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[0:00] Joe Barros: Experience the musicals of tomorrow, today. Get a glimpse inside the blueprint of an original musical being developed in real time, with New York Theatre Barn's podcast, The Musicals of Tomorrow. I'm Joe Barros. And I'm Jen Sandler. And we're the hosts of The Musicals of Tomorrow.

[0:46] Joe Barros: As the Artistic Director and Associate Artistic Director of New York Theatre Barn, we make space to speak in community with musical theatre writers and their creative teams. Lifting up songs from original culture-shifting musicals in development and introducing them to a global audience has become a major part of New York Theatre Barn's evolving story. Each original musical's intention, content, and journey are unique and extraordinary to the storytellers who create them. We believe that there is no formula for musical theatre except authenticity. We recently spoke with the writers and creators of Cowboy Bob, Molly Beach Murphy, Jeanna Phillips, Alex Thrailkill, and Annie Tip, and the writers of Hart Island, Michelle Elliott, and Danny Haengil Larsen.

Our first musical is Cowboy Bob, which has music and lyrics by Jeanna Phillips, book and additional lyrics by Molly Beach Murphy, additional music by Alex Thrailkill, and is co-created by Molly Beach Murphy, Jeanna Phillips, and Annie Tip.

[1:49] Joe Barros: You wouldn't look twice at Peggy Jo. She was a good daughter, always tipped well at restaurants, and disguised as Cowboy Bob in a fake beard and a 10-gallon hat, she was the slickest bank robber Texas has ever known. Making her getaway in a sky-blue 1975 Pontiac Grand Prix, she was a modern-day bandit stealing thousands and evading detection for more than a decade. With a score that's equal parts Riot Grrrl rage and Texas two-step twang, this tale of a small-town legend spurs a discontented chain restaurant waitress to buck routine, take life by the reins, and let it ride. And now, here's our conversation with the writers and creators of Cowboy Bob, Molly Beach Murphy, Jeanna Phillips, Alex Thrailkill, and Annie Tip.

[2:34] Molly Beach Murphy: Hello! Thank you so much for having us.

[2:37] Jeanna Phillips: Of course! Thank you for being here.

[2:39] Alex Thrailkill: We're so glad that you could all be here. Molly, your work has been developed with the Alley Theatre, Page 73, New York Stage and Film, the Drama League, New Georgia's Pipeline Theatre Company, and Williamstown Theatre Festival. And, your plays include The Air Got Thick, Ike, and Big Ben in the Red Dirt Desert. Jeanna, your original work is What's This Called? The Spirit, Cooking to Me is Poetry, and Poe. Your work has been developed with Ars Nova, Dixon Place, Galapagos Artspace, and the Morgan Library. And your alter-ego Andrea Lloyd Webber wreaks havoc regularly across the Tri-State area. And your children's music project, Little Bandits, released a self-titled album not too long ago. Alex, your work has been developed with Village Theatre, New York Stage and Film, Yale Institute for Music Theatre, Ars Nova, and Spring Street Social Society.

You're also the co-founder of Little Bandits. Annie, you are the director of Ghost Quartet, Leslie Hedlund's Cult of Love, Bess Wohl's Continuity, James and Jerome's Ink, James and Jerome's The Conversationalist, and Dave Malloy's Octet, of which you won the 2020 Lucille Lortel Award for Best Direction. Congratulations. And you're in great company because another award also went to Kuhu Verma, Best Featured Actress, and the show won for Best Musical. Your collaborative team of Molly, Gina, and Annie was formed in 2016, united by a desire to make music theatre that carves out space for more dynamic female-identifying characters and explodes the possibility of the genre at large. As we mentioned, we saw your presentation at NAMP, and we were excited by the beautiful work that you're doing.

NAMP's festival committee said that they were compelled to select the show for the festival for this reason. Quote, we were sucked in by Cowboy Bob, a woody musical that empowers and encourages women to take back their power, even in difficult times. This story, reminiscent of Thelma and Louise, left the committee members over the moon laughing, intrigued, and touched. End quote. So Molly, Gina, Alex, and Annie, your show takes life by the reins and lets it ride, as you say. What was the impetus for your collaboration and what drew you to excavate this female-focused untold story while finding your own way into it?

[4:55] Molly Beach Murphy: I love that. Thanks, Joe. Thanks for those introductions. We're all thrilled to have our bios read to us. It's a pleasure. I can say that I met Molly back in 2016, I believe, or maybe it was 2015 now. I had gone to school with Gina and Alex, and I had a directing residency at Ars Nova. They very generously were like, do whatever you like. We'll give you three days if you want to put something up. It was kismet to have met Molly around that same time and find, within a day of meeting her, my ultimate collaborator. Gina is someone who I had seen perform many times and have heard her music, as well as Alex's. But this was the first opportunity that I thought, okay, what if we all came together and tried something, even though none of us felt like we could claim traditional musical theater creator? But here we are, and now we can say that. Maybe Molly could speak a little bit about Peggy Jo Tallis and Cowboy Bob and the story of how we found her.

[6:00] Molly Beach Murphy: Sure. Peggy Jo Tallis was a real person. We learned about her through news clips. She robbed banks for, I think, 20 years. She died, I think, in 2005, and was just really bowled over by the story of her. She's robbing banks to pay her mother's medical bills. It's this big Texan myth example of how increasingly hard it is to carve out a dignified life for oneself in this country. But we knew that we didn't want to make a biography of her because she's so unknowable. She is kind of like a myth to us, to the world, because she died. So we started spinning out, creating this world of fictional people who knew her in fictional situations, and how she affected their lives. In particular, a character of a waitress who waited on Peggy Jo out of fictional Chili's regularly, and she learns that Peggy Jo is this bank robber, and it really changes her life and allows her to get out of a very crappy situation she's in.

[7:35] Jeanna Phillips: Yeah. Nailed it. You said it all. And I think that was something, Nance, we didn't know that they, because they're not even in the same time period, the girl and Peggy, right?

[7:41] Molly Beach Murphy: Right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's kind of like, I think it's something we share with Hart Island, actually, is that it's about people colliding. And when things collide, they explode, right? And sort of what the fallout is from all that.

[8:04] Jeanna Phillips: Right. I know that was something in Nance we didn't know well enough. And when we found that out, we were like, it just exploded about how it's just an amazing concept. We came to think of Peggy Jo as a new American tall tale, and we're kind of delighted to imagine how her story might capture other people the way it captured us, but in different and surprising ways.

[8:36] Molly Beach Murphy: Well, I think you wanted to find the humanization in Peggy as well, that she wasn't just someone that robbed, you know, she had a reason, she had a family, she had things to care about.

[8:42] Jeanna Phillips: Right, right. As sort of an example of it's hard to get by in America for many, many people to different degrees, of course. But we loved this example of sometimes you have to fight for your life to save it, you know. And sometimes that fight takes surprising form.

[9:01] Joe Barros: Awesome. Can you speak a little bit to how the score transcends time and space and how it transports audiences?

[9:06] Jeanna Phillips: I would love to speak to that, Joe. I was thinking about this a little bit in advance of this conversation. And I was thinking, Alex and I have been on a huge country music jag lately. Strangely, we've just been listening our way through Hank Williams and Patsy Cline and Johnny Cash and kind of going back to the classics. And it occurred to me that the musical that we wrote is not a country Western musical. But the music that that kind of came up is a tapestry of different genres inspired by the music that maybe Peggy Jo's mother was listening to or Peggy Jo was listening to as a kid, the big echoey girl bands inspired by what Peggy Jo might have heard when she walked into a bar that may or may not have been a honky tonk bar in Texas.

And then ultimately, I think, for Alex and myself, I identify more as a pop music writer and the source of pop music is pleasure. And I think what we made, I hope, is music that feels good viscerally to listen to, and also music that is both very intimate and takes up space in the way that these women really long to.

[10:41] Alex Thrailkill: I think you did great. One thing that I would say is I think one of the, to me, one of the keys to the genre and the genres that the music plays with in this show is a kind of transcendence, because I think, Gina, you're exactly right. It is not a straight ahead country music musical. And I think that in a lot of the music, I think a lot of what we've tried to do is to land in surprising sonic spaces and surprising genres that I think for each song, and hopefully in those songs that we hear tonight, sort of show something new about the person who's singing it and the experience that they're having. I just want to say this is also, I think, one of the moments where we get to shout out the band.

Many of the musicians have been working on the show with us for years now, for many iterations. Eric Farber's drum arrangements are alive in this music, and these musicians have been so generous in their sort of sensibilities and their musicianship. And that's really shaped the sound, which was written by me and Molly and Annie and Alex, and also by a bunch of people vibing out on the stage at New York Stage and Film.

[11:48] Jeanna Phillips: Well, that's how you discovered your show. And Alex, what were you going to say?

[11:51] Alex Thrailkill: Oh, I was going to say, in addition to hearing Eric Farber on the drums, we're also going to hear Debbie Jong, who's playing bass, and we're going to hear Ada Westphal, who's playing some incredible guitar.

[11:59] Joe Barros: So tell us more about your development. How did you get to NAMMT?

[12:03] Jeanna Phillips: We have developed this for a few years, and we started at New York Theatre Workshop, we have gone through the Yale Musical Theatre Program, we have gone through the University of the Arts program that they have for new musicals. And I think all along the way, we've just been trying to figure out, all right, what is the essence of the show? We're trying to tell who are these people? And every step has led us a little closer in terms of the writing and in terms of the music. And the way that Molly, Gina, and I started this piece is not unlike writing a sketch show, in that we started very much by saying, all right, what delights us and excites us? Everyone, right? There are no boundaries between us.

Yes, I am the director of this piece, Molly, the writer, Gina, the composer, Alex contributing additional music, but we all have a say in what this is. And we take really seriously just the delight of boundaryless creation. So I think we've had a really beautiful development period. I love the way we work, and Cowboy Bob is the way that we have been able to hone that as a team. And now, you know, we're working on our next musical, we have ideas for the next few, and it just feels like Cowboy Bob was the show that helped us kind of crack how we like to work together. And the show was at Ars Nova, and then where did it go from Ars Nova?

[12:21] Molly Beach Murphy: We started at Ars Nova.

[12:22] Jeanna Phillips: Yeah. And then Yale, right?

[12:24] Alex Thrailkill: And then to Yale Institute of Music Theatre, and then to University of the Arts Polyphone Festival, and then to New York Stage and Film, and then...

[12:34] Pauls Macs: We were at the Village Theatre in Seattle. We did a workshop there, and I think that leads us to NAMT.

[12:39] Jeanna Phillips: And a couple of concerts as well, yeah.

[12:43] Pauls Macs: All the writing and ripping up writing and all along the way, you know. Awesome. And the Hart Island writers have been at the Village many times as well, which is another connection you both have. And in addition to tonight's performers, also Tony nominee Barbara Walsh has been a part of your developmental period. So with that said, we'd love to know more about tonight's first song, Canyons.

[13:05] Molly Beach Murphy: So Canyons is a song that's from Rina, this sort of discontented Chili's waitress, who has this strong sense that there's more to life than what she's experiencing. She's not quite sure what it is. But Canyons finds her in the moment where she kind of dares to imagine breaking the cycle that she's stuck inside of. And we also see her kind of imagining Peggy Jo as sort of a specter looming over that possibility. Ashley Perez Flanagan will be singing tonight, who has been involved in very recent parts of your development. A queen. So here is Canyons.

[14:00] ♪ Musical number: "Canyons" — performed by Ashley Perez Flanagan ♪

[23:10] Pauls Macs: What else is there to say? Wow.

[23:13] Jeanna Phillips: Yeah, it's nice to revisit that. I think before we leave, we just want to talk about it again. You know, we said before the show is uniquely set in two different time periods. But these women could meet tomorrow and have so much in common. We need to keep seeing more women's stories that are so centric and so important like this. And why, why should we keep seeing daring and exciting and adventurous stories like this? Why do we need them in the musical theater canon?

[23:36] Molly Beach Murphy: Because they're fun.

[23:39] Jeanna Phillips: Yeah, I think people are desperate to see themselves on stage. I think people are desperate to see not only fantastical characters and characters who can help us live up in the clouds, but also people that we can relate to, people who are either fighting similar struggles that we are or who can illuminate the struggles that we don't understand.

[24:01] Molly Beach Murphy: Yeah, and I talk a lot about the show with dignity, but I feel like there are so many people's stories who are not given dignity. And there's so much dignity in American life that we need to. And I don't mean like important with a capital I. You know, there's lots of like dumb comedy in this show. We think the canon should be filled with stories of people you may not encounter every day and be filled with like the deep complexities and dignities of all kinds of American life.

[24:30] Jeanna Phillips: Right. We all deserve to have a musical written about us. And we hope we've done that for Peggy and for all the people who populate our world. What's so amazing is I've never seen a show like yours, but it's so inherently musical. So thank you all for joining us tonight. We can't wait to see more from Cowboy Bob.

[24:47] Pauls Macs: Thank you.

[24:48] Jeanna Phillips: Thank you so much.

[24:49] Pauls Macs: Thank you, Nam. Thank you, everyone. Such an honor. Our second new musical is Hart Island, which has a book by Michelle Elliott, lyrics by Elliott and Danny Haengil Larsen, and music by Larsen. Just off the shore of New York City lies a sorrowful island that serves as a public burial ground.

[25:08] Michelle Elliott: Hart Island is an inspiring and emotional tale of an immigrant woman fighting for her child and the unexpected compassion of a disillusioned inmate who is the only person who can help her. This hauntingly beautiful new musical serves two people on the fringe of society as they change each other's lives forever.

[25:33] Joe: And now, here's our conversation with the writers of Hart Island, Michelle Elliott and Danny Haengil Larsen. You're both so generous and kind to each other. You've been collaborating since meeting at NYU's Graduate Musical Theatre Writing Program 18 years ago, and now you're only 22. And now you're multi-award winning writers, and your work is so connected, so nuanced, it's hard to see where one ends and the other begins. Your first musical, The Yellow Wood, was awarded the Richard Rogers Development Award and the Daryl Roth Award. In 2007, The Yellow Wood was presented in the New York Musical Theatre Festival, now renamed the New York Musical Festival, then directed by B.D. Wong. And in 2008, the show was part of Village Originals and NAMMT.

Your other musicals include Maiden Voyage and Cloaked, of which I saw an incredible production, a very intimate production at Cap 21, starring Katie Thompson. You also filmed and produced The Hinterlands, a seven-part musical for teens in response to the surge of suicides by queer youth. And together, you're currently working on a new musical called Country Radio with Emily Saliers of the Indigo Girls. And Danny, you're currently working on a new semi-autobiographical musical called The Pain in My Gay Mormon Half-Korean Ass, which sounds awesome. And Michelle, your plays include Promising and The Midwesterners. I wanted to note that when New York Theatre Barn first launched in 2007, my heart and mind exploded when I learned about your show, The Yellow Wood.

The show follows 17-year-old Adam, who's frantically trying to memorize Robert Frost's poem, The Road Not Taken, to recite in his English class. But because he decides not to use Ritalin, he can't go much further than the first lines diverged in The Yellow Wood. This powerful musical feels even more important now than it did then, as it makes space for a neurodiverse, biracial, Asian-American protagonist, and explores the power of choice, intention, and identity. You made a half-Korean teenager with ADD become the hero of his story. And because of you, other young people like your protagonist, Adam, will see themselves on the stage and under the bright lights.

[27:36] Danny Haengil Larsen: Well, truly, I wish that was the case, Joe. But we had one really lovely production of the show in Seattle that our friend Brandon Ivey directed. But that was probably 12, maybe 15 years ago. And so unfortunately, The Yellow Wood has never gotten its sort of entrance to the world. And I'm not sure if that's because it was a show for, you know, it was about a teen experience, or if it just wasn't time for it, if it was a little bit just not the right time. But we still greatly hope that someday we'll be able to share the show. I think it's really special. And like you said, there are not many protagonists like Adam, who was really based on Danny's story growing up in a household where his mother was a Korean immigrant. And Danny's experiences, we were really inspired by that.

[28:35] Michelle Elliott: Awesome. Well, you know, I could talk about The Yellow Wood all night. But there are over 1 million adults, children, and infants buried on Hart Island, and burials continue to this day, conducted by inmates on Rikers Island who receive 50 cents an hour for their labor. So Danny and Michelle, what inspired you to explore the untold story of the country's most famous public burial ground as a musical?

[28:52] Danny Haengil Larsen: Well, I was sitting at I work at the Graduate Musical Theater Writing Program. And I was sitting at my desk, probably seven, eight years ago. And Michelle and I would get on G chat every, you know, probably more than we should while we're at work. But she emailed me this article, I think it was in the Huffington Post. And it was an article about Hart Island, which I had never heard of. And then when I started talking to other people around me about this location, no one in New York City that I would talk to ever had heard of it. And she said, I think we need to write a musical about this. It was really that article. And it was just about Hart Island and what it is and the history of it. And there was this sort of reverence, yet sadness, yet peacefulness, but also this beauty.

And there was also this almost like ghostly haunted quality to it that just, but it was all about humanity and connection and people who are on the margins of society who are forgotten that, you know, get brushed away that we don't want to think about. So we send them to this island so that we don't have to think about them. And I think that kind of theme encapsulates the sort of stories that Michelle and I are very interested in telling, which is why I think it spoke to us so much.

[30:09] Michelle Elliott: Yeah. And we've subsequently learned that the island played a big role during the AIDS epidemic in the 80s and 90s. And that the queer community knew about the island, you know, the older queer community knew about the island more than probably the average New Yorker might have. Because unfortunately, a lot of people who passed away from HIV, AIDS, were abandoned by their families or were not able to afford a private burial. And so it kind of became another infamous part of the AIDS epidemic in the city. So I just wanted to acknowledge that because the island has a long history. It actually has Civil War soldiers buried on the island. And it became the city's public burial ground right after the Civil War. So over 150 years ago.

[31:00] Danny Haengil Larsen: You know, it's interesting you say that, because now I feel like there's so much renewed interest in Hart Island because of, unfortunately, because of the pandemic and COVID-19. And the, you know, the amount of deaths that have been here where people didn't have families, they were, you know, not from this country, any, so many reasons. So I think we need to keep hearing these stories. And, you know, why do we need to continue hearing them? Because they're important. They're the makeup of New York City almost.

[31:24] Michelle Elliott: Yeah, absolutely. And it's a place that, you know, we lived in New York for many years before we ever learned about it. And I know people are still learning about it. And maybe somebody out there right now has never even heard of the island, but it has played a huge role in the COVID crisis. I believe right now, the folks who are doing the burials are actually not the inmates that they've hired for very small wages, private crews to do the burials because of potential spread for COVID amongst inmates. And there are just a lot of new kinds of regulations in place. And, you know, that was another thing that really fascinated us that these two islands, Hart Island and Rikers Island, are these places where we just push people away that we don't want to have part of society, or we just don't want to think about, we don't want to know their story.

They're just peripherals to our busy lives as we go, keep our heads down, move forward, plow through the crowd, get on the subway, get home, do our thing. And so we really thought about the show as the chance to tell stories about people who we normally rush past and don't think about and don't see and highlight their lives and bring their stories to the forefront.

[32:37] Joe: Well, I think that's a through line with your shows, like I mentioned with The Yellow Wood and with Cloaked. It's about people, you know, who are isolated, but who are yearning for connection, despite the fact that they're basically trapped. Tell us a little bit more about the development of Hart Island. I know you began in 2017 with a stage reading at Village Originals at the Village Theatre.

[32:56] Danny Haengil Larsen: Yeah, before that, we were one of the inaugural writers group projects. We came into the first writers group a little bit later than the very first folks. So Musical Theatre Factory really helped us write the show and the conversations we had with the other artists. I mean, there were some just fantastic folks in that group, Anna Jacobs and Michael R. Jackson and Shekina Knafek and really great folks who gave us a lot of encouragement and really supported us. It was great to be part of that group. And I think honestly, if we hadn't had them, I'm not sure we would have ever really gotten it on the page. So that was really critical. And then Brandon Ivey, our longtime friend and supporter at Village Theatre in Issaquah, Washington, he just basically put us on the schedule for doing our show in August, even though it was May and we hadn't really finished it. So it was sort of like, you will finish this now because it will be presented. And it was a real great inspirational method to get our show written.

[34:00] Michelle Elliott: We call that high risk first drafting.

[34:00] Danny Haengil Larsen: Yeah. And then Musical Theatre Factory, as part of the writers group, produced a reading in, I think it was March of 2018, where it was the second reading that we did. Both of the readings, the first one that we did at Village and then the one at Musical Theatre Factory, which was sort of co-produced with the Village, featured Valerie Curtis Newton as the director. And then Village decided that they wanted to put it in their Beta Series.

[34:29] Michelle Elliott: Yeah, the Beta Series. So it received a workshop production in summer of 2019, which was super pivotal, directed by Jerry Dixon.

[34:38] Danny Haengil Larsen: For those who don't know who that is, that's Daniel from the original Once on this Island.

[34:44] Michelle Elliott: Yeah. Amazing person. And we are so indebted to him. He actually helped us with Hart Island, even at the original days when we were working on it with the Musical Theatre Factory. So he's been a great supporter all along.

[34:58] Danny Haengil Larsen: Yeah. And then that led to the blessing of getting into NAMT. And Raja Feather Kelly came on board as director of that project.

[35:08] Michelle Elliott: He was amazing.

[35:09] Danny Haengil Larsen: Now you're here. How about that?

[35:11] Michelle Elliott: Thank you. Yes.

[35:12] Joe: So tell us, what is the first song we are going to hear tonight?

[35:15] Danny Haengil Larsen: Well, it's actually a rehearsal recording just done in the rehearsal studios at Village Theatre. And it features Rodney Hicks playing the role of Charles. Charles is the inmate in our story who is on the burial crew, and he's very resistant to the power of Hart Island. The other inmates all really take their work seriously and are very reverent. But Charles has heretofore been just kind of aloof about it, disinterested. And in this particular moment, he kind of almost takes a moment to really see the island for the first time.

[35:53] Joe: And Rodney has been in your development pretty much since the beginning, right?

[35:56] Danny Haengil Larsen: Well, no. The first thing he did was at Village in 2019. And then he did our NAMT presentation. He was amazing in that. But this is from the Village version.

[36:07] Joe: So here is Rodney singing It Ain't Lost on Me.

[36:09] ♪ Musical number: "It Ain't Lost on Me" — performed by Rodney Hicks ♪

[37:43] Michelle Elliott: I've been cured and large, but still, there's something about the place. It's calm and it's serene. And it's nice to look up and see, not prism gray, but green. And God, look at that enormous tree. I climbed a tree like that when I was a kid. Probably the happiest thing I ever did. I remember being young and having hope before prison cells and the end of my rope. I remember being young. It ain't lost on me. It ain't lost on me that this island ain't so bad. Seeing all the branches swaying and the geese are flying over. And these old boys are praying. And I'm feeling something too. Like a spirit in my chest. Maybe I can find some peace. By laying these poor souls to rest. It ain't lost on me. It ain't lost on me. It ain't lost on me. Wow.

[40:17] Danny Haengil Larsen: Rodney should be a national treasure. He really is. We all have a story about how we saw him in Rent at some time. Me when it closed because I was too young to see him when it opened. I was just about to move to New York for the first time. And I saw on the Tonys this show called Rent. And I was like, who? And I saw Jonathan Larson's sister accept the award on his behalf. And she really encouraged writers. If you are a writer, go out there and tell your story and do your thing. And I was like, that sounds like me. I think that might be me. That's why we have the Larson grants now. Right. And then I went to see the show and stayed late on the sidewalk overnight to get $20 tickets. And then when I met Rodney and we were working together, I was like, guess what I used to do every weekend when I was young. It was kind of cool. And how lucky that he's the final Benny. He's on the DVD of the final performance. What an amazing person. Awesome.

[41:14] Jeanna Phillips: Well, tell us about your second song tonight. So the second song is called The Blanket. And so to just sort of set the song up, there are two sort of primary characters that we're following through the show. One is Charles. And then the other is a woman named Marilena, who has immigrated to the U.S. from the Dominican Republic. And upon arriving, she was pregnant when she arrived and then went into labor and her child was stillborn. And she couldn't speak English very well. And something that happened to a lot of mothers and parents back in the 80s and for a long period of time is that if they couldn't afford a public burial, they would be given the option to have their child buried on Hart Island.

But what they didn't realize and what they weren't always told was that they wouldn't be able to visit the grave site because there are no grave sites. And I remember there were, you know, we watched stories and heard about stories of mothers who for like 30 years were searching for the burial place of their child. So Marilena is in such a situation and predicament and is desperately trying to find out where her baby is and can't, which is how she intersects and connects with Charles, who is on the Hart Island burial crew. And during her journey, she is sent a package from her mother back in the Dominican Republic and obviously is very grief stricken. And this is the song that sort of follows the reception of this package. And it is sung by Giselle Jimenez and Natasha Diaz. Here is The Blanket.

[42:53] ♪ Musical number: "The Blanket" — performed by Giselle Jimenez and Natasha Diaz ♪

[46:08] Jeanna Phillips: It's an interesting show to be doing at a time where so many folks are dealing with grief that that grief has become a national presence in our lives in a way that hasn't I don't think that any of us have experienced that maybe maybe again during the AIDS crisis would be the closest thing that maybe in our lifetime we could look to and say you know grief is just like part of everybody's life but the the lives lost and the suffering from the pandemic is just it's everywhere and so the show in many ways speaks to that speaks to the present moment in that way.

[47:15] Danny Haengil Larsen: What brings these two characters together ultimately Hart Island is where they connect but you come to find out as Michelle said you know Charles was very resistant to the island and you come to learn that it's because he also suffered the loss of a child and has not allowed himself to move through the grieving process and these two learn this about each other and see the humanity in one another and need each other to begin moving through the process of grief and are able to do so.

[47:48] Michelle Elliott: Yeah and I think find a way to as Danny said move through and then also move forward as they can you know to the best that they can at that time and I think that that's another component of grief that we just want to cringe you want to stay away from grief but there's some you know coming to a place where you can somehow live with it that you've experienced it and recognize it and journeyed with it I think is part of it too and there is a lightness to that a brighter more positive part of that that's really important too we don't want to make it seem like our show is just you know oh agony to watch and really only sad and difficult it also has a lot of light and and it moves to a very comes to a very light place.

[48:35] Jeanna Phillips: I think all of your shows sort of examine isolation a little bit but sort of yearning towards connection and I like that you do the parallel of sort of the AIDS crisis and because for me I feel like it's almost PTSD what we're going through right now you know after losing my grandparents to my connection to Bill Finn and falsettos and all that there is a lot of sort of residual triggering elements to that time period that is happening now this fear of people I think a dangerous thing but very real right now.

[49:05] Michelle Elliott: Anyway thank you both so much we can't wait to hear more from Hart Island and hopefully more from The Yellow Wooden all of your other fantastic shows like Cloaked and Maiden Voyage thank you so much and truly we love you guys and we're so grateful for all that you're doing to support musical theater writers and thank you to NAMM and The Village and Musical Theater Factory shout out to all of you for organizing this has been an insane time for new work and I think we're going to keep seeing new work evolve and be more special than ever and it's really exciting.

[49:34] Jeanna Phillips: I think you're right Jen thanks so much.

[49:37] Michelle Elliott: Thank you so much yeah.

[49:56] Jeanna Phillips: This has been an insane time for new work and I think we're going to keep seeing new work evolve and be more special than ever.

[50:03] Jeanna Phillips: Join us next time for more of The Musicals of Tomorrow.