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[0:00] ♪ Musical number: "Vilna, My Vilna" — performed by Greg Lafollette ♪

[2:33] Teresa Attridge: Welcome back to part two of our conversation with Kevin Cloud and Lisa Kenner Grissom about this inspiring new musical. Vilna: A Resistance Story is an exciting new musical about Witka Kempner, a 19-year-old Jewish girl who inspired the heroic Jewish resistance movement in the Vilna ghetto during the Holocaust. After the Nazis invade Poland, a fierce and fearless Witka escapes to the free Bohemian city of Vilna, Lithuania, where she meets a group of young artists led by a visionary poet, Abba Kovner, and inspires them to form a resistance. When the Nazis invade and confine Jews to the ghetto, Witka and the group must find creative ways to fight back. With the Nazis bearing down, they make a daring escape to the forest where Witka blows up a Nazi train, the first act of sabotage by a Jewish partisan in World War II, paving the way for their return to reclaim their beloved city.

With a vibrant klezmer-influenced pop score, Vilna tells a forgotten and inspiring story that speaks to our times. Listen all the way to the end for a game where we decide which musical theater characters would help us lead the resistance.

[3:30] Pauls Macs: Another person I'd like to talk with you about today is Witka Kempner. Learning about her life and what you had to create or how you found materials to create her story, insight about that would be really fascinating. She's a really inspiring figure, and I just love to know how you write a character like that.

[3:46] Lisa Kenner Grissom: Yeah, Witka Kempner was from Poland. She's Polish, and she escaped her small town after the Nazis invaded and basically rounded up everybody in her town. And she just had the guts and the chutzpah to leave against her parents' wishes. She actually, in the real story, she took her younger brother with her, and they ended up stopping along the way at an uncle's house. And the uncle was like, no, you're not going to take your little brother. But she just has this vision of getting to Vilna, which is still safe and free at that time, and wanting to fight. You know, she wants to meet with other young people and join the fight. So that's sort of where our story picks up. And she's just, I mean, for me, I tend to write about strong female characters and protagonists.

So I was just in love with Witka from the get-go. You know, she's fearless. She's feisty. She's sassy. She doesn't take no for an answer. She's blunt. She puts her foot in her mouth, all those things. In our story, she's quite single-minded. And I think that is also true. I think in real life, she's probably a little bit quieter than our Witka. But, you know, this is drama, and we're having fun, you know, developing her and giving her her voice. I do think that in real life, she and Abba were in a relationship. They end up getting married. This is a little-known fact that we could not fit into the musical. But she and Ruska and Abba were a bit of a throuple at the time.

[5:14] Pauls Macs: Oh, my goodness. Scandalous!

[5:17] Lisa Kenner Grissom: Scandalous. Yeah, I mean, they shared a room. And there's very little written about it, but they were—I would say they really were, like, the best of friends. And they stayed the best of friends after they—I mean, fortunately, they all survived, and they end up immigrating to Israel. And they all, you know, Ruska married somebody, Abba and Witka married and had children. But she's just a great character that you just want to—that you fall in love with because she's so single-minded and feisty. And that's very true, I think, to Witka Kempner.

[5:46] Kevin Cloud: Yeah, you asked how we learned about her and her life and her details. We connected with her son and had an interview—had probably a couple different interviews with him. And he just shared memories and stories, stories that have been passed down to him. One of the stories he shared that didn't make it into the play because it was—it actually made it in the earlier version of our show. But people were basically like—it was so improbable that they were like, well, that's obviously made up, that couldn't have happened. But what happened in real life is that she had a confrontation with a Nazi soldier and slapped him and walked away and didn't get killed and survived to tell about it. And that was the true story, and that was in one of our earlier versions.

But we just heard from everybody saying like, oh, that slap scene, that was so unrealistic, there's no way that could have ever possibly happened. And it was funny because it was like, well, actually, it did happen, but because everybody responded the way they did. But it does give you an insight into how strong she was, how determined she was, how impulsive she was. We had a conversation with the dramaturge once who said, you know, we've never had a really great female Jewish protagonist in a musical. I don't know if that's entirely true. Lisa, you might know more than I do if that's totally true or not. But it really was an interesting conversation as we thought about Vidka and really making the story about her and centered around her. She is this amazing person that kind of drives our story forward.

[7:00] Lisa Kenner Grissom: Yeah, I think she's kind of iconic. You know, I mean, we've learned about her in maybe a bigger version when we get to Broadway or whatever. We'll have all the sets we want, but she would run across the rooftops to escape the ghetto and she would go in and out of the ghetto and she was able, she was a bit of a chameleon. She didn't look too Jewish. She was able to pass, actually, and that's actually in our show. And so she could wear different disguises and just wear different hats in the resistance movement. So she's a courier. She's also, you know, smuggling things. She's doing many, many different things for the cause. So she builds a bomb.

[7:34] Kevin Cloud: She builds a bomb.

[7:36] Lisa Kenner Grissom: Yeah, she builds a bomb. She carries it outside of the city and blows up the Nazi train, which historically really was the first act of Jewish resistance against the Nazis. She blows up a train and they kill all the soldiers. I mean, these amazing things that she does. It just, she was such an inspiring person to write about and to embody this idea of resistance.

[7:56] Pauls Macs: Well, yeah, and I would just say a theme of our podcast has often been, oh, I wrote this character because I didn't see them represented on stage. For example, a classic example, Justin Huertas' Lizard Boy. He talks about, I didn't see a young gay Filipino man being portrayed on stage. So I wrote one. But what's so exciting about this character is this incredible headstrong but driven female protagonist, but it's real. She's a real person. So it's not like you had to create this person. This person really existed and that's really, really exciting.

[8:27] Kevin Cloud: We just had to find her.

[8:28] Lisa Kenner Grissom: Yeah. Well, that's so often true is that if you look at history, it's there. Or, you know, people will say, oh, throuples, that's such a modern thing. And of course, like, you know, no, throuples have been happening, people. Just look at the history of you. Look, they're there.

[8:41] Kevin Cloud: Exactly. When we first started doing research about Vilna, I came up with just story after story of story. These amazing things that happened and this small group of artists who, you know, turn into resistance fighters and the things they did. And about six months into it, I kind of panicked because I was like, someone's done this story. Like this story is too good. This story is too good to have never been told. We just started doing research like crazy. And I just kept having this underlying panic of like, oh, I'm going to stumble into the website of the, you know, major movie that I miss somehow from the 90s about this story. But it hasn't been told to me. There have been a couple smaller shows, a couple that have been in Yiddish that have been kind of about certain people in our story. But the story of Vilna by and large has not been told. And so we feel really humbled and honored that it kind of came to us and that we have the opportunity to share it now.

[9:26] Teresa Attridge: Well, I think this is a great opportunity to set up "Never Say."

[9:29] Kevin Cloud: Yeah. So "Never Say" is the song that Hirsch Glick writes in the ghetto. And in fact, another amazing interview that we were able to have is we talked to one of Hirsch Glick's friends from the Vilna ghetto, who was one of the first people that Hirsch played the song for. And the two of them were down in this basement and Hirsch tells them, hey, I wrote this new song and he starts singing it for him. And he kind of recounts that story, which was just such an incredible honor to have that conversation. But he writes this song and it spreads like wildfire throughout the ghetto, throughout all the other ghettos in Eastern Europe, to the partisan soldiers out in the forest fighting. And it really did make a very real impact on people's sense of encouragement, sense of hope, sense of faith, sense of belief that they could make a difference.

So what I did is I took the original lyrics and I just picked a couple of the phrases that I took from the original song are, never say this is the final road. And then he also says, keep marching onward as long as we're here. And I just thought both of those ideas were so inspiring. First of all, this idea of never say this is the end. You don't know when the end is going to come. Like you just kind of keep doing what you're doing and just keep fighting for as long as you can. But this idea of like, keep marching as long as we're here, like as long as we have breath, as long as we have a day to live, we're going to keep fighting and resisting and doing whatever we can to do good in the world.

And that idea was just so inspiring to me. And so I kind of lifted those two phrases from the original song. The original song that he wrote was actually from a Russian tune, I think. He sent lyrics to this Russian tune. But I rewrote the entire song. I kind of, you know, set it more in kind of a pop modern day setting to try to connect with modern audiences and bring this story to kind of a more contemporary audience. This is another one of those songs. This is probably my third shot at it. The first couple were okay. I actually have a son who's 20. His name is Ben and he has great taste. He's like a great sounding board. He's really, really good musician and I played this third one for him and he's like, yeah, that's the one that's the one. So I think we finally stumbled into it on third time's a charm on this one.

[11:24] Kevin Cloud: Performing this song.

[11:25] Kevin Cloud: Yeah, so this song is performed by another good friend of mine. His name is Greg La Follette, super talented vocalist and great producer, and yeah, he's featured on this song.

[11:32] Lisa Kenner Grissom: Fantastic.

[11:33] Kevin Cloud: Well, here is "Never Say," performed by Greg La Follette.

[11:36] ♪ Musical number: "Never Say" — performed by Greg La Follette ♪

[14:55] Kevin Cloud: This is an anthem, and I hope you don't mind this comparison, but I'm getting Pasek and Paul vibes as I'm listening to it. It feels very, very inspiring, but also very contemporary.

[15:05] Lisa Kenner Grissom: Yeah.

[15:06] Kevin Cloud: So the next time I need a little encouragement, I'm definitely going to put this song on.

[15:10] Lisa Kenner Grissom: You can compare my music to Pasek and Paul any time you want.

[15:13] Kevin Cloud: You're like, please, please.

[15:16] Lisa Kenner Grissom: That's immediately where my mind went, oh, this has got Pasek and Paul vibes as I was listening to it. I was actually listening to it. I was taking care of my son, and I had this song in the background. I'm like, this song is really encouraging.

[15:26] Kevin Cloud: That's awesome. I love that. So in the musical, as you said, there's unconventional means of resisting where we start with cultural resistance and then we go to a violent resistance with the bombing of the train. But there's an intermediate state that involves the sewer system. And I think this is a great opportunity to play "Sewers." Would you please set that up?

[15:45] Lisa Kenner Grissom: Yeah. So Ruska Korczak is another character in this play based on a real person. And in our story, Abba Kovner had given her the assignment of mapping the sewers earlier in the story. So of course, who wants to do that job? I mean, it's the worst job ever, but it comes back around and it ends up saving them. This is all true. They were about to liquidate the ghetto. Really the only way out, they would have been shot at any of the gates or they were literally being hunted. Jews were being hunted in the ghetto. She knew the sewer system. So she was able to lead them through the sewers and allowed them to get to the forest where they were able to lead them through the sewer system so that they could be in the forest, actually taking up arms and being the partisan fighters that they have so long to be.

So that's where we are. We start the song with them going down into the sewers from the manhole. And the crazy part about this song too is that Abba Kovner, his desire, his dream was to really lead the people of Vilna in an armed revolt against the Nazis. But the people of Vilna basically rejected that idea. They made it clear that they would not fight. In fact, they turn on Abba Kovner and his group of a small group of resistance fighters. And so this is a crushing moment where they basically have to go to plan B because they realize they didn't inspire the people of Vilna to stand up and fight with them. And so they've got to flee to the forest to fight, which is a crazy part about this song.

But another thing that I love about not only this song, but our story in general is that a lot of the people from our story, they did survive. They not only escaped through the sewers, they make it to the forest. But then as the Red Army is coming in from the Eastern front, Abba and the partisan soldiers from Vilna are able to retake their city of Vilna back from the Nazis. So it's, it really is. We tell people it's a Holocaust story you've never heard because it's the story of these Jewish partisans who literally take their city back from the Nazis. And the way it started was them leaving the city through the sewer system so they could get to the forest and then come back and retake their city with the Russians. It's absolutely an incredible story.

[17:41] Lisa Kenner Grissom: Amazing. And who was singing this song?

[17:43] Kevin Cloud: Yeah, this is Greg La Follette again on this song as well. Here's "Sewers" performed by Greg La Follette.

[18:14] ♪ Musical number: "Sewers" — performed by Greg La Follette ♪

[22:49] Kevin Cloud: I just want to add because we talked earlier on about, you know, visiting Vilna and you're talking about Riga and the Baltics and everything. I went to that forest and I went to the Partisan Fort where they stayed, where they lived. It's so palpable. The song really takes you there, like you said, both excitement to finally be able to take up arms, but also joy about being free finally and looking up at those trees and everything. And to your point, yeah, today there are partisans in those forests. I know in Lithuania, there are people that are going back and forth between Ukraine and trying to help Ukraine and things like that. It's both historic and also contemporary. Really, the forest is a place where lots of things happen.

[23:38] Lisa Kenner Grissom: Oh, absolutely. I mean, one of the great themes of your piece is resistance. Ukraine, which has been invaded by Russia. I can't help, of course, but think about that country. And of course, that's a violent resistance. But also, I can't help but mention what's happening in the United States right now, where the National Endowment for the Arts is under attack. Harvard University can no longer admit foreign students. There's a cultural warfare that's going on in our country right now. And thinking about resistance and what that means and how that changes in different contexts. And this is a very specific historical context. But you can't help but think about how can I resist, even if not through violence? How can I culturally resist what's happening in this moment?

[24:15] Kevin Cloud: Yeah, that's one of the things we talk about a lot every time we do the show. One time we had a reading and our director asked the actors, "Hey, what's one idea that you want your character to embody in this reading so that the audience might take away?" And one of the most moving moments was a young woman who said, "You know, all the different ways that the people in this situation resisted big and small. I hope that people leave this theater asking the question, what does it look like to resist today? What does it look like to do good in the world today? What does it look like to stand up to evil things that are happening in the world and be a light and be a source of good?" I mean, we live in a crazy world today. I mean, I feel like the world is crazier today than at any time in my entire life. So to be working on this piece that's hopefully inspiring people to be light, to do good, and to be good in the world is a really hopeful idea for me.

[25:02] Lisa Kenner Grissom: Absolutely. And I hope this doesn't come off as a plug, but I'm the artistic associate at New York Theater Barn. And I'm so proud to be part of this company. But I'm also the artistic director of a theater company in Seattle that develops new musicals from musical theater writers from Seattle and the Pacific Northwest. And our company is called Geisme Theater Group. Geisme is the Latvian word for light. The power of that name is the ideas we're trying to provide light in a dark time through music, which I think is in the DNA of this piece and is in the DNA of so many things happening in the Baltic States. We didn't even talk about the singing revolution on this podcast. You know, someone will probably comment on that.

[25:37] Kevin Cloud: I just get chills. What's the singing revolution?

[25:43] Lisa Kenner Grissom: Oh, the singing revolution. So I don't get strongly worded letters from my Latvian, Lithuanian, Estonian friends. In the 1990s, and Latvia very specifically in 1991, those Baltic states, what they did is they made a giant chain. They made a giant chain across all three countries, people holding hands and singing as a protest against the Soviet Union and asking for the independence of their countries. So that's why it's called the singing revolution, because it's a nonviolent one. And again, to see that DNA resistance through song, resistance through nonviolent methods, not to say that violent methods are called for.

[26:11] Kevin Cloud: Absolutely. We see that very powerfully in this piece. But in the 1990s, this very famous historical event, the singing revolution, all three of those Baltic states, those peoples, you know, have this amazing long chain, this human chain. And that's not the only reason. That's a big part of how they all regained their independence from the Soviet Union. Incredible history. It's great.

[26:30] Lisa Kenner Grissom: When we did the show in LA, we had the support and one of our producers was the Lithuanian consul. You know, the first time we did this, it was, I think, a year after the Soviet Union had invaded Ukraine. And one of the things that she was telling us was that, you know, these other smaller countries that are surrounded by their neighbors of Ukraine, they're all worried that like the Soviet Union isn't going to stop with Ukraine, that these other countries are next. And so this idea of resistance really resonated with her. And she actually gave this really, really lovely speech at our presentation. But, you know, we've had people that have drawn those direct connections with what's happening in Ukraine right now and how this piece speaks to that.

[27:11] Kevin Cloud: Oh, yeah. I mean, it should be said that after Ukraine, Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia are next. We all believe that firmly it's happening. And part of it is that we are part of NATO. And so if they pick—I say we as I'm like, I as Pauls, I'm speaking for all the Baltic states, which is crazy. I would say I'm going to rephrase that. I'm going to say Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia are part of NATO. So in theory, if Russia attacks those countries, then all of NATO must defend those countries. But I think now in the current political climate, we're like, what is happening with President Trump? President Trump blaming President Zelensky for the invasion of Ukraine as if it was his fault. As you said, Kevin, just now we're living in the craziest time.

I'm going to guess I'm a little younger than you. We're living in the craziest time that I've ever seen in my life too. What we're experiencing right now is truly unprecedented. It's truly crazy. So my hope is that a piece like this can provide that hope, can provide that historical connection that will give us hope in this moment.

[28:07] Kevin Cloud: Oh my gosh. So it's so funny because Teresa's not here. And when I talk about this episode, she's going to ask me, "Pauls, I set out for one episode. Did you just talk about Latvia the entire episode? Did you spend the entire episode talking about Latvia?" No. Well, kinda. But I think now's the perfect time.

[28:22] Lisa Kenner Grissom: Exactly. It's topical. It was important context for this conversation. But I'm going to do our Game Master Teresa proud. Teresa, we miss you so much. We love you. We hope you feel better soon. But so Teresa is the Game Master, although I have come up with a few games for the record. But so I came up with today's game. And Teresa always names the games as well. So I'm going to call our game today "Resistance is Futile. Or Is It?" A 5678. What our game is today, you are going to basically curate or pick your own resistance team if you were leading an underground resistance, like who in the musical theater canon would you want on your team? So anyone from the musical theater canon is available to you.

So I'll start while you're thinking about your answers. So I mean, I went to some pretty obvious answers to get started. My first answer is Bobby Strong from Urinetown. Because we need that inspiration. We need someone who can just inspire us when we're feeling down, kind of in the same vein of "Never Say." I think we need that Bobby Strong quality, although it might be a little funnier when he inspires us. And of course, I was also thinking about Jean Valjean. I was thinking about Jean Valjean too when we were talking about the sewers, because I've never read it. But it's my understanding that the unabridged version of the actual novel of Les Misérables spends like a lot of time discussing the sewer system in Paris and like ways that are just crazy.

So I'm going to go with Bobby Strong. I'm going to go with Jean Valjean. And then the other thing was, well, we also have the entire musical theater canon available to us. On one of the recent podcasts, I said I wanted to like draft Spider-Man when Spider-Man turned off the dark. And then I realized like, oh, if we allow magical characters or superheroes, it's a bird, it's a plane, it's Superman. We could have Superman on our team. I don't know, it's up to you, Lisa and Kevin. I'll let you decide if you want to allow magical characters or not. In this scenario, maybe that will depend on whether you have magical characters in your team. Do you have selections? Or do you have thoughts about who you want to pick?

[30:08] Lisa Kenner Grissom: I mean, Alexander Hamilton and his crew come to mind.

[30:11] Kevin Cloud: Oh, of course.

[30:12] Lisa Kenner Grissom: These revolutions.

[30:13] Kevin Cloud: I mean, obviously, obviously.

[30:15] Lisa Kenner Grissom: He has experience with this.

[30:17] Kevin Cloud: We need him for strategy. We need him for strategy. Alexander Hamilton for strategy.

[30:21] Lisa Kenner Grissom: Yeah, I mean, I was going to be next on my list, of course. But like, yeah, I mean, strategy, for sure. I like Alexander Hamilton and his crew.

[30:29] Kevin Cloud: Yeah, yeah. I mean, the very trendy answer now with the huge movie that just came out is, you know, bring Elphaba along for another person that has some experience standing up against the powers that be and leading a revolution. So you know, she flies.

[30:45] Lisa Kenner Grissom: You totally want Elphaba on your team. You want Elphaba on your team, for sure.

[30:50] Kevin Cloud: So those two were on my list too. And then of course, I had to throw in—this is not in the musical theater canon, but I'm just going to throw in Wonder Woman.

[30:57] Lisa Kenner Grissom: Yeah, absolutely. And you know, you just did what I always do. Teresa says what I do is I write an Other. I write an Other. So I'm like, well, if you look at it from this lens, I guess this person could really count if we backdoor that through Superman. There's like, we are technically involving the entire DC universe. So yeah, Wonder Woman, for sure.

[31:15] Kevin Cloud: And then I threw in Persephone from Hadestown for a little magic. I threw in a little magic there.

[31:21] Lisa Kenner Grissom: I agree. The other thing I would say about Persephone, I just worked on a production of Hadestown teen edition, shout out to Marshfield High School in Marshfield, Wisconsin. And the thing I love about Persephone is she loves to have a good time. Our Lady of the Underworld. She likes to drink. "Anybody want to drink?" she says. And I feel that's very appropriate for the bohemian atmosphere.

[31:43] Kevin Cloud: So I think you definitely want Persephone on your team.

[31:45] Lisa Kenner Grissom: You got a good team, Kevin.

[31:47] Kevin Cloud: Yeah, I like it. Let's do it. I think you're going to turn the tides. I think the revolution is going to be successful.

[31:54] Lisa Kenner Grissom: Amazing. Well, Kevin, Lisa, thank you so much for being here. It's been such a pleasure speaking with you this evening. Theresa, we miss you. Oh, I should ask this. What are the next steps for Vilna?

[32:06] Kevin Cloud: So our next steps were, we just finished a reading in LA, which went amazing. What our team wants to do next is kind of a closed workshop where we get together for an extended length of time where we just can work on the piece without any pressure to present or do a reading or anything like that. And then after that, we're hopeful that we'll be ready. I mean, we're talking to—we have a handful of theaters we're talking to. We're talking to a producer off West End. So we have a number of different opportunities out there that we're pursuing. But definitely, I think we're going to do this workshop. There's also a museum in New York that's interested in bringing us out for a reading. So we'll probably do that sometime in the spring, I would hope.

But ultimately, we're looking for producers. We're looking for investors. We're looking for people who really are passionate about this story and that want to help us move it down the road. We didn't even talk about this today, but at this point, I've been self-producing, basically. I mean, I've been raising all the money and talking to people to get to donate money for this thing. And the ultimate goal is to find a commercial producer to kind of take that and run with it and let me and let our team get back to the writing part of the show. But we have some exciting next steps and feel like we're close to being ready for some kind of a premiere at a regional theater or potentially off West End.

I mean, that could be a whole nother conversation. But self-producing, it is truly exhausting. It's difficult work. As you said earlier, every step takes a year. And so, I mean, it's a labor of love that we're engaged in. I've self-produced myself, so good on you. I would just say I do believe after reviewing this piece that it is absolutely something worth sharing, absolutely something that I think could be inspiring, especially in this moment to so many people. I'm grateful, you know, as I said, I'm Latvian, but I'm so grateful to have learned this piece of Lithuanian history, this piece of Jewish history. Thank you for sharing it. Thank you for being here. Lisa, Kevin, we appreciate your time. Barnacles, thank you for listening. We'll see you again soon.