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[0:00] Teresa Attridge: Ever wonder what it takes to make a new musical sing?

[0:25] Pauls Macs: Our mission is to give you an inclusive look behind the scenes.

[0:28] Teresa Attridge: We are interviewing the creatives who are changing musical theater one 11 o'clock number at a time.

[0:33] Pauls Macs: This is your Backstage Pass.

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

[0:35] Pauls Macs: I turn my theories up. I play my proofs out loud.

[0:48] Teresa Attridge: Explain the universe in verses, let me show you how.

[0:52] Pauls Macs: I take equations and rearrange them to chord changes.

[0:55] Teresa Attridge: To chord dangerous ideas, let's get to it now.

[1:08] Pauls Macs: I've been staring at the sun a lot lately.

[1:11] Teresa Attridge: Some people laugh at me and say it's gonna make me blind.

[1:13] Pauls Macs: But I've gotta risk it, I have to find out if color is out in the world or if it's all in my mind.

[1:19] Teresa Attridge: Black and white, trick of the light, I don't know what I'm...

[1:22] Pauls Macs: I gotta keep looking, I gotta keep looking.

[1:28] Teresa Attridge: I'm looking at sunbeams.

[1:30] Pauls Macs: What do these images in my eye mean?

[1:31] Teresa Attridge: Nothing like a rainbow in the sky to remind me.

[1:34] Pauls Macs: Shine light through a prism, get a rainbow on the wall.

[1:38] Teresa Attridge: Funny feeling that's the secret to it all.

[1:45] Pauls Macs: You're listening to "I Wanna Be Mad" from Gravity, a Newtonian musical.

[1:49] Teresa Attridge: Welcome back to part two of our conversation with a collaborative team that created this hilarious and heartfelt new musical.

[1:56] Pauls Macs: When physics prodigy Sophie's accidentally catapulted back in time, her meet-cute with 23-year-old Isaac Newton prevents him from discovering gravity, trapping Sophie in 1666.

[2:06] Teresa Attridge: To return home, Sophie must restore history and navigate the Enlightenment, where natural philosophers are the pop stars of their day.

[2:13] Pauls Macs: On the way, she encounters historical luminaries such as up-and-comer Edmund Halley, Isaac's rival Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz, and the unknown author Margaret Cavendish, who's embroiled in her own quest for fame and scientific recognition.

[2:26] Teresa Attridge: Gravity is a hilarious romantic comedy, smashing together madcap time-travel mayhem and delightfully remixed history.

[2:33] Pauls Macs: Listen all the way to the end for a game where we ponder which events we would change in musical theater history.

[2:37] Teresa Attridge: Well, the thing that I am not sure is fully clear to the audience yet who's listening to us right now, you know, we've talked a lot about science and this great love story across time, but I want to make sure it's also clear that this piece is absolutely hysterically funny.

[2:51] Pauls Macs: It is absolutely hysterically funny.

[2:53] Teresa Attridge: And I want to talk about, can you share a little about the character of Amy, the AI?

[2:58] Pauls Macs: This is how Sophie finds out that there's something wrong with the timeline.

[3:02] Teresa Attridge: I don't know who wants to go, but I will shout out that Amy is named for Weston's partner Amy, who has been our Amy all the way through, because she is unbelievably amazing at playing this role.

[3:19] Pauls Macs: Yes, my wife, Amy, alongside Matt, they are the two people who have been in every single one of our readings, our five stage readings over the last 10 years.

[3:31] Teresa Attridge: And just to give the audience an idea. So when I was encountering Amy, who's essentially this AI that Sophie takes back with her, I was thinking about, you know, how in the Marvel movies, Iron Man has an AI like Jarvis, or that those AIs kind of transform through the movies.

[3:46] Pauls Macs: Amy is like, if Sophie had a Jarvis, but Jarvis was incredibly sarcastic and funny and a little bit mean, and also a little judgy, and also was totally not phased by the fact that it is from the future, but they're in the past and that Sophie has destroyed the timeline and is trying to help her get it back restored.

[4:07] Teresa Attridge: Amy is the time machine herself.

[4:09] Pauls Macs: Amy is the voice of the watch and the watch is the time machine.

[4:13] Teresa Attridge: When the time machine goes offline, Sophie is able to speak to it and speak to Amy and try to figure out what is going wrong.

[4:19] Pauls Macs: It's funny too, because when we were crafting the character of Amy originally, this was pre-Apple Watch, this was the beginnings of Siri, like pre-Alexa.

[4:30] Teresa Attridge: It's funny because I was just talking to our general manager early this morning, and she was saying, wow, it's so timely to have a musical wherein your AI character has such a hysterical and also emotional arc.

[4:44] Pauls Macs: And I said, well, that's hilarious. Who would ever say that in a Broadway musical, there would be an AI character with a hysterical emotional arc?

[4:52] Teresa Attridge: We didn't intend to like write this character to be so timely to our environment right now and the scientific conversations about artificial intelligence in our world.

[5:03] Pauls Macs: We have just been so delighted to have that audiences respond so positively to this character and to this relationship, especially because Sophie as written is really a hermit.

[5:16] Teresa Attridge: She has isolated herself from a number of her personal relationships.

[5:20] Pauls Macs: And it's through time travel, through a relationship with Amy and the different characters that she stumbles upon in the past where she really starts to open herself up to these various social relationships and finds herself.

[5:33] Teresa Attridge: So there is some good to AI is what we're trying to maybe.

[5:37] Pauls Macs: It's the new tagline of the show, Gravity, there's some good in AI.

[5:41] Teresa Attridge: No, that's not the theme of the show.

[5:44] Pauls Macs: Yeah, no, it is not.

[5:47] Teresa Attridge: It is funny because it is wild that AI was in our show in 2015, along with I Will Sick.

[5:55] Pauls Macs: I just we have to say this.

[5:57] Teresa Attridge: In 2015, there was also a Hamilton, Lin-Manuel Miranda like rap.

[6:03] Pauls Macs: This was right before Hamilton was a rap battle.

[6:07] Teresa Attridge: And once Hamilton came out and we all got obsessed, we were like, Oh, this cannot be in our show.

[6:10] Pauls Macs: Yeah, but you just you know, you move and you change with the times and sometimes the times I mean, I'm certainly caught up to when it comes to AI watchers in this show.

[6:17] Teresa Attridge: Let me tell you, Sophie's trying to go back in time and fix things.

[6:22] Pauls Macs: And Amy's like, error, nope, don't bother time machine is offline.

[6:27] Teresa Attridge: And that wall that she puts up that sarcastic nature is really funny.

[6:35] Pauls Macs: Sophie's like, what what I was just talking to Isaac, oh, I the Apple, we can go back and fix that, right?

[6:39] Teresa Attridge: Or that must be a small problem.

[6:42] Pauls Macs: And Amy just replies, Wow, I'm not sure it's not like his discoveries are the fundamental groundwork that allow your little time machine even exist.

[6:49] Teresa Attridge: You know, that kind of sarcastic lens, especially with a gifted actor, I was rolling on the floor.

[6:55] Pauls Macs: And then the next line after that is Amy apologizing because she gets cranky when she installs updates.

[7:00] Teresa Attridge: So updates, right.

[7:01] Pauls Macs: That was a great, great joke, because I get cranky whenever updates are installed.

[7:06] Teresa Attridge: When I think about Amy, that's one of the delightful things for me about that character is like the Oracle, like the all-knowing one that sets the main character on the quest is such a trope.

[7:16] Pauls Macs: In musical theater, AI tends to be talked about as like an Oracle technology, I think a lot of the time it's like all-knowing and it will like that's the fear and we liked I like representing it as an Oracle that's also just kind of like unhelpful in big ways and like, just like sassy and sassy, sassy, yeah, like fickle in the way that a lot of like normal human characters would be there's something about that that feels like taking a high status notion and making it kind of just like a very approachable like lower status and delightful place to play as a character.

[7:53] Teresa Attridge: Yeah.

[7:54] Pauls Macs: No, I just think play is also an important word for our piece.

[7:57] Teresa Attridge: Thank you so much for saying that it is hysterically funny, because when we talk about the show, it's easy to get into the heady space.

[8:04] Pauls Macs: But like, at the end of the day, this is a comedy.

[8:07] Teresa Attridge: It is very, very funny.

[8:09] Pauls Macs: And we and that is because we love to play.

[8:12] Teresa Attridge: We've had a lot of fun over the years.

[8:14] Pauls Macs: And I like I mean, we have in the past, and I hope we continue to have audiences laughing a lot and then suddenly hit with some tears.

[8:21] Teresa Attridge: And there are drafts where we've gone deeper into that have been a little bit less silly and where we've we get excited about the themes and the deeper resonances and things and go into that and then have felt like, oh, those start to drag the show down.

[8:36] Pauls Macs: And I think, you know, increasingly, we're like, the themes are there, we can touch them lightly, they will always come through.

[8:41] Teresa Attridge: But our core of the show is silliness.

[8:43] Pauls Macs: And then you're like, so what if we read a boy band number?

[8:46] Teresa Attridge: Ah, yes. Perfect segue.

[8:47] Pauls Macs: Because I would love to share one of my favorite silly moments in the show that also is not silly, but it was hysterical.

[8:55] Teresa Attridge: So would you please set up "Let Us Enlighten You."

[8:57] Pauls Macs: So "Let Us Enlighten You" is our introduction to the philosophers of the day.

[9:04] Teresa Attridge: That is to say that it's led by a group called John Locke and the Philosopher, which used to be John Locke and the Philosopher, just to be clear.

[9:11] Pauls Macs: But then we cut one character.

[9:13] Teresa Attridge: And this is our introduction.

[9:14] Pauls Macs: They're sort of the we've painted them as, yes, sort of a boy band, but we're also painting them as gatekeepers of the institutions that help disseminate information.

[9:24] Teresa Attridge: And they do so in a very, I would say, masculine way.

[9:27] Pauls Macs: And also it's a fun song.

[9:29] Teresa Attridge: And that's "Let Us Enlighten You."

[9:30] Pauls Macs: We meet them at their own gala at the Royal Society of London's annual fundraising gala.

[9:36] Teresa Attridge: And that's that's the context of this song.

[9:38] Pauls Macs: It feels like a boy band concert.

[9:39] Teresa Attridge: Let's be clear, just like to set the scene as people are listening to the song, at least the performance that I saw, it felt like a boy band concert.

[9:46] Pauls Macs: Who is performing this song?

[9:47] Teresa Attridge: Yeah.

[9:48] Pauls Macs: So this version is at our reading in November of 2024 in San Francisco at the Brava Theatre through the New Roots Theatre Festival.

[9:56] Teresa Attridge: It features Marcus Jamal Page, Dave Abrams, Nathaniel Rothrock and Weston Gaylord.

[10:04] Pauls Macs: When I was watching the reading, I watched a video of it, but that crowd is just loving every second of it.

[10:10] Teresa Attridge: Here is "Let Us Enlighten You" performed by Marcus Jamal Page, Dave Abrams, Nathaniel Rothrock and Weston Gaylord.

[10:16] Pauls Macs: And now to kick off the 1666 gala for the Royal Society of London, please welcome Hook, Lock, Ren and Boyle, aka the Royal Society.

[10:32] ♪ Musical number: "Let Us Enlighten You" — performed by Marcus Jamal Page, Dave Abrams, Nathaniel Rothrock, and Weston Gaylord ♪

[12:03] Teresa Attridge: The night where we get our favorite patrons under one roof.

[12:07] Pauls Macs: I see you, King James.

[12:09] Teresa Attridge: Happy to have you, Milton.

[12:12] Pauls Macs: We see Isaac and Eddie in server uniforms, trays in hand.

[12:18] Teresa Attridge: When you said that you got us into the gala, I didn't think we'd be working it.

[12:23] Pauls Macs: John Locke's talking.

[12:24] Teresa Attridge: We celebrate the philosophical giants who came before us.

[12:28] Pauls Macs: Aristotle, Plato, Socrates, and hypotenuse daddy Pythagoras.

[12:35] Teresa Attridge: We see further by standing on their shoulders,

[12:37] Pauls Macs: and you see further by standing on ours.

[12:40] Teresa Attridge: Now, put your hands together for the one and only Bobby Ball!

[12:46] Pauls Macs: When I'm stumped metaphysically, I'm looking at you quizzically.

[12:49] Teresa Attridge: What am I going to do?

[12:50] Pauls Macs: What is he going to do?

[12:51] Teresa Attridge: I go back to the drum board.

[12:52] Pauls Macs: I'm plucking out the tonic chord.

[12:53] Teresa Attridge: What do I know to be true?

[12:54] Pauls Macs: What does he know to be true?

[12:55] Teresa Attridge: I gotta stick to the principles.

[12:56] Pauls Macs: The logic is invincible.

[12:57] Teresa Attridge: The science has taught me to see how to tinker with the mechanism.

[13:00] Pauls Macs: To the end, just mechanism.

[13:01] Teresa Attridge: Mystery to me.

[13:02] Pauls Macs: I'll break it down now.

[13:03] Teresa Attridge: Show us as we see the world from different points of view.

[13:11] Pauls Macs: For nothing in doubt was ever settled without an argument or two.

[13:20] Teresa Attridge: Take Ren and Hook.

[13:21] Pauls Macs: Let's hear it for Team Ray!

[13:25] Teresa Attridge: Take it away, gentlemen.

[13:28] Pauls Macs: I posit thusly that the cosmos is composed of an all-consuming clockwork.

[13:33] Teresa Attridge: And I counter my dear colleague with, is not.

[13:36] Pauls Macs: Furthermore, I suggest that this divine mechanism is a deterministic predictor of all earthly occurrences.

[13:44] Teresa Attridge: That seems so bold as to counter that you're a deterministic predictor.

[13:47] Pauls Macs: Would you let me finish?

[13:49] Teresa Attridge: Fraud.

[13:50] Pauls Macs: Stiff.

[13:51] Teresa Attridge: Critic.

[13:52] Pauls Macs: Cynic.

[13:53] Teresa Attridge: Quint.

[13:54] Pauls Macs: Navel-gazer.

[13:55] Teresa Attridge: Devil-racer.

[13:56] Pauls Macs: The world is what you make of it.

[13:57] Teresa Attridge: You argue for the sake of it.

[13:58] Pauls Macs: You're the most obtuse.

[13:59] Teresa Attridge: Long-headed.

[14:00] Pauls Macs: Fake-purpose.

[14:01] Teresa Attridge: I ever knew.

[14:02] Pauls Macs: You're bad.

[14:03] Teresa Attridge: You're bad.

[14:04] Pauls Macs: You're bad.

[14:05] Teresa Attridge: You're bad.

[14:06] Pauls Macs: Come closer.

[14:07] Teresa Attridge: Let me enlighten you.

[14:08] Pauls Macs: Tonight, we announce our intention to add a fifth member to the Royal Society.

[14:12] Teresa Attridge: We're looking to turn this Philosopher into Philosopher Five!

[14:17] Pauls Macs: No way!

[14:18] Teresa Attridge: We're scouring the nation for up-and-coming philosophers worthy of the chance to audition for us.

[14:24] ♪ Musical number: "Let Us Enlighten You" — performed by Marcus Jamal Paige, Dave Abrams, Nathaniel Rothrock, and Weston Gaylord ♪

[16:23] Pauls Macs: It really does sound like a boy band concert. That crowd is going wild! Can I say something really quickly about the "You're Bad, You're Bad"? You mentioned that you enjoyed that part, and that is, to Matt's point, one of the newer additions to that song. And I think it's a perfect example of the way we're always trying to push towards silliness. There's an argument in the middle of the song where there's a debate between two of these scientists, and they're debating whether the universe has a purpose, and it goes back and forth. In an earlier draft of the song, they had quite a complex argument back and forth, with each of them making points that you had to follow, and it came together, and they sort of ended up on the same line, and we felt, okay, this sort of works, but you have to really listen to every piece of it in order for it to make sense.

And in the last version, we scrapped the end of it, and instead just had them start making personal snipes at each other, and kind of faux-seductively setting up kind of a fake romance on stage to make the crowd go wild. And it's just sillier and more fun, and I think is a good example of how we're trying to get away from the intellectual thing that the audience has to carefully follow, and into something that is just kind of more visceral and goofy.

[17:30] Matt Herrero: Love. I feel like when we're writing, and we're really trying to specifically get a vision or idea for one moment of the show, and we're really pushing to try and realize that, and it's taking a long time, there's kind of a moment right before we give up where we kind of start throwing around the dumb version of the choice. Like, what would be the stupid version of how to land this moment? And oftentimes we have to take that seriously, because sometimes it's a good idea. That is a note I give as a director. I'm a director primarily, actually. I will just be in the audience, and I'll say, that is so stupid. That is what I like to call peak stupid, like capital P, capital S. Where it's like, it's stupid, but we hit peak stupid, like the best stupid, you know?

[18:14] Pauls Macs: Yes, and I think towards what you were saying earlier, Teresa, of like, you can come into this show, and you can know a lot about science and the specifics, but also if you don't, you're not pushed out of the theater for it. I think that instinct of, let's try to do something serious, and if it's really not working, let's make a delightful choice instead, that's the engine that creates that feeling in the audience. Like, that's really what we're going for. And something that we've had to learn as a writing group as we've been working on this show, I think. Going back through the historical lens, because we started this conversation with, how do we write a musical? We've never done that before.

If you look at those earlier musicals, there's a reason many of them work so well, is because they're so hysterically funny. And yes, there's romance, there's greater themes involved, but they are so entertaining, and so funny, and often so silly. And if you go to a production where it's not like that, usually they don't work very well. So in a way, your piece harkens back to that lineage of musical theater, but also is creating a new space that's very exciting as well.

[19:16] Jessia Hoffman: So we touched on this subject before, Duchess Margaret Cavendish, and also her husband William Cavendish plays a role in the show. Can you talk more about their purpose in the story, and how you became familiar with them, and why you thought they would be an integral part of this piece? Famously, she was the first woman to attend a meeting at the Royal Society, and yet she's not in this number! She is in the room, but that's kind of a crucial...

[19:39] Ken Savage: Yeah, it's kind of a crucial piece that at the gala, we see that she is very much excluded from the conversation. Her husband William Cavendish is one of the Royal Society's greatest patrons, and so he's funneling money to the Royal Society, and meanwhile Margaret is being actively, actively ostracized. Like, we were talking about not trying to ostracize our audience. They're watching Margaret being ostracized on stage. The way that we are currently conceptualizing the tavern, which is kind of this third space where up-and-coming philosophers gather, and it's headed by an androgynous, kind of drag queen-like character, Francois. In that space, Margaret has room to breathe and actually share her ideas, which are quite profound, and we learn that she's actually incredibly, incredibly brilliant, incredibly cool, very poetic, very sharp.

I think we originally, when we learned about her, because none of us knew of her before we started writing the show, when we learned about Margaret, we were like, who can be Sophie's ally in 1666? We try to now, with a pretty light touch, show our audience where we have made progress as a society and where there is still room to make progress, especially when it comes to gender dynamics and the inequities there. That's always been a core of our show, and Margaret herself actually was pretty obsessed with fame. She wanted to be known, and we just find it so dramatically tragic that she is not known, and that's been kind of a driving force for us as well.

[21:20] Matt Herrero: There's a Margaret Cavendish quote that I really like, and it's, I had rather die in the adventure of noble achievement than live in obscure and sluggish security. I feel like just sums up...

[21:31] Jessia Hoffman: Yes, is that still in our show?

[21:33] Matt Herrero: No, I looked that up because I was like, oh, this character's really great. I know she's real, so I was looking up just sort of her history, and I came across that quote, and in relation to your show, I thought it was super relevant, this idea where she was like, she so, so wanted to just be acknowledged for her brilliance, and in a world in which women are not even considered brilliant, let alone celebrated for being brilliant, the kinship between her and Sophie, I think, is really beautiful because to each other, they're peers and they're equals, but only one of them has been denied that opportunity, and it's really interesting the ways in which they are so, so similar, but one is not going to be able to invent something like time travel or do all of these bold things just because she didn't have the opportunity to do so, and Sophie sort of seeing that happening in real time and remembering how important it is to be able to take credit for her own achievements and, like, galvanize her wanting to go back home, and I think it's just like their relationship is really beautiful because, like you said, it is a very light touch.

It's not like a heavy-handed, like, these are feminists doing feminist things in a world for feminism, right? Like, it feels very of, you know, the circumstance that they're in and that women of that time always did the best they could, and sometimes it wasn't enough.

[22:49] Ken Savage: I was just going to say, and with Margaret, we are asking the question, even if we, like, ourselves as writers, like, even if we never become famous, even if we gain no celebrity, will there be ripple effects to our work? We have a POV on that in our musical. There is that scene where Margaret asks Sophie, you've heard of me, right? Sophie has to say, no, Margaret, I haven't, and that is heartbreaking but also very powerful.

[23:16] Jessia Hoffman: Oh, yeah, no, that really got me. I was like, stop. And yet she continues to help and assist Sophie, and that, I think, resonates with what you were just saying. Sometimes you might not attain the celebrity yourself, but the resonances that you will have in other people's lives that probably can't be measured or even known is very important as well.

[23:35] Pauls Macs: Yeah, and I think that actually leads into our last song as well, "In My Own Time," because of the fact that the way that Sophie and Isaac have influenced each other throughout all of this and their little blip of a love story. But I think there's something really beautiful with the way that their fates sort of have become interwoven, and though it didn't change the events of time that she went back necessarily, plot twist, he does still discover gravity, the fact that there was so much nuance and layering and unexpected love and delight that led to that discovery beyond just him observing, but there was something that felt like an invisible string of fate between timelines. It's really beautiful.

Can you guys just kind of set up this moment for us? And I would also just add the lens on this question of you were just talking about this, trying to clarify the journey that Sophie goes on, the things that she learns from her relationship with Isaac. I'd be curious to know how that comes into the thinking of this song as well.

[24:30] Matt Herrero: This is one of the oldest songs in the show. It has gone through some updates. It is the song in the show that all five of us touched. I think it is in some ways like the beating heart of our collaboration in "In My Own Time." This is not the most updated version of the song because it's the most updated studio version that we have. So this song has changed in every iteration of the show, but what is the same is the decision that Sophie makes at the end of the show. But Sophie learns things from Margaret and from Isaac in the show. Isaac and Margaret both learn things from Sophie, and all of that culminates in the decisions that all three of them make at the end of the show. This demo that we're hearing is not the most, most updated version, but it is a point along the way of our thinking.

[25:19] Pauls Macs: Well, I happen to know that this is another duet by Taylor Iman Jones and Matt Herrero. So here is "In My Own Time."

[25:26] ♪ Musical number: "In My Own Time" — performed by Taylor Iman Jones and Matt Herrero ♪

[28:49] Ken Savage: They're meeting, it's a meet-cute. This song, they have to end their relationship. They're accepting they can't be together, at least that's how I read it. There's one line as I was listening to it, it just hit me like a ton of bricks. It says, it takes a little pain to make the answer clear, which is a very profound but very simple statement about life. And then what was so interesting was then I went back to En Route, I realized that Isaac said the same thing there, except he was talking about it in a very different context. He was talking about poking himself in the eye and making that answer. A needle to the eye, a needle to the heart. Without a pain. But the way it's recontextualized to be like something very simple and elementary to something deeply, deeply, deeply profound is very, very powerful.

The through line between these songs is fairly strong. The central question in En Route is, even though your experiments didn't turn out the way that you wanted them to, were they still worth it? And Isaac's saying, yes. I think that question being asked about their relationship, kind of saying, even though this didn't turn out the way that we wanted it to, was it still worth it? And giving them a chance to both say yes, I think is a really impactful. It's a beautiful piece of this song for me. Who hasn't had that experience of being in a relationship and being able to at some point say, I'm grateful that I had this experience, even though it is now over?

[30:03] Ken Savage: Well, I'm just going to read some lyrics, which I sometimes do. Sophie says, In my own time, I need to be in my own time. I wish I could say that I knew how to stay. Please understand, in my own time, I need to be in my own time. I know it's unfair, but my future is there. And you'll understand in your own time. Sophie is someone who comes off as not being deeply emotionally compassionate at the start, but she has the foresight to realize that she can't be here. He'll come to accept it in his own time. The recontextualization of those words is also really, really interesting. Sophie also says, I'm falling, I've fallen, I fell. And when I remember reading that lyric, I was like, Oh my God, Sophie is the apple, right?

Like Sophie is the catalyst to so many things. And so it really, it really comes back to the apple so often. But I think there's something beautiful about, yeah, like the discovery was inevitable. The feelings between them were inevitable. Having to go back was inevitable. And the fact that for all we know, time is indeed a linear thing. And until there is some new sort of like fold or tesseract or some other act of science that proves us otherwise, it's the only way that it could have gone.

[31:15] Ken Savage: Teresa, you're reminding me of like one wild idea we had a handful of years ago, where like at the end of the show, which I'm not saying this is how it ends now, but at the end of the show, Sophie goes back home. And then at the very end, we see, we see like a different version of Sophie that's set to send her back. Do y'all remember this?

[31:30] Joel Chapman: Yeah.

[31:30] Ken Savage: Yes. It was like a time loop version where she, she never knew why she ended up back in the past. And at the end of the show, she's like, Oh, I have sent myself back.

[31:36] Joel Chapman: Oh, that's right.

[31:41] Ken Savage: Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's right. I'll send myself back. But essentially, yeah, time loops, everything's a circle. We did drop that. But it still feels kind of emotionally true that she knows that this is what is supposed to happen for her. The word that's resonating with me right now is inevitability, which in a musical where someone goes back and unknowingly changes the past, and then spends like the rest of the musical trying to fix it. The fact that she inevitably ends up having a relationship that helps her grow and also impacts the people around her. It just feels like such a fitting ending to the piece. You feel that inevitability of like, I think I know where this has to go. But you know, it's the tension of like, do I want it to go there? Do I want it to happen?

[32:21] Teresa Attridge: Yeah, exactly.

[32:23] Ken Savage: You know, she has to go back. But do you want her to go back?

[32:26] Teresa Attridge: Right.

[32:26] Teresa Attridge: Well, Teresa, should we do our game to take us out?

[32:28] Teresa Attridge: I think so. Yeah, you know what? Like we were saying, all things must end. And here at Backstage Pass, we always end with a little game.

[32:36] Ken Savage: Fan favorite segment, our game for y'all this week. Because again, we tailor our games every week to the show and the guests. It is going to be called 11 o'clock blunder, my goodness gracious. So the game, the question that we want you all to consider this week is going to be, if you could pick any musical in which you could go back in time and change a major event that happens in that show, and then watch it as it progresses and tries to fix itself, essentially, or just to kind of see what ends up happening. What show do you pick? And what do you change?

[33:04] Ken Savage: So for me, my first thought was, if I could watch a version of Sweeney Todd, where Sweeney Todd realizes that the woman is actually his wife who is alive. And then together, they're like, Okay, what if the two of us plot a big, crazy breakout murder, so we can get our daughter back and restart our lives. And it becomes like a Bonnie and Clyde, like adventure, in which they go on a crime spree to save their daughter. I was like, I would absolutely watch that show.

[33:38] Joel Chapman: See, this is where we slightly because I also chose Sweeney Todd. But rather than making a compelling story, I just said, Oh, I just really want them to go back. And before anything bad happens to Sweeney, I want Judge Turpin to be brought to justice. I don't want anything bad to happen. I know it's not compelling drama. But that poor Sweeney guy, you just got to watch it. It's like filled with people who are filled with shit, like something bad could have still happened.

[34:02] Ken Savage: Yeah, if it's not Turpin, it's Trollo, there's just a lot of bad men in power, like somebody would have been a mess. But the one thing that we can still rely on is if men are a mess, there could still be murder.

[34:15] Weston Gaylord: I do like the idea of turning Sweeney Todd into sort of like a legal procedural that just kind of tries to systematically go through the court.

[34:24] Ken Savage: Which now just gives me the fantasy of them all just going to court. And for some reason, there's like a simple country lawyer there in the middle of London.

[34:28] Joel Chapman: Yeah, he's like, I say, I say.

[34:35] Ken Savage: I would time travel.

[34:39] Weston Gaylord: Yeah, I would time travel Elwood's back to Sweeney Todd.

[34:43] Ken Savage: Sweeney Todd and Legally Blonde come up on this game a lot.

[34:46] Joel Chapman: I just love it. So we'll get Elwood's coming.

[34:48] Ken Savage: Legally Todd! Whoa!

[34:52] Ken Savage: I was in a production called Jenna Todd through the musical multiverse once, which was Waitress and Sweeney Todd, and that was wild.

[34:55] Ken Savage: Yeah, no. It was crazy. Shout out to the musical multiverse.

[35:00] Ken Savage: We gotta know.

[35:01] Ken Savage: I'm desperate to hear your answers. Let's go. What do you got?

[35:04] Jessia Hoffman: I got one. I would choose Hadestown. And I just want to see the show one time where Orpheus does not turn around at the end.

[35:13] Ken Savage: See, Matt's like me. Matt wants it to turn out well. Teresa's like, well, how can we make this drama juicier? I'm like, I just want these bad things that have happened. To clarify, these people are not real. If these are real people, I wouldn't want bad things to happen to them, but for the joy of the theater, you know?

[35:31] Ken Savage: No, it's so tricky because I also was thinking about Hadestown was one of the shows that came into my brain too. Every show that's coming into my head, like I want to save the characters, but it wouldn't make for as good theater. I was like into the woods.

[35:46] Ken Savage: I don't want the baker's wife to die.

[35:47] Jessia Hoffman: Oh, that's what I was going to say.

[35:49] Ken Savage: Yeah, really?

[35:49] Jessia Hoffman: She like fucks someone else and then it's like die, which is very like...

[35:55] Ken Savage: It's very fairy tale coded.

[35:56] Ken Savage: You know, fable, whatever.

[35:58] Ken Savage: Ken, you said that you also picked the baker's wife. Was it for a similar reason, a different reason?

[36:03] Ken Savage: No, well, mine was going to be that the baker's wife didn't die. She ends up having a fabulous relationship with Cinderella's prince. She leaves the baker and she like ends up using the money as royalty to finally do her own business and succeed.

[36:19] Jessia Hoffman: Kind of like a waitress situation. You know, she opens her own bakery.

[36:23] Ken Savage: Yeah, like why does she need to be the baker's wife?

[36:26] Ken Savage: Like what's her name?

[36:27] Jessia Hoffman: What is her name?

[36:33] Ken Savage: I didn't know we were going to go down this road, but I love it.

[36:37] Ken Savage: Yeah, sorry. I was sort of trying to quote Next to Normal, but it was...

[36:42] Ken Savage: Oh, I mean, well, there's another one where we could save a baby.

[36:45] Ken Savage: Oh, my God.

[36:46] Ken Savage: But then there wouldn't be...

[36:47] Jessia Hoffman: Do you see what I'm saying?

[36:49] Ken Savage: Yeah, the baby lives.

[36:50] Ken Savage: But then I wouldn't have Next to Normal. Where are our morals?

[36:53] Ken Savage: That is the problem with saving the characters is in the show doesn't exist.

[36:56] Teresa Attridge: I see exactly what you're saying, Teresa.

[36:58] Teresa Attridge: Yes, yes.

[36:59] Teresa Attridge: But I want to make sure everyone gets a chance to talk. Joel and Weston, please chime in. A bunch of people are yelling and I need you to yell too.

[37:05] Joel Chapman: I'm in. I'm going to go. I also want to save characters, I will say. But this is for a specific reason. And I'm going serious. Urinetown, I want the revolution to succeed only because I think now, like in this moment, we need more stories about revolutions and people that can succeed. And so I would love to see a version of Urinetown that doesn't end with some, you know, Malthusian bullshit.

[37:27] Weston Gaylord: I also said Les Miserables and I want to see those kiddos who get killed at the barricade. I want them to... Weston, did I steal yours?

[37:35] Weston Gaylord: No. Well, it's not about the kids at the barricade, but I do have a... Mine involves Les Miserables.

[37:39] Joel Chapman: I mean, I'm not sure it would, like talking about Inevitable, I'm not sure if they survived that particular barricade battle, if it still would have turned out better for them.

[37:45] Weston Gaylord: But I think that would have been a dramatically interesting choice that doesn't end the show, is what would happen if they had been successful in that battle? Where does Andras go from there?

[37:56] Weston Gaylord: Do you want to share yours?

[37:57] Weston Gaylord: Yeah. So I also love Les Miserables. And I was thinking about something that hopefully adds drama to the show, which is to veer into out of theater and into movies for a second. Has anybody seen the movie RRR? An Indian movie from a couple of years ago, directed by S.S. Rajamouli. The word R three times, RRR. It's from 2022. It's an absolutely incredible movie. I think it's on, I think it's streaming on Netflix. I highly recommend it, but it is, it's set, it comes from Indian Telugu cinema and it's set in the times of British colonialism in India. It reminded me so much watching it of Valjean and Javert, because it's sort of about a revolutionary fighter, and then like a policeman who's also Indian, but who works for the British Raj, who is kind of tasked at finding that guy. But they meet without knowing who the other ones are and become best friends.

[39:15] Ken Savage: This is such a good game. I love making up games and I'm obsessed with this.

[39:17] Ken Savage: And I also love that we all know so much musical theater that we can play this game.

[39:23] Ken Savage: You can only play this game on our podcast or, you know, in certain contexts, because you can't just go to like a party on Friday night and be like, so I came up with this great game.

[39:34] Teresa Attridge: Honestly, this was made for you.

[39:36] Ken Savage: So you can take 11 o'clock blunder to all of your parties and such.

[39:40] Teresa Attridge: I will.

[39:40] Ken Savage: Promote the show.

[39:42] Ken Savage: But yeah.

[39:42] Ken Savage: Oh, I had one more and it was I would want to do Annie, but instead when Annie is adopted by Daddy Warbucks, it's just a redistribution of his wealth to all the poor people. I'd be like, hey, what have you paid more taxes, Warbucks?

[39:49] Weston Gaylord: And so it's kind of like if Valjean and Javert met without realizing they were Valjean and Javert and sort of fell in love a little bit or became best friends. And then there's such amazing suspense and tension in like, when are they going to find out who the other one is? And what is going to happen when they do? So what I want to do is take that dynamic and stuff it back into Les Mis and have that happen to Valjean and Javert.

[39:55] Ken Savage: I would also like to find a way to save Anatevka. Just had to get that out there.

[39:59] Jessia Hoffman: See, this is every all of you sound so nice and I sound insane. Like I'm like, I'm like, we're killing a judge. We're redistributing the wealth. Like we're getting the orphans like weapons, which I didn't add that part.

[40:13] Ken Savage: But why not?

[40:13] Ken Savage: We're already here.

[40:15] Ken Savage: I'm still thinking about the Hades town where Orpheus doesn't look back. And I'm imagining what if they announced at the beginning of the Broadway run, kind of like Willy Wonka golden ticket style that at one performance across the run unannounced, you may have a ticket to it, you may not.

[40:30] Ken Savage: At one performance. Hadestown, if you're listening, do this.

[40:37] Ken Savage: And you need to give a cut of all of that to Weston Gable.

[40:40] Ken Savage: Maybe we should do that for our show, though.

[40:44] Ken Savage: Honestly, you should be like, guys, we're going to sing it again. In the like Tideback goes back in time to send herself back in time. We've had the notion, what if she goes back in time to the start of writing Gravity and changes the show? And then we tour two different versions of the show. One is a like time loop causal change dependent on the other version of the show. So you never know which one you're going to get. We've also talked about Gravity 2 where Sophie goes back in time, gets Margaret, and the two of them go on another adventure together to another time and place.

[41:16] Ken Savage: Yeah.

[41:18] Ken Savage: Incredible.

[41:18] Ken Savage: That relates back to like Gravity 3 Tokyo Drift, in which they go to Japan.

[41:24] Ken Savage: Okay, we could we could keep going for hours and hours and hours. This is amazing.

[41:27] Teresa Attridge: But we are in our own time loop.

[41:32] Teresa Attridge: But I think we should sign off. Ken, Weston, Matt, Jessia, Joel, thank you so much for being here.

[41:38] Ken Savage: You know, our fans are we call them barnacles because they stick with us through thick and thin.

[41:43] Ken Savage: Barnacles.

[41:43] Teresa Attridge: We hope you enjoyed this conversation. We certainly did.

[41:47] Ken Savage: Absolutely.

[41:48] Teresa Attridge: And I just want to also shout out some like Bay Area pride in here as well. The theater scene in the Bay is incredible. Some of the best like actors and writers and crew you could ever have. If you're on the West Coast, I highly encourage you to see a show. You could have seen Gravity before anybody else.

[42:04] Ken Savage: On the topic of shouting out the Bay, we should also shout out San Francisco Bay Area Theater Company, SFBATCO, who have supported us in the last two readings they've done. They've really believed in the piece.

[42:12] Ken Savage: And another shout out to give is to our really awesome, wonderful dramaturg, Regina Victor, who has like not only become a well of knowledge for the world that we're building, but also for us as writers and has been such a joy and light to work with.

[42:28] Ken Savage: Damn, it takes a society.

[42:30] Teresa Attridge: Well, thank you all so much for being here. We really enjoyed reviewing your piece. Best of luck. Barnacles, thank you for listening. Thanks, everyone, for being here. We'll see you next time. Good night.

[42:39] All: Thank you.

[42:40] Ken Savage: Thank you, too.

[42:42] Ken Savage: Thanks for joining us on New York Theater Barn's Backstage Pass, hosted by Teresa Attridge and Pauls Macs. If you believe in supporting original culture shifting musicals, please like, subscribe and share.