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[0:00] ♪ Musical number: "Backstage Pass Theme" — performed by Backstage Pass ♪

[0:44] Harrison Bryan: A Hanukkah musical? Sounds crazy, no?

[0:50] Aaron Kenny: It's a miracle. From all the options, we're the show you choose. It's a miracle. To hours you can't watch or read the news.

[1:02] Rob Berliner: Amen! With something on that Christmas show. There's finally one for Jews. Jews, Jews, Jews.

[1:10] Harrison Bryan: Whether Orthodox or Goy, we invite you to enjoy. If you'd like to see us live, tell a friend, tell 25.

[1:19] Aaron Kenny: We're singing in tune and going home in a dreidel tin can. Let's give it a singing. A Hanukkah. Shut up! Carol!

[1:34] Rob Berliner: Ugh, humbug.

[1:38] Teresa Attridge: All right. Hello, hello. And welcome to Backstage Pass. It's Teresa and Pals.

[1:43] Teresa Attridge: Today is, I think, one of the greatest days of my entire life because we have one of my favorite upcoming new musicals here with us in the studio.

[1:51] Teresa Attridge: For once, we have a three-person writing team. Our first triple act. One might say the past, present, and future of musical theater.

[1:58] Pauls Macs: I like what you did there.

[2:00] Teresa Attridge: Incredible. We have the writing team behind A Hanukkah Carol here with us today. Pals, you want to tell us a little more about our guests?

[2:07] Pauls Macs: Welcome, everybody. How are you all doing today? Thank you for being here.

[2:11] Pauls Macs: I am so excited to introduce the writers of A Hanukkah Carol today.

[2:16] Pauls Macs: A Hanukkah Carol has music by Aaron Kenny, lyrics by Rob Berliner, a book by Harrison Bryan and Rob Berliner, and an original concept by Harrison Bryan.

[2:26] Pauls Macs: Also, I'd love to read your bios. So away we go.

[2:29] Pauls Macs: Aaron, we're going to do you first. So Aaron is a composer for screen and stage and a current member of the BMI Lehman Engel Musical Theater Advanced Workshop.

[2:38] Pauls Macs: A proud Aussie immigrant. G'day.

[2:42] Aaron Kenny: G'day indeed.

[2:44] Pauls Macs: Aaron has been the recipient of the Australian Young Composer of the Year Award and has since been featured stateside by ASCAP as a composer to watch, as well as being selected for the ASCAP Musical Theater Workshop NYC 2017.

[2:54] Pauls Macs: His musical, On Your Mark, was featured in TheaterNow NY Soundbites 3.0 and is now available through their anthology publication.

[3:01] Pauls Macs: His work with lyricist Rob Berliner earned them finalist status for the 2021 Fred Ebb Award and has been performed in concert by the Chicago Gay Men's Chorus at BMI's seasonal Smoker presentation and at several shows at Feinstein's 54 Below.

[3:13] Pauls Macs: They recently wrote songs for the original film musical Brand New Year, which was commissioned and produced by the New York Film Academy, and earned the duo a Best Original Song nomination at the 2019 Hollywood Music in Media Awards.

[3:25] Pauls Macs: Aaron is the music assistant to theater and film legend Alan Menken.

[3:29] Rob Berliner: Who?

[3:30] Pauls Macs: Can you explain who that is for all the listeners in case they don't know?

[3:34] Aaron Kenny: The music of your childhood, I guess I would say.

[3:38] Pauls Macs: A real up and comer. Audience, stay tuned.

[3:41] Pauls Macs: Watch out. He's on the person to watch list. All right.

[3:44] Pauls Macs: Next, we're going to Rob, who Rob, you're looking great today.

[3:47] Rob Berliner: Thank you!

[3:48] Pauls Macs: Rob Berliner is a songwriter, performer, and aspiring billionaire philanthropist.

[3:51] Rob Berliner: Aren't we all?

[3:52] Pauls Macs: As a lyricist, he has been distinguished as a finalist for the Cleveland Prize on four occasions and in tandem with composer Aaron Kenny, was a 2021 finalist for the Fred Ebb Award. Just reminding you.

[4:02] Pauls Macs: In 2022, he contributed lyrics to two original songs to composer Paul Libman's oldies inspired score for the Chase Brock Experience's Big Shot.

[4:10] Pauls Macs: His updated lyrics to You're the Top have been performed by Anne Harada at 54 Below, by Tony winner and nominee Santino Fontana and Laura Osnes at the Huntington Theater's Annual Gala, and by stage and screen icons Alan Cumming and Liza Minnelli in Rehearsal.

[4:24] Pauls Macs: So close. Someday. That's a great bio.

[4:26] Pauls Macs: He is a proud member of the BMI Lehman Engel Musical Theater Advanced Workshop and a graduate of Northwestern University.

[4:32] Pauls Macs: Thank you for being here, Rob. It's so good to see you.

[4:34] Rob Berliner: So good to be here. Thank you.

[4:35] Pauls Macs: And one more, Harrison. Harrison Bryan is an award-winning Jewish-American playwright, actor, producer, clown, and puppeteer.

[4:42] Pauls Macs: A proud member of the Dramatists Guild of America and Alliance of Jewish Theater, Harrison is a two-time award finalist of NYC's Stephen Sondheim's Write a Play Festival.

[4:50] Pauls Macs: As an actor, he has appeared off-Broadway, regionally, and on tour, and was recently nominated for a Helen Hayes Award for his performance as Christopher Boone in The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime.

[4:59] Pauls Macs: Recipient of the 2019 New York Innovative Theater Award, his writing has been featured, produced, read, and workshopped at the Cherry Lane Theater, MCC's Fresh Play Festival, Fringe NYC, Broadway Comedy Club, the BMI Advanced Writer's Workshop.

[5:11] Pauls Macs: And just, Harrison, like, there are so many organizations here. Is it okay if there's like so many notable organizations that there's like 30 in this bio? Or is there one you really want to hit?

[5:21] Harrison Bryan: No. Had I known we were going to do bio, I would have said something with a classic favorite.

[5:27] Pauls Macs: You're more like us, Harrison.

[5:29] Rob Berliner: If only you'd known. God, Harrison, can you just stop being good at stuff?

[5:33] Harrison Bryan: Well, I'm going to skip to the final, last, most important part. Brooklyn, born and raised, he served as a writer-actor for five years with FACE's Theater Network for Teens, using playwriting and improvisation to promote tolerance, peace, and anti-bullying.

[5:46] Pauls Macs: That is all these talented people in this room. Thank you all so much for being here.

[5:50] Rob Berliner: Oh my gosh, I'd fight a quarter for every nomination in this room. I could pay my own rent.

[5:55] Harrison Bryan: Thank you!

[5:56] Rob Berliner: Where I also am.

[5:57] Pauls Macs: Especially if you include Alan Menken's name in there too.

[6:00] Harrison Bryan: Oh, man. This is my official petition for Alan Menken to pay my rent. Thank you.

[6:05] Rob Berliner: Between Aaron, myself, and Harrison, and Alan Menken, we have an EGOT, so.

[6:11] Pauls Macs: Pretty good company to be in, if I could say that.

[6:13] Teresa Attridge: Listen, you got the jokes.

[6:15] Harrison Bryan: I feel very lucky to be in this room today. I'm definitely the least successful person here, but maybe through this podcast.

[6:21] Rob Berliner: No!

[6:22] Harrison Bryan: I don't know. I mean, look at all these nominations.

[6:24] Pauls Macs: But wait, also, you're all friends, right? You all know each other. And by you all, I mean, like, Teresa and the writers of A Hanukkah Carol. Is that correct?

[6:31] Harrison Bryan: We do. This is nepotism, ladies and gents.

[6:33] Rob Berliner: No, no, it's genuinely, it's a great show. But actually, Harrison and I are childhood friends.

[6:38] Harrison Bryan: Yeah. Oh my goodness, we go back over a decade now.

[6:42] Harrison Bryan: 16 years.

[6:43] Pauls Macs: Yeah.

[6:44] Teresa Attridge: Oh, wow.

[6:45] Harrison Bryan: I know. Aww. I know, look at it.

[6:48] Rob Berliner: Aww. So proud of our friendship.

[6:50] Harrison Bryan: Friendship is magic. My little pony, right in there.

[6:53] Rob Berliner: Absolutely. Just sneaking it in.

[6:55] Harrison Bryan: You gotta.

[6:56] Teresa Attridge: Well, speaking of friendship, how did you all come to meet and collaborate? How did A Hanukkah Carol come to be in the world?

[7:02] Harrison Bryan: It's a beautiful tale. We'll take you back to Hanukkah Eve's past.

[7:07] Harrison Bryan: I was commissioned a few years ago to write a Hanukkah play for a 24-hour play festival.

[7:14] Harrison Bryan: And I was sitting around with my parents and my bubby. She was making her famous baked ziti.

[7:19] Harrison Bryan: And we were all talking about how there was no Christmas carol for Jews.

[7:23] Harrison Bryan: And we couldn't believe that that couldn't exist.

[7:26] Harrison Bryan: So the spirits of Hanukkah came over me that night and in a mass rush to the laptop, I threw this 10-minute play together.

[7:33] Harrison Bryan: At the time, it was my favorite thing I've ever written. And it was just so joyous.

[7:37] Harrison Bryan: I met Aaron through a film project at NYU. He was writing music for a short film.

[7:44] Harrison Bryan: We connected. He introduced me to Rob. And they are a songwriting duo from BMI.

[7:49] Harrison Bryan: They were looking for a playwright to collaborate with. And maybe that's where their part of the story comes up and they can pick up from here.

[7:56] Aaron Kenny: Yeah, no, Aaron and I have been writing together since 2015.

[7:59] Aaron Kenny: I first heard about Harrison, I think, in 2018.

[8:01] Rob Berliner: There you go with the Chai Harrison.

[8:03] Aaron Kenny: 2018. Chai is the Hebrew signifier for the number 18 and the word life. So if we ever reference that to those unfamiliar, that's what that is.

[8:11] Aaron Kenny: But in 2018, I had heard about them working together.

[8:14] Aaron Kenny: Aaron and I had been working mostly on adaptations and finding that to be a challenge when it came to getting underlying rights.

[8:20] Aaron Kenny: The opportunity to work with somebody who had some new ideas or some new ideas based on some old public domain ideas also sounded great in both cases.

[8:27] Aaron Kenny: Aaron encouraged me to meet Harrison and we did a sort of trial run of a we wrote a 15-minute musical together.

[8:32] Aaron Kenny: We had a lot of fun writing and then somehow we dusted off this play Harrison had written, Hanukkah Carol.

[8:37] Aaron Kenny: And it just sort of leapt out at me as a fellow Hanukkah celebrant since childhood and a fellow fan of the Christmas Carol who also wondered when was our turn?

[8:45] Aaron Kenny: I just thought it was just such a cool idea. And definitely there was an audience for it and an opportunity to make it something really fun and special.

[8:52] Aaron Kenny: I also have to I have to acknowledge because my parents will be listening.

[8:56] Rob Berliner: I was waiting for this.

[8:57] Aaron Kenny: I have to acknowledge that growing up my parents really went to town on Hanukkah.

[9:03] Aaron Kenny: They created the Hanukkah fairy and my sister and I believe that there was this actual fairy who was related to the tooth fairy.

[9:11] Aaron Kenny: She would come and decorate the house blue and white and give us presents under the table.

[9:16] Aaron Kenny: And every year we would look forward to all of the crazy decorations that the Hanukkah fairy would bring into our home.

[9:22] Aaron Kenny: And I really did believe this until I was eight or nine. And my sister said, you know, it's our parents, right?

[9:27] Aaron Kenny: And I was like, whoa, I'm so impressed by their commitment.

[9:31] Rob Berliner: I love that that's the reaction.

[9:33] Aaron Kenny: It's not I hate you mom and dad. It's not real. It's man. Look at my working parents really making it happen for their two kids.

[9:40] Aaron Kenny: They were so committed to this.

[9:44] Aaron Kenny: A lot of the love, a lot of the magic, a lot of the imagination that lives inside the show. I do credit to my parents' commitment to allowing my sister and I to really celebrate Hanukkah in all of its pride and joy and glory.

[9:57] Rob Berliner: For anyone who watches the local news once a year, your parents are the ones who have the Hanukkah house with all the lights.

[10:04] Pauls Macs: Could you expand on that, please?

[10:06] Aaron Kenny: I'd like to know more.

[10:07] Aaron Kenny: We have been called the Hanukkah house on several local news networks.

[10:11] Aaron Kenny: And certainly if you go to a Hanukkah carol dot com, you can see these clips for yourself.

[10:16] Aaron Kenny: There was a couple of news reporters who came out of my high school. They found out about these lawn ornaments that my parents commit to.

[10:23] Aaron Kenny: And people come all over Brooklyn and they take pictures in front of our Menorah Saurus, our Hanukkah bear.

[10:29] Rob Berliner: Did you just say Menorah Saurus?

[10:31] Aaron Kenny: I can't let that just like pass by without making a note.

[10:36] Aaron Kenny: Yeah, yeah, yeah. The Menorah Saurus is a new upgrade to the front lawn and people really love it. It's just it's fun and it's subversive. And again, it all comes back to, I think, the real heart that they bring when they make these.

[10:50] Rob Berliner: It's decorative, celebratory gestures. It feels somewhat absurd and ridiculous, maybe from the outside, but inside of it, it's just fueled with the love they have for the holiday and their family. That's really what we're trying to bring home with our show.

[11:04] Harrison Bryan: That's really fantastic. The Hanukkah fairy, I believe, makes an appearance in the script. Something tells me there's like a lot of lived experience that made it into this piece.

[11:12] Rob Berliner: Yes, you know, we have the spirits of Hanukkah's past, present, and future. Yeah, I would say that the Hanukkah fairy just felt like the right vehicle for our Hanukkah present. I wanted to read the synopsis, just so we can get that in.

[11:22] Harrison Bryan: Narcissistic millennial influencer Hava Kniption, known to her followers as Queen Vava, is obsessed with her social media empire, so much so that she has no time or energy for the real world, for actual friendships, or least of all, for Hanukkah with her family. That is, until she is transported on an unforgettable trip that compels her to rethink everything. A trip led by spirits of the past, present, and future. Think you know this story? Think again.

[11:46] Teresa Attridge: I feel like we've been talking a lot about this on the show. Through a lot of pieces we've been reviewing lately, we talk about specificity of experience. And as I was reading A Hanukkah Carol, just so people know, I mean, I guess my family has always celebrated Christmas, and so I've never celebrated Hanukkah. I know some of my friends, they say they're Jew-ish, and they do both. I've never celebrated Hanukkah. Sometimes when you're reading a piece, you could feel like possibly excluded, but I did not feel that way at all when I was reading this. I felt so, so included and invited to celebrate Hanukkah. And that was so exciting for me. I mean, the way that the piece is constructed is so smart.

I mean, this piece is wacky. Something that has always appealed to me is metatheatricality, which this piece has in spades. Like, for example, we open with a Dickensian orphan who's like straight up addressing the audience. I especially love all the Fiddler on the Roof references. I know it started like as 10 minutes, then it got longer, right? Because now we have like a full-length show.

[12:37] Rob Berliner: It's much, much longer.

[12:38] Harrison Bryan: Well, yeah, it's one act. To add to our history with Teresa, Teresa was an invaluable asset to our 2022 reading that we did. So she knows the script as well as anybody, at least as of December 2022. I like this story a lot because it's really a credit to Harrison. When he brought us this idea, it was such a great, I mean, I knew on the title page, I was like, I think this is going to be the one. And then read it and it was delightfully funny and irreverent and short. It was 10 minutes, right? You know, it was 10 minutes that lasted for 20 because of holding for laughs. So that's a great place to start. And I said, I think this is a really cool idea. I think we should work on this. I think we're going to have to sort of break it open into pieces and build it up again from the beginning. Are you OK with that? I mean, that was sort of the only kind of asterisk I said before diving in. And he was like, totally, let's do it.

[13:22] Rob Berliner: We really just sort of dove in together as a trio. We got a room at one of the studios in Midtown. We sort of shut ourselves in with a whiteboard. We came up with a whole bunch of storytelling ideas. What are the challenges of this as a concept? What are the opportunities? Where do we want to start writing songs? And Aaron and I, we got some ideas for some song placement as a trio and wrote some stuff.

[13:41] Harrison Bryan: Yeah, you touched a little bit about Fiddler on the Roof, how the symbolism in that show comes in and out and weaves in. And Rob talks with great reverence about how the themes inside Fiddler of a person who believes deeply in traditions, but is struggling with the world changing around them and how those themes ended up becoming a huge part of A Hanukkah Carol. And that was sort of a happy accident. I think we originally approached a lot of this script from a place of just full out reckless comedy. Whatever the funniest idea was, whatever the greatest subversion was, we just went for it. And throughout the years as we've been developing and getting feedback, what we've discovered people really attach themselves to is the surprising heart of the piece.

And that's all of Fiddler. And so interestingly enough, our journey of, oh, let's just throw a Fiddler joke in now is like, oh, that really deep moment in Fiddler is actually like really connective tissue for our protagonist. And that was a really wonderful surprise. We've also went from a very specific niche audience. We were going for this R-rated, Avenue Q-esque type of Hanukkah show where like, look, she's smoking kosher kush and she's visited by spirits. And then as we've developed and grown and we've really, I don't know, maybe we're getting soft and lovey-dovey in our old age here, but we've really opened it up and broadened the audience. Now we're like excited for people to invite their families.

And when the show is done 10, 15, 20 years from now, then those families get to bring their families. And suddenly we're creating a holiday tradition that exists across generations, which wasn't important to us at the beginning of the project. And now is a huge motivating factor as we continue to find the best version of this story.

[15:30] Rob Berliner: Just piggybacking onto that, what you said about the way that Fiddler kind of emerged as the secret deeper meaning or surprise deeper meaning. We have that actually in two cases, I think. We obviously began to write A Hanukkah Carol in large part because it was sort of a Jewish analog for Christmas, not for any deeper reasons about the holiday. It was the holiday that was not Christmas. It was our holiday. At least for me, that was the initial leaping off point. And we also, of course, included Fiddler because, I mean, it's a perfect Jewish show, first and foremost. But it's also like the American Jewish cultural touchstone. It is like the most iconic piece of American art about being Jewish.

And obviously for theater audiences, it's going to be the first thing we all think of. It's like show one through 10 on the list of greatest Jewish shows. That's it. It's Fiddler. And then, I don't know, hopefully us. But the beautiful thing, as Harrison mentioned, is, well, in the case of Hanukkah, it was there. It was in December and it was kind of adjacent to Christmas. So culturally and in the zeitgeist, it feels analogous. However, it is a story about persisting in one's identity as a minority in the face of an overwhelming majority that with a different identity and a different belief system. There was something really kind of magical about realizing that it was the perfect holiday when we were writing a show about Jewish identity and about feeling at peace and proud of who you are and where you're from. It actually made perfect sense that this was a story set at Hanukkah.

[16:47] Harrison Bryan: The other thing that I kind of want to throw to Aaron that touches upon one of your points, is how you didn't feel excluded from this Hanukkah-centric piece. Aaron is our goy friend.

[16:59] Aaron Kenny: Goy to the world, baby!

[17:01] Teresa Attridge: Wait, can you define that for the audience? I just want to make sure everybody knows.

[17:04] Aaron Kenny: I'm a Jewish boy. I'm a Jewish boy.

[17:07] Rob Berliner: A goy is Jewish for someone who's not Jewish. It is not always historically the warmest word in full transparency, but we have adopted it and reclaimed it as a term of endearment. But Aaron, you can probably talk a little bit about how you didn't grow up celebrating Hanukkah at all and what your journey throughout this development is.

[17:25] Aaron Kenny: I mean, it's been an educational experience as well, in the best way, collaborating with the other boys as well, too, on this piece. Sure, there are all the differences between it. I grew up in a Catholic high school, boys' school in Australia.

[17:41] Harrison Bryan: Me too, baby!

[17:42] Aaron Kenny: Celebrated all the Christmas stuff and the holiday stuff. But, you know, moving to New York and living in New York, obviously, I mean, the Jewish experience is all around me and the lifestyle here as well, too. But it was also fun to see the references and experiences that I had of Jewish culture from growing up, not in it, but see where the parallels lie and see the appropriation of even Jewish terms or whatever it is in the piece that I can relate to. I function, obviously, mainly as the composer of all the tunes, but also as a litmus test for the story, for the jokes, for the characters, so that the show is accessible to a wider audience as well, too. Because I feel like audiences in general, we want to be in on the joke. We want to be in on the story and everything like that. If we're getting an education along the way without us knowing it, that's a great situation.

[18:41] Rob Berliner: Pavel, I just want to acknowledge that you sharing that feedback for us is as meaningful as it gets. I mean, hearing that you were able to engage with this piece as somebody with no Hanukkah history and to be able to feel connected and welcomed and included and invited in, that is the whole Megillah. That's the whole ballgame. We're grateful that you had that experience and thank you for sharing that with us.

[19:00] Aaron Kenny: I'm very grateful to you writing it because, you know, the word educational was used earlier. I also learned a ton. That's part of the reason I go to the theater, is so I can learn about the perspectives of others. There have been times that I have felt excluded. This time, I definitely felt included. I'm really intrigued by the incorporation of social media into this piece and specifically, I hope I'm saying this right, Chava, is that correct?

[19:23] Rob Berliner: Yes.

[19:23] Aaron Kenny: It could be a little more, a little more clear in your throat.

[19:26] Rob Berliner: Chava.

[19:26] Aaron Kenny: Chava.

[19:27] Rob Berliner: Great.

[19:27] Aaron Kenny: I like that.

[19:28] Rob Berliner: Chava.

[19:28] Aaron Kenny: I was like, we're going to cut this and now we're going to keep it.

[19:39] Rob Berliner: Chava.

[19:39] Aaron Kenny: Chava.

[19:39] Rob Berliner: It's just reminding me of that scene in My Fair Lady where they're like, Chavicans, chavi!

[19:42] Aaron Kenny: Chavicans, chavi!

[19:42] Rob Berliner: Why don't we have a Yiddish version of that? That's great.

[19:48] Harrison Bryan: You heard it here first!

[19:48] Aaron Kenny: I'd be curious to know about why that attachment to social media was such a prevalent theme in the piece because I was really fascinated by it. It also offers some really fantastic social commentary that might be associated with Hanukkah or not, and I'm not sure if it is or not.

[20:02] Rob Berliner: Yeah, well, you know, when I mentioned we sort of shacked up in a room and talked about the opportunities and challenges of this piece, the first thing that struck us was, well, it's about a Jewish character and A Christmas Carol is about greed. And those are two streets that we don't need to intersect. That was not a story we felt needed to be out in the world. There was an opportunity to change what the currency was at stake in this story. In fact, even before we considered, I think, the opportunities to have social commentary on social media and the pitfalls of it, it was just a sort of a sidestep from the original story, a way to make it more contemporary, a way to make it a different currency of power, a different obsession for our main character.

[20:39] Harrison Bryan: One of my favorite lines in the script relating to that is when she's like, like by like by like for link by link. That kills me every time.

[20:47] Rob Berliner: Thank you.

[20:48] Rob Berliner: Well, just the idea that in our contemporary existence in our society, we do put a lot of value on how we are presented on our social media to the world. And we thought if our protagonist, who is dealing with on a deeper level, a sort of blocked mindset about who she authentically is, what culture and connectivity she has with her Jewishness, if that is so suppressed because she is worried about what the outside world will think of it on some level, even subconsciously, then social media is an amazing platform to put a lens on this story. How do we exist with a character who is presenting herself to the world as someone who is mean, but inside she is kind and loving and caring that gives us such a.

[21:41] Harrison Bryan: So that we can then, at the end of the show, look at social media and say, well, how can we try and relay a more authentic version of ourselves? And I hope that the show isn't suggesting that all social media is bad. But it's about how you use any power, how you use any platform. How is your voice being applied? And if, at the end of this journey, she discovers that she can share goodness with the world, instead of vapidness or selfishness, then we've created an arc that, dare I say, is actually deeper than a Christmas Carol. And so that's why social media became an important vehicle for us, because it allowed us just more opportunity to connect with what we're dealing with today. Social media also gives us a perfect lens through which to examine the question of identity.

I mean, in a way that, had we not gone that avenue, we would not have had this opportunity in front of us. It really did work out pretty serendipitously. We had this opportunity for our main character, Chava, to kind of create a fictional version of herself online because of her own insecurities and her own discomfort with who she is as a person and what her family background is. And so she kind of creates an avatar of herself, a new persona, gives a new name, and a whole new kind of hateful but DGAF sort of attitude, if you will. And this show is about her sort of reconciling who she is and who maybe she could be or should want to be, as is sort of the Christmas Carol. So that worked out nicely for us.

It's also really fun to go from the past to present and the future and imagine all the technological advances and see where we came from and where we're going. The recurring cell phone bit, as it were. Yes, and use the past, present, and the future to explode that, make fun of that.

[23:20] Harrison Bryan: Now, something I will say, one of the things I like adore about this script is I have always been like a Christmas Carol purist. I grew up with it. I read it with my family. I love a Christmas Carol. This was absolutely hilarious. What I was about to say is this is actually… Wow. What a vulnerable thing you just shared with us. I'm honored. I love a Christmas Carol. And I'm not going to apologize for it. I love a Christmas Carol. I've always loved a Christmas Carol. I grew up with it. I read it with my family. I watched all the adaptations about the Christmas Carol. Shout out. Best one. Don't fight me. The best version. Completely. The best version. Get in the comments. Honor will mention Mickey's Christmas Carol, which is before… Oh.

But it's a pretty… It's my definitive. You know who else had a good one? Mr. Magoo's Christmas Carol. We're getting off topic. Okay. But one of the things I love about the script is this is actually an incredibly well done adaptation. It is one of the closer adaptations in terms of its pacing, its subject matter, and the way that you reference the original text is so clever and so funny and the joke is always, it comes when you least expect it. My favorite line in the entire show, spoilers, is when she's like, are there no Red Ruffins? Are there no La Quintas? It was the line that I was like, I'm all the way in. It just, it so cleverly tracks the exact same journey and it makes incredibly smart, well thought out references.

And I think that's one of the reasons that someone like Pauls or myself or Aaron or anybody would be able to go see it and be like, even though I don't get some of these jokes, I do get a lot of them because I think the way that you've been able to weave in the original narrative while keeping that modern and very Jewish perspective is really artfully done. I mean, the script is like very tight in terms of how it was able to fit so many, like it's dense with references. And some of them are, you know, very, very clever and some of them are fucking silly. Gosh, the amount of times we talk about Dunkin' Donuts and kittens.

[25:14] Aaron Kenny: Oh my gosh. When I am directing comedy, I often refer to the comedy rule of three, which I was thinking a lot about when I was examining the past, present and future of this piece. It allows, for example, the cell phone joke of, you can tell it's this era because my phone won't break if I do this. So that's three times, right? There are other jokes that just keep coming back, keep coming back. Go buy the prize donut at the Dunkin' Donuts, you know, and just keep coming back. Can you talk to me? I mean, if you can, you know, could be just instinctual. Can you talk to me on like comedic structure? Aaron, you could jump in about this. There are funny jokes in the music as well from like a technical standpoint, which I find fascinating. How did you structure it comedically?

[26:01] Rob Berliner: I think that what is most important to us as comedic writers, and in its musical entity as well, is the element of surprise. And when you're dealing with a story and a structure that has been told for over a hundred years in so many different adaptations, I think we like the idea of putting coins in different meters, if you will. Parking spaces, I don't know what this analogy is. Feeding the pigs? I don't know. In terms of making sure we're covering bases, when you just talk about like the joke distribution and the reference distribution, we wanted to make sure that for every specifically Jewish joke or kind of inside baseball Jewish joke, we had a broader joke. We had a Dickens reference. We had the running fiddler on the roof references out of both Jewish affection for that show and mainstream affection for the show and ours, of course.

Yes, and we did recognize and delight at the opportunity to quote or wink at the original Dickens text whenever possible without slowing down the piece. I think that the fun challenge of this was to keep it moving and keep it paced with the urgency of A Christmas Carol, while also trying to make sure we're taking every opportunity to have fun and keep everybody involved. We've been very lucky that we've had wonderful reactions from people who had never had any experience with Hanukkah and people who had no idea what A Christmas Carol was. On the other side of that, I mean, genuinely, we had people telling us they loved our show and they had never heard of, read or seen A Christmas Carol. So that's really rewarding for us.

And I have a very short attention span. And so I'm always interested in making sure that whoever is going to lose focus, we can bring them back in. I enjoy kind of the variety of the jokes and oh, wait, maybe we're losing them. Let's give them a fun song here. Aaron, can you talk a little bit about your approach to comedy in the music?

[27:28] Aaron Kenny: The songs are hilarious. I mean, I'm a big fan of Boyz II Mench. That's like one of my favorite moments in the show. How did you go about writing that? It's funny because my collaborators often talk about jokes in the script or even references as well, too. And occasionally I will put references in the score, which is also something that is of a very collaborative nature as well, too. Both Rob and Harrison are not shy about sharing ideas for incorporating musical references as well, too, which I love and I'm always open to. But I will say that the music itself kind of stands as the sort of straight man in the formation or the yin and the yang of everything. Because you have an example like the Boyz II Mench song, which is a boy band song.

But the way that I approached writing it musically was very seriously. Like if this was an actual NSYNC song or Backstreet Boys song, how would I musically go about writing that and producing that? There's several other pieces that are in the show that I take very seriously. And that enhances the comedy as well, too, I think. Because when you incorporate hilarious lyrics or lyrics that go against what the music's doing, it also adds humor or context from the book. You sort of get this magic.

[29:03] Teresa Attridge: Oh my gosh. Your music really is so magical. I love the song The Girl I Used to Know. You have this very silly, very wacky musical. And then you really just put this insanely beautiful, personal, profound ballad. It's so earned and so gorgeous. I think it's my favorite song in the show, actually. I sing it to myself sometimes when I'm just in my house, feeling retrospective. Also, it's sung by the character Barb, Barb Cratchit. What an incredible twist on a character. I want to just mention that tonight, in advance of our podcast, I was trying to type on my phone New York Theatre Barn, and it kept auto-correcting to New York Theatre Barb. So I just... Joe Barros, make it happen. Rename it for the day.

I don't even know if this was intentional, but one of the things that Barb served for me as an audience member was not just the Barb Cratchit reference, like very obviously, but that you've replaced the significant romantic relationship Scrooge has with a strong female friendship, like a childhood friend. And that we're getting this perspective of the person who humanizes you, right? And in A Christmas Carol, it's the employee who's like, no, you know, like, yeah, I mean, he's grumpy and stuff, but he puts food on our table. And like, I'm really grateful that I have this job. And someone who, their intensely deep humanity is the thing that almost keeps them human for us from the very beginning.

And Barb plays that role in this so beautifully. And with such, just so funny, unintentionally, too. Not a character who's like a wink and a joke. No, there's one wink and a joke. The November joke is pretty good.

[30:34] Rob Berliner: Harrison's in my banter, by the way. A lot of the back and forth between Chava and Barb is things Harrison and I have said to each other in the writing process. I mean, who's Chava and who's Barb? That's the question. I think it switches on and off.

[30:41] Aaron Kenny: That's true.

[30:43] Rob Berliner: Aaron, are you bestie? I think there's a lot of yes anding that happens in our collaboration where we'll sometimes be deciding between a few ideas. And then as an exercise, we're like, well, what if it's all of them? And sometimes that really works in terms of heightening and building the jokes and building the characters. Teresa, you mentioned the balance. And I think that's really important in terms of comedic structure. I only want to be laughing once a minute in a show if it's balanced by a reminder of what's important in life. Why is laughter important? And it's to connect. It's to feel. It's to be, for just a moment, happy that I'm alive and sharing this planet with other people. Our show, especially in the music and in credit to Aaron and Rob, grounds us in that sense of humanity and humility and importance that when you first buy a ticket to a Hanukkah Carol or a Geltrip the musical, you might not be expecting to feel anything and just go for the good times in the laugh.

And our hope is that, again, a surprise, you leave with the spirit of the holiday and the desire to call your family and tell them you love them, because at the end of the day, that's what makes laughter matter.

[32:04] Teresa Attridge: Thanks for joining us on New York Theater Barn's Backstage Pass. Join us next time to hear more music from A Hanukkah Carol and we discuss who would be our past, present and future of musical theater. Get your backstage pass.