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[0:00] Teresa Attridge: Ever wonder what it takes to make a new musical sing? Our mission is to make the exclusive.

[0:28] Pauls Macs: We're interviewing the creatives who are changing musical theater one 11 o'clock number at a time. This is your Backstage Pass.

[0:34] Teresa Attridge: Get your Backstage Pass. Get your Backstage Pass.

[0:42] Pauls Macs: What do the Lord of the Rings, Mrs. Lovett, and a deserted island have in common? Find out as we continue our conversation with Tony Award winner Greg Kotis.

[0:51] Pauls Macs: On the title page, it says, The End of All Flesh, parentheses, a play with a lot of music, right? So for you, what distinguishes this piece as a play with a lot of music?

[1:01] Greg Kotis: Oh, yeah, that's right. I mean, that's what we were debating that too. I mean, I like a play with a lot of music. That's funny to me. Also, I'm trying to indicate that the music that I write, it's not very sophisticated. It's the kind of music that a lyricist who knows a few chords on a banjo or guitar would write, because that's what I am, as opposed to the kind of work that Mark Coleman does, or any legitimate musical theater composer would create, which involves more than four chords and enlisting a greater knowledge and mastery of music. It's my way of saying, there's music, but it's not that fancy.

[1:40] Pauls Macs: I mean, to your credit, the banjo is hard. That is a hard instrument to play.

[1:44] Greg Kotis: Yeah, I would say also, don't sell yourself short, Greg. I really, really enjoyed the songs that I heard. So please, I understand what you're saying. And also, you want to give that space to the masters of their craft, but I really, really enjoyed this score.

[1:56] Pauls Macs: And actually, that was a question I was going to ask you earlier, which is why bluegrass, but then it seems pretty obvious. You've got a banjo, but still, the fact that you're like, I'm going to pick up this thing and write a play with music, and that the songs are as great as they are, is truly remarkable.

[2:08] Greg Kotis: I so appreciate it. So anyway, anyway, that's just my way of saying, just to set expectations to a degree.

[2:15] Pauls Macs: I respect that. As someone who also can play like, kind of some chords, that makes me feel very confident as a lyricist to be like, well, also Greg Kotis, who wrote Urinetown, is like me. So maybe I will write a show.

[2:29] Greg Kotis: And I think that's inspiring. You know, exactly. Right. Like, I think that's nice to hear. I feel like one of the things about musical theater that makes it hard to get people who are not theater people into it is that it feels inaccessible, right? Like, it feels like you have to know how to read music, and you have to have all of this extra information. You have to know that Oklahoma was the first musical theater musical from our historical perspective. And I feel like being able to say, hi, this is a play with music in it, and I wrote it knowing four chords, and it's great. That's great. And it's a fully, beautifully realized show.

[3:04] Greg Kotis: Yeah, thank you. I appreciate that. Yeah, I mean, you're right. Music should be accessible. This is one of the elemental ways that we communicate with each other. Babies sing, so we can sing with you.

[3:15] Pauls Macs: I teach music classes for babies.

[3:17] Greg Kotis: So how does that connect? How do you do that?

[3:19] Pauls Macs: I also would really like to know how this works.

[3:22] Greg Kotis: It's kids from the ages of six months to four, but I primarily work with six months to two or three. You teach them very basic things, like how to find the beat. So we do a lot of tapping our knees and shaking maracas. They know the scale, so we teach them do, re, mi, fa, so, la, ti, do, etc. And you sort of just help them develop a relationship with music and them making music with their own voice and their body. It's very cool. It's an important part of child development. You know, that's why we have nursery rhymes. And Raffi, that man built an entire career on four chords, right? You don't knock four chords in this house.

[3:59] Pauls Macs: That's really good to know.

[4:01] Greg Kotis: So something I really enjoyed about the piece is that Ma and Pa begin the show by saying there's no technology, no electricity, no indoor plumbing, and establish themselves as these post-apocalyptic homesteaders. What I appreciate is that we've established them as homesteaders, and I feel like there's this stereotype of people living off the land being very simple and not very intelligent. Later, they're discussing the myth of Cronus and opposing views on the impact of civil society between Rousseau and Hobbes. There's polyandry and egalitarianism and all of these big complex ideas being discussed by people I think are really easy to dismiss as a group. And so my question is sort of, tell me more about what it's like to turn that kind of stereotype of like a simple country folk on its head.

And is that the intention for the piece was to say, oh, you know, yes, it's like it came from having like the banjo and the beard and the aesthetic, but ultimately, was there a lot of intentionality between saying things like, you know, yeah, these are people who are passing down traditions and they're from our history and they're from our future, because you also have them talk about the people of the Stone Age, and how their intelligence is what got us here. Again, playing on that idea of the past and the future, and the fact that we so believe people who are older than us or people from generations before us were not intelligent, while we are actively benefiting from their discoveries and their systems. So if you could tell us more about anything related to the amalgamation of words like that, I would love that.

[5:37] Greg Kotis: It starts with these archetypes, right? The hillbilly, which I guess is perhaps a pejorative. As I've been playing the banjo, I've become aware of the perception of what the instrument is and who plays it. For example, the reaction that people who are really deep into that world have towards that, like one thing is like in this place where I am practicing and being taught, dueling banjos is not taught. And it's sort of kind of the unmentionable a little bit. And I think that comes from the instrument and the music sort of being dismissed as something that inbred people who are ridiculous do. There's pride there that says, that's not who we are. I started with the archetype. I started with the idea of who we think these people would be.

And also with sort of kind of, I hope, a sense of fun of like, it would be fun to play this broad character. And then to confound our expectations of who they are, to fill them also with this knowledge that I also happen to have, which is about political science and political philosophy and anthropology. And they can be both these archetypes in presentation while simultaneously sort of having this surprising deep knowledge of all these other kind of academic subjects. And it's just, it seemed like that's fun. That's like an improv. So improv, that's part of my background. And sort of when I write, I write with that kind of perspective in mind. A typical suggestion that you might get to create a character is to have one kind of archetype and one kind of adjective that you might not associate with that archetype.

So you could have vengeful dentist would be sort of a character and you can imagine how that's going to play out. And that's a fun character because it confounds our expectations of who that person is. Or lusty dishwasher, that kind of stuff. So here is another kind of improv approach where you have academic hillbilly, I guess the one way of saying it. And also it's an allegory. It's not reaching for realism. It's not reaching for naturalism. It's not really trying to create a person that you would actually meet. It's creating a person that can exist within the magical space of storytelling.

[7:47] Teresa Attridge: I just think that's really, really powerful because, you know, so often I'm going to make very broad statements about humanity right now. So everyone hold on. I just think that very often in our lives, we can only perceive someone for just like a split second and only get like one glimpse of who they are. And then we are conditioned to then create all these different assumptions about them based on how they dress and how they look and, you know, the identity that we perceive. But I think if we were able to truly understand people and we have the luxury to do that, I think more often our expectations would be confounded. So and I think that's a really powerful thing that you put on stage there, Greg, in my opinion.

[8:21] Greg Kotis: Thanks. We are. And we're talking to you. Well, I'm not going to say talking to tradition because you have said there's that war within you. But I so appreciate your assertion of, hey, even to say in the year 2023 that tradition is good, you know, not always, but there are valuable aspects of it is actually a powerful thing to say.

[8:42] Greg Kotis: That's the classic thing, right? You want to shake off the strictures that are placed upon you by your parents and you can see they're not good at living in the modern world and you're going to do it better. But yeah, as you get older, then you realize, oh, I mean, like one thing about parenthood is it taught me why my parents seem so crazy to me, because like that's hard, like raising children is hard and it puts you under a kind of pressure that is not clear to you when you're the child.

[9:07] Pauls Macs: I would just love you to talk a little bit about your development path, how it started, how it was developed. I believe you had a reading in New Hampshire and then you're with us in New York for the first presentation. So, yeah, if you could just talk a little bit about that, I'm sure the audience would love to hear about.

[9:19] Greg Kotis: Absolutely. So a friend of Anne and mine named Lauren Rosen, living in New Hampshire, invited me to submit something for the theater company that she was working with in New Hampshire called Players Ring, invited me to submit something. She said, are you working on anything? And if you are, we have space for you to develop it. So I was like, ah, and it's in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, which I'd never been to. So I was like, I have an idea for something, but it's not written at all. And so like, this is actually an important thing for me is to have some reason to start writing. And so all these vague ideas about the banjo and the hair and that's like, it was just sort of floating around as a vague kind of murky something. And the invitation to get specific and get concrete and to put words down on paper to say exactly what you think this is going to be, that was the immediate spark to start writing this.

[10:05] Greg Kotis: And my process from the writer's point of view is I set a timer. So I work in half hour steps. So I'll set a timer. And for that 30 minutes, I must write. It's amazing how productive you can be if the rule is you can't not be writing. Also, I borrow just to get in the weeds about the playwright's life. I heard that the guy who wrote The Corrections, he would blindfold himself when he was writing, so he couldn't see what he had written, so he couldn't edit it. So I've adopted that process where when I'm writing first draft stuff, I will blank out my screen so I can't see what I've written, which turns out to be for me a very effective way of not getting too bogged down in minutiae and just produce stuff.

And there's a writer who writes about writing called Natalie Goldberg, and she wrote a book called Writing Down the Bones. And she talks about thinking about creativity as being half the creative mind and half the critical mind. The creative mind creates and the critical mind polishes. And the secret to productivity is to separate those two long enough so that it can actually work.

[11:05] Greg Kotis: So anyway, I started working on a first draft maybe in April, and then I think we showed up in Portsmouth in June or July. By that time, I had a first draft of the book and maybe five songs, so I knew that I wanted it to be music. Then the next year, we came back and I had a complete book and score. And so the first two steps for the show, developing it, was putting on readings at this small theater in Portsmouth called The Player's Ring, which Lauren Rosen was the creative force behind it. So this was a year ago last summer, and then I was looking for another step to take it, and someone suggested that I reach out to the New York Theater Barn. I looked on the website, and they just said, this is a place where new work is done, and they're great people, and they're supportive, and maybe this is a place for you.

I just looked on the website. I didn't know Joe. I just looked on the website, and his name was, here's the artistic director, and here's his email. I thought, well, I'm just going to reach out and see what happens. And so I emailed him. It was serendipitous in that he said that they had just had a project drop out for some reason. I don't know why, but they had an opening in a new work series. So I think in September of last year, September of 2022, we presented 20 minutes of the work at a series that the Theater Barn produced in Chelsea, I think, in New York City. And then based on that, Liz Fleming, who is the artistic founding producer of Out of the Box Productions, she invited this piece to be a part of her new work series.

And that, we just did a reading in March, I think. So that's sort of how it happens. With developing a new piece, at least how we've done it with this show, it's just a matter of trying to find a place to present it. Having self-produced, I know that producing is really, really hard. It involves endless hours of labor and effort, and it's really difficult to do. And if you can find a place that will do that hard labor for you so you can focus on the creative thing, that's just a huge blessing. That allowed me to continue to work on the piece, to continue to polish it, to work with some fantastic artists.

[13:08] Greg Kotis: We've got some people both at the New York Theatre Barn step and the Out of the Box production step to work with directors and music directors and dramaturgs and other people that can help you sort of see what you can't see. One challenge for a playwright is you can never see the show for the first time. You see it in pieces and bits and pieces and you can never see it the way that an audience sees it, so it's great to get a perspective of someone who is seeing it for the first time or reading it for the first time. That's something you can never do. You can never see yourself from behind, really, because your eyes are placed. It's an impossibility. It was a critical step to have it presented and produced by the New York Theatre Barn and then more recently by Out of the Box Productions.

I remember you were asked a similar question at the New Work series and you talked about seeing it with an audience for the first time and the difference between nausea or not nausea as your experience. I know many writers talk about that first time is really hard. Can you talk about your experience seeing the piece for the first time?

[14:02] Greg Kotis: Yeah, I mean I've been doing this for a while so the emotional response is a little bit more, I'm a little more armored, I have a little more scar tissue. But yeah, I mean you as the writer, you are alone with your piece sometimes for years. There are things that make you laugh that you think are just hilarious or that move you or that whatever or you think make complete sense but when the proof in the pudding happens when you actually present it to an audience and you see what they do. You see if they laugh where you think they should laugh. You pay attention to things like when do people start looking at their programs. Since we're talking about theater, that's like evidence of like oh, they're not paying attention.

There's lots of different kinds of silences that you can hear and feel in an audience and so there's a kind of silence which means that they're listening and there's a kind of silence that means that they're not. To try to gauge those things and to learn what you can from an audience to see where things are working and where things aren't. And things that you can change and things that you can't change. With Urinetown and Yeast Nation and maybe to a degree, I'm not sure if this is true at the End of All Flesh, but a lot of the direct address stuff are things that I probably heard from an audience member after some reading. I think someone must have told me that Urinetown is a terrible title.

I'm like okay, I'm not going to change the title so let's at least let them know that we know that they think that that's a terrible title. You know, in Yeast Nation there's a character, now in the unnamed, who's sort of like a Greek seer and sort of mystic and a lot of things that she says at some point came from things that audience members or collaborators might have said about the material. That makes so much sense in retrospect. For those that don't know, in Yeast Nation, Yon the Unnamed has like a Greek chorus of other yeasts and one of those yeasts, who I believe is just yeast number two, is constantly like, I don't think that's scientifically possible. And everyone's like, silence! Kind of like the, what?

Everyone just shouts silence, no matter who it is or where they are. So it's very funny, your ability to also hear the feedback that's like, oh, this is helpful, and the feedback that's like, oh, you don't like it? Let me just make that a part of it now. That's very empowering, I think, knowing the difference between an opinion that is helpful and an opinion that is not.

[16:22] Greg Kotis: Yeah, I mean, it might be noise and just might be a fact about the material that it can't be changed, or I just don't want to change it. And just to make that a part of the awareness of the piece and to build, I guess, a little bit of solidarity between the people on stage and the people off stage. This neo-futurist principle of sort of tearing down walls between these two groups. And if we can bring their criticism on stage, then that feels like it diffuses a lot of possible friction between the production and the audience member. I mean, how many times are we in a theater, and there's just something that's bugging us about the show, and you know that the people on stage know that it bugs them too.

So if you just name it, then it becomes a source of solidarity rather than of division. I once heard a writer say, the audience can tell you where the problems are, but they never know how to fix it. That's copyright them. But yeah, like what you're saying is making so much sense. And of course, like you're going to be paying attention during that process. I think we should spice it up a little bit. Teresa, do you want to introduce your game or your segment? Let's call it a segment.

[17:24] Teresa Attridge: I have a fun little segment that I'd love to do, and it was tailored specifically for your love of disaster and dystopia. So the game is Survival: The Musical. Now, I think for all intents and purposes for this, the three of us wake up on a deserted island together. There are no native people living on this island. There's flora and fauna and the things you would find on a deserted island. But alongside us, there are four musical theater characters that have also been abandoned on this island. Who do we want on the island with us?

[17:55] Teresa Attridge: Wow. I will already go ahead and say, I would like Elle Woods to be on the island with us.

[18:01] Teresa Attridge: From Legally Blonde the Musical, because if she proved anything, she can learn anything. She's adaptable. She's likable. And if there's one thing you want in the face of a disaster, it's somebody who will be solution-oriented and try to keep everybody going. She's definitely like an optimist. And I know that she's not everybody's cup of tea. I'm from California, so I very much love her vibe. But I think that you need someone who has leadership skills without the same amount of ego, because you definitely don't want someone trying to like colonize six other people on the island, you know?

[18:35] Greg Kotis: Yeah. And Greg, while you're pondering this, I'll say mine. I went two directions. I first thought about it very practically. Oh, I want Chip Tolentino from the 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee, because he's a Boy Scout. I'm an Eagle Scout. I don't know if you knew that, Teresa. I'm an Eagle Scout. So I thought, oh, he'll have wilderness survival skills, because mine are quite rusty. I think you had a critique to that, Teresa, didn't you, about Chip?

[18:55] Teresa Attridge: We don't know where Putnam County is. Is he a city boy who goes to the park to earn badges? Or does he actually rough it in the woods?

[19:03] Greg Kotis: Those given circumstances are not established in the play. So we don't really know. Teresa made me rethink my choice. You know, the other one that I was thinking of, and of course, my mind went here because of you, Greg. But I thought, I want to be on the island with Caldwell B. Cladwell, because I'm sure people are going to be hunting for him, because he could give them an awful lot of cash if they found him. This play happened in 2011, when I staged it. My brother still comes up to me and says, it wasn't just cash, Miss Pennywise. It was an awful lot of cash. So that's where my mind immediately went. I was like, oh, yeah, all his employees are gonna be looking for him. So they gained a cash reward. That's how I attacked the problem.

[19:37] Teresa Attridge: Very practical. How am I going to get off this island after I survive for a bit?

[19:41] Greg Kotis: So your intention is to escape.

[19:43] Teresa Attridge: I'm not trying to repopulate society. I'm trying to get off of this island, get back to society. What are you thinking?

[19:49] Greg Kotis: This is probably a terrible idea, but I guess Mrs. Lovett.

[19:53] Teresa Attridge: That's a great idea.

[19:54] Greg Kotis: No, I love it.

[19:55] Teresa Attridge: Not a terrible idea. That is a great idea.

[19:56] Greg Kotis: Really resourceful, seems really willing to get behind people that she believes in. Assuming that she would be on our side. She seems like she'd be a great person. She was corrupted, kind of by Sweeney. And maybe in the hands of a more sympathetic character, she's capable of great good as well as great evil.

[20:16] Teresa Attridge: I love that. I love that so much, Greg. I love the idea of getting Jane from Tarzan, which was a musical. Because in the musical, she's a botanist. And she travels with her father who studies animals. So she has the kind of information that keeps you from eating a poisonous plant. And I debated, I was like, do I want Jane or do I want Seymour? I think Seymour is too weak-willed. He's like, maybe a little bit of blood, maybe murder. He escalates a little too much for me.

[20:46] Greg Kotis: When it comes to Mrs. Lovett, I don't know if I could fall asleep when she's around the campfire. If he starts to sing, Nothing's Gonna Harm You. I'm like, oh, I've heard this one before. I know how this one turns out.

[20:55] Teresa Attridge: Not to defend Elle Woods, but she is a Gemini vegetarian, famously. So Elle Woods would not eat you in your sleep.

[21:01] Greg Kotis: Who is Seymour's love interest in Audrey?

[21:05] Teresa Attridge: Audrey won.

[21:06] Greg Kotis: Well, just because she's such a positive presence.

[21:10] Teresa Attridge: I love that. Great. I have to admit, I went the same direction, which was, you know, first I thought about, okay, who's going to practically help me survive? I also went to the pilot from Come From Away, who probably knows how to survive on an island if there's a plane crash. Then I went to Chip Tolentino, then Caldwell B. Cladwell. But I also had this thought process of, who's just got really positive energy? Do I want Bobby Strong, who's just going to help me feel good about myself and lead me to a better tomorrow? I also went there. So I love that you thought about Audrey as the character you'd want on your island. I agree with that.

[21:38] Greg Kotis: Yeah. You know what? I love that we're all just picking these very positive, loving female figures for the island. And Chip.

[21:45] Teresa Attridge: Chip is there, who probably would get there. And then I'd be like, okay, can you start a fire? He's like, no, I don't have that badge yet. Well, I picked the wrong person.

[21:53] Greg Kotis: Well, now Mrs. Lovett is there and it won't be a waste. You have a young child there. I don't know. I don't condone eating children. I'm just saying it's an apocalyptic scenario. So, so far, what is it we have? Are we yes on Mrs. Lovett?

[22:06] Teresa Attridge: I'd go yes. I'm going to say yes to pretty much anything Greg says. I'm not going to actively disagree with Peg Kotis on the podcast and what she chose to be so kind to guest on.

[22:16] Greg Kotis: See, me who loves to fight would have, but I think Mrs. Lovett is great.

[22:21] Teresa Attridge: Are we yes on Elle Woods or does anyone disagree?

[22:23] Greg Kotis: Here's my ignorance. I don't love the character.

[22:25] Teresa Attridge: You would love her. She's wonderful. She also subverts expectations where she's highly idealistic and then people think that means she's dumb. She's not dumb. She got into Harvard law.

[22:30] Greg Kotis: So what happens in that musical, Greg? This is fun. I'm describing the plot of Legally Blonde, the musical to Greg Kotis. This is the greatest moment of my life officially. So Elle is dumped by her boyfriend, Warner, who's like very, very smart and very popular. And I think rich as well. And he's going to go to Harvard law in the next academic year. And she thought that they were going to like live their life together and get married and she is heartbroken. So when he dumps her and goes to Harvard law, even though she's kind of what you would probably, I mean, talking about a stereotype here, but what you would consider like a blonde sorority girl, she decides she's going to go to. And so she spends her entire senior year studying for the LSATs and she gets like a perfect score and goes to Harvard law.

And when she gets there, she goes through a journey of self-discovery where she realizes, oh, I came here for this person, but this person's not actually a good person. And I actually am everything that I need to be an outstanding lawyer on my own. And she learns to find that strength in herself and she falls in love. It's a very powerful story. I just did that. I just summarized Legally Blonde the musical to Greg Kotis. But Teresa, I fully agree with your choice. I want Elle on our team.

[23:35] Teresa Attridge: There we go. Okay. I think we all also agree about Audrey.

[23:38] Greg Kotis: I'm willing to drop Chip. Okay. You put it in my head. Chip is gone.

[23:40] Teresa Attridge: We're willing to drop Chip.

[23:41] Greg Kotis: I don't know. I feel like I'm going to go Caldwell B. Cladwell or Jane. I feel like, yeah, I'm going to go Caldwell. We don't have to agree. We don't have to agree.

[23:50] Teresa Attridge: Are we trying to survive or are we trying to escape?

[23:51] Greg Kotis: I think you need to be the tiebreaker on this and I'm not going to be offended.

[23:54] Greg Kotis: I think survival. I think that's got to be the, that's the measure, I think.

[23:59] Teresa Attridge: Teresa is nodding her head. She is so happy right now. Although, you know, you picked a character that was not your own.

[24:05] Greg Kotis: Listen.

[24:06] Teresa Attridge: Yep.

[24:06] Greg Kotis: A deserted island. I keep calling it a desert island.

[24:09] Teresa Attridge: I think it's like a desert deserted island. I think it's both things. I think that makes it even better.

[24:13] Greg Kotis: That's so bad. Because if we were trying to escape, I would have recommended Ariel from The Little Mermaid. She loves sailors. She'd go find someone with a ship and be like, come save them.

[24:24] Teresa Attridge: I think that is a brilliant loophole. I actually, my mind went there as well. It's like, okay, what mythological musical theater characters could I choose? Like Hercules or my mind went to Hadestown. And I was like, okay, why would I want Hades on my team? Like, never trust a god.

[24:38] Greg Kotis: Exactly. Never trust a god.

[24:39] Teresa Attridge: Never trust a god.

[24:41] Greg Kotis: But I love that your mind went there, Teresa, because I think that's a good play. Greg, I think you have the most fun answer though. Mrs. Lovett, that was choice because we're like, she can cook. She loves the ocean.

[24:51] Teresa Attridge: That's true.

[24:52] Greg Kotis: Yeah, yeah.

[24:52] Teresa Attridge: She'd probably be pleased. She'd be by the sea, finally.

[24:55] Greg Kotis: She will be by, oh, I love, she would be by the sea, finally. Well, Greg, it was truly a profound pleasure. Like you have no idea how exciting this was for me. I'm like, I don't know if it's my general love of The Lord of the Rings or The Beard specifically on Greg, but we really went there and back again. Greg, it was just such a pleasure to speak with you today and learning about your creative lens. The End of All Flesh is such a promising piece. I can't wait to see what happens next with it.

[25:20] Greg Kotis: Thank you. Thank you so much for being here.

[25:22] Greg Kotis: Thank you very much for having me. It was a delight to talk to you both about Flesh and musical theater and all the things. So it was really fun. And I'm a podcast fan. I'm so happy that you guys are going to be a part of that world.

[25:35] Teresa Attridge: Oh, amazing. Thank you. That's such a nice thing to say. And now we have old friends and new friends. That's what theater does. It brings people together. And on that note, goodbye backstage pass.

[25:47] Teresa Attridge: Thanks for joining us on New York Theater Barn's Backstage Pass, hosted by Teresa Attridge and Pauls Macs. Join us next time for a conversation with Nico Juber about her new piece, Millennials Are Killing Musicals.