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[0:00] Kevin David Thomas: Love is in the air. It's love. It's love. Well, who would have thought it? Uh, hearts, roses, candy. What more could one want in the month of love? How about more contributors to our Patreon? After all, we are a self-funded podcast.

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[0:35] Kevin David Thomas: Oh, I'm gonna go home and snuggle with my wife right now, Rob.

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[1:00] Robert W. Schneider: That's it. Hi, I'm Robert W. Schneider.

[1:02] Kevin David Thomas: And I'm Kevin David Thomas.

[1:04] Robert W. Schneider: And this is Behind the Curtain: Broadway's Living Legends. Don't forget to follow us on Twitter at Broadway Curtain.

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[1:19] Kevin David Thomas: Today's guest is one of the most intelligent composer lyricists working today. He's already laughing, but it's true. His contributions to the American musical theater are tantamount to its ever-evolving development. His works always seem to take us into a world that is unfamiliar but is filled with the resonance of humanity.

[1:34] Robert W. Schneider: Yes. His pieces include Buzz Saul Berkeley, The Highest Yellow, Hotel Celamore, Giant, LOS OTROS with Ellen Fitzhugh, Reign of Human Bondage, Cost of Living, First Lady Sweet, First Daughter Sweet, Hello Again, The Petrified Prince, Little Fish, See What I Wanna See, Bernardo Alba, which I love, Queen of the Mist, Marie Christine, and of course The Wild Party.

[1:56] Kevin David Thomas: To tell us what it was like to work with such legends as Grapsi La Danielle, Audra McDonald, Mary Testa, Eartha Kitt, and so many more, here is the incredibly brilliant Michael John LaChiusa.

[2:05] Michael John LaChiusa: Oh my God, guys. What is all that all about?

[2:09] Kevin David Thomas: You did it.

[2:10] Michael John LaChiusa: It's your fault.

[2:11] Kevin David Thomas: Thank you though.

[2:12] Michael John LaChiusa: We are sweet.

[2:13] Kevin David Thomas: Oh, please. We are so happy that you took time out of your busy schedule to come down and join us today. What is a normal day like for you like? You are teaching right now, is that correct?

[2:22] Michael John LaChiusa: Yes, I am. I teach at NYU. It's a lot of fun to work with the students there. It's a growing class, it's quite a large class, so there's a lot of responsibility.

[2:36] Kevin David Thomas: Yeah.

[2:36] Michael John LaChiusa: But um, but we are having a good time, and the class this year is wonderful. It's exciting to see people making music and making songs. It's just wonderful. You know, I am totally spaced about that. I think it's a good 16 years, I think I've been.

[2:55] Michael John LaChiusa: You know, but I have a lot of joy in it. I never thought I would enjoy teaching there, but it's turned out to be a really great thing. It's also wonderful to see how the students go on from their studies to whether or not they become writers or not, they become something involved in the theater. Right, some of them become my publishers or producers, and it's just wonderful to see that evolution of character and talent.

[3:21] Kevin David Thomas: Now, how did you first get involved with the theater? When did you first fall in love with it?

[3:25] Michael John LaChiusa: Oh, I think I'm an Italian boy. So from so there's a lot of drama. Yeah, you know, how that's a Catholic too, and a Catholic boy, too. So there's a lot of people. Double the guilt, double the fun.

[3:37] Kevin David Thomas: Exactly. But you grew up in Westchester, right?

[3:39] Michael John LaChiusa: No, no, in Western New York.

[3:41] Kevin David Thomas: Oh, yeah.

[3:41] Michael John LaChiusa: In Chautauqua. I think you're thinking of Chaplin.

[3:45] Kevin David Thomas: That's very artsy stuff.

[3:46] Michael John LaChiusa: That's very West. We're Western New York. We're very adamant. Elmira, New York, which is not as far as it's that's not as West.

[3:52] Kevin David Thomas: I know. We are the wild west out there.

[3:55] Michael John LaChiusa: This is like sound like an arts colony, wasn't it?

[3:57] Kevin David Thomas: The Chautauqua Institution is there, yes.

[3:59] Michael John LaChiusa: Yes, it's beautiful. And every summer they do major, it's for the humanities and the arts, the ballet, the theater, the symphony, a lot of shows come in, and they have a lot of speakers there, political speakers, etc. And it's quite a beautiful, beautiful place to go visit.

[4:13] Kevin David Thomas: So you grew up there, and then how did you get involved out in the arts out there?

[4:17] Michael John LaChiusa: Well, because it was all around me. I mean, literally we had so much of it going on in our community and in my school. You know, there was always the theater department and a wonderful, wonderful music department that I grew up in. Very, very lucky, yes.

[4:30] Michael John LaChiusa: And of course, in my household, my mom always and her sisters were always singing, and I learned to play piano relatively young and you taught yourself to play piano.

[4:37] Michael John LaChiusa: I was, well, I began playing by ear.

[4:40] Kevin David Thomas: Okay.

[4:41] Michael John LaChiusa: And then I began taking lessons with the wonderful blind Mrs. Scarum. And she was wonderful to me. She was great.

[4:47] Kevin David Thomas: Was her name really Mrs. Scarum?

[4:48] Michael John LaChiusa: Mrs. Scarum, yes.

[4:51] Kevin David Thomas: It's intimidating.

[4:53] Michael John LaChiusa: She was. Oh, yeah. But she loved me to pieces, and I was very lucky to grow up with her and learn piano from her, and I had a wonderful musical teacher, Mrs. Stranisha, who was in my high school, and then of course my one beloved, Mrs. Hammer.

[5:06] Michael John LaChiusa: Mrs. Hammer, who really told me when in fourth grade, she said, when you grow up, you should write musicals.

[5:13] Kevin David Thomas: Oh my God, really she told me because I did I did like write a little musical for my class, I guess, and I don't remember exactly what it was, a short little piece, and for the class to perform. And she said, after you know, when you grow up, you should write musicals. And I didn't doubt her because she'd never doubted Mrs. Hammer. Hello, with a name like that.

[5:32] Michael John LaChiusa: No, no. And I just decided that was what I was gonna do. Even as a kid, that was a good one.

[5:38] Kevin David Thomas: Even as a kid, yeah. I don't know how you did it.

[5:40] Michael John LaChiusa: Right, right, right. But I thought, yeah, I'm gonna do that. Were you listening to a lot of musicals growing up?

[5:45] Michael John LaChiusa: Oh, yes, absolutely. Yeah, very, very, you know, this typical 60s, 70s household, particularly with a mother who loved Robbie musicals. You know, the favorites. Oh, Carousel, and South Pacific and Sound of Music, most certainly, all the Roger and Hammerstein classics.

[6:01] Kevin David Thomas: Yeah, and as well as like the Frank Lesser musicals, Guys and Dolls, and you know, beautiful the beautiful stuff in the what they call the golden age.

[6:10] Michael John LaChiusa: Did Sondheim enter it?

[6:12] Michael John LaChiusa: Interestingly enough, I really wasn't familiar with Sondheim until I was much older.

[6:17] Kevin David Thomas: Okay.

[6:18] Michael John LaChiusa: Sweeney Todd hit me like a brick, you know. I mean that really knocked me for a loop.

[6:25] Kevin David Thomas: Yeah, yeah.

[6:26] Michael John LaChiusa: But I wasn't quite familiar with a lot of other Sondheim stuff until I was actually being a music director and doing a lot of summer stock and having to learn the canon.

[6:36] Kevin David Thomas: Yeah.

[6:36] Michael John LaChiusa: And getting into my fingers and learning so and then of course you know you fall in love and you go, Oh, there's life after Rogers and Hammerstein. I mean there's more to the world than you know, the course of the city.

[6:48] Kevin David Thomas: Were you taking trips as a ever as a kid to New York City to see shows?

[6:51] Michael John LaChiusa: No, I didn't ever I never got up to New York City, believe it or not, until I well, I was so young when I moved here. I was like about what, 17 and a half, eighteen or so when I moved here from when I was doing summer stock at New London Playhouse.

[7:03] Kevin David Thomas: Oh, okay.

[7:04] Michael John LaChiusa: New New London New Howard. New London Barn. Up in New Hampshire.

[7:07] Kevin David Thomas: In New Hampshire.

[7:08] Michael John LaChiusa: Yeah.

[7:09] Kevin David Thomas: Oh, like Link Senep. When you were in high school, were you performing on stage?

[7:14] Michael John LaChiusa: I did a lot of that, yes, absolutely. But I knew I was never going to be an actor. That was just the saddest thing. I was terrible. I would never remember lines.

[7:26] Kevin David Thomas: Uh oh.

[7:27] Michael John LaChiusa: It was really hard for me. I never got it. I never liked being in front of an audience. I hated it. I just really felt it wasn't me. I could never lose myself on stage that way.

[7:38] Kevin David Thomas: However, now that as a writer, you lose yourself in character all the time. And you're always, you know, I don't mean I I'm very gregarious as you probably know. And you know, I'm out there, but I'm not an actor. I could the minute you put lines in front of me, I'm just like you know I don't know how I don't know how actors do it. That's why I love them and hate them simultaneously.

[8:01] Michael John LaChiusa: Oh my gosh. Were you writing musicals or songs when you were in high school?

[8:05] Michael John LaChiusa: Yes, absolutely. Yeah, I would put on shows and concerts of my stuff, and I don't know, it's really strange, isn't it? Yeah, and risking getting beaten up for it all, but you know, it was my way of just sharing the work. I really felt didn't feel ever compelled about or compelled not to do that. I mean, I was very much encouraged to do that by friends, by my teachers, and by the student body.

[8:26] Kevin David Thomas: Yeah, and your family too?

[8:27] Michael John LaChiusa: Oh, yeah, sure. They were very kind of supportive. My father wasn't so big on it all. He'd rather have me play football.

[8:34] Kevin David Thomas: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[8:35] Michael John LaChiusa: And not do that. But you know, they didn't quite understand it all. Yeah, you know, but they were very supportive of it.

[8:44] Kevin David Thomas: How big's your family?

[8:45] Michael John LaChiusa: I have two younger brothers now. My both my parents are long gone. I have two younger brothers, Thomas and Matthew. They live in Buffalo, New York.

[8:52] Kevin David Thomas: Cool in Buffalo, New York. Matthew runs ART of Western New York, which is a theater company, small theater company out there, which is great. And Tom is sometimes acts. He's a wonderful Shakespearean actor as well. And right now, he works in Carpentry.

[9:05] Michael John LaChiusa: Yeah.

[9:05] Kevin David Thomas: What an art he's got to be.

[9:06] Michael John LaChiusa: I know. Well, and I know it's kind of fun. But even my cousins were all that too and sang and we did a lot of stuff. So of course, I, you know, my brothers would have to wind up being some involved somehow in the show because I was always putting them in my plays and shows. You know, they were forcing them, forcing them to play drums for me teaching, you know, but so I could have someone to accompany me when I, you know, right, right.

[9:28] Kevin David Thomas: I hope they're giving you a commission now. So you're like, you're like a senior in high school, and you're like, what am I gonna do next? Was there college on the horizon?

[9:34] Michael John LaChiusa: Well, college was on the horizon, but you know, we were didn't have I didn't come from money, we didn't have a lot of money. And um I honestly I had to tell you, I wasn't sure by the time it came time to decide what to do. Um, because colleges and universities, and I think it's still very much the same situation for them, is that um, you know, there was a theater department and then there's a music department.

[9:55] Kevin David Thomas: Yes, there was completely.

[9:56] Michael John LaChiusa: And the only school that maybe was doing that was Carnegie Mellon, but that was way too expensive for me. Even with good grades and stuff, I would never have gotten a scholarship that was just next to impossible to get a scholarship to that school. And um, so I I knew that, and having been in a companyist like if Donie State for opera, I knew what the music department things were like. And I knew that that was just not it because they didn't do, they weren't focused on theater, which I love to play.

[10:22] Kevin David Thomas: Yeah, yeah.

[10:22] Michael John LaChiusa: And then I knew that from theater, there was so little focus on learning music. So the other thing that I really liked to do was watch TV. And so I found some school in Boston, convinced my parents to send me there. It was like a two-year school, and what we did all day was watch TV and write about it. It was mostly my excuse to get out of town.

[10:41] Kevin David Thomas: Can I go to that school?

[10:42] Michael John LaChiusa: Oh, it was fabulous. We did TV all day. We learned how to make TV and write up TV shows and watch TV and critique. And it was that was the thing. It was the media study of course, like for two years or something. Sort of like a vocation school of sorts. But it was really my excuse to get out of town because I'm I midway through the even the first semester, I was like already, you know, on the sidewalk getting jobs, playing piano.

[11:06] Kevin David Thomas: You were?

[11:06] Michael John LaChiusa: And I by the end of the first semester, I was like, done. I was working professionally at that point in Boston.

[11:15] Kevin David Thomas: Oh, yes, and that's how we did doing all that stuff there.

[11:18] Michael John LaChiusa: Yeah, exactly. Well, and then you start making money at a very young age. It gets quite fun to do that. Especially with those skills, and they're fun to do that. And if you have the skills to do it, yeah, I was lucky enough to be, you know, a relatively good piano player and could sight read and could site transpose, which were very valuable tools back in those days, you know.

[11:36] Kevin David Thomas: Yes, yeah, we could learn how to do that.

[11:38] Michael John LaChiusa: Well, sometimes I don't know how that well, by playing by ear, I think that is an awful lot.

[11:41] Kevin David Thomas: Yeah, that is it. You know, I'm not saying you could do it definitely, you know, every single note site transpose, but knowing where the chords go. But isn't that also from church, playing organ in church, you had to sometimes transpose a little bit, you know, for the priest to whoever was visiting. If you couldn't sing the certain Latin hymn in one thing, you had to like take it down.

[11:59] Michael John LaChiusa: He says they would say to you, can you take it down?

[12:01] Kevin David Thomas: Yeah, sure, sure.

[12:02] Michael John LaChiusa: Yeah, sure. Just like at a piano bar now or something like, hey, can you do it in D?

[12:10] Kevin David Thomas: Can you do this in D?

[12:11] Michael John LaChiusa: You know, yeah. Sure. Tanta America, Sacramentum.

[12:19] Kevin David Thomas: Oh my God.

[12:20] Michael John LaChiusa: Thank you.

[12:22] Kevin David Thomas: I'm here every Tuesday. Try the veal.

[12:27] Michael John LaChiusa: I had read that you appreciated some of the neoclassic composers like Corigliano, Adams, Glass. Was that like during those teenage years or was that later?

[12:37] Michael John LaChiusa: A little later. Like, well, you know, when I was, you know, in my early, early 20s and you know, really began and Steve Reich, I mean, all that. Although I was familiar with this with it, I really was just really smitten with the new composers that were coming through.

[12:52] Kevin David Thomas: Okay.

[12:52] Michael John LaChiusa: This was wonderful to listen to Reich and to John. I just love his work so much. And the same thing with John Adams. Just adored all that stuff and just drank it in and studied the scores. I mean, I practically lived in the library, you know, because I didn't go to college for music, so I had to teach study.

[13:10] Kevin David Thomas: You have to teach yourself if you're not gonna go and do the four years and be killed in music school.

[13:16] Michael John LaChiusa: Right. You know, I'm so I was very self-taught in that respect, but very diligent about it. You know, going learning and studying music theory on my own and studying the scores and learning how to play the stuff and having as much of a vocabulary as I possibly could, you know, scrounge for myself in my early days in New York.

[13:32] Kevin David Thomas: So when you were listening to or being exposed to a new piece for the first time, did you like to sit and listen to it while following along in the score? Or did you just like to put your headphones on, close your eyes, and listen? Like, how do you like to receive it?

[13:45] Michael John LaChiusa: I think it's different. I think it's different for every single thing that I would listen to. Yeah. It depends on the purpose of it all. Am I is I generally do like to listen to it without a score in front of me because I just, you know, just to listen. Because that's the experience.

[14:02] Kevin David Thomas: Yeah, it should be.

[14:03] Michael John LaChiusa: And then if it does intrigue me enough, then I will go and look at a score and follow the score along. You know what I'm saying? It depends. What are they doing? How do they make that? If I might if I'm in a research mode though, or something, and I'm learning like, or I have to learn quickly, what was Mozart doing when he was writing this, you know, the big climax of Don Giovanni. What was he doing? I'll sit there and look at the score along with it all. If I have to learn that, say for lecture or something, then I'm gonna quote something from Mozart in a lecture or then I'll do it. It all depends on expediency or whether or not I have the luxury of sitting and listening to a full score these days. You know, for things, yeah.

[14:40] Kevin David Thomas: How old were you then when you made that move to New York?

[14:44] Michael John LaChiusa: I well be some 18. I was in 18 when I came here. Yeah. Oh wow. 250 bucks in my pocket.

[14:50] Michael John LaChiusa: Can you believe it? Are you serious? And the trash was piled high as an elephant. It was really dirty. This city was this city was filthy. I think I found well, I stayed at a while, the Y on 66 there for a short time, and then got a job immediately on a tour.

[15:07] Michael John LaChiusa: Oh, okay. Yeah, music directing on a tour for some equity children's theater thing that was going around the country and stuff, and so I wasn't really here a lot, but you know, I would pop back in, you know, go to the Y, pop the stuff down, and then eventually I found a place on 79th Street.

[15:20] Michael John LaChiusa: Okay, okay. Um eventually I even moved from there because I was like I moved into the basement of the 78th Street Theater Lab. The wonderful Mark Seller and Dana Zeller Alexis ran a wonderful, it's right, it's where stand-up comedy, stand-up New York is now 78th Street. And uh they used to have a though all three floors were all theater activity uh things, uh rerated.

[15:41] Michael John LaChiusa: Yeah, and oh Mark was uh is and continues to be one of the great vocal teachers uh in New York City. I remember and I was his accompanist uh for all his classes and in exchange, he let me you know, crash in the basement there, which was nice. And uh and Dana Seller Alexis's terrific acting teacher, they were remarkable.

[15:59] Michael John LaChiusa: I mean, you can watching Mark uh work with um non-singers, that was his forte. Where people were people who who just were too scared to sing and how to get that out of them, uh a voice out of them. Uh he to I remember him working with deaf students.

[16:14] Michael John LaChiusa: Oh, people who really, you know, because it is all about sensation, how how you can you can you can do the best singers only know if they're singing correctly by how it feels, not by how they hear themselves. And uh it was remarkable working with him. I think I still think he's one of the great, great, great, great vocal teachers that New York had.

[16:31] Michael John LaChiusa: Um I'm not sure if he's still doing it, he would be rather up in the age. I've not been in touch for a number of years. Okay. But they were wonderful influences on my life, and uh was so lucky to know them. And we and of course, playing for all the cabarets and all the shows and writing and that's where I really began doing writing original musical and music and and doing my songs and cabarets.

[16:50] Michael John LaChiusa: And this was here in New York. Mid eighties? Um early 80s, early year eighty, eighty-one.

[16:55] Kevin David Thomas: What was the cabaret scene like?

[16:57] Michael John LaChiusa: Oh my gosh, please. Oh my god, I was part of it. It's not like it was telling them everybody. Oh my gosh. For some reason I got into a niche of being the guy that all the comedians went to.

[17:08] Michael John LaChiusa: Like camp songs a little bit. Kind of where the it was surprised me because I I I I wound up being like the comedian's music director for some reason. Wonderful uh uh people like um um uh uh Jeffrey Esman and Jane Anderson, who just did a uh was was a great comedian at the uh and she did a lot of stand-up at that time, and I was her comp I heard the uh we always did the like don't tell mamas um um the duplex of course was fabulous.

[17:36] Michael John LaChiusa: Then um and then of course there was Folk City. What um Folk City folk city was on uh fourth street, 8th Street, Fourth Street in the in the west in the in in the west village area right by my u okay um that was happening there there was always and there was the improv of course and uh all those other clubs and there's plenty to do here yeah in fact I even managed one at 78 Street Theater Lab we had a cabaret stand-up stand-up where stand up New York is now was we had a cabaret there it was all over the place because that was the that was where you really got to show off if your your talent right in fact if you were a songwriter actually that's where you would bring all your new songs and do them there I mean it's very limited now rents have gone up so much and also two ordinances are different now we mean you could we can't dance in bars anymore there's no more dancing in this town in bars you know that's no double I go I go so far back that I remember dancing in this bar day to dance in this bar in my day it really is like walking on the upper west side and this young gay couple wonderful they're very you know cute guys and they recognize me and they said oh I didn't know you lived up here how long have you lived up here in the upper west side and this is like on one of fourth street and I go God since you know I don't know 80s and he goes you're a pioneer and I'm going wow I really granny granny on the back of the walk around pioneer yes my grandsons different time back then oh it was a different time the covered wagon it really was that was that and you enjoyed yourself.

[19:19] Kevin David Thomas: And you had a good time with those.

[19:21] Michael John LaChiusa: Oh my gosh. This is amazing. Okay, what shows were you seeing? Were you starting to get exposed to a lot of things?

[19:25] Michael John LaChiusa: Yes. I was started going to shows and meeting. Of course, I could only afford to I was second act a lot of them. But then again, they there was so little security, you know, going on back as they have today. You know, like I don't think very rarely can you go, but then also you pick up a ticket that would be lying outside and roll back in and stuff.

[19:42] Michael John LaChiusa: So I second act an awful lot of shows. And when you could afford it, it was cheaper than course. You know, I mean, I remember paying no like ten bucks to see shows here. I mean, I remember seeing in the 80s, it would be what would it be? Well, one of my very I think my very first problem with show here would have been, would it have been merrily we roll along?

[20:02] Michael John LaChiusa: It might have been merrily we roll along. Oh my god, I saw it three times.

[20:05] Kevin David Thomas: Yeah.

[20:06] Michael John LaChiusa: Oh, I loved it.

[20:07] Kevin David Thomas: Yeah.

[20:08] Michael John LaChiusa: Oh, I loved it. In fact, I got I remember after the first performance, I had a heart on.

[20:13] Kevin David Thomas: Yeah.

[20:13] Michael John LaChiusa: I so I didn't get up from my seat. I've been I literally had a heart on. You were just so I was so what the hell could and people were marching out, they were mad about it and marching out doing the show, just mad at my going, This is freaking brilliant.

[20:28] Michael John LaChiusa: Yeah, it's fucking brilliant. I got so turned on. I've told Steve this story. But he loved it.

[20:32] Kevin David Thomas: Okay, well, yeah, yeah, I did.

[20:34] Michael John LaChiusa: He had told I think actually it's actually published in some honorary book to him or something like that, where I finally came clean. I go, I mean everybody was getting up to leave the theater. I'm like, I'm not I'm gonna wait until you settle down there, Mr. Man.

[20:45] Michael John LaChiusa: And uh, you know, I was so turned on by it on a couple of things. That is incredible. I just thought it was I just and I went, oh, again, those little revelations that you have when and and also too, knowing that that piece and directed by Hal Prince as well, uh, you know, and what these artists were doing was just like making people so fucking angry.

[21:04] Michael John LaChiusa: Yeah, I was like going, I need to do that. Oh my god. I think I need to do that. That is the thing that made me excited.

[21:12] Kevin David Thomas: Yeah.

[21:12] Michael John LaChiusa: Yeah, you know, that really turned me on in such a visceral way. I went, now that if you can do that to people, piss them off to the point where they're marching out angry, not knowing why they're angry.

[21:25] Michael John LaChiusa: They're just angry. They're just angry because it's so new to them. It's such a different language that's being given to them. And I just thought that is cool.

[21:34] Kevin David Thomas: When you were living here in the in the mid 80s, you started, I'm assuming developing like a tribe of people, like your community of people.

[21:39] Michael John LaChiusa: Sure. Who were some of the people that were oh gosh, you know, I was very fortunate to get into the BMI workshop at a very, very young age.

[21:46] Michael John LaChiusa: Um I mean, I think I had I had layman ankle at the last two years of his life. Tell us everything.

[21:51] Michael John LaChiusa: And oh my god, he was he was layman and he was layman. Right.

[21:58] Michael John LaChiusa: Um, but at the same time so loving, I I felt and so dedicated, so deeply passionate about passing on what he knew about or what he believed about theater.

[22:08] Michael John LaChiusa: Now he was could have been right and could have been wrong, who knows. I learned.

[22:11] Kevin David Thomas: Yeah.

[22:12] Michael John LaChiusa: Oh, I learned like the lens and what what have we taken away from the class?

[22:16] Michael John LaChiusa: Oh my gosh, just how to write a Blanche Dubois song. Come on.

[22:20] Kevin David Thomas: Come on.

[22:20] Michael John LaChiusa: We just heard the Willie Lohmann song, or the Well, one of the most important things I learned from Lehman, we were doing something called um The Moon Is Blue Based on the Moon is Blue, the play.

[22:31] Michael John LaChiusa: Um it's set in the 50s. Okay. So there was a big climatic moment, and um we I I wrote uh my collaborator and I wrote lyrics to this moment where the two lovers reconcile, and I decided to go all the way with it in you know, in the 50s.

[22:47] Michael John LaChiusa: Well, it sounded just like a sweeping thing from inherit the wind or you know, big 50s love thing. And he layman was uh layman was very flirtatious to the young boys, and I was a very young boy.

[23:03] Michael John LaChiusa: Uh you know, so but he but he also he was also really good to me. I think he heard something which was positive and gave me positive reinforcement.

[23:15] Michael John LaChiusa: So he said, This is very beautiful. And I went, Oh, I was so happy. He goes, Yeah, but it's not you.

[23:23] Michael John LaChiusa: Which is which was the part. I said, Well, what do you mean it's it's me? It's this is mine. I wrote it. He goes, No, no, no, it's it's just sounds like something that someone else wrote from the 50s.

[23:34] Michael John LaChiusa: And I said, But that's what I was trying to do. I was trying to do is never imitate.

[23:38] Michael John LaChiusa: Oh you have to learn how to filter your own voice through those um, you know, uh, if you want to write in the 50s song, write it, but write your version of the 50s song.

[23:49] Michael John LaChiusa: And he said it's like Jerome Robbins when he did the dances for West Side Story. He didn't just do a cha on stage, he did Jerome Robbins version of the cha cha when Leonard Bernstein wrote, you know, the his music for that, he wrote the Bernstein's version of that, and in that way, that's when you become good at what you do.

[24:11] Michael John LaChiusa: And then I learned to learn that at that early age and to go, wow, thinking that you had done such a beautiful job, and it was a beautiful piece of music. I and I went, oh, what is my voice?

[24:21] Michael John LaChiusa: What is he what what does he hear? And that I need to make sure is always there for myself. And that's what that's when the search began and always continued.

[24:32] Kevin David Thomas: That's great.

[24:33] Michael John LaChiusa: It was a great lesson, and it really hurt so deeply to be criticized, but at the same time, it was like, but he wasn't mean about it, but it was it was so deep, and it hit me like boom, you know.

[24:45] Michael John LaChiusa: I went, wow. And then I realized, oh, I'm this is serious business.

[24:48] Kevin David Thomas: Yeah.

[24:46] Michael John LaChiusa: This is serious business here.

[24:51] Kevin David Thomas: And I'm assuming you impart that lesson on to your students today.

[24:54] Michael John LaChiusa: I try to. I try to. If there's something that I hear, if I don't hear anything in their work that's just that there's a voice that needs to be protected and to you know allowed to breathe.

[25:08] Michael John LaChiusa: Um, yeah, absolutely. Yeah, I'll share that with them. You know, and through the BMI workshop, of course, you meet a lot of good old folks that you know are still friends of mine, Lynn Aaron, Steve Flarity.

[25:17] Michael John LaChiusa: We were all in the same class. Uh well, they were thinking of a year behind me, and uh, but they were still we all became part of something some come the third year. Gerard Alexandrini was in my class.

[25:26] Michael John LaChiusa: He was talking to him yesterday. Oh my god, one of my favorite people on the planet. I just love him so much. And he started doing Forbidden Braway during then too.

[25:33] Michael John LaChiusa: He was so good. He was Lehman didn't like that.

[25:36] Kevin David Thomas: That's what he said.

[25:37] Michael John LaChiusa: Yes.

[25:41] Michael John LaChiusa: You're not allowed to do anything professional. But you know, what are you gonna do?

[25:46] Michael John LaChiusa: What are you gonna do? And he's one of the best in the planet. I love Gerard to pieces to this day.

[25:49] Michael John LaChiusa: And then, of course, my mentors that you know, I had the great fortune to meet uh there, uh, Ed Cleban, who just who took me on being my remarkable mentor, and who I think is the best living lyricist that we have in our country, Ellen Fitzyou.

[26:06] Michael John LaChiusa: Um, you know, many people don't know who she is, quite unfortunately. Well, she's a woman, ha ha ha ha.

[26:11] Michael John LaChiusa: Yeah, you know, for one thing, and uh and uh she's really brilliant, so she took me under her wing, and there was wonderful Alan Menckin was there, and and uh just wonderful, wonderful mentors.

[26:21] Michael John LaChiusa: And then of course my dear Maury Eston, who I love so much and who's been so good to me.

[26:26] Kevin David Thomas: Was he also?

[26:27] Michael John LaChiusa: He was one of my teachers there too, yeah.

[26:28] Michael John LaChiusa: Who I and I learned an awful lot working with Maury. Because talk about your opinions, but boy, he's a smart devil.

[26:35] Michael John LaChiusa: Oh my gosh. Smart man, smart man.

[26:37] Kevin David Thomas: Right, right.

[26:38] Michael John LaChiusa: And so I was very fortunate. So those were great days. You know, I took a lot from the BMI.

[26:43] Michael John LaChiusa: I did know enough though, come the third year, that um when enough was enough, when I had built a certain amount of um friends, had discovered it, you know, uh, and had been in the BMI workshop where I was I was in the showcase.

[27:00] Kevin David Thomas: Right.

[27:01] Michael John LaChiusa: Um and uh and met Ira Whitesman at Link who was working at Playwrights Rise. That's helped my rights got on my age, who later became my agent, my friend Wiley Housum.

[27:10] Kevin David Thomas: Okay.

[27:10] Michael John LaChiusa: Uh so I was able to sign with Luis Sanyorjo at ICM.

[27:13] Kevin David Thomas: Oh wow.

[27:14] Michael John LaChiusa: And uh which was really great.

[27:15] Kevin David Thomas: Yeah, that was very fortunate to have Luis for the short time that I did before he passed.

[27:19] Michael John LaChiusa: Um because he was one of the old timers there. You know, he goes back to Audrey Wood and Tennessee Williams, and so all the the gentleman agents and the writers agents back when they used to have, yeah.

[27:31] Michael John LaChiusa: Um and uh so I was very fortunate to meet all those people through that. Once I learned and and had developed a little um band of friends outside of the BMI workshop, I recognized that it was I didn't need to bring my songs by every week and be heavily critiqued.

[27:45] Kevin David Thomas: Yes, and um you know, and then your voice being formed.

[27:49] Michael John LaChiusa: Yeah.

[27:49] Kevin David Thomas: And so uh tell me a little bit w with the playwrights. What did you the the four short operas? Didn't you?

[27:52] Michael John LaChiusa: Oh, we did the one axe, the one that like the first sort of I don't want to say playwrights is commercial because they're a not-for-profit, but is that one of your first New York showcases of your work?

[28:04] Michael John LaChiusa: That was your original? I think no. I think it would have to be one of the stupidest musicals ever written.

[28:11] Michael John LaChiusa: And one of the funniest ones I've ever been involved in. It's called Buzzsaw Berkeley.

[28:15] Michael John LaChiusa: And Doug Wright and uh wrote the book for it all, and Chris Ashley directed it. So we're all three, we're younger than hell. I mean, we were baby babies, just babies.

[28:25] Michael John LaChiusa: And Doug and and I think Chris too had this crazy, crazy ass idea of doing a mashup of uh Mickey and Judy movies, Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland movies.

[28:38] Michael John LaChiusa: Come on, kids, let's put on a show and babes in arms and do a mashup with slasher movies.

[28:44] Kevin David Thomas: Okay.

[28:45] Michael John LaChiusa: What a great idea. It's brilliant, and it's one of the funniest shows ever.

[28:49] Michael John LaChiusa: And um, and it was so ahead of its time. And I hate when people say that, you always kind of raise your eyebrow.

[28:55] Michael John LaChiusa: But it really was so beyond, it was gay camp to the nth degree before there was even such a thing like that in New York. I mean, they were doing stuff at you know, uh with we had Ethel Ida Broker in it just to show you how camp we were.

[29:02] Michael John LaChiusa: We were we were that crazy. I mean, Charles was doing his stuff, yeah, yeah. You know, but the one but as a musical, it was just you think the prom is as gay as it gets, trust me.

[29:17] Michael John LaChiusa: This is Buzzall was there many, many, many years before that. Thank you. At the WPA Theater down there in 23rd Street.

[29:24] Michael John LaChiusa: And uh, and so that was I think and I remember every song ended with a death.

[29:29] Michael John LaChiusa: And I remember Lynn, every song ended with somebody being murdered, which is brilliant.

[29:33] Michael John LaChiusa: And I said I remember call uh writing Lynn Aaron's a little letter. We didn't have email, by the way.

[29:39] Michael John LaChiusa: Yeah, yeah, yeah. And, uh, or no, I was like, I left her a message or something, and I because Lynn always said to me, you know what your problem is, Michael John, you don't know how to button your songs.

[29:49] Michael John LaChiusa: So I remember calling her like a mother.

[29:52] Kevin David Thomas: Yeah, but she is, she is, she is.

[29:55] Michael John LaChiusa: She means it only with great love.

[29:56] Kevin David Thomas: Of course, of course.

[29:57] Michael John LaChiusa: You know, and uh you know you teach. And I called her and I said, you know, Lynn, I've got a show to liberty to see and I love to, you know, and so she and so she I guess she came to see and I said, How'd you like the buttons? She said those were buttons.

[30:09] Kevin David Thomas: The death.

[30:13] Michael John LaChiusa: Death. So fuck you. Tell me how I don't uh know how to button a fucking show. I'll catch your button. Stick your neck out. I want to see this show now. Was there a recording late? Never. Oh my god. There it was a oh my god, they trashed it. We were literally almost run out of town.

[30:35] Kevin David Thomas: What year what year was this?

[30:36] Michael John LaChiusa: Oh gosh, chum, I can't remember. It would be 90. 80 something. Okay. It would have to be in the 80s, 80s.

[30:44] Kevin David Thomas: Genius.

[30:45] Michael John LaChiusa: It's but it's Doug Wright. I'm telling you, that boy is a genius. He went on to write, you know, some of the funniest things. Chris, I guess, Chris, brilliant.

[30:54] Kevin David Thomas: Yeah, brilliant.

[30:55] Michael John LaChiusa: Genius. Wasn't that extended? No, I was the playwrights. I was just curious about the book. And then we did, and yeah, we did the one X there. The drama bookshop, I think that they are they're a handwritten score published there. I always wanted to get them and play them. Because I always want to hear that in the city.

[31:11] Kevin David Thomas: Now so it's much cleaner now to read.

[31:12] Michael John LaChiusa: Yes. I don't think dramatists has re-published it yet. So because they're not done that often. I imagine, but still. I'd like to do that.

[31:22] Kevin David Thomas: Oh, oh. Good to know.

[31:23] Michael John LaChiusa: Good to know. Playwrights at that time was really kind of sort of finding the new writers.

[31:28] Kevin David Thomas: Oh, they were remarkable, yes.

[31:29] Michael John LaChiusa: I mean, they they really had the hold on uh of imagination. Uh uh and also too, uh, after uh they were they were part of that post Prince Sondheim and the new collaboration with Jim Le Pont that that created Sunday in the park and and and initiated into the woods right you know uh as well so they were very instrumental and of course introduced the world to Bill Fanny I was just gonna say I know you teach and Glenn Aaron's and Steve Flaherty too as well with their lucky stiff right right so they were really right on the the cutting edge of introducing a lot of new musicals and still you know they still do yeah you know there too Tim under Tin Safford they still introduced new new playwrights and how did you first get connected with Lincoln Center then well uh because Ira Weitzman and Andre Bishop who had you know I worked with and yeah knew me from there so when it came time for them to make the move um you know that's how I did Hello again over there met Graziella and Chronicle of Death foretold uh Hello Again that's the first time you met Graziella uh was for was with for Hello again oh yes Ira Weitzman had called me one day and said have you ever read the play uh La Ronde by Arthur Schnitzler and I said gosh you know years ago I did and I remember seeing the movie the from Max Awful's movie years and years and years ago and um but I'll take a look at it again and he said he mentioned you know Graziela Danielle I don't know if you know her you she's just done once in this island she's um interested in maybe making a ballet out of it or a musical with one to and I thought maybe you might be might be a good musical if you want to take a look at it.

[33:00] Michael John LaChiusa: So I went home and I read it and uh had it had a copy of it and I read it and um wrote the first scene and I called I said I've got a first scene to play for you if you want to bring Miss Danielle over that and I met Dan Grazie that day. And I played with the scene, and we were off. It was magical.

[33:19] Kevin David Thomas: Had you already had the concept of like the decades of the case.

[33:23] Michael John LaChiusa: No, that would come that would come a little later. It would come the following week. When I began when after playing the first scene, Grazia was like, Yes, yes, we are doing this. We gotta play and go doing this. And yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. She, I mean, she got up and she kissed me on the cheek. And that was the beginning of a marvelous, marvelous relationship that has lasted so many years. And she is just a lot of mommy. She's just the best.

[33:47] Kevin David Thomas: Yeah, well, do you are you you stay close to the ones you you know that you not only that always challenged, I mean, she's just always friggin' challenging. It's not safe, you know, to be in a room with Gratzi because you never know what you're gonna do next.

[34:01] Michael John LaChiusa: Right, and I think she's a little I you know, we we in the business know her, but I think she's a little underrated as far as like a storyteller, director, and someone tell me about it. Literally push the envelope of what musical theater is today. With so many careers that just to have giant question marks over all of them these days. I'm just going, you know what? You want to see something fucking real? That's for real.

[34:20] Kevin David Thomas: Yes, that's the truth.

[34:22] Michael John LaChiusa: And that comes from a line of tradition, you know, that's a real true line of tradition. I mean, she comes from uh solid background. You know, she wasn't Michael Bennett's assistant for nothing. And uh and what she ever's remarkable when it comes to storytelling. She knows what to do with her early. Yeah, she's brilliant. She's great to work with. And also not just putting it up on its feet, but cultivating. I mean, like helping, you know, say, well, what about this? Well, I mean, I'm a s I don't want to project. Yeah, she's remarkable.

[34:50] Kevin David Thomas: Michael John, what about you know, you know, you always look for a director who's very good at problem solving.

[34:57] Michael John LaChiusa: That and also too, someone who can who you can have a good laugh with. You know, because it sucks. Putting on shows sucks. It's really hard. You better have someone you can have a good laugh with at the end of the day.

[35:13] Kevin David Thomas: Absolutely. Um, I was gonna ask you, how did the Hello Again movie come to be?

[35:18] Michael John LaChiusa: Oh, that would that was something surprising that popped up. Um I knew Tom and Corey. We would discuss doing another project for a while, another adaptation of another one of my shows. And uh in in the meanwhile, while we were working toward making that uh happen, knock on wood, um he they mentioned hello again to me. What and I said, well, you could definitely try doing it there. You know, I would have you know, and I was very happy because I really trusted them. I like their work an awful lot. I loved uh their The Midsummer Night's Dream adaptation that they did, Where the World Mine. And I also love Mariachi Gringo. I just think that they really Tom is a wonderful, wonderful director, and Corey's a great screenplaywriter. I really like the two guys an awful lot. And I think they did a beautiful job with the movie. I mean, just think it's beautiful to look at. And they got great performances out of these remarkable.

[36:08] Kevin David Thomas: I didn't get a lot of notice and stuff, which was surprised me a lot.

[36:12] Michael John LaChiusa: Well, I think with my stuff, a lot of people go, fuck you, Michael John, you're doing too much. They get mad at me. You know, yeah, yeah, yeah. I've experienced my whole life in this country.

[36:20] Kevin David Thomas: Really?

[36:21] Michael John LaChiusa: Yeah, because this kind of thing I've why are you doing so much? We don't like you. So it's like a lot of stories you want to tell.

[36:27] Kevin David Thomas: That's what I'm saying.

[36:28] Michael John LaChiusa: Well, I'm fast and I'm efficient and I get produced. Would you consider yourself a fat yes, a fast writer?

[36:34] Michael John LaChiusa: I'd like to be because I like to get it over and done with, don't you?

[36:37] Kevin David Thomas: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, yeah, I mean, there's people, there are deadlines and dates and I realize this is like weird. It's not brain surgery to write a song.

[36:47] Michael John LaChiusa: Hey, podcast listeners, are you looking for a place to rehearse in New York City that is clean, spacious, and most importantly, affordable? Come check out Shetler Studios and Theatres, our wonderful host for these podcasts. Shetler is centrally located on West 54th Street between Broadway and Eighth Avenue, right in the heart of the theater district. Right in the heart, you'll find music, dance, and acting studios complemented by two black box theaters and six presentation venues. The professional facilities, inspired environment, and expert industry staff combined to provide the New York artist with an unparalleled studio experience. Visit their website at Shetler Studios.com. That's S H E T L E R Studios.com. Shetler Studios and Theatres is our home for recording the legends of Broadway, and we hope that you make it your artistic home too. That's Shetler, S H E T L E R Studios.com. See you here.

[37:43] Kevin David Thomas: We're called behind the curtain. I don't mean to pull the curtain back, but can you talk a little bit about your writing process?

[37:48] Michael John LaChiusa: Well, you mentioned what do I do with the course of the day? You mentioned Well, it's generally up early. I like to get up early because it's quiet and you know, I don't like the dark, so I prefer, I mean, you know, I'm not a winter prayer person. But uh I like to wake up, uh, grab my coffee and go right to the piano or go right to the desk and write the song for the day.

[38:00] Kevin David Thomas: Really?

[38:00] Michael John LaChiusa: Write the song for the day, or arrange the song or orchestrate the song for the day, or start recording the song for the day. I like that first thing that I do during the very first thing I do is not to look at the news.

[38:22] Kevin David Thomas: Right.

[38:23] Michael John LaChiusa: Not to not to sit around, you know, not to lounge around, is to get up out of that bed and get to the piano. And is there like a to do to do list that you know, like the night before or something there? It's like, okay, well I gotta do it.

[38:33] Kevin David Thomas: Yes, I will.

[38:35] Michael John LaChiusa: I gotta get this song. Even though no one no one's saying I have to do it any of it, you know. But that's the writing order if I'm in the middle of writing. I mean, there are deadlines, you know, and you have to finish it. But also, too, I love it. I love waking up to do that. To me, that's the best part of the day. You know what I mean? And then I'll work, but I oh I over the years though, I've decided that um I needed to stop at a certain point. Because I would normally work right, and that was just not good for me. Not for good for my mental health, not good for my social life. Not good for my body. And uh so I you know, I've learned to to take breaks and take my gym break, you know, and then make sure that I I'm at five every day that that's that's my day.

[39:14] Kevin David Thomas: You're done.

[39:15] Michael John LaChiusa: I mean you write it from the piano. I like to write at the piano, and I also like to work well, it depends on what I'm where I'm at. If I'm writing a script or writing the libretto for a piece, I'll be not at the piano for that.

[39:26] Kevin David Thomas: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[39:27] Michael John LaChiusa: You know, sitting at the desk right now.

[39:28] Kevin David Thomas: I wanted to ask you about one of my favorites, which is First Lady Suite. Where did this idea come from to put these women together in the same world?

[39:38] Michael John LaChiusa: I don't know. You know, I was walking down the street one day, and uh, you know, with you used to sell books on the sidewalk. Remember when there were books.

[39:44] Kevin David Thomas: What's a book?

[39:44] Michael John LaChiusa: Yeah, yeah. And uh it was a really hot day, and uh hot summer in the city. It must have been I would say 85 or so, 1985 or 86 or so. And I picked up a there was a book there on Dolly Madison. I thought, oh, what a great book to read on a hot summer day. It's a book about ice cream.

[40:01] Kevin David Thomas: Yeah.

[40:01] Michael John LaChiusa: Well, it was D-O-L-L-E-Y Madison, and I recognized that it was the wife of James Madison, fourth president of the United States, and uh and yet I was fascinated because I went, Oh, I didn't know this about the war of eighteen fourteen. Uh I didn't know this about this part of history. I didn't know this stuff that I didn't know this, the slavery issues that they were facing, and how Washington came to be, Washington, how the White House came to be built and and all these things, and who this remarkable woman was, the mythology of her, but also to some of the facts that were true or not true, and also to the power that she welded. Even given then, it's fascinating me. And I don't know what clicked on.

Um, but I went, Oh, I've got to start collecting books on First Ladies. So I started cre collecting books on the First Ladies and started building a huge library. It wasn't until I read a book um by Mary Gallagher, who was the personal secretary to Jackie Kennedy called My Life with Jackie Kennedy. Jacqueline Kennedy. It was one of the very first tell-all books working. Yeah, of some of that time. It was one of the very first ones post uh post-Jack's death. Uh very 70s, you know, very 70s. It was shortly after her marriage to Anasses where there's long souring on Jackie. No one no one had written a tell-al book. And Mary's was really one of the first in this new environment of the Kitty Kelly's coming up and stuff.

Because Kitty Kelly hadn't written her book yet either about Jackie. And um, and I read this book and I went, oh my God, this character's outrageous. The things she's fucking saying about Jackie, unbelievable. And then I went, I looked around the library and went, I have so many books here on the First Ladies. Yeah. I it just Mary started singing to me was the thing. And that's what happens when it w when I begin adapting. So I think they have characters have to start singing in my ear. Weird, yeah. It's weird. I know you're looking at me like I'm a weirdo.

[42:02] Kevin David Thomas: No, no, no.

[42:02] Michael John LaChiusa: It's really strange how a book has to start singing to other characters have to sing to me. Well, Mary Gaylor began singing to me, and um, I bet the Tom Kitten misses me. You know, and um just her voice, I don't know, you know, this is nice. This is really nice. That's you know, she talked and she's really just gappy gabby. And so, but it had music out, and that's when I went, I'm gonna write a musical. And I began that over Texas, and then that became the Miami piece. And then I went, okay, I'm gonna add a third piece to the song and see if I can't do a trilogy out of this.

[42:37] Kevin David Thomas: Well, you had to pick another first lady, or you just had to decide which ones.

[42:40] Michael John LaChiusa: Exactly. Well, I went and I decided to go. I we actually thought, well, I can go in chronological order, uh, start with Evelyn and work my way through to Jackie, or just do something kind of fun and go backwards with it all. So that's what we did with it all.

[42:51] Kevin David Thomas: Um, was there a First Lady story that you wanted to include that was not included?

[42:56] Michael John LaChiusa: Well, what I'm gonna do next time I have another go-around with First Lady Sweet, if ever that happens, I really want to expand the best Truman piece a little more. I want us to expand that piece a little bit more. And because I have I want more of Bess in it, and I figure I have the time to do that, and I'm gonna do that with a piece and just give it a little bit more fat.

[43:18] Kevin David Thomas: Got it, got it to it.

[43:19] Michael John LaChiusa: That's what I would do with it all.

[43:21] Kevin David Thomas: How did you uh meet George C. Wolf?

[43:23] Michael John LaChiusa: George I met through um uh Wiley Halsham uh and uh because he when he began taking over when he took over the public theater shortly afterwards. I had known um I had been at public theater as an accompanist for years doing auditions and stuff like that, even back when Joe was there and through Joanne Acolytis. I was with Joanne Accolai. In fact, we were talking about doing a piece uh that I was working on with Anthony Davis, the composer there at um the public theater, which Minjoanne was there, and then, of course, you know, Wiley knew George and I met George through Wiley, and we became friends, and uh he produced I think first daughter First Lady Suite was literally the first production of George's there at his theater when he took over.

Throw the helm there. So and we became friends and did all of wonderful fun with that. Oh my god, creative mind that he's he's he's just remarkable. The guy's a genius. He's a genius. There's no other word for it all. I mean, you he you know, he is lives in Breeze theater. He is exciting and temperamental, and and uh you never know what's gonna happen next, but very thoughtful and probably one of the most loving people I've ever met in my life.

[44:35] Michael John LaChiusa: You know, he is really truly genuinely something else. Oh, you know, he's got his George as we all do, but he's got, you know, George issues, but I got my Michael John issues. We all got those things that make us us, you know. We wouldn't be creative, I don't think, if we didn't have our set of complexities and complications, and yes, and I think that's great. And I think he has every right to be temperamental when he wants to be. I mean, look at that show, Shuffle Along. I just thought that was the most brilliant show I'd seen ever. I mean, it just hands down was like, what the fuck? Yeah, it was brilliant, brilliantly done and just sensational. And so it was great fun working with him on The Wild Party. I'll tell you that much. It was a wild party. Do you want to ask about that now?

[45:22] Kevin David Thomas: Oh my god, The Wild Party.

[45:26] Michael John LaChiusa: The Wild Party. It's wonderful. Um, it was a great experience. And whose idea was it first? I had given to me by our friend the book when it came out with Art Spiegelman's woodcut version, republished. So that was quite a little sensation. And it's given to me as a gift, and I read it with as a gift saying, you know, this is something you might be considered doing at one point, and it's like it didn't speak to me, and it sat on my bookshelf for about four years. Then when I was looking for a new project, I heard it singing. Yeah, I literally did. Well, you know, I say to people, you know, sometimes it, you know, that's why it's important to go through like the Shakespeare canon, at least for me, once every seven years.

Read every play by Shakespeare, every sonnet every seven years, because what's happened to you in seven years has changed your life. You are a different person. Like folly. You're different, you really are different. So this play or this sonnet or this passage of a play, whatever this is, is gonna have different resonance for you than it had for you seven years before when you were a different person. Not that you're different, but you've changed, or whatever's happened, life has happened to you, and it's great to read the pieces, you know, because of life. And so life ch life happened within four years, and suddenly, oh my god, The Wild Party sang to me. So I began working on it, showed some of it to George, and he dove right in.

And I knowing that I needed to shape her and a book writer along with him because it was such a big complicated piece that we wanted to do. I mean, there we almost did it in like a real time, you know that we there's like make it like a full night's party. Oh my god. In fact, I have enough material to do that, yeah. But of course, the reality is who's gonna sit for nine hours, but you know what I mean? But the idea being that you can get up and go and come back and the party's still going. Yeah, you know, that's what a party would do. But you know, but it was quite long. I think our first run through was almost six hours, I think. It's really long, it's huge. Wow. It was huge. It was just vastly exciting.

And so George helped like trim and focus. We both did all that. Yeah, we both had to, yeah. And by the time we got on Broadway, and so there was major editing we had to do. We needed to really cut out more time from it all. Yeah. I mean, now they do it in two acts because the audiences now just can't take more than 80 minutes now in a theater. Our attention spans are so limited now. How sad is that, right?

[47:51] Kevin David Thomas: Um, are you happy with that?

[47:53] Michael John LaChiusa: I don't care. I mean, it's fine. I just wish that we were allowed to do three acts. You know, I wish reunion rules allowed for that and there wasn't that because I would have done Giant. I would never have done Giant in two acts. I would have kept it in its three-act form. Oh, that was. Yeah, absolutely. You know, Giant should be. I love vast evenings. Yeah. I do. I loved, um, the Irish play, Jazz Butterworth's. Oh, The Ferryman. The Ferryman. I just loved it. But I wanted a real break. Yeah. Not something called, uh, interval or something. Interval. I think, what is this? You did the biggest were taken out. Yeah, it was appalling. Yeah, exactly. And they say the same thing with, uh, George's brilliant, uh, The Iceman Cometh last season.

Going, please give me a friggin' break. Oh, they're still doing the opera. You get to go to dinner. I do it the intermission opera, yeah. You know, just do it. But you know, with the union rules and stuff, it's just like God, you know, it's crazy frustrating to me. Yeah, was there you have to not be able to experience theater in a way that it needs to be experienced, but you gotta pay out the nose for it all. I don't get it. I don't get it. Yeah, you write for the art. Did was there, well, you, you, yeah, with an with the sense that, oh yes, this there's gonna be in a commercial theater and it's on Broadway, but yet you still you're an artist. I mean, like that's what I'm saying.

[49:03] Michael John LaChiusa: Right. I just I find like, you know, why does the work have to follow a contract? Why can't there be contracts that follow the work? I mean, equity comes up with these ridiculous things over and over again. They just go, who wrote this shit? You know, a bunch of corporate people sitting in a room. It's like who are you? Same thing with the musicians union. I mean, not down on the unions. We need them, we need them, we need them to protect, and they do do that. We need our guilds, we need all that. But at the same time, I just think sometimes the compromises are so great that you're not getting the art that you deserve.

[49:31] Kevin David Thomas: Oh, I was gonna ask you a question really quickly, which is tell us about the cast for The Wild Party.

[49:36] Michael John LaChiusa: The stars, the stars. This group of Tony was brilliant to work with. I love Tony Colette. She was wonderful, wonderful, wonderful. She was great to work with dynamite. She and Mandy were dynamite on stage. I'll tell you scary dynamite. Mandy was a honeymoon for me. I loved working with him every single minute. I thought he was he was for me a writer's dream to work with. I loved working with him, shaping the material with him. I loved being in a room with him. He has opinions and he wouldn't. Oh, God, yes, but it was all about what's right for the character. Yeah. And it was just everything that I had been taught working with, say, Mark Seller when I was a child, working with, um, and being young in the BMI workshop.

Everything I was taught about how to write a song for a character, working with Mandy was the fruition of that. And it was truly one of the great experiences of my life and whatnot. Never ever regret having, and will always be kind of holding the bar up to.

[50:31] Kevin David Thomas: So you enjoy that artist writer collaboration.

[50:34] Michael John LaChiusa: Of course, if any writer who doesn't and says, Here, you do this song, anyone who says that, you know, you get over yourself. Yeah. You're tailoring, you're trimming the sleeve, you're doing the collar, that was me. Okay, doing the collar, doing the hem. That's a song. It's fashioning the song, particularly if it's a new song for someone. Yes, of course. You fashion the song for the character for the actor, what they're capable of doing. Don't make an actress sing a high D if she can't do that. Uh-huh. You know, challenge them. Yep. Like challenging Audra in Marie Christine was is oh is a joy to joy, you know. Uh and challenging her is fun to do too, to see if she can get this and that sometimes is really kind of fun.

But you know, challenge you, but not ask them to do something that's out of their, you know, out of reality or makes them feel uncomfortable. That's stupid to do. But you know, that's the joy of it all. That's the real pleasure is getting in the room. That's why I love returning over and over again to the same wonderful group of people that I've worked with, Theresa McCarthy, Mark Kutish, Mary Testa, my wonderful Tally Sessions, you know, these wonderful people that get the language, Jesse Tyler Ferguson, you know, the wonderful, wonderful friends and colleagues of mine that know the language.

[51:47] Michael John LaChiusa: Is it Santiago, you know? Is it Betsy Morgan? Oh, yeah. Is it true that Audra auditioned for Hello Again?

[51:55] Kevin David Thomas: Yeah, she was too young for it at the time.

[51:58] Michael John LaChiusa: Yeah, she just graduated from Juilliard, and um, but we and one of the roles had already been cast. And we didn't want to get muck with that. That would have been not right to do to the actress that was playing that role. Because we could have fit her into that role, but it didn't seem right to do that. But you know, hey, you know, it worked out well.

[52:18] Kevin David Thomas: So were you like, I'm gonna write you a...

[52:18] Michael John LaChiusa: Oh my god, yeah. I was like, you are, I just went, oh my god, that woman is just oh my god. It just blew me away. You know, when someone like that walks into your life into, you know, much less into a small little Lincoln Center room or basement, and you feel like you know, 50 million tons of TNT have just gone off, and you know, you're not the same. You've been changed when you have those kind of encounters with greatness, and she is greatness. She's stunning, and the work that Marie Christine is absolutely stunning. Did you know? I love it. I just revisited, we just talked about it on the podcast a couple weeks ago.

[52:57] Kevin David Thomas: Did now you've written opera and you've written what they call opera, what they call musical theater. Now, do you put, is it the same?

[53:04] Michael John LaChiusa: There's a little bit of difference because the old son type thing. When it's done in an opera house, it's an opera. Well, he's right about that. He is absolutely right about that. Um, there are different things that do go into play with opera, you know. Um, I think since you're gonna be working mostly with opera singers and opera, you have to keep in mind that this was a couple good lessons that I learned when I worked at when I was a resident composer at the Lyric Opera of Chicago, or you did Lovers and Friends. Um, I learned from one of my mentors there that opera singers, since you'll be working with them, they like a longer line. They don't like a lot of words. So more vowel. To get more value, more value out of your work, you know, you might have to spare a little bit of the word play and amount of lyric that you might use.

So be simple. And I did that with Marie Christine because it sort of borders on opera. There's very simple language in Marie Christine, very simple. It's not technically challenging like the lyrics are on The Wild Party or say a Giant, which is a lot of although Giant has a very simple lyric thing too in some places because it does go into that opera thing, and then if you're hiring opera singers, just know that they love the long notes. Yeah, that's what they learned and spent years to do well. And so you must give them that. That's another thing, though. You have to be able to be malleable and change with your venues and whatever circumstances comes your way. You know, as a writer, you can't just say, I'm this.

[54:39] Kevin David Thomas: Right. Yeah.

[54:40] Michael John LaChiusa: Because then you'll just be that for the rest of your life. Why do that?

[54:44] Kevin David Thomas: How early do you like to engage a director in the writing process?

[54:48] Michael John LaChiusa: It really all depends. I've I'm working on two new pieces, um, and direct, uh, three new pieces, and the directors are were engaged even before I set pen to paper. Oh, really? Yes, absolutely. Well, one, well, the one I'm working on with Danny Mefford, who choreographed Fun Home and Dear Evan Hansen, he's a wonderful, wonderful director. And, uh, doing a new piece with him at Williamstown based on the cost of living on the Pulitzer this past year. So we're working on that. And Danny was involved even before we the play even came along. So, uh, uh, and so that was it's been wonderful. And I'm working with Jack Cummings, of course, at a transport group on a new piece for Mary Testa, which I'm excited for.

And then, um, I'm doing a piece that Graziela Daniel is directing. For many years I've known Grazi, and for many years we've gone for my teenies, and for many years she has told me many, many, many, many stories of her life growing up in Buenos Aires as a child, and how she became a ballerina and about her three muses, she calls them, her three grazes, her mother, her aunt, and her grandmother. And I had I was doing some teaching up at Columbia, and I invited Grazi up to speak to the students, and, uh, and she told one story I'd never heard before, and I'm going, and we went out for our martini after the class, you know. And I said, you know, I didn't hear that story before you've got so many stories, you know, girl, I'm gonna write a musical based on your life and she goes, oh no one would believe it and I did that and I went home and I wrote the opening number so I'm doing a musical based on Graziella's life growing up in Buenos Aires called The Gardens of Annuncia. Yeah, we just did a reading of it, a workshop of it all as a matter of fact.

[56:08] Kevin David Thomas: That's incredible.

[56:08] Michael John LaChiusa: A little mini one at the public. Is she gonna direct them? Yes, which is so mean and cruel of me I don't know if it's a gift or if it's cruelty, you know, because she says she's I don't know if it could be objective I don't know I don't know you know going oh yeah you can do it you can do it I've changed the name it's Annuncia not Graziella so exactly oh she's so brilliant I can't wait to see that it's really beautiful it's a it's beautiful piece and you could use that in do you use that musical influence of oh yes Buenos Aires some tango a lot of tango yeah and there's not just tango and the music there's many different styles of music in that so I've been able to play around with that have fun with that and and most importantly not bring those three women that influenced her to life exactly you know very wonderful remarkable women too at that very strong very very powerful women in her life and it's wonderful to bring them to life that story with the audience exactly and they'll never and also too to know that they're never gone exactly yeah you know they'll they'll always be here that you know and I think that's the beautiful thing that's why I love writing musicals so much like when you say the First Daughter Suite and First Lady Suite and those characters why why it's just it's to make something something of even though theater's not permanent, but the writing is permanent.

[57:47] Michael John LaChiusa: Yeah, and it's always gonna be there, maybe, unless we do blow ourselves to smithereens or something like that happens. But you know what I mean? Right. Look, I made a hat, exactly. I mean, not to quote the other message. Yeah, but that's it. Yeah, for something met Sondheim. Gosh, when did I meet Sondheim? First time I met him was when I won the Stephen Sondheim Award. It was given out down in Philadelphia. Oh. And it was very fancy dude do. And I remember being I read you had like a mohawk or something. I had a mohawk at the time. Oh bless you. And um and I don't know, we met him, and it was just weird. It was serious. Actually, I think I met him. Tell him about the heart on then. I yeah. I uh I met him, he came to see my one X um at Player's Rising was when the first time Mary Rogers, the wonderful Mary Rogers brought him.

It was the Rogers Award, which I had won that year, and uh uh a development grant or something like that. I forget what it was. And um that you it would be a development grant, not the actual Rogers thing because it was in production. And so that would have been before the the award. So so and then I got the award after he had seen the the the one axe that I had done had written under the Richard Riders. It was very nice meeting him. I was like, Wow! Yeah, well, say us all, like all of us are like but I never went to, you know, I mean it's it's different, it was different back then because you know there weren't a lot of shows opening on Broadway, but you hung out a lot down midtown down in this area. There was a lot of hanging out down here, and there was a lot of changeover in the theaters. It was before the British invasion, right?

[59:23] Michael John LaChiusa: Where things just sat in theaters for a really long time. So there was always something happening, and you'd always like you'd meet like Charles Strauss, one of my I my love my Charles Strauss more than life itself, and um and and John Candor. You'd meet them in like like the bars, and you say, Well, so what's up and what do you think about this? And you learn from them from these guys, you know, what the good, what wasn't good, you know, if did that work. Even Sondheim would pop in sometimes, you know, or Hal would be around or something like that. And you'd over you know, you listen to them talk. I'd never force myself into a conversation, but you know, I'd say always say hello, and you know, and um you know, and and listen in.

Those were some ways that we you you were taught back then, but now we don't have those things anymore because the changeover's not that great. So thus you have classes in it now, you know, and that's so you know, where you can pass on what you know about things, you know. That's when you pay to meet with someone like that.

[1:00:18] Kevin David Thomas: Yeah, that's wild. But what great education you received. What's the one thing you want all your students to take away from having taken your class?

[1:00:26] Michael John LaChiusa: Many things. Uh one that I mean, there are many things, but most important is um to know your craft. Know your craft, because you can always rely on craft when the when it gets hard, when the going gets tough and and it really gets hard. And secondly, to really write from your heart. The truth. Don't don't do anything that you don't feel that you know are uh obliged to do unless you want to make some money. I mean there's a difference, but try try your very best to write from your heart with all things and to be honest and true to yourself. Don't know thyself.

[1:01:02] Kevin David Thomas: What do you mean by craft?

[1:01:03] Michael John LaChiusa: Know your craft.

[1:01:04] Michael John LaChiusa: Craft. Learn the art of writing a proper lyric, learn the art of AAB, learners. All those um sometimes very pedestrian, very pedantic things that all the great masters are offered us. And then you can go off the road. Break the rules, yes. You know, but learn the map before you go off, is what I always feel, you know. You can break the rules. Please do, for God's sakes. Do do do, do. But not until you've learned that, you know, ground doesn't rhyme with town.

[1:01:36] Kevin David Thomas: Thank you.

[1:01:37] Michael John LaChiusa: You know, although that was fine for Condor McGreen. It worked for them.

[1:01:45] Kevin David Thomas: Are there any writers working today that excite you?

[1:01:48] Michael John LaChiusa: Well, I you know, I have to say, I'm I'm I'm I'm not sure what I feel about the musical. I I'm I'm I'm really eager to see it. Um uh but I'm interested in Joe Conis. I wonder what he'll do after this thing happens. Um what's next? Um I was delighted with Matt Sklar's work in in the prom. I really was. I was finally I wasn't I was at a musical world. I didn't feel like I was being insulted, you know, by the crappy songwriting and stuff. I really you know, I I really was so happy to see some really witty. I like Nell Benjamin. I think she's I think I have to tell you, I think that she got, even though the score is uh for mean girls, I thought her lyrics were were charmingly funny. Yeah, and good. Um I like them there's a young writer, Michael Jackson I like an awful lot. And he is out there, that boy is out there.

[1:02:42] Kevin David Thomas: I love um how are new writers uh getting their work out there opposed to how when you were getting your work out there? How has it changed?

[1:02:49] Michael John LaChiusa: Oh well, there's social media now. Uh we didn't have YouTube and and and uh social websites, you know, social network website. Um I yes and no, I guess. I mean, there's little unfortunately, there's less critical um response. I mean, you are also too, a lot of people are looking at and listening to your stuff. If you're posting it online, you you're you're not there in the room with them. So if it's theater, I it's not theater because you're really just doing um a televised uh form of art, which maybe is maybe will be the future for all I know. I mean, if they got away with rent live We're using that word very loosely. Very loosely. Commercials were live, and that was about it. You know, uh, you know, maybe that's the the the thing.

I you know, maybe uh television is the way to go. And anybody can put something on YouTube and be like I'm a writer. Yes, you can in the critical, so the critical elements out the window. Yeah. And that's one of the things that's sort of sad to see go because I think that you do need our critics, people who really are knowledgeable and do know what they're talking about. Is this a good piece of music? Is this a a good song? Is this a good score? Yeah, you know, we need those critics out there, and without them, I think it's just free-for-all. You have what you have a lot of these days.

[1:04:06] Kevin David Thomas: Yeah. Has a performer in a rehearsal hall ever said to you, Oh, you know, maybe the moment should be this, and it spurned an idea in you that you thought, I've never thought of it in that way before?

[1:04:14] Michael John LaChiusa: Sure, all the time. You have to be. If you're not, I don't think I don't think you can be called a good writer if you're not open to it all. It has to be done right and at the right moment.

[1:04:24] Kevin David Thomas: Yes.

[1:04:26] Michael John LaChiusa: I get that. And there can only be like a couple of those moments, and then I'm done with you. Because otherwise, go and write your own fucking musical.

[1:04:34] Kevin David Thomas: Right.

[1:04:35] Michael John LaChiusa: Talented actor as you are. Yes, it's I don't want to hear I'm writing this, I'm not writing it with you. I'm right. And I'm interested. Right. I'm absolutely interested, but I'm not interested in this or that. I'm not interested in ego.

[1:04:48] Kevin David Thomas: Do you like being in the rehearsals? Or do you or are you one of those writers? Here's some stuff, I'm gonna go away for a bit and then I'm gonna see what I'm saying?

[1:04:54] Michael John LaChiusa: No, I love being in rehearsal. It's my it's a thing I actually live for. That's why I try to write my things as quickly as I can so I can get to rehearsal. I love being with people. It's lonely when you write your own music and lyrics and sometimes your own book. I mean, I love collaborating when I when enough I find a good book writer to work with, you know, and um, you know, so I love being with people. You know, it gets lonely at four o'clock in the morning. Some writers are shy. Some of them are shy. Don't want to some of them too though. Some of them some are more productive not being in the room. They don't help in the room either. Sometimes I've been in I do a lot of new musicals, and a lot of times sometimes the composers can almost get in the way.

They they don't understand the pro you've been through the process so many times that you trust the process and you know that if they don't sing it right now, they're gonna sing it right later. They'll sing it right later. I'm I uh you can ask a lot of my music directors, and they'll be well he's brilliant, yeah. But you know, they I'm they can get a I can be a little, but it's only with the music directors, never with the actors, man. The actors wouldn't know. But I think the music directors can go, would you mind? Let me do my job.

[1:05:56] Kevin David Thomas: Yes, I've got to be a chance. Definitely.

[1:05:58] Michael John LaChiusa: But never to the point where it's like fighting or anything like that. I don't get in a fight. It's just like we got it. Because I'll start laughing before if I can make them mad, I start laughing. Ha, gotcha.

[1:06:09] Kevin David Thomas: I've often thought that sometimes audiences had to learn to appreciate the complexity of your work, and I think that they are. I I think that you're almost, you know, in 1994, 95, 96, ahead of your time in a way, I think, because you're challenging the audience to think. I don't mean this is just my opinion.

[1:06:25] Michael John LaChiusa: But I'm shit.

[1:06:26] Kevin David Thomas: No, no, no, but I think you've challenged the art form. Damn. You're challenging the art form to raise the bar, to be better, to be smarter, to make plays with music, as opposed to like walk a waka waka, da-da-da-da-da. You know, that's it.

[1:06:36] Michael John LaChiusa: Well, that's okay too, but we love musicals like that too. We do have a music. Oh, I love Hello Dolly, give it to me. I'm not saying um I'm I I don't think I go into go, I demand this of the audience. I really don't go and approach the work that way because I love the audience. You're writing for the character and you're writing for the story. But I have to keep myself involved in it and try to do something that's gonna turn me on and keep me on the razor's edge. You know, I really need to be that. And and also too, I know my actors want that too. And I know that there is directors that want that, and I know that there are designers that want that. And I think there are audiences out there. I think that there's a there's a lot of misconceptions about my work that's out there that you know I don't know if they'll ever be corrected, and it's not for me to to to go about correcting, just to let it, you know, if people think, oh, his stuff is too hard to sing, he's not non melodic. And I stop paying attention to that stuff, you know, now in my old feeble broken knee-lay day. You know, I've decided not to come concern myself with that, but to write better stuff.

[1:07:38] Kevin David Thomas: What's the greatest misconception that you wish you could clarify if there was one?

[1:07:43] Michael John LaChiusa: That I think that I'm God or something that I think you know that that I'm a you know, that that that's that that's yeah. Anyone who knows me knows that I'm of course very um not that way at all. And I try to be as humble as I can about my work. Yeah, you know, I think there were just some very early on things that happened that that stuck in people's craw. Well, you know, about the career and stuff. I remember I remember there was an article that was back in the day when he had theater magazines. Remember those days?

[1:08:08] Kevin David Thomas: Oh, yes, show music.

[1:08:10] Michael John LaChiusa: Theater week.

[1:08:11] Michael John LaChiusa: Theater, oh, it's theater week. I think I I touched a nerve, yes. Theater we're a big they did a big article on me, and it was my first thing. It was really, it was like gonna be, it was the one two whammy thing of doing first daughter sweet and and and for um and hello again. And so they did a rather big article, it was big for me because I thought, wow, and they're gonna put me on the cover of it all. And then the headline, which nothing was mentioned in the whole article about any of that, the headline rates, is this the next song time? Now you don't know how that that was just whoa. Yeah. Now I couldn't tell you how deeply upsetting that was to me to read that because for one thing, I didn't want to be that.

No. It was he's got his gig, he does his thing. I'm I'm not that at Michael John. Like that's I'm not. Yeah. I mean, I always aspire to to be as good a craftsperson as as Steve is, and and uh as good a writer and as daring as Steve is, but it was never that never wanted to be the next. That's not for me to decide. And it felt like that was what you know, and I think a lot of people got really pissed out. So you start off your career that way, ooh, they're gonna come after you. They're gonna come after you with tooth and nail, and I think that they do. But you but you learn after years and years of doing that. There don't worry about that shit, Michael John. Don't and you know, it took me years to learn not to worry about that kind of stuff.

And just to do my work and do that work and do it promptly, get it done, try to keep a roof over your head and food in the refrigerator, be nice to your friends, you know, don't do bad things to yourself because you get no.

[1:09:13] Kevin David Thomas: Right.

[1:09:13] Michael John LaChiusa: And be kind, generous with what you know, and be generous with what you know to your students.

[1:09:58] Kevin David Thomas: How has speaking of students, how has teaching affected your writing or has it at all?

[1:10:03] Michael John LaChiusa: Oh, yes, it makes me much more uh conscious of oh, you're just breaking one of your little rules here, you know, that you just told your kids about, you know, and uh and I go, well, okay, it's me. It's me. I uh it's it's changed me in being a little bit more um uh uh uh freer with myself to allow myself to be young again.

[1:10:29] Kevin David Thomas: Yeah, they do keep you young, that's for sure.

[1:10:31] Michael John LaChiusa: Yeah, there's a youth thing. You know, and I that's why I love it. I think one of the best things about it is that they're younger, yeah, and to always find keep that spirit in myself, what it felt like to be looking at garbage piled up outside of 78th Street and working in the the sleeping in the basement of Mark's and Dana's you know, building and and then playing at night till 2 a.m. in the morning, and you know, I'll keep those things alive in myself. Hopefully, and always wonder what's gonna happen next. Yeah, don't guess what's gonna happen next. Always be like, yeah, what's gonna happen next? I mean, that's every day for me. That's why I can't wait to be, you know, get up. You know, I really do.

That's that that's that's the way to do it though. Yeah, and because then then you that bleeds into the writing. Yeah, because you never know. I was working on a really hard scene. Oh my gosh, was it hard? Because it's styming me this summer. I hit a brick wall with this scene. I went, oh, how am I gonna do this one? I got I wrote up around it, I went to the next scene, and I went to the other scene, and I finally said I've got to circle back to this, I've gotta do this. How do we do this? I'm so scared. Oh my god. So I got off on being scared. Yeah, I went, okay, go there. Do the most outrageous thing that you can think of to do with this song. Do the thing that's not meant to be, and sure enough, boom.

I didn't know. And living in the unknown made me so happy to be there because it was just so great to go in and write that thing and get it done, and I've found a way in. I was working on it this morning, the rest of the scene. It was just boom. It's in place now. I couldn't be happier. Well I couldn't be happier. Hey, I don't know if it's gonna work. I don't know. That's when the but I'll know later when the actors start doing it, and when I start seeing it as part of the whole thing, or listening to it as the whole and the whole thing. I don't care. It's there. It was testing the unknown and the joy of that. If you can get into that in all things, that's that's the best part of writing. That was what makes writing great.

[1:12:28] Kevin David Thomas: That's so wonderful. And you have inspired us so much today.

[1:12:32] Michael John LaChiusa: Have I not put you to sleep?

[1:12:34] Kevin David Thomas: No.

[1:12:37] Michael John LaChiusa: That was a little bit.

[1:12:38] Kevin David Thomas: That is so amazing. Because we are so energized. This is so exciting. Thank you so much.

[1:12:41] Michael John LaChiusa: Thank you.

[1:12:43] Michael John LaChiusa: Thank you so much for that. We have meeting listeners. What you have given us over the years is so special. I just thank you. We thank you.

[1:12:51] Michael John LaChiusa: I'm not good with the compliments.

[1:12:52] Kevin David Thomas: I know, but I like still bestowing them. See what comes next. Till next time. Take care, everybody.

[1:12:59] Robert W. Schneider: Today's episode was recorded at Shetler Studios on 244 West 54th Street. Visit Shuttler Studios to book your room today. And you could be as cool as us. That's S H E T L E R Studios.com.

[1:13:12] Robert W. Schneider: And a big thanks to our sound editor Daniel Schwartzberg and social media manager Bethany and Solecki. And friends, don't forget, we want more folks to hear these incredible stories, and that's where you guys can come in and help us out.

[1:13:24] Kevin David Thomas: Yes, in order for people to find out about us, we need lots of ratings on iTunes. The more ratings, the more they'll come up and search us. So head on over to iTunes, search for behind the curtain Broadway's Living Legends. Click on our logo, click on ratings and reviews, then write a review and leave us five stars and make us feel as special as Eliza Doolittle on Eliza Doolittle Day. Or you can leave us one star and make us feel as bad as Annie did in that weird production in Boston where Annie dreamed about being adopted and then ended the show back in the orphanage. True story, Rob was there.

[1:13:59] Robert W. Schneider: I saw it. So head on over to iTunes and make us feel even more special than we already do.