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[0:40] Lauren Van Hemert: I'm Lauren Van Hemert, your host, and on this episode, I'm chatting with Aaron Simon Gross. I first met Gross virtually during the pandemic. At the time he was supposed to direct the North Carolina theater production of Edges, which, like most casualties of the shutdown, was unfortunately canceled. But what I loved so much about our conversation is that his passion for this art form was so infectious, and that at heart, he was just a diehard theater fan, just like so many of us. In fact, he shared with me that when he was in middle school, he was writing fan letters to artists like Hal Prince and Benj Pasek, just before he made his own Broadway debut in Jason Robert Brown's musical 13. Here's our conversation.

[1:43] Aaron Simon Gross: Um sort of quickly fell head over heels, as it were. Like my friend Jennifer Tepper says that when I was six years old and we were doing really rosy, she remembers me saying, and I don't remember this, I don't even remember doing this, but she remembers me saying that I slept with the original 1959 cast recording of Gypsy under my pillow. And my parents are both lawyers, and I'm an only child, and they obviously not obviously, but now they like adore the theater and see everything. But at that point they didn't, and they were, and they just sort of really generously just and you know sort of gung-ho supported this love affair. Now, is anybody if the so the parents are lawyers? Anyone in your family theatrical or musical or just you?

Um not in such a way that they pursued it, but I first fell in love with it with um said grandpa introducing me to Singing in the Rain when I was cyber six, and he always had a pretty broad knowledge of shows and saw a lot. And my and that's my maternal grandfather and my paternal grandmother as well. Also I think she would I know she would be rightfully slighted if I didn't say that she also is a great lover of the theater.

[3:03] Aaron Simon Gross: So 13 is this coming of age story. I feel like it's a little musical that could, because it just every time you think it kind of goes away, or I think it's kind of gone away, it comes back in a big way. We really weren't on Broadway for particularly long. It was just some a few months, I guess, at the Jacobs, but it's really taken off such a shocking afterlife. So talk to me about working with the amazing Jason Robert Brown. I'm sort of uh it was surreal because I'm a I'm a perpetual fanboy. I even then, especially then, honestly, and not especially, always, um was deeply familiar with his work and knew every word and every note of everything that existed till that point, and was hyper aware of the fact that I was in the room with him, and that if I was um staying after rehearsal one day and it was just us in a room and he was teaching a new song that he'd written that day called If That's What It Is, I was thinking in my head the entire time, oh my god, this is the first time anyone's hearing this song.

Tomorrow and the presentation of this workshop will be uh I get to sing this song and share it with people for the first time. I am I'm so lucky, I am so lucky, I'm so lucky. I was very aware, and that honestly extended through the entire team. Even like our I knew our production stage manager Rick Steiger had um he had I knew he had done LaCusa's Wild Party that George C. Wolfe's A Wild Party, and so I was asking him all about what the relationship between Tony Collette and Mandy Patinkin was like off stage, and all it it pervaded all of it in a way that is was probably sort of funny, but is just I I love it all. I love it so much.

[4:56] Aaron Simon Gross: How did that experience early on inform kind of the rest of your career and how you've approached directing and musicals? But I began involvement with it when I was in middle school, and by the time we opened on Broadway, I was a freshman in high school. Um, I think just by virtue of the fact that um the creators were writing about an experience that was past tense for them but present tense for us. Um they really actively invited us into the piece and had a lot of conversations with us mo about moment to moment what the show looked like and in addition to wider lens things that made the play the play about what this experience was and for us in that moment and I think that's because broad sweeping statement that all all theater is going to be stronger or at least more valuable at least to me to everyone I don't think anyone would disagree with this if the communities it's being made for across the board are a part of the creation of making it can speak to more most directly to those communities and be um it can most valuably serve them.

And knowing that it wanted teenagers and young people to be a huge part of who came to it, I think they I think that had to motivate they knew that in order to reach those people that um that point of view needed to be truly with the capital T represented in the piece. And I think I've been thinking about that idea. I think I think about that a lot and that that is really I think invaluable.

[6:38] Aaron Simon Gross: You really seem to favor new musicals and new work um lot of work with playwrights. Living playwrights rather I know that so um talk to me about what it is working with playwrights um on new pieces that intrigues you that interests you. Twofold the um if what all of us love about theater is the sort of at least in part, the back and forth push and pull and the constant having to reckon with and wrestle with what is this doing? What am I doing in context of it? What are me and the play doing in context of each other? Spiraling, etc., etc. etc. At the beginning of any process, you're having that with the text. But when you're doing it with the new play, I think it more tangibly activates that from the very beginning.

And then I guess more broadly speaking, um, just to keep my mind as agile as possible as possible right now, as I feel my brain turned to mush in this quarantine moment. Um I've been taking a psych class online and with a bunch of friends from college, and we have discussion section every week, but something that I read in it this week is that humans this makes sense. Um we get used to things very quickly, and so I think what that means in theater is historically always the shows that end up having the largest reach and that end up um meaning a lot to a lot of people, are the ones that see start off sort of smaller and seeming like they're talking about things that haven't been talked about, or trafficking, or I keep saying trafficking, or bringing in forms that are unfamiliar.

[8:52] Aaron Simon Gross: Like I even like obviously, so recently, people it's um you can point to Fun Home and Hamilton and Band's Visit are the shows that are winning the Tony for Best Musical, and then will trickle down in terms of what art will look like. And you further back, I mean you go to in the 60s, Hair and in the 70s, Chorus Line, like it's all those have always been the shows. The shows that seem like they couldn't have always been the ones that read so to be with playwrights, to be with the people who are at the forefront of that and finding those forms and those stories, and to get to in as someone in a tree, in some way be privy to that and privy to the finding of that, um, is something I hope to and want to see and take part of.

Um, and because also I love those stories and I love their plays, and honestly, just because I'm inspired by them, the playwrights I work with, I learn so much from, and I just think they're doing tremendous work, and I, if nothing else, read their plays, and I'm like, oh my god, how can I work with you? If nothing else, I just want to have a conversation with you. And when I read any play I want to work on, the first thing I want to do is talk to the playwright and like figure out what's going on in their mind. And if it's a living, young, emerging playwright, then if that can actually happen, oh my god, then I will latch onto that and continue that conversation as long as I can.

[10:26] Aaron Simon Gross: What are the trends that you're seeing and the types of stories that we're going to all be seeing coming down the pike? What's the trends in musical theater and plays, do you think? Again, if you can always look to the stuff happening in the smallest spaces for what we'll see in 10 years everywhere, then to speak audaciously. Which sort of begins as one thing structurally, and by virtue of the conversations it's interested in having with its audience. Again, like I was saying with that, it pulls that rug out from underneath its audience, becomes something else entirely that is very different from what it even advertised itself as and pushes an audience that it sort of roped in with familiar forms into wholly new ones and into I think way thornier, scarier conversations.

And I think there seems to be a trend right now of okay, how can we reach the people who aren't necessarily having the scary conversations that we want to be, or the hard conversations for them for me that we want to be having? Lure them in and then go there. And I think that those are the plays that are starting to happen more and more that sort of walk this thin line between glitz and dirt.

[12:28] Aaron Simon Gross: Um Fair View more specifically begins as a sort of um black family comedy drama. Um getting ready for a family gathering, and then the fourth wall topples and it becomes about what it means to make art under the white gaze under the Fair View and what justice looks like, what is what is fair, what is just within that. And that's so it advertised itself as just sort of everyone's coming over for dinner tonight, and like how will they get everything together in time? And I think that sort of surprise um surprise, this is what we're after is everywhere now, in a way that's really exciting.

[13:15] Aaron Simon Gross: Do you have any dream shows you want to direct? Dream shows to direct first two to come to mind. Um musical Kiss of the Spider Woman. Ooh, yes. Oh yeah. Oh my god. Oh, yeah. Um, and play. Oh, there's a play I've been working on for I guess a year and a half now with a playwright named Charlie O called Long. And um it's about Asian American men in American gay porn. And um, I think it's a really extraordinary play that I we've done workshops of and readings of, and we are in often in conversation about, and he's an amazing writer, a really amazing writer, and I really want to do the play. I really wanted to just like jump into it with like full on with actors and designers because I yeah, I think it's it's really special.

[14:23] Aaron Simon Gross: One thing that's coming through loud and clear is your love of the stage, as your love of this medium. Do you think that your success is because you come at theater as a fan first? Yeah, absolutely. I think I think it's because if I love it so much, I'm going to always do my homework because I enjoy it. I've I because it's it's a chance to lap up as much as possible of this thing that I can't get enough of. I mean, after I found out I would be working on Edges, I is when I discovered you because I was like, okay, cool. Who are the people who are the people talking about arts in this community? Who what is what do those conversations look like there and how are they happening? And so I'm okay, cool.

What are the interviews Lorna's doing? What is Lauren saying in the press? Uh, Lauren Kennedy Brady, what is Eric Woodall, the uh the artistic tractor saying when he talks about NCT and like what is he saying about the theater is after more generally, and how can I contribute to that? I look up those things not because though sure I feel an obligation to, though I do think it is the responsible thing to do, but because I love it because I it's exciting to hear these people talk about these, even just like seeing as much as possible theater wise, is how I was able to have been able to and continue to be able to tune. This is the kind of stuff I like, this is what I respond to. This is aesthetically what I like.

This is like what the designers I like do, and this is what differentiates their work, and I'm only able to articulate that through consuming as much as possible of what that work is and of people talking about it and being in as many rooms as possible. So totally, but yeah, and I at least that's my own path, and I'm sure and it I hopefully it'll continue to be. And everyone has it on, and I'm sure someone else could say, I and I would believe it, that it's their separation from it in the sort of clinical way of like being um outside of it, that is what makes them do the work they do and have this find the success that they find within it. And I I that makes so much sense to me as well. But yeah, personally, yes.

[16:39] Aaron Simon Gross: I was in North Carolina this summer directing a show for the North Carolina Theater Conservatory. He's now back in New York working towards his masters in journalism. Of course, the musical 13 is reaching a whole new generation of fans on Netflix. I'll be curious to know what you think about this latest incarnation of the musical, and I'll be sharing photos of my musical theater 13-year-old self on social media this week. So be sure you're following on Facebook or Instagram at Beltline to Broadway or Twitter at Beltline to B Way or visit me online at www.beltline to broadway.org. Until next time, I'll see you at the theater.