] Pauls Macs: The fact that you're from Yale, because, you know, that breaks up the NYU mafia that kind of has been running this podcast.

[8:56] Teresa Attridge: It's always the NYU kids.

[8:58] Pauls Macs: We've got Yale and Pace represented today.

[9:01] Teresa Attridge: I didn't go to college at all, so I'm representing literally everyone else.

[9:05] Pauls Macs: Absolutely.

[9:06] Teresa Attridge: I love that.

[9:07] Pauls Macs: The other thing is, like, Teresa and I keep saying that, like, we should get scholarships for running this podcast.

[9:11] Teresa Attridge: So, you know, NYU, we're working hard on that one.

[9:13] Pauls Macs: But it's Yale and Pace.

[9:14] Teresa Attridge: You want to give a scholarship?

[9:15] Pauls Macs: I'm just trying to get an honorary degree, man.

[9:18] Teresa Attridge: They got a lot of money.

[9:19] Pauls Macs: Listen, I'm out here promoting all of your students.

[9:22] Teresa Attridge: A lot of our teams, they, like, meet and start working on a show together. And so the fact that this story had, like, roots somewhere and then, like, you've been able to shift and sort of adjust, it really does lean into the mythos of Robert Johnson, the person, right?

[9:37] Charlie Romano: Because you don't know what the original story is.

[9:39] Teresa Attridge: You know what I mean? There's a reason that there's such freedom in telling the story, because even though there's so much history behind it, there's also so much mystery that's still yet to be explored.

[9:51] Pauls Macs: I would love to know more about what it's like to write for a character that both exists, the legacy and weight of that. But where am I able to fill this in both musically and, like, dramaturgically? Would love to hear more about that.

[10:04] Charlie Romano: Well, lucky for us, we have the great gift of the myth, right? We have this whole legend around him, and there's so much mystery around him as a whole.

[10:14] Harold Hodge Jr.: Even with what we do know of Robert Johnson, there's just a big pocket window, like, he disappeared and then came back and was great with the guitar.

[10:20] Charlie Romano: So there's so many questions about his life, so much mystery around it.

[10:23] Harold Hodge Jr.: It's great for us as writers, because it gives us so much free wiggle room to say, well, this is what could have happened, or this is what may have happened.

[10:30] Charlie Romano: And one thing that was big about us with this story, too, is really leaning into the fact that it is mythology.

[10:36] Harold Hodge Jr.: Because one thing that I bring up a lot is it's really cool to be able to explore African-American myths, because we don't see that often.

[10:45] Charlie Romano: We don't really get to see the lore coming from, like, our culture.

[10:48] Harold Hodge Jr.: So really leaning into that and really making the story feel like this campfire story that's been told for generations and leaning into, well, this may have happened here.

[10:57] Charlie Romano: So even the story itself, as we've written, is being presented as, this may have happened.

[11:02] Harold Hodge Jr.: By the end of the story, people are even questioning things that we've just seen.

[11:06] Charlie Romano: And so that just gave us so much freedom to really play with, like, the stakes and raise stakes in certain places and add in stakes with the devil and changing how the devil pack works.

[11:16] Harold Hodge Jr.: So it was very, very freeing.

[11:18] Charlie Romano: Because anytime we ran into the wall of dramaturgical things, we always had the freedom in the back pocket to be able to, like, oh, well, there's magic.

[11:26] Harold Hodge Jr.: We can time jump, or we can do this, or we can explain this this way.

[11:30] Charlie Romano: So it was great.

[11:31] Harold Hodge Jr.: In terms of, like, Robert the Real Person, that's how I was first drawn into this.

[11:34] Charlie Romano: I was a junior, I think, in college, and I was taking a jazz history course.

[11:38] Harold Hodge Jr.: There was this lecture or part of a lecture on Robert Johnson, even though he's a Bruce musician, he influenced jazz as well.

[11:44] Charlie Romano: And I was so upset because my professor, Tom Duffy, started playing a song to Sweet Home Chicago.

[11:49] Harold Hodge Jr.: And I'm from outside Chicago, and that song is like an anthem for anyone from there.

[11:53] Charlie Romano: I discovered that people outside Chicago don't really know the song, but it's a big deal in Chicago.

[11:57] Harold Hodge Jr.: It's in the movie The Blues Brothers.

[11:59] Charlie Romano: And I had always thought that it was by The Blues Brothers or whatever.

[12:02] Harold Hodge Jr.: And I realized, I discovered that day that it was actually by this guy named Robert Johnson, first recorded by him.

[12:07] Charlie Romano: And I was entranced with the sound of his music.

[12:10] Harold Hodge Jr.: And I took a deep dive, and I was like, this is crazy that this person, this man, had such a strong influence on blues, rock and roll, and thus, you know, popular music as we know it today.

[12:19] Charlie Romano: Very few people really knew who he was, only like guitar and blues aficionados.

[12:23] Harold Hodge Jr.: And I was already interested in the Falk Team Bargain.

[12:25] Charlie Romano: I really wanted to help bring this man's story to life.

[12:27] Harold Hodge Jr.: And I identified with his story because from the little I knew at the time and researched about him, he was brought up in a world where it was very frowned upon for him to be a musician.

[12:35] Charlie Romano: And I had a similar familial experience of being, you know, told, oh, going into music and theater, this is like a terrible life that you're going to have.

[12:44] Harold Hodge Jr.: Oh, yeah.

[12:45] Charlie Romano: Which is not true.

[12:46] Harold Hodge Jr.: There's a little of that for all of us, too.

[12:49] Charlie Romano: Exactly.

[12:50] Harold Hodge Jr.: Yes.

[12:51] Charlie Romano: Yeah.

[12:52] Harold Hodge Jr.: Oh, a little bit.

[12:53] Charlie Romano: Sell your soul in order to go.

[12:54] Harold Hodge Jr.: Right.

[12:55] Charlie Romano: So this.

[12:56] Harold Hodge Jr.: So I really felt strongly about that at that time in my life.

[12:58] Charlie Romano: I think I want to add, because it's an interesting details.

[13:00] Harold Hodge Jr.: So before I even wrote the show, I went down to Mississippi on a road trip from Chicago with a very close friend of mine, the great guitarist, Eric.

[13:08] Harold Hodge Jr.: And we spent like a week and a half jumping between towns in Mississippi, went to Clarksdale.

[13:13] Charlie Romano: I had a big blues festival going on, ran to Hazlehurst, which is where Robert was born, and saw the house that he was maybe born in. But you know, it's still all kind of mythical. Went to Crystal Springs, where his living family is based now, and I met his grandson, Michael Johnson, and played a piano that Robert most likely played, you know, when he was alive. And so I did all this deep research. And to go to that place, and Harold obviously is from the Deep South, so he's much more familiar with it than I am or was. You can understand where these myths come from. It's almost like they come out of the Mississippi Delta, and there's a real energy there that you can't find anywhere else. I mean, not to be a crazy conspiracy theorist, because this was an off, like an off-mic conversation, but do you think the ghost at Goodspeed that opened the door was actually Robert Johnson inviting himself in to be part of the story?

[13:58] Harold Hodge Jr: We've talked about that a lot. Like, if you, if you, if only you knew how much we talked about that.

[14:05] Charlie Romano: Listen! It was very much on my mind. It has to be, right? Is he mad or is he happy? Are we doing it right?

[14:10] Harold Hodge Jr: I think if the door was open, that's very symbolic.

[14:14] Charlie Romano: You're doing it right. Also, pal, I think a great time for us to give the synopsis of the show. We've talked so much about the mystery, we may as well figure out where we've landed, at least at this point. I sometimes act as kind of the avatar for the listeners. The person who actually shared this piece with me was Joe Barros, the artistic director of New York Theatre Barn. I had never heard of Robert Johnson at all before I read the email that Joe sent me. Just the listeners are aware. So this is a real person, but we keep referencing the myth of this incredible blues player that, you know, and he was so incredible that people had said about him that he must have sold his soul to the devil to be that good.

But even to this day, the details about his life, if you go to his Wikipedia page, he has three different possible grave sites. They're like three different headstones for him in three different locations, which is something that's just so fascinating. People have tried so, so hard to fill in the details of this person's life and not been successful. They have ideas or clues, but there's so many conflicting accounts, I think adds to the mythology and adds the interest of this piece. And on that note, you've had to make some really strong interpretive choices to tell your own story. So I'll begin with the synopsis of that so the listeners can see what you're setting up.

[15:25] Charlie Romano: Call Me From the Grave explores the life and myth of the legendary blues guitar player Robert Johnson. In Greenwood, Mississippi, a young sharecropper, Robert dreams of becoming a blues man. When his loving girlfriend, Virginia, becomes pregnant, Robert puts his dreams on hold to build a life and family with her. However, Robert's life comes crashing down when Virginia dies of complications in childbirth and the newborn son is taken into the exclusive custody of her unapproving father. Feeling he has failed as a husband, father, and musician, Robert is at his lowest when he is approached by the devil. Robert exchanges his soul for the music career he has always dreamt of on the condition that he never returns home. As years go by, Robert gains all the fame and renown that he has promised. However, after learning that the people he loves are in need back home, Robert must choose between his fame and his family.

[16:08] Harold Hodge Jr: Strong interpretive choices there for sure. I'll jump in because some of it is based in historical truth. You know, he did have a girlfriend named Virginia who did die in childbirth. And it was after then that he left and kind of went missing for a year or two. And when he returned to his town, he was suddenly this great guitarist. The myth is born out of this tragedy that he experienced very young, very early in his life. I mean, he was maybe 18 or 19 when it happened. We thought that, well, that's very dramatic. And it is a very interesting story. That's one of the genesis of our version of this myth, which is based at least in the little bit of reality that we know about it, which is really not much more than I just said.

[16:44] Charlie Romano: So much of the story then became what kind of story do we want to tell with this? What is the vehicle of the story? Because that was something we went back and forth with at the beginning. What is the message? What kind of story are we telling? And that really informed what gaps we wanted to fill. We've decided we really wanted to make this a story of redemption, right? And we wanted to make it because this story of going into this deal with the devil, and then how does one redeem themselves from that? Because the title of the show are his real last words. He said, I know my redeemer lives and he will call me from the grave. And so to have someone who we all know as the man who sold his soul to the devil, his last words being like, I know I'll be redeemed, was something very, very interesting to us.

We wanted to explore how does one go from full on devil transfiguration to redemption? And so once we decided that that was the arc the story was going, it really opened up the narrative choices we made after that.

[17:41] Charlie Romano: I love that. On one of those three tombstones that exist, the one that's sort of regarded as the fitful one, though no one's really quite sure, his epitaph is inscribed on the tombstone, which I got to see, which says what Harold just described, has those exact words, which is where this whole impetus of the show came from.

[17:56] Harold Hodge Jr: I love that.

[17:57] Charlie Romano: That's great. So I think now is actually the perfect time to play our first demo, A Souling Free. Please set up A Souling Free for us.

[18:04] Harold Hodge Jr: Yes. So A Souling Free, we have just met Robert Johnson. He is a sharecropper in Mississippi. He was just practicing on his guitar, trying to learn a new song. And his mother has just scolded him saying, you need to stop wasting time on this and do something more practical. She's telling him, this is great, this is cute, but this isn't going to keep everybody fed. You need to do something more practical. And so this song is where we're left with Robert dwelling on those thoughts of his current situation and his dreams.

[18:31] Charlie Romano: Fantastic. And who is performing this song?

[18:34] Harold Hodge Jr: You'll hear Xavier Washington singing the vocals of Robert, who had played Robert at Yale actually. He was the first one to play the role. And Danielle Yvonne James will be singing the role of Julia, who is Robert's mother.

[18:47] ♪ Musical number: "A Souling Free" — performed by Xavier Washington and Danielle Yvonne James ♪

[23:08] Charlie Romano: I love this song because it sets up the central conflict of the show for Robert. You know, he wants to be free. He wants to be out there pursuing his blues man dream. But there's an argument happening about like what it truly means to be free and how you should live your life.

[23:21] Harold Hodge Jr: I think the poetic but sad thing about the song too is that you have this character who longs for freedom. But when you're locked into a deal, the way that you can be locked into your life, there is no freedom. Because the idea of this character singing, well, I mean, in the situation I'm in, you know, where I'm coming from, and everyone around me, like, I feel like, you know, my soul's not free. There's nothing I can do about this. And to trade your soul for the illusion of freedom or the benefit of freedom, but still being bound by that. The themes of freedom and what freedom actually looks like come up for all of these characters, right? Where is Virginia's freedom from under the foot of her father?

Where is Sarah's freedom from Charles? Where is Julia's freedom from just the circumstance of their lives? So freedom being such a huge theme in the show and having this piece while it is, you know, Robert's song, it really feels like it's very much a representation of how a lot of people feel and felt.

[24:14] Charlie Romano: Also, I just love the way the song expands at the end. You get a sense of what it really is like for him to be performing on stage. In my view, I felt that was like, oh, like, he's performing right now. He's there. He's on stage. And you can see the future ahead of him. But to get there, he's got to make that unfortunate deal with the devil. He's trying to be free. That freedom is just an illusion.

[24:36] Harold Hodge Jr: That's absolutely correct, Teresa. I'm really intrigued by that question that Teresa just brought up about, you know, like freedom and how you kind of like tracked Robert's journey, how you developed that. It sounds like, you know, certain details of his life, but there's a full cast of really developed characters in the show. So you could talk about like, you know, how you develop the world around Robert. That'd be fantastic.

[24:54] Charlie Romano: I think part of the reason we're so passionate about this piece is that as artists ourselves, you know, everyone has to make compromises of different kinds. You often find yourself in a position where you metaphorically have to tell yourself, or maybe you think you have to, whether it's compromising on a principle or ditching out on some previous commitments that are very serious. But you know that, oh, if I miss this, I just do this one thing, this one person, maybe then I'll get to where I want to be. And that's a real temptation that I think people in all industries face, you know, whether it's trying to make it on Broadway, whether it's trying to make it at Hollywood, trying to make it on Wall Street, you name it, there's this very human reality where sometimes it's the easier route or the harder route.

And it's actually not clear which one of those two things are which. People might promise you things and you have to trust them or not trust them. And as we navigate the world, it's very easy to fall into the temptation of selling your soul, of giving up freedom for the illusion of freedom.

[25:47] Harold Hodge Jr: I think you put it really well, Teresa. And so I feel like in terms of approaching the character and the story, Harold and I, either consciously or subconsciously, are able to draw on our own experience as writers and artists.

[25:57] Charlie Romano: I really resonate with that, but in a slightly different way, because I became a dad 13 months ago. And so trying to navigate the artistic life of being a theater director, educator and podcaster while having a child, you suddenly have one fifth of the time you had, it feels like, to accomplish all the things that you used to be able to do. And it's just really, really, really difficult. And not to say that there's temptation to leave this life in the slightest, but you're like, oh, I remember when I was a kid.

[26:26] Harold Hodge Jr: I had all that free time to pursue my artistic career. And you do feel that tension of family versus your dream and how those two things interact. So I definitely really related to that piece. And it resonated with me in a unique way now that I'm a dad. And I also became a father about a year ago. I have a daughter. She's almost 12 months. You know, it's very real. It's very real out here. But I want to make sure we go back and allow Harold to answer that question I asked previously. I would love to know more about how you created the world.

[26:55] Charlie Romano: Yeah, it's funny because the world around Robert, like I kind of mentioned before, that was the thing that really drew me in because originally, from what I was hearing from the music, the characters that we have now they existed, but they really were like a footnote in Robert's story. And I was like, Oh, I want to like gloss over that person there. Because that's interesting, too. Like, because I was just like, there's so much more to like her situation. It was just done so quickly. And I felt like the women in the piece were really, really important to me. Those first few weeks, we rarely talked about Robert. And I was like, if I'm doing this, we have to figure these women out because I want them to be 3D characters.

I mean, yes, of course, it is Robert's story. And they're a part of it. But the things they're dealing with are real. I want it to be done in a nuanced way. Because I'm for those listening who don't know one of the characters, Sarah, she ends up in a domestic violence situation. I didn't want that to be something that wasn't nuanced. It wasn't done with care. Yeah, a lot of time was taken to this. There's in the world around Robert, I really wanted to so much so that we had to scale back a bit. That was like notes we got in the beginning where they're like, we're losing Robert. And I was like, okay, I do too much. I got the note. But yeah, as far as building the world around, I really just took time with those individual characters, even with Charles too who is Sarah's boyfriend, who ends up being domestic violence into being abusive.

Originally, when I first heard his material, he was just like this really like Bill Sykes villain. And that's not real. Because if she met him that way, now, now it doesn't feel real. I was like, I wanted Charles to be nuanced, too. I wanted us to see what his relationship was like at the beginning and how at the beginning, it was something sweet and happy and how we can see their relationship devolve. So that way we understand now when Sarah's situation gets bad, how she's like, oh, but it used to be this and it used to be this good. And I want us to get back to this. Yeah, I just really wanted to make everyone's situation seem more grounded. Even Virginia. Yes, she's still supporting Robert's dreams, but she also has desires of her own, like building a home and things of that nature.

Or Julia, too, just being more practical in nature and being like, yes, I'm the maternal figure, but I'm also like dealing with these very real things to try to keep a house together. And my husband has passed. And I'm trying to keep things afloat. Because these are the things that women had to do back then. And these are very real situations for them. And they're, I mean, all options for black people in the 1930s were limited, but for women even more so. So it was just I really wanted to make sure that that wasn't glossed over. At the end of the day, Robert had the freedom to just jump and go and pursue his dreams, but they didn't. And that's something I really wanted to make sure was like clear. And they say it when he has to make the choice to like help them because their situation is a little bit more precarious because they're women at the time.

[29:11] Teresa Attridge: I really appreciated that about the book, actually, while I was reading through it, especially for black women who are really often maligned in even their own stories. When you're building the world around a character, it's impossible to do it without women in general. But when you're talking about like opportunity and like Robert's ability to leave, when I was reading the book, I was like, right, this is less than 50 years after the Emancipation Proclamation even went into effect. I believe Mississippi was actually still a territory at the time as well. These are people who grew up with like their parents and grandparents, like still being slaves, like it's very much still. And that relates back to the feeling of freedom again, like you're free, but are you?

There's a part in the show where the devil says, I mean, Robert, look around you, what do you see? And he says, cotton. I gave you the chance to escape this. No one gets out of this. You had your one in a million shot. This is the choice you want to make, right? Not to give anything away, obviously. But the world is so present, and it's deeply rooted in what I feel like is the reality of that situation, but it never comes across as like, you need to understand the circumstance of this world. At no point do I feel like it's being spoonfed in any way. I think that that's a really huge strength is that through the characters' relationships, I fully understand the context of where they are and what's going on. I mean, it's really strongly done. It's beautiful.

[30:48] Charlie Romano: I would like to add that I love that you got that note that the female characters are too developed and we're losing Robert. I mean, I'm a musical theatre director and Friday night, I was up late working on a directing proposal for Stephen Sondheim's Passion. Where I locate myself in that play initially is in Georgiou. But I thought to myself, the worst thing that could possibly happen was that at the end of this proposal, someone would feel that I hadn't put just as much thought and care into the motivations and development of the characters of Fosca and Clara as well. You know, because so often it's the opposite note, which is these female characters felt like they were just accessories in a story that centers a man.

I'm so excited that your piece got that. And I hope that as we continue moving forward, because I can fix that directorially. The piece is still structured in a way that Georgiou's in the center of a love triangle, but there's more shows that develop more well-nuanced characters in that way. So I just, I love that. I think now might be actually the perfect transition to play the song Waiting for You, which is sung by one of your well-developed female identifying characters. Please set that up for us.

[31:52] Charlie Romano: Yes. So at this point, Virginia has discovered that she is pregnant and she has told Robert and they have gotten married. However, things have not worked out as well as they may have hoped. Robert has been trying to balance everything at this point. He's been working to support his family, but he's also going to the jujube every night. Virginia is also trying to be supportive, but she doesn't want to hold him back. But at the same time, she's like, I'm not seeing you. The baby's on its way. So Virginia and Robert have just had a fight and Robert has just stormed by Virginia alone with her thoughts. And she begins singing this to her baby.

[32:26] Teresa Attridge: Brilliant. And who is singing this song?

[32:27] Charlie Romano: This demo, you'll hear Maylina Laudig, who played Virginia also in the original Yale Faf. A very dear friend of mine. A brilliant voice. You will hear her. Here is Waiting for You performed by Maylina Laudig.

[32:56] ♪ Musical number: "Waiting For You" — performed by Maylina Laudig ♪

[36:37] Teresa Attridge: The groove on this song is so good and so pure. And that harmonica is mournful. And there's also a strength. This is one of those songs where I feel you get a really great sense of the character and the piece. You understand Virginia on a deep level, just from the way the piece is structured, the way you created it. For some reason, like such a history of pregnant women singing to their unborn child, or they're like a woman singing to a baby on this podcast. That's yes, that's a podcast thing for us. Which I personally really love. And I feel like especially with you two as new fathers, Harold, do you have a kid too? I don't know.

[37:14] Harold Hodge Jr: No, no.

[37:21] Teresa Attridge: I'll say me neither. But I'm not cutting that by the way. I was a genuine question. I want to know about your life. But I feel like in pieces where we're talking about sort of like who a child will be or like what it's like for them or the world they're going to be into and the life we want versus the life they'll have. There are some lyrics here that I really, really loved. When you kick, are you angry or lost in a dream? Do you run in your sleep? Spend the night counting sheep? Are you desperate to leap to your feet? Do you realize the family you meet will bring so much joy, though it will sometimes feel bittersweet? Beautiful. There's already like this contemplation of even if you're not here, what are you feeling?

What are you thinking? These are the questions that I feel like Robert also like contends with, you know what I mean? And this idea of like, where are you running? Or what do you need? Are you dreaming? Are you angry? Are you fighting? Like generational questions, these things that we ask ourselves that we also ask of our children that we ask of our children's children and so on and so forth. I love a song where you have like a mother singing to a child in general, especially with where this is in the show. I feel like it comes at such a poignant moment that when we hit that point where Robert is like, Oh, right, I'm about to make this deal with the devil. We're able to filter that through the emotion of like, who is this child going to be?

And I would just add that after those really well constructed lyrics, the song ends with and Robert, we're waiting, I'll keep waiting for you. But then the most devastating thing happens, then Robert isn't there. I don't know if I can spoil that or not.

[38:40] Charlie Romano: It's one we can spoil it.

[38:51] Harold Hodge Jr: Yeah, Virginia dies.

[38:56] Teresa Attridge: And also with harmonica and some of those are spoilers, but musical motifs and lines and ideas. The script has so many openings and closings and

[39:05] Charlie Romano: Yeah, we love motifs.

[39:06] Harold Hodge Jr: We love a motif.

[39:12] Teresa Attridge: Thanks for joining us on New York Theatre Barn's Backstage Pass, hosted by Teresa Attridge and Pauls Macs. Join us next time as we continue our conversation with Charlie Romano and Harold Hodge Jr about their new musical, Call Me From the Grave.