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[0:00] Teresa Attridge: Ever wonder what it takes to make a new musical sing? Our mission is to give you an inclusive look behind the scenes. We are interviewing the creatives who are changing musical theater one 11 o'clock number at a time. This is your Backstage Pass.

[0:43] Teresa Attridge: Hello, everyone. Hello, Barnacles. It's Pauls and Teresa. And we hope you are gently nestling into fall. We are because we have the team from Falling Forward with us. Karl, Emily, why don't you say hello?

[0:55] Karl Amundson: Hello.

[0:56] Emily Fink: Hi!

[0:57] Teresa Attridge: Oh my gosh, they're so charming. I'm falling for them already.

[1:04] Pauls Macs: Well played. Well played. Well, it was a lovely fall day. I felt like the first one in Seattle. I was sipping my coffee and reviewing your show. And I'm so excited to speak with you about it today.

[1:13] Karl Amundson: Really amazing to be invited on here and be able to talk about our show. We've been sort of the little musical that could on our own. And so it's nice to be able to share this with other people.

[1:22] Emily Fink: So fun to chat. We love to chat. We love to chat arts and especially.

[1:29] Pauls Macs: Yes. And we love a little gossip. We love a little promo. We love a little support. We love a little community.

[1:33] Karl Amundson: Precisely. We gotta do it. You know, there's no art without other people.

[1:40] Pauls Macs: Yeah, it's true. Congratulations on having an album on Spotify. That was so—

[1:44] Emily Fink: Oh my God. No, it's amazing.

[1:45] Karl Amundson: Thank you. Thank you. That's been a big labor of love. I mean, honestly, mostly in part to Karl. He's been the mixer.

[1:49] Emily Fink: Oh, I was literally about to compliment the mixing on the album. I was like, Wow, everything sounds so good.

[1:54] Karl Amundson: It's been a learning process over the past year to do my best.

[1:57] Emily Fink: It's so fun to realize you're a natural and you have such an innate gift. You can keep developing.

[2:04] Karl Amundson: That's so fun to keep developing. And that's what we're doing with this piece. We're developing Falling Forward.

[2:09] Emily Fink: Yes, absolutely. And one thing I was struck by as I was reviewing your show is that this piece will connect to so many people, especially artists. But whether you're 27 or even, you know, someone in this podcast might be closer to 37. I think this piece is very, very relatable. The themes of the piece will resonate.

[2:31] Teresa Attridge: Well, before we go too much further, Emily and Karl, we're going to do your bios so the listeners can get to know you a little better. So Karl, we're going to do you first. Karl Amundson wrote the music and lyrics to Falling Forward, which has been named a Eugene O'Neill National Musical Theater Conference finalist, a NAMD committee recommended show, and a NIMF finalist. Karl is also the co-creator, writer, composer, and performer for the musical variety show Zefallis de Re, which has been seen across stages in New York City, including the AMT Theater Off-Broadway, the Slipper Room, the Brooklyn Comedy Club, UCB, and Caveat. As a commercial songwriter, Karl has written jingles for Procter & Gamble, Kellogg's, and Morgan & Morgan Injury Law Firm.

As an actor, Karl has been seen at the Muny, the Guthrie Theater, and on CBS's East New York. In addition to Falling Forward, Karl is developing a top-secret spy musical titled The Blind Lemon with collaborator Tom Meglio. Karl, thanks so much for being here. It's such a pleasure to have you.

[3:26] Teresa Attridge: All right, Emily, you're next. Emily Fink is the librettist for Falling Forward, which as we know has been named a Eugene O'Neill National Musical Theater Conference finalist, a NAMD committee-recommended show, and a NIMH finalist. As an actor, Emily just made her Broadway debut in Dead Outlaw. She most recently hopped off the national tour of Les Misérables, understudying Fantine. She teaches voice and is currently certifying through the Institute for Vocal Advancement. Emily, congrats on making your Broadway debut in Dead Outlaw. That's so exciting and gives a very cool kind of happy ending, I would say, to a lot of the things that we're going to talk about today. But today is not about Dead Outlaw.

Today is talking about your show, Falling Forward. So let's dive in to the synopsis. Falling Forward is about Meghan, a queer 27-year-old sculpture artist who is leaving New York City, moving in with her mom in Michigan, and giving up on her artistic aspirations. However, packing her apartment proves to be a noisy affair, as all of Meghan's belongings, including a bong, a self-help book, a vibrator, a family portrait, a smart device, and more, come to life, forcing Meghan to reckon with her own role in her terrible, horrible, no good, very bad year. Equal parts memory play, fever dream, generational satire, and coming-of-age story, Falling Forward follows Meghan as she teeters on the brink of change, searching for certainty in her uncertain world.

[4:48] Pauls Macs: Pals, that was incredible. That's such a great synopsis. Pals, I have to say, I don't think either me or Emily have ever read the synopsis that well, and we're the only two people that have ever read it, so.

[4:57] Karl Amundson: We're going to need to get you to read the synopsis every time.

[5:03] Pauls Macs: This piece is giving me Sunday in the Park with George vibes, if George was a queer 27-year-old sculpture artist who is leaving New York City and moving in with her mom in Michigan. So, I mean, we gotta know, how did you two even meet up and create such a fun, relatable, entertaining story? Where did you two begin this very cool relationship?

[5:23] Emily Fink: Well, it's funny, Karl and I, we went to college together. We were both good little A-plus students and really, I don't know, I'll say this without hopefully coming off as arrogant, we were sort of gold star students. We really enjoyed the structure and really had a great time and both moved to New York, ready for New York to fall at their feet for us and for our Broadway dreams to come true. And we had a couple of wrenches thrown in there that sort of brought us together in a different way.

[5:48] Karl Amundson: Yeah, absolutely. Emily Fink and I joke that we are sort of the same person, like we are the one horcrux of a Scandinavian Lutheran artist soul that's been split into two. Because we're born on the same day, we both have Midwestern upbringings in sort of a Scandinavian Lutheran culture. And we met in college and we were very similar as people and became fast friends in college. We were both sort of people that loved school and loved grading rubrics and were very goody-two-shoes kinds of students. When we moved to the city, so I was a year above Emily, and so I moved to New York City first and I was sort of instantly met with crisis. I lived here for about a month. At like my first callback in New York City as an actor, I broke my knee in a dance audition.

[6:42] Emily Fink: Karl!

[6:43] Karl Amundson: Yes, so it was like one month of living in the city and already just something terrible happened. I was carried out of Pearl Studios on a stretcher.

[6:51] Emily Fink: Oh my god, you know people talk about that. What an entrance.

[6:55] Karl Amundson: Oh yeah, I have the funniest pictures ever of like me on a stretcher with, you know, all of these people dressed to the nines ready to give their best 32 bars in Pearl Studios.

[7:06] Pauls Macs: Well, you gave a 32 break, so what are they gonna do?

[7:13] Karl Amundson: Yeah, there we go. Yeah, but anyway, so one month after living in the city, I realized that I needed to get surgery on my knee. I moved back home with my parents. I got surgery. I lived with them for about three months, came back to the city, was just inundated with like physical therapy while like trying to get back to working as a waiter and as a babysitter. Less than a year later, I was hit by a car and broke both my legs and shattered an ankle, and this was after like a year of trying really hard to get my body back in shape, and I was like, man, I just can't catch a break.

[7:47] Emily Fink: I mean, you caught several breaks, Karl.

[7:53] Karl Amundson: Several breaks. Many things broke, unfortunately. But not your heart. When you were praying for your big break, the universe was like, oh, so sorry. We did not read the fine print on that.

[8:02] Karl Amundson: Absolutely. They truly just broke me.

[8:06] Teresa Attridge: Oh, sweet boy. I'm so sorry. I shouldn't be making fun of you. You were hit by a car.

[8:11] Karl Amundson: No, I mean, I wrote a musical that I think is funny. It's sort of about reflecting on my experiences. So it's all funny, right? Or at least, you know.

[8:19] Emily Fink: It's funny now.

[8:20] Karl Amundson: It's funny now. Exactly. I mean, so basically what I was sort of circling around was like, I really wanted to be a performer, and I was working really hard for like two years to try to make that true. But sort of like, despite how hard I was trying to get back into shape and get ready to perform and get ready to audition, like little things and big things would come sweep in and sort of sabotage me. After that second injury, getting hit by a car, I was like, you know, I'm going to start writing because I had to sit on my butt for seven months. I could not walk for seven months. I was already a musician, so I just started kind of playing at the piano a lot and writing funny songs that entertained me.

In the meanwhile, when I finally did decide to move back to New York City, I met up with Emily Fink, and she was also having a really rough time. We sort of trauma bonded over horrible things that were happening to us. While we both felt like we wanted this stupid dream was just to act and sing in front of people. Out of that, a musical was spawned where we thought that we would sort of like write about, you know, not only the genuinely painful things that we were going through, but also really try to satirize, like, what is it like to do something that can feel at times really frivolous and stupid and meaningless? At what cost is it to make art? And who is it for? Is it for yourself? Is it for other people? And I think those were the questions that we really started with that got us writing.

[9:45] Emily Fink: Yeah, it was something cathartic about being able to write, get all your demons out writing about having a horrible year.

[9:50] Karl Amundson: Yeah, so it started, you know, really fun. And then we developed this character that we had a lot of affection for. But also, you get to that point where you get sick of yourself having problems, whether it's a neuroses, or personal development, or whatever, you just you want something better from yourself, and you're sick of yourself as well. So we developed this character that you love and you want to hug and you want to like shake at the same time, which is sort of an attitude that I think we both were exploring in some ways of like, who is this girl? And like, what is her year? And it ended up being really fun and really fruitful.

[10:24] Emily Fink: Yeah, I can respond to that a bit. First off, thank you for sharing that and for being vulnerable with us, Karl, especially. I have also been hit by a car. Yeah, I had a traumatic brain injury. So for example, I was not able to make memories for like a month. And then, you know, once I came back, I couldn't make very spotty memories. It took like almost a full year for my brain to recover. I broke an ankle. And so psychologically, you know, that puts you in a very, very difficult place, especially if you're pursuing the arts, like I happen to have a common experience there.

[11:03] Karl Amundson: Yeah.

[11:04] Emily Fink: And at that time, I was like, Oh, I built up all this momentum. And I felt all my momentum just crumbling. And so I pushed my recovery too much because I just had to get back and I didn't want people to think I couldn't work anymore.

[11:13] Karl Amundson: What a smart decision.

[11:14] Emily Fink: I did not do that. I did not start writing. I was I'm gonna get a job at Starbucks. And don't get me wrong, some doors open for me. I was very lucky to have that. But all this is to say what a creative solution to a difficult problem. And also that I really appreciate the term trauma bonding. Because even though you experience these difficult things, both of you, you have been able to use that to shine a light and provide hopefully a cathartic experience.

[11:32] Karl Amundson: Yeah, certainly hope so. I think that like what Emily Fink and I really were starting to realize was that our life felt like a series of false starts in lots of ways, not only with like our career, but where we were living, who was in our lives that supported us what we even liked and wanted to do. And so when we talk about the musical, we really say, you know, it's really a musical about false starts. While you're trying really hard, you're failing harder somehow. And how do you find your footing through an experience and you know, that feels to the person going through that kind of self-discovery and trial and false starts. It feels so dramatic and so huge and so painful, so much so that we thought we'd make a musical about it.

But like, I think that the comedy that we like to find in it, things that our protagonist is going through are ultimately the sort of like small neurotic anxieties that feel huge, but in the long run are not huge. And she's a person that needs to learn to get perspective.

[12:37] Emily Fink: I think one of the really fun things about your show is that when we talk about trauma bonding, again, it's this character who's created all of these different trauma bonds with the items in her home, right? And that every item in her home also doubles as different characters that she knows in real life. So she has these relationships with all of the items in her home that remind her of the worst things that she's done or the most embarrassing or the things that bring up a lot of shame. And yet the absurdity of them being items in this sort of like cartoonishly large, like as you say, in the like stage directions, big, comfy couch-esque room, and that everything is exaggerated to this like cartoonish degree, but we're talking about very real things. Where did all of the items come into play? How did you sort of use that as a device in order to tell the story? Whose idea was that? I don't really know at least which order they started to come in on. But

[13:32] Teresa Attridge: I don't know, generally the home base was that she was stuck in her apartment. The sort of feeling of stagnancy and surrounded by all of these objects of her past. I don't know, Karl, when did they start materializing as characters?

[13:44] Karl Amundson: Yeah, I can speak a bit about this. With Falling Forward, it's funny, I mean, we've been now sort of lightly working on this musical for six years now. So pre-pandemic times. The idea had sort of started with me, where I was just like sort of writing songs about situations that I was finding myself in, in this weird period in my life. And I had this idea that a whole musical could take place in a bedroom. I was finding at the time that my bedroom was like not only my sanctuary, like the place where I would go to hide from the horrors of New York, but it was also like my place of torture, where like the stillness would frighten me. And that whenever I was in my bedroom, I'd be thinking about everything I'm not doing.

And also those first few years in New York, you know, going to live with my parents and living in three different apartments in two years, other than living with my parents, I was just moving all the time. I was waking up all the time with this feeling like my room was shouting at me, like, go do something with your life. And so I think that was the basic premise that I brought to Emily Fink was this idea that it's like, what if a bedroom was alive and screaming at you about all of the things that you're not doing, that your bedroom thinks it knows more about you than you and that all the characters can kind of be like a personified in the way that we see in like children's entertainment, like Pee Wee's Playhouse or Beauty and the Beast or whatever.

And I think together we sort of came up with this idea that it's like, oh, she's like moving and she really needs to decide for herself what she wants to keep for her life ahead and what she needs to throw away. And that is all kind of the experience of self-optimizing. Every time you move, you have to think like, who's the person I'm becoming? What's junk? Like, am I really like taking my, we always joke about this, am I really taking my freshman year acting notebook to the ninth apartment? So far, I haven't opened this thing in years. What's the utility of this anymore? Or is it sentimental or what? Does my bong still serve me?

[15:43] Emily Fink: Yeah, like, does it? That's the big question. And I think that actually is a great way to get into one of the songs that you guys have. So the newest addition to Megan's Apartment is this self-help book that her mother has bought for her in sort of like a very well-mannered attempt to try to help her with this transition. And the book is just like this, one of those weird social media, like new age hippie gurus. The character is Guru, an influencer, a spiritual shepherd, one might say, one who brings people to the flock.

[16:18] Karl Amundson: I love that alliteration.

[16:19] Emily Fink: Oh, yeah. No, that came up in a D&D campaign character I'm working on. This sort of like social media, like shepherd who like brings people in and is trying to help her figure out what serves and what doesn't serve and does so in a, in a pretty, pretty forceful way, really just kind of like barges in song and dance ready to go. Do you guys want to set up this song for us? Tell us what it's about, who's singing on it?

[16:42] Karl Amundson: Yeah, well, I'll tell you Carl Amundson is the voice of the Guru in this. Megan, our protagonist, like you said, she receives this book and she cracks it open. Before she knows it, bam, there's this explosion and this man appears and he looks like Tony Robbins, Mr. Clean type, just totally ripped. Larger than life personality that has the simplest answers for Megan that seems to her like complex issues, which is just to pack up her apartment. And so throughout this song, he's ripping through her apartment and deciding what stays and what goes. And she's sort of being dragged along, thrown into this initiation of decisions. The idea behind the song Guru Say is that it really sets up the show that what we're going to see over the course of this two act musical is this woman packing up her apartment and reckoning with all of the objects in her room. And the guru is sort of the driver of that experience. And this is Guru Say, yeah.

[17:40] Teresa Attridge: Amazing. And I think we've already heard that it's you performing this song, Karl.

[17:44] Karl Amundson: It is me performing this song. This has always been probably my favorite song from the show because it's so wacky and hyper theatrical in the ways that I love and that Emily loves. Like we we've really cracked up about this song over the years and just making it as intense as it is has always cracked us up. So it really represents the raucous theatricality in our show. I think I mean, a fun fact, you can cut this if you want.

[18:11] Emily Fink: No, we love a fun fact. I probably won't.

[18:14] Karl Amundson: A fun fact about this show is I got really into Tony Robbins.

[18:18] Emily Fink: This is not getting cut. Letting you know. So be careful what you say next.

[18:22] Karl Amundson: I got really into Tony Robbins in the midst of my crises post college. And I was aware that like I hated everything about loving Tony Robbins so much because he's exactly the kind of person that I wanted to be cynical about. But then I'm also like, wow, like he's just got such great confidence. I'm like, if I could see the world like Tony Robbins, I could like I could do anything. And at the same time, the Marie Kondo show had come out on Netflix, where she's like teaching you about how to optimize all of the space in your home. And my girlfriend who's now my wife was like, you have to watch this show. You have so much clutter. And those two things kind of came together as we were coming up with this idea that it's a show about packing. I was like, it would be so funny if Tony Robbins aggressiveness is paired with Marie Kondo's like make everything neat and tidy and Tony Kondo.

[19:24] Emily Fink: I just want to say also, Karl basically wrote this in one pass. Like this hasn't changed since he shared it with me more or less. There might be some tweaks, but it was just like genius song, in my opinion.

[19:36] Karl Amundson: One of the few songs that's barely changed.

[19:38] Emily Fink: Amazing. And if I recall correctly, Megan is played by your lovely wife.

[19:42] Karl Amundson: Yes, yes. Megan is played by my wife, Emily Kristen Morris, who very graciously has lent her voice to my demos over the last many years. When we decided that we wanted to make a real album out of it, she was game to still record and it's very easy to, you know, have the person that lives with you just come into your little home studio. So it worked out.

[20:07] Teresa Attridge: How convenient to be married to a fantastic talent.

[20:10] Karl Amundson: Yeah, she's amazing. It's me, Emily Morris, and a few auxiliary voices. Emily, think sing some backup on this.

[20:19] Emily Fink: I sing one solo. We got a various smattering of people.

[20:23] Teresa Attridge: Well, here is where the Spotify album, which everyone should go listen to, is going to be our friend because it lists all the amazing performers on the song. So here is Guru Say, performed by Karl Amundson, Emily Kristen Morris, Emily Fink, Danny White, and Kimberly Emanuel.

[20:38] ♪ Musical number: "Guru Say" — performed by Karl Amundson, Emily Kristen Morris, Emily Fink, Danny White, and Kimberly Emanuel ♪

[25:16] Teresa Attridge: This is very funny and charming, but it's also true. How many of us have found ourselves in that struggle of trying to clean out our place and trying to make that decision like, oh, do I really want to get rid of that T-shirt I wore in high school theater? Because I'll never be able to go back and get it.

[25:30] Emily Fink: Yes. Oh, gosh.

[25:32] Teresa Attridge: We could talk for an entire hour on the nuance and hilarity of that.

[25:37] Emily Fink: Just getting so fed up with even the decision making.

[25:40] Teresa Attridge: It's honestly, that's what made that song so fun to listen to.

[25:43] Emily Fink: Totally illuminated that moment for what Karl and I were talking about.

[25:46] Teresa Attridge: And I love when the guru says to Megan, you're only allowed to keep the things that bring you peace.

[25:53] Emily Fink: And Megan is like, but these are pieces of me. That is, I feel, the experience with all of my clutters. I'm like, no, this means something, even if it's the stupidest little thing. And, you know, he's saying you will become a bigger person when your life isn't cluttered with shit or whatever.

[26:09] Emily Fink: Or you will become a bigger person when you are attached to nothing. And it's also this idea that the actual word guru is reserved in Buddhism and Hinduism for the highest of spiritual teachers. It's like this very sacred thing. And it is this Mr. Clean, Tony Robbins, Marie Kondo nightmare. Being like, it is I, the guru! Where you're like, OK, yeah, so we know what we're in for with this guy. But at the same time, it's so telling because I feel like there's always that voice in our heads that's trying to sort of like self-help ourselves into being like, I shouldn't be attached to these things. I should be able to throw that away. I should be able to move on from that. Like I should, I should, I should. I feel like there's this huge undercurrent of that anxiety for Megan that like is really present through the script.

[26:54] Karl Amundson: It's interesting because, yes, it's like you have all of these different items in the room. Like we have a vibrator. We have a painting of her great grandmother. We have like the book and the box.

[27:34] Karl Amundson: What the room's opinion is, what these objects' opinion is on this past year, and how we can reflect sort of Meghan's struggle through this cacophony of voices that's echoing back at her, which has been a delightful challenge, to say the least.

[27:49] Pauls Macs: Karl, I so relate to your story about being hit by the car, because I was hit by a car. But I remember I first went to Harborview Medical Center for, you know, a few weeks before I was in the clear. And then I was transferred to a rehab facility in Olympia, Washington. I lived with my parents for a summer. And so I was in my childhood bedroom for a summer. It's like all the things in my room were being like, you're still a child. Get out. Grow up. This image of the room yelling at you or talking at you or pushing you is so effective. And the feeling of being in that room, as I was reading it, I was thinking, she hasn't left the room yet. That kind of claustrophobic feeling, I think, is very, very present.

This song brings it to life in a funny way. But also there's that truth of it. It brings the central conflict of the show out in this song. And it's also so indicative of what's actually going on outside the room as well. Because every time we get a flashback, you know, where we're seeing what was going on outside the room, it's in the room. And all the items are standing in as items in, you know, in the outside world. And the characters that are playing items also play the people. So it's like you're always, always in it, even when you're out of it. So I think that's a really effective device. And also, once we start seeing what's going on outside of the room, and what Meghan did go through that year, it's that artist moving to New York, working 18 jobs, and you have no time for your art, and nothing is good enough.

And you're always run down. And you're like, is it worth it to do these miserable things so that I can do the thing I love when I'm too tired to do the thing I love? But if I focus on that, then I literally can't survive. And like, that struggle, I think that "If You're Smiling" hits so hard, I was like, this had no right to come for my neck. And yet here we are. It's just I think anybody who listens to that song is if you've moved to New York, unless you have like a beautiful, like sunshiny sort of privileged carpet laid out for you like that is the experience. Can you guys talk a little more about "If You're Smiling"?

[29:48] Karl Amundson: You know, this song to my eyes is like, it does come for your neck, absolutely. But it's a love letter to everybody who's doing that life. I nannied for like four or five different families. And I was doing some catering and blah, blah, blah. And Carl worked as a waiter and a nanny and a this and a that. And the sort of frenzied, I'm doing a lot, but I'm actually not doing anything, which ends up being your entire life. And so we wanted to make a song and Carl did so beautifully about that sort of constant motion and overwhelm, and yet, and yet, I'm not doing what I came here to do. And it just reaches this fever pitch that honestly gets so absurd, but it feels like it matches the moment.

[30:34] Emily Fink: Yeah, for me that song too, like one of the things that I find delicious about it, like it's in a lot of ways, it's actually like pretty musically simple. But that's kind of the point is that there's this toxic positivity that lives underneath the whole thing. When the song kind of has this classic oompa oompa Broadway, when you're smiling, when you're smiling, which was like, kind of my initial inspiration was that song. And I was like, Can I flip that song a bit and make it if you're smiling? And meanwhile, Meghan can do anything but smile because she is so, so, so deeply in the sauce with not being able to do the work she wants to do because she just needs to make rent. And meanwhile, while she's trying to do the work she wants to do, she finds that it's more like networking and none of the networking is paying off when she's getting so little sleep.

And when she's splitting her attention between so many things, does she ever really have the capacity to be the self-optimized person that she wants to be? And meanwhile, the person who kind of leads us into the song with the melody is Meghan's girlfriend, Kat, who is a pretty put together stable person who, you know, as the show goes on, you sort of learn has a hard time conceiving that an artist's life could be so maniacally split in so many directions.

[32:02] Karl Amundson: Yeah, those poor put together stable people who fall in love with artists. I feel so bad. They all have to learn so hard. They all have to know I don't feel bad for them. I can do anything for them. I'm like, get take me to any wedding. We're gonna be the most memorable. Well, it depends on the wedding. Oh, and we'll get to the wedding. After we do the next song, after we listen to "If You're Smiling," we're talking about that wedding because one of my part-time jobs is I work at a bridal salon.

[32:28] Pauls Macs: Oh, really? Yeah. That's gotta be. Who's performing the song? Who's performing "If You're Smiling"?

[32:35] Karl Amundson: So on "If You're Smiling," we have Kimberly Emanuel starting the song off as Kat. We have Emily Kristen Morris as Meghan. And then a bunch of background vocalists. The Spotify album is gonna help me out here too. Here is "If You're Smiling" performed by Kimberly Emanuel, Emily Kristen Morris, Karl Amundson, Emily Fink, and Michelle Cobin.

[33:03] ♪ Musical number: "If You're Smiling" — performed by Kimberly Emanuel, Emily Kristen Morris, Karl Amundson, Emily Fink, and Michelle Cobin ♪

[37:04] Emily Fink: I feel both seen and traumatized, which I suppose is the point of the show.

[37:08] Karl Amundson: Unfortunately, yes. Oh, I felt very seen. It hurt. It's hard to hurt. For anyone who's still a gig lifer, right? Currently, I have four jobs that I do regularly. And then I have like, gigs. So like little things I pick up, right? Are you talking about four jobs?

[37:21] Pauls Macs: Yeah, just you know, host this podcast, I edit the podcast, have a day job. Oh, yeah, where it's like bridal salon, pie shop, music classes for kids, dramaturgy, the podcast, the show I'm in, right? Like, it's like, it really does when you're here. And you're in the like, when everyone's like, oh, my God, the grind. It's like, you hate hearing stuff like, oh, my God, it's the hustle. It's the grind, because it just feels you're like, oh, my God, it just feels so cliche. And then you're in it. And you're like, no, no, truly, truly, those are the words. The word is grind. This is the anthem of so many struggling artists in New York or otherwise. I mean, I feel it's especially present in New York, you know, whether you're walking dogs, whatever it might be. But there are many places where you're doing three or four things. So many people will find the song to be relatable.

[38:10] Emily Fink: Yes, unfortunately, yes. When Karl and I started writing this musical, we were both very much in that world. I mean, so I was a waiter, which was technically what I did the most. But then they couldn't offer me enough shifts throughout the week. So I would also cater and temp. And I was a babysitter as well. And I would do that like one day a week. But then and then all of a sudden, it got to a point where like, I started getting referred to people as a babysitter. So I was trying to juggle like three different families at the same time while I was still waitering. But I didn't want to like, leave the caterers or the tent people off the hook because I didn't want them to stop offering me gigs just in case things went into a dry spell. But there was a time when it was like four pretty consistent jobs a week that I would see all of them. And, and like, you're in the exact same place.

[39:04] Karl Amundson: I almost I nannied and I catered and and it's funny because you I have this theory that whenever you move to New York, like the entire first year or first however long is just figuring out how to like literally survive here.

[39:21] Emily Fink: Oh, completely. Totally. You're not wrong. Yeah. In the city, like everything's hard. Everything's impossible. And then okay, I need to get a job because I'm bleeding money. I need to make my rent. Okay, I'm completely fried. But I finally made my rent. Okay, now should I do the thing I came here to do after a 60 hour workweek? And I just want to honestly smoke weed and go to bed, then that's sort of like the rigmarole. And then it's like, Okay, I'll make a career out of what I do. So now that my only passion, my only little thing that's for me, I've now tried to monetize. And now I'm trying to make this a thing. So now it's just another job. Now I have another job that I go home to and then on top of taking care of yourself a bubble walk. It's been a great release to have that song because that was the most immediate aggravating circumstance for Karl and I whenever we first started writing the show.

[40:10] Pauls Macs: Thanks for joining us on New York Theatre Barn's Backstage Pass. Join us next time as we continue our conversation with Karl Amundson and Emily Fink about their new musical Falling Forward.