This transcript was automatically generated and might contain errors.

[0:43] Teresa Attridge: Hello, everyone. Hello, Barnacles. Welcome to another episode of New York Theatre Barn's Backstage Pass. It's pals.

[0:51] Pauls Macs: And Teresa. Round of applause. Round of applause.

[0:54] Pauls Macs: And today, we are so pleased to welcome a true triple threat, Martin Storrow, who wrote the book, music, and lyrics for the new musical King of Pangea. Hi, Martin. Welcome.

[1:05] Martin Storrow: Hi, it's such a pleasure to be here with both of you. Thank you for having me.

[1:09] Teresa Attridge: Oh, my God. Thank you for coming. We're very excited. We've been talking about this piece for a while, actually. Before you arrived, I was telling Teresa that I've been thinking about your piece ever since I saw it at NAMT, the National Alliance for Musical Theater Conference.

[1:21] Pauls Macs: If anybody out there doesn't know, but the NAMT conference in 2022. And I have to be honest with you, the part of the reason we asked you to be on this podcast today is that I was so excited to understand how the story turned out. Thank you for sharing the materials with us. It was truly moving to be able to experience the show. So thank you.

[1:37] Martin Storrow: First of all, just thank you. I received that and it means a lot. I'm very happy to spoil the ending for everyone.

[1:43] Pauls Macs: Oh, my gosh. We love a spoiler.

[1:45] Martin Storrow: Thank you for saying that. I just want everyone to know that the ending is as gorgeous as I'd hoped. Like it is truly, truly profound. It honestly can't be spoiled because it is a universal experience told in a really moving, impactful way. You can only experience when you're actually seeing the show or listening to the album. That's kind of how I feel is like knowing the story will only take you so far.

[2:06] Martin Storrow: I mean, for me, it starts and ends with more questions than answers. And I feel like anything that allows you to leave the theater asking questions for the audience and also for the writer, I think, is more empowering in a lot of ways.

[2:16] Teresa Attridge: Yeah, I have to say, we were actually talking about this as well before you logged in. But we were talking about musicals that are true meditations on grief and loss. And there aren't that many of them. We were talking about perhaps you could compare Fun Home. This piece is different. Grief can often leave you with certainly more questions than answers. It was part of the piece that was just, it felt so right. As Stephen Sondheim says, content dictates form. The idea that there's just as many questions as there are answers was truly, truly beautiful.

[2:46] Martin Storrow: Yeah, I have more questions than answers. I think what I've found, and we can talk a little bit about how the show came to be and what it came to be, because I think it's actually very different than the initial idea. When I started writing, I actually didn't even know that I was writing a show about grief. I didn't know that I was writing a show that was so personal. I thought I was writing a fantasy story about a guy who goes to a magic island that had nothing to do with my life.

[3:07] Martin Storrow: The journey of discovering what the show wanted to be and then finding my own willingness, my own courage to be vulnerable and excavating that, that is a journey of asking questions. It's been a journey of asking questions and not having answers. I think one of the most profound things that I've learned in the process so far is actually asking questions is what we're here to do. We're here to sort of deconstruct life and the human experience and not to try to build something perfect or something that explains everything.

[3:34] Pauls Macs: Towles, would you like to tell the audience what the show is about and or introduce our fabulous guests?

[3:41] Teresa Attridge: Thanks for teeing me up. We do read bios here. And just so you know, people tend to be very uncomfortable when I read them.

[3:47] Pauls Macs: It's a book report about you in front of you.

[3:50] Teresa Attridge: Yeah, let's sit here very still.

[3:52] Pauls Macs: Very still.

[3:54] Teresa Attridge: I have to thank you. I think this might be one of the easiest bios I've ever read, but we'll see. We'll see how it goes. All right.

[3:59] Teresa Attridge: Martin Storrow believes that our stories can change everything. A prolific writer, composer, and lyricist, Martin has created multiple albums and singles and a collection of poems. His music has been featured in film and television shows on NBC, Starz, and Netflix. And he has performed more than a thousand live concerts across the US and around the globe. And that's the bio from your website. Was there anything else you wanted to include? Because clearly you're fantastic.

[4:24] Martin Storrow: That's about as long a bio as I figure anybody's willing or able to digest.

[4:28] Pauls Macs: It was really incredible how you were able to fit so many accomplishments in such a succinct way. That's a writer, ladies and gentlemen.

[4:34] Teresa Attridge: Absolutely.

[4:36] Martin Storrow: The trick is not having that many accomplishments.

[4:39] Pauls Macs: Hey, okay, self-deprecating humor. Okay, you're like the me of this podcast. All right. I'm the one who self-deprecates here. You can't do that.

[4:45] Martin Storrow: I'm sorry. I will not step on your toes again. I'll go full ego from here on out.

[4:50] Pauls Macs: Love that. You have to be really careful because Pals and I are basically just RAs and we're here to make sure you're okay in a way that is pathologically positive.

[4:59] Martin Storrow: Well, and Teresa's always building me up. She's like, Pals, no, you're great. You deserve a bio too. All that stuff.

[5:04] Teresa Attridge: I'm always like everything you do is perfect. You're editing, flawless. Everything about you, wonderful. Great father. Accomplished entrepreneur.

[5:11] Martin Storrow: Okay, I feel so safe and so happy to be in this space.

[5:13] Teresa Attridge: I'm glad you feel safe.

[5:15] Teresa Attridge: We like to say that the pod is a very safe place. It's very safe for the barnacles.

[5:19] Pauls Macs: All right. And now, just so people know a bit about the show that we're talking about today, I'm going to read the synopsis. King of Pangea is inspired by Martin's own experience. After the sudden loss of his mother shatters his world apart, Christopher Crowe travels back to the imaginary island they created together when he was a child in hopes of finding answers that will bring the pieces back together.

[5:36] Teresa Attridge: Drawn from Martin's own memories and experience, King of Pangea travels the rich, complicated, and at times beautiful journey through loss, weaving together memoir, fantasy, and humor, and examining what it means to become king or queen of one's own heart.

[5:50] Pauls Macs: I think the listeners just heard it right there. I mean, this is based on your own experiences. Teresa said this earlier, but a word that kept coming to mind as I was reviewing the piece was vulnerability.

[5:59] Martin Storrow: Wow, I mean, through this conversation we're going to have today, thank you for sharing your experience. Thank you for being vulnerable. It's truly beautiful when it comes across in the piece.

[6:06] Martin Storrow: Oh, thanks. That is the highest compliment that I can receive at this moment in my career, I think. The journey of this show has been a journey of learning to become more vulnerable as a storyteller and also simultaneously learning how important it is for those of us who are making theater and making art to bring ourselves to the stories that we're telling. Whatever those stories are, I have become sort of an evangelist for tell your own stories, find the truth in whatever it is that you're looking to create.

[6:36] Pauls Macs: Yeah, you were saying earlier that the piece didn't start as a semi-autobiographical or self-inspired piece. You were saying that it started with the idea of the fantasy first, of the magical island. Can you talk about where you started with this piece and how it slowly started to evolve into what it is today?

[6:52] Martin Storrow: Yeah, so when I started writing King of Pangea, I did not know that it was going to be a musical. I did not know that it was going to be a personal story. My background is in music. I was a singer-songwriter, toured for a number of years. I had stepped away from music for a while. I just sort of like decided to reorient my life and this project was the project that brought me back to my creative self, sort of brought me back to the well.

[7:14] Martin Storrow: And I started working on it. It was a collection of songs and there were these songs that took place on this fictional island of Pangaea, sort of loosely telling the story of this person who shows up on Pangaea and becomes the king of this island. And I was like really very connected to this place and I felt really connected to the characters. And I was writing these songs and started sharing them with people and feedback that I kept getting was like, yeah, these songs are really beautiful, but like, what is this about? We don't understand.

[7:37] Martin Storrow: And so I kept saying, no, you need to understand this place is like so important. It's so like alive in my mind and my heart. Eventually, a really smart friend kind of asked, well, why? Like, why is Pangaea so important to you? I realized that like the reason this place was so important to me was because this is like the island I used to escape to when I was younger. My mom lived with cancer for most of my childhood. There were moments that were tough for our family and I used to escape into my imagination and I created this world.

[8:08] Martin Storrow: And once I told my friend that, this person was like, yeah, that seems like a story that's worth exploring. And so from there, it was like, am I willing to dig into this story? Am I willing to embark on a process of healing through art, healing something that I had actually not done the work to heal prior to really working on the show? And so with each iteration, I think I sort of eased into this idea of vulnerable creativity and sort of like vulnerable crafting of a story.

[8:35] Martin Storrow: And so with each iteration, it's become more personal. Eventually, I sort of realized another very smart friend. I was like, I want this thing to like live. It's more than just a collection of songs. Like, it feels like it needs to like live in front of people. And, you know, maybe there's something with actors. And my friend was like, yeah, it's called a musical. Like, they already have that.

[8:52] Martin Storrow: Like, new concept. I'm like, what if they put their feelings into song? Like it's acting, it's music. Maybe there's a book involved. It's called musical theater. Whoa, five, six, seven, eight. Let's get it. It all sort of evolved very organically. And it all, I would say, evolved because of really smart, heart-centered people who were around me and around the process and were willing to not only support me, but push on me a little bit and say, like, what is underneath this? What is underneath the island? What is underneath your protagonist's journey? Like, what is this really about?

[9:27] Martin Storrow: Layer upon layer was removed until the story was actually just like, got it. I'm telling the story of what happened to me leading up to and after my mom passed away. And through telling that story, I have been able to experience layers of healing of my own heart that I would never have experienced without embarking on this process.

[9:51] Teresa Attridge: Yeah, that's so beautiful. Well, first off, kudos to your support system or your collaborators who were able to give you that feedback. Sometimes it's really hard to hear that about your own work. So also, congrats to you for being able to take that feedback and turn it into such a productive step forward. I just want to say that it is a testament to the power of the theater. And this is something that I believe, the power of theater to heal. You know, that's something that I have in my personal artistic practice, my personal artistic mission statement. I try to offer healing. I can't just say, like, my work's going to heal you, right? I'm a director. If I can offer healing to the collaborators in the room that I'm working with and also myself, that's honestly the goal of what I'm doing.

[10:31] Pauls Macs: I guess the other thing that, as you were speaking just now, it struck me is so many of the writers on the podcast, and the one I'm thinking of specifically right now is Justin Cortez was talking about this when he was writing Lizard Boy, is so often you don't know what you're writing until after you start writing it. And so Justin was sharing about how he didn't realize he was writing Lizard Boy about race until being into the process for quite a ways. It's so interesting, right, because people are like, oh, why does it take so long to develop a new original musical? And yes, of course, there are all these moving parts and it's collaborative and that sort of like happens in seasons. But part of it also is exactly what you're saying.

It's like a show takes time to reveal itself to the creators, too. You start out by thinking and you're writing about something and then actually you need that time. You need those iterations to sort of unearth what is this really about? What is the story I'm really telling?

[11:19] Martin Storrow: That was like one of the most exciting moments in our entire development process was in 2019. I'd been working on the show for a couple of years and had connected with Richard Israel, who's now the director of the piece. The first time that I had really leaned into, we did what was called the big tent reading. I was living in L.A. at the time and it was the summer and it was really hot. So we rented this party tent, this canvas tent and had it in the backyard. And it was just this really beautiful day, doing a full reading of the show with friends who had been supportive.

[11:47] Martin Storrow: It was the first iteration of the show where the premise was that this person's mother had passed away. That was like the big shift. The catalyst for this journey is the loss of the mother. And there were so many things that were a little bit weird and fantastical and not what the show is now. But just the resonance in the space, the moments of honesty that I knew were honest moments that maybe people may or may not have known in that space. But the reaction was real. And it was like, I feel like I know what we're chasing now. That was like three years into the show, into working on the show. And from there, I was like, okay, now we can keep going in this direction. We can keep excavating and figuring out what this is. It was like striking gold in a way. You're just like digging and digging and digging. And you hit something and you're like, ooh, that's me. That's something.

[12:28] Pauls Macs: The aha moment, yeah. Can we keep pursuing that? I think it's interesting that you talk about vulnerability and your willingness to share with collaborators. The act of uncovering that story being so curious.

[12:40] Martin Storrow: I feel like that's kind of the opposite approach that Christopher takes in the show. Chris has sort of self-isolated, doesn't really want to talk about it. So many moments, even reflecting in the past, are young Christopher or Christopher kind of trying to process alone. Like having these beautiful flashbacks with family or moments with Sophie, moments with Arthur, moments with Celia, but the processing and the figuring out so often happens by himself. In the flashbacks as a young boy, as somebody who is so open to being vulnerable and able to sort of like bring people in, do you think that made it easier or harder to write a character who's actively trying to keep people out? Such a good question.

I think it was the most honest choice for the character. Yeah, I mean, in real life, I have two siblings, two younger siblings. They're represented in the story in as much as we've talked a lot about our experiences, you know, in the last few years. For this particular story, it made sense to have it be this one person going through this very intimate experience. But what's really interesting in talking with my siblings is like we all speak really freely now about the loss and about the experience of the loss. And this show has in many ways opened up those conversations. But one of the things that we all remember is that we didn't talk about it at the time. Like we didn't talk about her grappling with this illness.

We didn't really talk. I mean, we never talked about the idea that she could pass away. Just wasn't a conversation that happened in our family. Even afterward, it wasn't something we talked about. That idea of like being surrounded by family and friends and people, you know, being surrounded by community, but also feeling incredibly isolated was actually the most honest choice for the character, to my experience. It's represented by that theme of the island, right? An island stands alone. And to go to an island, but the idea of Pangaea, which they talk about in the opening, is that once it starts to drift, it doesn't go back to the way it was before. Very much those pieces separate, but it doesn't mean that they weren't together.

Just thematically, Pangaea itself as a character is so present and interesting and such a parallel to your main character. I thought that was very brilliant writing. I loved it. And it's interesting. There are people who engage with the show who are aware of the sort of Pangaea, like the geographical scientific history of what Pangaea is and other people who aren't. And I think ultimately, I feel like people can feel it on a sort of subconscious level that there's a connection, even if they don't know the history of it. But I also think to me, one of the main ideas of the show is that grief is something that we do not heal from alone. Ultimately, Christopher learns that these relationships are actually the key in a lot of ways to healing and moving forward.

And sort of likewise, in developing the show, the thing that has been the most surprising and also like the most meaningful is that with each new step, I have learned the exact same thing, which is like, number one, you can't make a musical alone. It's a similar journey in that way. Literally cannot. You cannot do it. It's very hard. It's very, very hard to do it on your own. This is a medium that necessitates community. It has got to have community and collaboration and all of those things. And the audience are a part of that too. I have learned starting very early on in the development of the show, I have been reminded time and time again, you, Martin, are not alone in your experience. And the specificity of some of these things, the details of the story, you know, the puzzle, I had somebody come up to me, these details are just resonant for the audience in ways that I never could have imagined.

Because my whole childhood, I was sitting around saying like, Oh, this was a solitary experience. This was something that I went through that nobody else would really understand. We don't talk about it. But to have people come in, somebody came up to me and said, like, when I saw the scene with the puzzle in the waiting room, I remember it was like, my father was dying. And I was in the waiting room in the sort of radiology department at the hospital. And there was a puzzle on the box, there was a note that said three pieces missing. It's like one of those details that I just remember from spending all that time.

[16:27] Teresa Attridge: That is very considerate that they put that on the box.

[16:30] Martin Storrow: I was like, where was that? Well, also, I think it speaks to a storytelling principle. We talked about this before on the pod is that sometimes the more specific you make something, actually, the more universal it can become. Now that person had like a very, very specific connection to the puzzle and the missing pieces, which might not be true for every single person. But that object or that metaphor that a person becomes attached to, to kind of process their grief, I'm sure speaks to many audience members who encounter this piece. And it was really, really powerful. That's another thing in terms of going back to that word vulnerability. There's so much specificity to you in this piece, but I have a feeling that that specificity is actually what allows it to be so healing for the people who have experienced this grief and the people who encounter this piece.

[17:13] Martin Storrow: I think you're right. And it's something I've learned about the craft as I've learned the craft. I think one of the gifts of being new to musical theater writing and writing a piece like this is you have got to come in with a student's mindset or the beginner's mindset. I've learned exactly what you're saying about the power of specificity, even if for them, maybe it wasn't a green puzzle piece. Maybe it was something else that they saw. Everyone has their version of that, right? And everyone has their Pangaea that they escaped to in these moments. It might not have looked like mine. It probably didn't. But the reactions of people who see the show, you know, we did a developmental production in Oklahoma City this past spring, and it was awesome.

And every night, this was at Lyric Theater of Oklahoma. One of the things that Michael Baron, the artistic director, does is that at the end of every show, he had a talkback. I would stay for all the talkbacks because I thought it was really fascinating. And I loved engaging with people around the show. And like night after night, people were just sharing these incredible stories of their own loss. It transcended a conversation about the show itself. It became a space like a container for a community to share their own stories. And you could just see how the specificity of their storytelling was sort of ignited by what they had just seen. That was really affirming. Cool. Art can do this. That's really, really special.

[18:25] Teresa Attridge: I think actually now is the perfect time to play the first demo. I think this actually transitions very well into what we're talking about. And I think we should play Prayer. So Prayer is sung by Sam Premack, who actually was in our NAMM presentation, has done a bunch of work with the show since then. I just love the way he interprets this material. You could say that Prayer is Christopher's I Want song. When we reach the song, his mom has just passed away and he has discovered an envelope that has a map on the back of it. It leads to this imaginary island called Pangaea, this place that was important to he and his mother when he was younger. And he, I think, starts to open up his own memory in ways that we haven't seen him do yet since we've met him and start to consider the possibility that he might be able to travel back to this place.

I think it's sort of the opening of a gate into what's going to be or a gateway into what's going to be this imaginary world, but also the world of Christopher's memory and the world that he sort of needs to travel.

[19:21] Martin Storrow: Absolutely. That was so well said. All right. Here is Prayer performed by Sam Premack.

[19:26] ♪ Musical number: "Prayer" — performed by Sam Premack ♪

[25:15] Martin Storrow: That song, really, to circle back to what we were just talking about, I'm going to read some lyrics here, actually. I can't remember all the stories I know you used to tell. Guess I should have thought to write them down. I thought about my own dad because my dad and my mom are still with us, thankfully. But I often write down his stories because he has so many good ones. Someday, he's not going to be around to tell. Pangaea represents this place, this idea of we could go back to that place where we could experience that feeling again. And all the far off places seem even further now. But when I hear Pangaea, it brings me back to then. I mean, it's memory, right? That feeling of trying to go back to home, even though you can never truly go back to that moment.

But there is that world that exists where it's like the in-between state. You said the I Want song, setting the stakes of the show, going back to that place, that Pangaea place. Also, I can hear the singer-songwriter influence, for sure. A lot of these songs, specifically in this song, there's something about it. It drives and it grooves, but it's also contemplative as well. It's thoughtful and it's self-referential in a way that it could stand alone. But the fact that it's incorporated into a story that we get to follow, even better. I think that is the place I come from is like that. I think the best songwriting is storytelling. I mean, it takes different forms depending on the genre and the medium.

But it's really interesting just hearing you read back some of the lyrics, too. And even the question about writing down stories and what we record and what we lose and try to regain. One of the gifts that came out of the writing process was my mom kept a journal. And when I say she kept a journal, we found a box of stacks of notebooks. I actually have them here in our apartment. I had never read them. I'd known they existed and they were sort of tucked away in a garage. It wasn't until probably four years into working on the show that I started to take out these journals and actually read her retelling of this story. It was fascinating. There were moments where our perspectives could not have been more different.

And then there were these moments, there's a scene in the show where Christopher, again, spends a full day in a waiting room. And it sort of becomes imprinted in his memory as this really, I think, defining event. I had such a strong memory of what that day was. My mother had written about it in her journal. It was nearly verbatim, her experience. In terms of factually what happened that day, it was the same.

[25:49] Martin Storrow: Part of the ongoing work is really trying to get behind the eyes and into the minds and hearts of not just my own experience, but what was her experience, the father's experience, like what was Maya and Sophie, you know, Sophie, the girlfriends, like what was her experience and all of that, and really trying to expand the perspective because so much of it is interlinked.

[26:08] Teresa Attridge: Totally. My family is currently, we're also on a cancer journey right now. My nephew, he's two and a half, he has cancer. Thank you. And so that's been difficult. One of the things that I've been observing a lot is sort of the different methods of trying to keep normalcy that my cousin is doing with her children. Yeah. She has three kids. She just gave birth to a third during all of this, which is super woman, truly.

[26:36] Martin Storrow: Yeah, truly.

[26:36] Teresa Attridge: I went out there for a couple of days to help them move and just kind of keep things normal, as normal as possible because I had to come back home from overseas. It was like a whole ordeal. But the ways in which she, as a mother, was trying to walk that line between, I want to tell you everything. I can't tell you everything. I want it to feel normal. You need to know this is not normal. And sort of seeing how difficult that was for her. I felt like you have such a beautiful moment in the show where he does read the diaries and he sees things from his mother's perspective. And he keeps sort of rereading or like rethinking about the idea of like, I have to put on a brave face. I'm tired. I'm tired of having to do this.

I'm tired of having to be brave. And that striking moment of like, right, because yes, you were so positive and so gung-ho and you wanted things to be the least scary they could be. But we couldn't make the fear go away. I just didn't realize how much effort it took to try to make it as tolerable as possible. I felt very strongly connected to that. I think that that was a really, vulnerable is going to come up a lot. I thought that was a very vulnerable thing to share. And I think it was one of the things that I really resonated with as someone who's now in that, you know, the club no one wants to join, right?

[27:49] Martin Storrow: Totally. Yeah. And I appreciate you sharing that. I hope that, you know, obviously, I hope that journey is a journey of healing and that things get better soon.

[27:53] Teresa Attridge: He's on a transplant list. We're like real close.

[27:58] Martin Storrow: I'm glad to hear that. It's hard though. And it's interesting, like perspective of a child versus the perspective of a parent. It's so real. We only know what we've experienced. We only know the perspective that we've sat in. When I started writing the story, I was effectively a child. I was a child myself. I lived this as a kid. I started writing it as a young adult and I have since become a parent myself. Your perspective can't help but change as you step into these roles. Writing this from the perspective of sort of an angry young person who's like, my mom didn't tell me everything. Like that's a valid perspective. But then also it's like, I'm also looking at it now from the perspective of a parent.

It's like, what would I do? What would I have done if it were me in her shoes? I don't know. I'd like to think that I would have had some enlightened, you know, approach that, you know, no one's ever thought of that's perfectly balanced, but like, um, but that's actually a perfect transition into the next demo. That's why they pay me the media.

[28:49] Teresa Attridge: Yeah, absolutely. You know, it's so interesting what you're saying. It's really resonating because as I was reading it, that was the journey that Christopher goes on. He starts as an angry young man, but through his journey to Pangea, one of the treasures he finds there is the journal. He's able to find the journal in the notebook and read it and understand her perspective. And also, I just think what you're saying is so profound, but the work ahead is putting more of the perspective of Arthur, the father, and also Christopher's partner to make sure those are fully explored, that we see a broader perspective of what's going on because you're right. I didn't think about this at all until you said it.

It's so focused on his experience, which doesn't feel wrong at all. But also, yeah, I guess I am craving, as soon as you said it, a little bit more, a little bit more exploration into the other characters. Speaking of which, next demo we'd like to play, well done, Teresa, is called Stella Maya. And this is not sung by Christopher, but sung by a character named Maya.

[29:39] Martin Storrow: That's right. Do you want to tell us about this song?

[29:39] Teresa Attridge: Yeah, so Stella Maya was one of the earlier songs that I wrote for the show. I wrote it after I knew a little more about this was going to be a musical, but not quite at the point where we fully knew what the story was. This song takes place in sort of a strange middle space in the imaginary world that Christopher is traveling through. So he leaves home. He ends up on this water taxi with a captain who somewhat resembles his father and with this woman named Maya who somewhat resembles his girlfriend from back home. And so this song, Stella Maya, is a moment that is shared between Christopher and Maya. She has revealed that she's also on her own journey through grief and healing that opens him up to be vulnerable about what he's going through. And I should say that the demo here is sung by Aubrey Swander and Ryan McCartan.

[30:32] ♪ Musical number: "Stella Maya" — performed by Aubrey Swander and Ryan McCartan ♪

[33:57] Martin Storrow: I'm already crying.

[33:59] Teresa Attridge: I remember this moment vividly from NAMM two years ago. I was just sitting there tearing up in the audience.

[34:02] Martin Storrow: And it was so fascinating to revisit it two years later and just be kind of transported between that moment and now and think about how much my life has changed the last two years.

[34:11] Teresa Attridge: Yeah, I mean, really, like, from what I know of your life, your life really is, I mean, and mine too, looks completely different than it probably looked when we were sitting in that space.

[34:19] Martin Storrow: Yeah, absolutely.

[34:23] Teresa Attridge: Me with no kids, I'm like, for sure.

[34:26] Martin Storrow: Listen, the last couple of years have been a decade and also have somehow been like two days, so I don't know, I really don't know what time is anymore.

[34:33] Teresa Attridge: Time is a construct, it really, yeah.

[34:35] Martin Storrow: Speaking of constructs, I really love the magical worlds that you created. Like your Pangea is really fascinating. I'm a huge fantasy fan in general. I'm a Lord of the Rings girl through and through.

[34:44] Teresa Attridge: Ringer forever, definitely, that's my fandom for life.

[34:51] Martin Storrow: One of the things I find really, really interesting about your fantasy world is it's this idea that it's this world that both you and then through you, Christopher went to in order to escape, but at the same time, it's where Christopher goes to confront as well, which is really powerful. There's this quote, we do not read children fairy tales to tell them that dragons are real. Children already know dragons are real. We read them fairy tales so they know dragons can be killed. And I feel like there's something so powerful in that quote. I remember reading your piece, it really reminded me of that and this idea of fantasy is just a mirror to our reality. Even if it's like these fantastical elements, what we are really doing is we are finding the ways that give scope and meaning and allegory and metaphor and all these things to these very real things that are hard to look at in their rawest form.

[35:46] Teresa Attridge: I wrote these lyrics down because they really spoke to me and I think speak to what Martin was just saying. And I'm standing at the devil's door and I don't know what I'm waiting for, but no matter how far you drift from your star, hope is the way back home. The idea, and I feel like this was Celia trying to tell this to Christopher, trying to instill optimism in him, hope is the way back home. And so it's so beautiful that Maya offers that to him as a way of defeating those dragons. Even though he's searching for a different place, Pangaea, it's also his home, right? That memory, it all weaves together. It's all interlinked.

[36:18] Martin Storrow: There's so much interlinkage, if that's a word, in this piece. For example, characters exist both as the father and then as the captain. It's giving Peter Pan. Can you talk about your inspiration or your thinking behind that? I am fascinated about that choice.

[36:30] Martin Storrow: Ultimately for me, I think it was about accountability almost. I was really fascinated with the idea that Christopher is always like, he's sort of walking on the edge of two worlds at all times because for me, that was my experience of grief too. It's like you're sort of living in this haze. You're always one comment away from this reality, one comment, one reminder, one small detail away from being thrust back into this reality. And so I love that for Christopher, Pangaea and sort of the imaginary world in general is a place where all of these things are completely new and fantastical, but we're always just one comment away from being thrown right back into the fire of what this journey is.

In a way, it keeps Christopher accountable to the journey that he has to be on and it also keeps me accountable to making sure that yes, we're living in this fantasy world, but what is the story that we're telling? It's an honest story, leading with honesty, leading with vulnerability. The grief journey has to come first, that journey from grief into hope.