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[0:42] Eila Mell: Hello, and welcome to Behind the Awards. I'm Eila. I am here with Bruce.

[0:48] Bruce Gotlieb: Hey, Bruce.

[0:50] Eila Mell: Good morning to you.

[0:51] Bruce Gotlieb: How are you doing?

[0:51] Eila Mell: I'm good. I'm always happy when I'm talking to you.

[0:55] Bruce Gotlieb: Well, we just listened to Jodie Foster and Jennifer Lawrence doing a little, you know, award presenting.

[1:03] Eila Mell: Jodie comes out on crutches and, you know, fabricates that Meryl Streep is the cause of her being on crutches. You know, we know that Jennifer Lawrence is funny, but we forget that Jodie Foster can be funny, too.

[1:15] Bruce Gotlieb: Right. And I think, you know, Meryl is so beloved.

[1:19] Eila Mell: Yeah.

[1:20] Bruce Gotlieb: She has no problem being the butt of the joke.

[1:23] Eila Mell: Oh, yeah. You know, especially when it's done, you know, so well.

[1:28] Bruce Gotlieb: Right. And by these women.

[1:30] Eila Mell: Right, right. It's just funny how they're like, you know, that's Streep.

[1:35] Bruce Gotlieb: Oh, my gosh. So I went to see Reunions. You know, our guest, Shalina Kennedy, is starring in that.

[1:42] Eila Mell: That's right. With Chip Zion, our other former guest.

[1:45] Bruce Gotlieb: That's right. Former guest, like it's a contract.

[1:48] Eila Mell: No, our other guest that we've had on the show. You're beholden to us forever.

[1:52] Bruce Gotlieb: That's right. That's right. You're part of our show.

[1:54] Eila Mell: So I had, you know, even though we spoke to Shalina about it, I really didn't know what to expect. Tone-wise, you know, I knew that it was two stories put together in an afternoon or evening of theater.

[2:08] Bruce Gotlieb: So there are two different stories, but they've created this bridge in between them that is so much fun.

[2:15] Eila Mell: It kind of like, they're almost like a Greek chorus, and they talk about one show, and then they actually lead you into the next show in such a clever way.

[2:24] Bruce Gotlieb: I love that.

[2:25] Eila Mell: Oh, interesting. Shalina is good. She's the star of the first piece.

[2:30] Bruce Gotlieb: I hope that people will go see it. You know, it's a small show. It's playing at City Center.

[2:35] Eila Mell: So when I saw it, you were there seeing Bat Boy.

[2:37] Bruce Gotlieb: That's right. That's right. That's the big draw right now. And also, they have Queens playing there.

[2:42] Eila Mell: So there's a lot to see. But, you know, if you want to see something just sweet and fun, and, you know, it's just, it's sort of, you know, it's like a delight. You just have so much fun watching it.

[2:53] Bruce Gotlieb: So that was a nice surprise, because, you know, I wanted to support Shalina so much.

[2:58] Eila Mell: Of course. I loved her when she was on our show. But you never know when you go to something, if it's going to, you know, you're hoping, I hope it's going to be good. And this was so easy to tell her how much I loved it, because I really, really did.

[3:11] Bruce Gotlieb: Right, right. Chip is great in it. He, so he is the lead of the second.

[3:17] Eila Mell: Okay.

[3:18] Bruce Gotlieb: Of the two shows. And he has a supporting role in the first. And Shalina has a supporting role in the second. And then, you know, there's other cast members, but it's a very small cast. Everybody does double and sometimes triple duty.

[3:31] Eila Mell: Fun. Courtney Reed is in it. And, of course, she was the original Jasmine.

[3:35] Bruce Gotlieb: That's right. In Aladdin. And, you know, she's great. And I just, I strongly recommend it. It's just a lot of fun.

[3:43] Eila Mell: But I was very jealous of you going in that I was not seeing Bat Boy.

[3:48] Bruce Gotlieb: But then that quickly went away.

[3:50] Eila Mell: I know. I was also disappointed not to be able to attend Reunions. But, you know, you could only be one place at a time.

[3:58] Bruce Gotlieb: I know. We had to split it up. Divide and conquer.

[4:01] Eila Mell: I know. So, that said, there's another show that's pretty exciting that's happening off Broadway.

[4:07] Bruce Gotlieb: That's right. A little further up.

[4:09] Eila Mell: Well, actually, sorry, a little further downtown.

[4:13] Bruce Gotlieb: Right.

[4:14] Eila Mell: Theater Row. We have Pygmalion. You can go to the West Bank Cafe if you want for lunch or dinner.

[4:22] Bruce Gotlieb: Depending on when you're going to see it.

[4:24] Eila Mell: It's right across the street.

[4:25] Bruce Gotlieb: Exactly. But, you know, we all know Pygmalion as My Fair Lady.

[4:32] Eila Mell: That's true. The matchmaker to its Hello, Dolly.

[4:36] Bruce Gotlieb: That's right. That's right. But, you know, this version of Pygmalion is a little bit updated. And, well, I don't even have to say anything because our guest, the director, David Stoller, knows absolutely everything there is to know about George Bernard Shaw and about this play.

[4:53] Eila Mell: So, let's bring him out. And just for our listeners, a little tease, and the connection with Stephen Sondheim and Hirschfeld.

[5:01] Bruce Gotlieb: Yeah. And there is one. This is for everybody.

[5:04] Eila Mell: Who knew? Let's get him out.

[5:07] Bruce Gotlieb: Hello, and welcome to Behind the Awards. I'm Eila. As always, I'm here with Bruce. But we have a special guest with us today. Welcome, Director David Stoller.

[5:19] David Stoller: Hello.

[5:20] David Stoller: Well, how wonderful to see you both. Isn't the virtual land the modern way to hang out?

[5:26] Eila Mell: I guess. I mean, it's not going to replace in-person for me. I like to be with a person, but this is the next best thing.

[5:33] David Stoller: Well, I'm thrilled to have you here.

[5:35] Eila Mell: Thank you.

[5:36] David Stoller: I'm thrilled you're thrilled, and I'm thrilled to be thrilled that you're thrilled and we're here.

[5:41] Eila Mell: All right. Well, now I'm confused, but that's okay. I'm going to power through.

[5:48] David Stoller: So you have a production that's up and running. You're doing George Bernard Shaw's Pygmalion.

[5:55] Eila Mell: Yes.

[5:56] David Stoller: Yes. And what a terrific play it is. We've got a terrific company. We're at Theatre Row at 410 West 42nd Street, which is between 9th and 10th on the south side of the street. You can get tickets online at Theatre Row or through our website, gingoldgroup.org. I'll also give the box office phone number, 212-714-2442, extension 2. We're having such a good time, and it's such a popular play, which amazes me because most people just know it for the musical, My Fair Lady.

[6:33] Bruce Gotlieb: Right. So how did this all come to be for you, mounting this production?

[6:40] David Stoller: Well, we founded Gingold Theatrical Group, named for my godmother, the eccentric British actress, Hermione Gingold, 20 years ago. This is our 20th anniversary.

[6:52] Eila Mell: Congratulations.

[6:53] David Stoller: Yes. Happy anniversary.

[6:55] Eila Mell: Thank you.

[6:56] David Stoller: We started basically as a response to sociopolitical events at the time. I was concerned during the Bush administration, which now seems like the good old days.

[7:07] Bruce Gotlieb: Exactly.

[7:09] David Stoller: I was concerned that journalists were being fired for speaking out against the administration. And had I been a trust fund baby, it really annoys me that I'm not.

[7:21] Bruce Gotlieb: Yeah, you should be. You have the lineage.

[7:23] David Stoller: I deserve to be. Really?

[7:25] Bruce Gotlieb: Yes.

[7:26] David Stoller: But I'm not. I probably would have just written checks, you know, and felt good about it in the morning. But I got some friends together, including Marion Selders and Stephen Sondheim, and we decided they worshipped Shaw. Sondheim claimed that everything he ever wrote was inspired by Shaw.

[7:44] Eila Mell: Oh, wow.

[7:45] David Stoller: Wow. And Marion Selders' favorite playwright was Shaw. And they're the only two people that really encouraged me to start this company.

[7:54] Eila Mell: Whoa.

[7:55] David Stoller: Basically not to present Shaw, but to use his activist, humanitarian, fortified belief in the better nature of humanity. I like that. To create this reading series, really. We started with Shaw because he wrote all of his plays as an activist engine of change. And we thought, okay, we'll give it a try for six months. And within a few years, we're the first company ever to present performances of all of Shaw's 65 plays.

[8:33] Eila Mell: Wow.

[8:34] David Stoller: And people started donating. You know, we're a nonprofit. We accept donations. Very important. And we started doing full productions. We can only afford to do one full production a year. So this year it's Pygmalion. And people have been begging us to do Pygmalion.

[8:53] Bruce Gotlieb: That's incredible. Now, have you directed all 65 of those?

[8:57] David Stoller: That's incredible. I didn't direct all of our readings, but I did direct the Shaw plays. I've spent years on some of these, really researching.

[9:03] Eila Mell: Yeah.

[9:09] David Stoller: For instance, with Pygmalion, with help from lots of Shaw heads and people who knew Shaw and people who collect papers and scripts, he actually published seven different versions of this play, partly because he was really good with a book. He just copywriting out by making changes, but it was really useful. And I realized that even people who claim to know Pygmalion don't really. It's really different from the musical in some very basic ways.

[9:46] Bruce Gotlieb: Both pieces are brilliant.

[9:49] David Stoller: I mean, really, name a musical better than My Fair Lady.

[9:53] Eila Mell: Oh, my God.

[9:54] David Stoller: I made the mistake once of walking down the street with Mr. Sondheim and he asked me what was my favorite musical. And Steve, I'm sorry. All your work is on another planet.

[10:07] Bruce Gotlieb: Yeah.

[10:08] David Stoller: But I wish I could have recorded his dissertation on My Fair Lady because he admired it. But we really went line through line, song by song, with what he felt enhanced the play and what didn't. So I got to know the original film, Eliza, Wendy Hiller. When I was working in London and she was doing Driving Miss Daisy and she was a tough cookie, I'll tell you. But we got along and she showed me all these notes from his original screenplay.

[10:47] David Staller: And I became very good friends with Sir Michael Holroyd, whose three-volume biography of Shaw helped him get knighted. And I've been working for years on this script. I found the script that had been trimmed for Gertrude Lawrence's Broadway 1945 version. I can't believe I'm just spilling all this out, but you asked me. We did. Yeah, we loved it. So I got a hold of that script, and it is a script that Shaw approved. And with these notes from his screenplay, we are doing a production of Pygmalion, and people are cheering and laughing and standing up at the end, not to leave, but to cheer. And we're just having the best time. I got a dream cast, and we're approaching it in a way that I truly believe that Mr. Shaw would enjoy.

[11:42] Bruce Gotlieb: Well, he'd certainly enjoy that people are wanting to see it in 2025. That's amazing. Can you imagine? But I will tell you that part of what we've decided to do in incorporating these ideas that Wendy Hiller showed me. And then one spring in Paris with my late partner, Robert Osborne, we met some friends who were Shaw collectors, and they had letters and papers regarding the screenplay. So I was able to take notes. I mean, this has been going on for years. This is what I do.

[12:16] David Staller: Well, you are uniquely qualified to be directing this production. It sounds like, not having seen the piece yet, but it sounds like what you've been able to do is almost write a love letter to him and to Sondheim, to all these people that helped infuse their love of him into your company and into this play.

[12:40] David Staller: Yeah, Bruce. Also, I don't know if you're old enough to remember the work of Al Hirschfeld, sure. But he was a great friend and worshipped Shaw, and nobody drew Shaw more or better. And his dream had always been to design a set for this play.

[13:01] Bruce Gotlieb: Well, you're making that happen in a way.

[13:01] David Staller: Well, yeah. So we got the Al Hirschfeld Foundation to partner with us and give us full license of all of his work. And we have designed a set inspired by Al's drawings, incorporating these screenplay ideas. And so I feel like this whole production is really a celebration of all of us, of Shaw's belief in humanity, in spite of everything, especially these days, in our belief in his determination to help empower us. Because we have all been, or are, disenfranchised in some way. And it's funny, people have the weirdest conception of Shaw. They think he and Oscar Wilde were the same Irish person. He was good friends with Oscar Wilde, by the way. He did help finance Oscar Wilde's legal defense. But unlike Wilde, who was this rich aristocrat who knew everybody, Shaw was this incredibly disenfranchised, poor Irish kid, uneducated, pulled out of school as a kid, sent to work.

He had a speech impediment. He was malnourished. He was skinny. He had bad skin. His mother, who never wanted to be married or have kids, left as soon as she could. His father was an abusive alcoholic. And, you know, he wasn't just this entitled white British empire guy. He had to really fight. And he really gave himself a good talking to. When he was 19, he was working at the phone company in Dublin and decided, okay, this is it. If I'm going to keep on living, I have to have a purpose in life. And decided to pack up his meager belongings and move to London without connections. He's self-educated. He went to the library and museum every day. He cross-referenced. And eventually, you know, he really invented modern English drama and helped redesign some elements of the English language.

But he fought all his life, especially for women's rights. That was his greatest cause, but also men's rights, gay rights. You know, he really fought the fight, writing, even in the 1880s before he was famous, ripping apart these laws that kept consenting adults from doing what they want to do in private. He fought for children's rights. He helped create and fund orphanages and schools. He created the funds that organized the London School of Economics to create scholars. All of his money from Pygmalion and My Fair Lady go to RADA, the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. He believed that his life was meant to enhance the planet rather than just squeeze what he wanted out of it. And that is what inspired us.

[15:56] David Staller: It's why my godmother, when I was 10, I was going to school abroad and we were corresponding because she was living in New York by then. And she finally wrote me when I was 10 and said, darling, I'd love to hear from you, but if you want me to respond, you've got to start asking more interesting questions. Along with this letter came a copy of Shaw's Man and Superman, which is a weighty play. But she just said, start on page one and we can discuss it. And it's so funny. It's so accessible. It's so much about challenging and questioning. It's about the importance of defining what male or female or sexuality means to you. It's about defining what you want to do in life and to help with anyone who stands in your way.

So for a 10-year-old, that was my introduction to the idea of this. And of course, I knew My Fair Lady. My mom had the original cast album, as every household across the country did. You know, that famous cover with Shaw as a marionette above Rex Harrison at Julia?

[17:07] Bruce Gotlieb: Yeah.

[17:08] David Staller: Yeah. And I asked my mom, is that God? And my mother said, well, he certainly thought so. So all of this just to describe to you why finally, at the end of 2005, while I was acting off-Broadway in a Shaw play with Dana Ivey, I thought, let's give this a try. Let's see what we can do. So all of the readings, all of the productions involve community. We always have talkbacks. We partner with eight different city schools, high schools, and colleges. Where I go, we bring students into our productions and readings. I go to the schools. These are not theater classes. These are not acting classes. Nobody needs me to teach. It's about ethics and humanities. For instance, we have all these schools reading Pygmalion. And for instance, next week, we have Barnard Marymount and Regis High School all coming to the play. And we'll have talkbacks afterwards with the cast.

[18:08] Bruce Gotlieb: That'll be fun.

[18:09] David Staller: Well, with these kids, it's a chance for them to become self-empowered in a way that I was when I was. So getting back to your question about this play, I had put off directing it as a full production all these years. Partly because, with no disrespect made, every production I've ever seen of it was kind of a snooze. It just feels kind of talky and you've got the trope of the Higgins who, pardon my language, comes off as an asshole. And I do, comes off as a victim. And then you've got the blustery Doolittle. And I thought, you know, I need to find out what Shaw had intended. And those tropes were not what he intended. So after all these years of working on the script, and, you know, there, as you know, journalists can be funny. We've gotten raves, we've gotten pans, we've got mixed. One critic actually arrived and started her review saying, well, I've never really liked this play. It's like, oh, yeah, thank you. Not a good starting point.

[19:22] Bruce Gotlieb: We'll be so pleased to hear that.

[19:22] David Staller: But people claim this weird ownership of Shaw. It has to be treated like a museum piece, as opposed to think of any other playwright. Think of Shakespeare, for Christ's sake.

[19:34] Bruce Gotlieb: Right. There's been so many different adaptations.

[19:38] David Staller: Or Ibsen. Tell me, how many of you speak classic Danish, the language that he wrote his plays in? What about Chekhov? Do you really speak Russian? Can you really tell me this is what Chekhov really meant? But any other playwright, you can, all black, all nude, all male, you know, it's like anything you want. And I've seen those productions. But with Shaw, it's funny, people think it has to be treated with reverence. Every one of his plays is a comedy. Every single one. Even St. Joan, before they light the match, is a very funny play. And even afterwards, so I feel justified in having an agenda and having a point of view. I feel justified in telling our version of these works.

[20:29] Bruce Gotlieb: Yeah, for sure. Otherwise, why would you be doing it?

[20:32] David Staller: Right. And I think it's important for other people to, you know, either be introduced or reintroduced to something in a way that comes from a different perspective.

[20:43] Bruce Gotlieb: So, David, I have a question. Do you say there are many versions of Pygmalion? Do all of them include the gods in their script?

[20:48] David Staller: Oh, no, he never published that.

[20:54] Bruce Gotlieb: Okay, so tell me about that idea, because it's so interesting.

[20:57] David Staller: So, in his original screenplay idea, he imagined, since nobody knows what a Pygmalion is, people come in to see the play, and they ask me, what is a Pygmalion? What does the title mean? Is somebody playing that role? And Shaw got that all the time, even from when he first produced the play before World War I. And so, he was told when the film was going to be produced in 1938. The film was a huge hit, by the way. Played for over a year in Times Square.

[21:33] David Staller: He wanted to include a prologue that he thought would be really fun to just help audiences in Des Moines or Galway Bay to be set up to understand why he titled the play referencing an ancient Greek myth about a sculptor. So he devised this really whimsical idea of having great theatrical luminaries of the time dressed as gods up in the clouds in Mount Olympus looking at us and laughing at us right at the camera and saying, you know, you're all basically, humanity's a mess. Remember, this was just before World War One. And we have a story, a myth to share with you that seems very timely. And he thought it would be really fun to have Dame Sybil Thorndyke, his original St. Joan, the original Eliza, whack-a-doodle-woman, Mrs. Patrick Campbell, and great men and women of the stage telling us this story and then wrap it up at the end with, so now do you get why we wanted to share this story with you?

I just thought that was so much fun. And Wendy Hiller took the job, well, it was a very important big career move for her, but she said she was really excited about the idea of having this framing device. But the producers really thought it was just too absurdist for theater at the time, for audiences at the time. You know, this was before the absurdist theater of post-war really became popular. So I got this dialogue from her and from Sir Michael Holwright and from other private collectors. And the only additions that I wrote specifically were because, you know, we have a budget of $57.50, so we have this one Hirschfeld set and I could only afford to hire six actors. So four actors who are playing the gods would play all the other parts, explain that's what they're doing.

So aside from that and from one of the gods coming out and saying, now we're in Mrs. Higgins' house, it's all Shaw. So you've never seen it or read it because I appear, aside from Sir Michael Holwright, who I'm sorry to say has not been well, I am the only living person apparently who has seen this stuff. I have my notes. Wow. Well, that's reason enough to come see the show because, you know, so many of us know Pygmalion or My Fair Lady, but this is a fresh take on it and also fresh dialogue that you've never heard before.

[24:09] David Staller: Yeah. But really, the play is just Shaw. I haven't changed or cut any of that. It is the script he approved. But really, the idea of Pygmalion being the sculptor who, you know, he could have named it the statue's name in the myth was Galatea. He could have named it Galatea. Right. He could have named it Pygmalion in Galatea. Why Pygmalion? Well, because the most profound journey he saw in the play was not Eliza, who is this disenfranchised, you know, he fought so hard for women's rights in here, uneducated, poor, dirty 18-year-old, but she is a complete human being. Yeah. Sure. All she needs are the tools. She just wants to be able to create an independent life for herself, independent of men, not have to answer to anyone.

She is not looking to have someone's head resting on her knee like in Globally. She has no interest in dancing all night with anybody. She just wants to be able to live an independent life at a time when women had no rights. They couldn't vote. They couldn't own their own name. They couldn't sign contracts. That was her aspiration. But the most profound journey to show was this guy based on Pygmalion, who was hiding from life, afraid of life, afraid of people, afraid of women, afraid of connecting to his head, to his heart. And so this highly emotional man puts all of his passion into his work, and he creates what he considers the perfect sculpture of a human being and more. It's a woman. And he begins praying to the gods, please bring her to life.

Please bring her to life. And they're laughing like crazy at him. And this is what the gods at the beginning are saying. We thought it was so funny. You people are so funny. People don't pray. They only beg. And we thought we'd have fun with this because there's a lesson to be learned. We granted his wish. But the caveat is that she would have her own will, her own thoughts, her own agenda. This is something he had never considered. And so she came to life and she made his life a living hell. But she forced him to become a human being. She forced him to connect his passions to his own humanity. And at a time when the British Empire, you know, they said the sun never set on the British Empire.

White, male, patriarchal, Church of England, stiff upper lip. Don't show your emotions, right? Power through. Yeah. Time when I thought, well, this is just going to backfire big time because women are going to get the vote. And women are just going to push you guys off the cliff. It's time to connect to your humanity or you are going to be in deep pucky. And so that explains why he named it Pygmalion.

[27:00] Eila Mell: Well, did you know that?

[27:01] Bruce Gotlieb: No.

[27:02] Eila Mell: No.

[27:03] Bruce Gotlieb: There you go.

[27:04] Eila Mell: No, I've learned already. I've learned a lot today. I haven't even seen the show yet.

[27:06] Bruce Gotlieb: Whoever go on property, you're so ready.

[27:08] Eila Mell: That's right. You mentioned your cast. I'm especially, I mean, they're all great. I'm especially excited that Mark Evans is in the show because I saw him in the play that goes wrong and he is so good.

[27:20] David Staller: Oh, my gosh. He's terrific. The whole cast is.

[27:23] Eila Mell: Yeah. I mean, if there's only six of them, they are doing a lot of work.

[27:27] David Staller: A lot of lifting. Well, so Mark Evans is just an ideal Higgins and he is playing him, I believe, very much the way Shaw intended. I got to know Rex Harrison when he was doing a play with Claudette Colbert, and he was explaining that by the time he made the movie in 1964, you know, they opened My Fair Lady on Broadway in 56 and then he went and did it in London. And so he had been on stage with this play for like four years and he was already bored with it. And then he went and made the movie Cleopatra and all these other movies. And when he got hired to do the movie, he confessed to me. He feels like the director, George Cukor, let him walk through it. Just low energy, just taken for granted. And then he got the Academy Award. So this sort of older, brusque, unemotional, insulting guy became the trope.

[28:21] Eila Mell: And that was never the intention?

[28:23] David Staller: No. When he confessed it, I said, well, what can I see that would give me an idea of. Oh, he said, oh, there's a movie he made with his wife, Kay Kendall, called The Reluctant Debutante. And he said, there are scenes in that which are pure farce. And that really gives me an idea of what his Higgins was. Sexy and funny and activated and throwing pillows. And with I don't know her, but I've had an opportunity to speak with Julie Andrews. She concurred. She said that when they were in rehearsal, Rick Saracen and the director Moss Hart really wanted to make him a more eccentric character. Also it's interesting talking to both of them about the male female roles in the musical and how it differs from Pygmalion.

The musical was in the 1950s and the creators really felt they had to honor the role of women at that time. And women were expected to just want to get married, have a guy, have someone's head resting on her knee. Well, in Pygmalion, that has nothing to do with Eliza. That is not her intent. That is not what she's trying to get from Higgins. And with Higgins, Rick Saracen was saying it was the same thing. He had to be a leading man. And it certainly worked. I mean, the musical is fantastic. People who look at the movie, My Fair Lady, which is so beautiful and a bit of a snooze, you know, you have to admit, slow moving. And Pygmalion is just this shot out of a canon comedy. And you see these two people really fighting to try to figure out their place in the world and what they want.

Severna Carlson is playing Eliza and she is revelatory. If you've ever seen any of the, she's a TV and film actress. She hasn't done that much theater and she's just remarkable. People who are Jane Austen fans are going crazy having her in New York because she's known for Miss Austen on TV, which has just started airing in this country on PBS. She was in Medici. She was in all these series. She's very young and beautiful and so accomplished. We have truly a theater legend in the play, Lizanne Mitchell, who is just amazing playing Mrs. Higgins and Mrs. Pierce. Carson Elrod is playing Pickering. Another theater legend, Matt Wolpe, who is playing both Freddy and Doolittle. Boy, I was worried about casting that. He is fantastic. His dad, Lenny Wolpe, has been working with us since we founded the company.

[31:13] Eila Mell: Oh, wow.

[31:14] David Staller: Oh, wow. How wonderful. Theresa Ivealem is the only one of the cast that I've ever worked with before. She was our Cleopatra when we did Caesar and Cleopatra by Shaw. So all of them. Yeah, they're all top-notch. I'm the only one in the room I've never heard of.

[31:34] Bruce Gotlieb: Well that's a wonderful place to be.

[31:36] Eila Mell: Absolutely. David, thank you so much for joining us.

[31:40] David Staller: We hope everyone will go see Pygmalion.

[31:42] Bruce Gotlieb: We will come see Pygmalion.

[31:43] David Staller: Yes, please. I'll take you out. We'll tell tall tales.

[31:46] Eila Mell: Oh.

[31:47] David Staller: It's at Theater Row until November 22nd. Just go to gingoldgroup.org and I'll be there every night. I'm the tall, haggard-looking, bearded man with a honked expression. Just come say hello.

[31:59] Eila Mell: Well, thank you so much.

[32:03] Bruce Gotlieb: Yes.

[32:04] Eila Mell: Thank you. The link will be in the notes.

[32:07] Bruce Gotlieb: So just a click away, you can get your tickets and head on down for a night of theater.

[32:12] Eila Mell: Thanks everybody.

[32:13] Bruce Gotlieb: Thank you. We'll see everyone next time on Behind the Awards.