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[0:07] Andrew Child: Hi, I'm Andrew Child and welcome to Fifty Key Stage Musicals, the podcast, a companion piece to the Routledge Press publication Fifty Key Stage Musicals, which is available for purchase by going to Routledge.com or clicking the link below in today's show description.

[0:25] Andrew Child: Today's episode focuses on chapter 35, MISS SAIGON.

[0:30] Andrew Child: And first, with us today are co-founders of Asian American Theater Artists of Boston, Sarah Shin and Micah Rose.

[0:39] Andrew Child: Micah Rose is a cousin and circle keeper who shares traditions like theater, story circles, biomimicry, and more as paths for communal care. Their credits include collaborations with the Theatre Offensive, POW Arts Center, and the American Repertory Theater, and they are currently the co-director of Emergence at Arts Connect International.

[1:01] Andrew Child: Sarah Shin is a performer, director, and producer who has worked with Central Square Theater, Company One Theater, American Repertory Theater, New York Theater Workshop, Asian American Arts Alliance, and All For One Theater. She serves as an artistic collective member of National Queer Theater, a board member for Stage Source, and an advisory board member for Boston Playwrights Theater.

[1:27] Andrew Child: Together, they founded Asian American Theater Artists of Boston, or ATAB, in 2018, which empowers and connects pan-Asian theater artists in the Greater Boston area, growing community and solidarity on ancestral lands of the Massachusetts and Nipmuck peoples.

[1:45] Andrew Child: Sarah and Micah, thank you so much for chatting with me today.

[1:50] Sarah Shin: Yeah, thank you.

[1:51] Micah Rose: Glad to be here.

[1:52] Sarah Shin: Yes, thank you for having us.

[1:55] Andrew Child: So I'd love to just sort of start with just having one of you sort of catch us up to date with why I reached out to you and your connections and ATAB's connections with the musical in question today, chapter 35, MISS SAIGON.

[2:16] Micah Rose: Okay, I'll start and then you can follow, you can fill in the missing holes. Um, I believe that you reached out to us, Andrew, because um when we co-founded ATAB back in September 2018, um the idea of starting ATAB came from Micah going to CataCon Fest in Chicago, a big national um Asian American theater um conference, and they saw a reading of This Is Not a True Story by Preston Choi, which featured a character, featured Kim from MISS SAIGON in uh this very in a in this world with uh Chocho from Madame Butterfly, and then also um Kumiko the from the the treasure hunter and putting all of those characters, these women in a play together and wondering why they keep dying.

[3:17] Micah Rose: And so that play was one of the first things that ATAB put together. Um, and it led to a conversation of us um talking about Asian American representation. What does it mean? How do we feel about this show that creates lots of jobs and opportunities for Asian American uh and Asian artists, but the content is a lot more complicated and having figuring out that relationship.

[3:47] Micah Rose: So I think that's something that ATAB has always been trying to put, have more conversations about. And so that's what I perceive to be the reason that we are all here today.

[4:04] Sarah Shin: Yeah, that and that programming, I believe proceeded, and I'll have to say there's some fogginess around dates, especially when we look at before 2020. But I know that after or around the time that we programmed This Is Not a True Story, um, was also when the latest US national tour of MISS SAIGON was doing its circuits.

[4:29] Sarah Shin: So I know at some point, maybe it was that fall after in 2019. The reading was in April 2019, and then I think the fall after we organized with Asian Pacific Islands Arts Network, which is like a grassroots volunteer-led org, uh founded actually after uh a programming series called Beyond Orientalism, which was in response to uh Boston Lyric Opera's production of the opera um Madame Butterfly.

[5:00] Sarah Shin: Um and so out of that came funding and support and community conversations uh hosted by API Arts Network. And through that community, we were also involved in organizing uh local Vietnamese artists to come with us to see um MISS SAIGON, the tour, and form a potential response.

[5:22] Micah Rose: And we ended up not really moving forward with a response, more just creating further processing space. I think it's really important for Asian communities and for all affinity communities and for all people who share parallel ancestries of impact by colonization and imperialism to gather around sites of violence.

[5:46] Micah Rose: And I definitely feel in our communities that MISS SAIGON and Madame Butterfly are part of these sites of violence that we were trying to reckon with through the stage reading opportunity, right? And so we we didn't move forward with like a public reaction to it.

[6:04] Micah Rose: But I remember the conversations we were having at the time and uh were like around like it's an incredibly like the the US National Tour was incredibly uh realistic in that, and I used kind of spare quotes there, in that like the the props, the setting, the costumes, like every part of it, it was received by the Vietnamese community as very quote-unquote authentic.

[6:32] Sarah Shin: Okay.

[6:32] Micah Rose: But that the larger problem was around the story that it was centered and focused around, like, and that the whole narrative is exploitative and violent and such a horrific reanimation and centering around a violence that is not historical, but is rendered as such, that is like rendered as this thing in the past that we can like look at and and feel heartbreak around, not actually because of all of the violence is embedded in it, but because of the romance, because of the heartbreak, because of the Romeo and Juliet-esque um drama of it all, because of the spectral spectacle of the saviorism of the helicopter and all of these other images that are just like woven in so fantastically and wondrously into the narrative, that is really a narrative that cannot exist in the way that it does in the American and global imagination without the continuing death and systems of death built around Asian femmes being overlapping targets for patriarchy, white supremacy, imperialism, and the global goals of all of those projects, which are not which are indetachable from the contemporary industry of American musical theater.

[8:12] Micah Rose: And you know, one of the artists like really lashed on to the engineer's song in that, the American Dream, and was like, that's the thing that we should be focusing on is this American dreamness that becomes the like the like launch pad for all of the all of all of all of the horrors we see unfold across real life and history that then get like compiled and glamorized within the context of a Broadway production.

[8:45] Andrew Child: And so before the programming you did with the staged reading, and before creating sort of space for community around the national tour, did either of you have any relationship with MISS SAIGON or familiarity with it?

[9:03] Sarah Shin: Um, I think when I first started theater in like middle school, my parents told me that that was one of their favorite shows that they'd ever seen.

[9:12] Micah Rose: Okay.

[9:13] Sarah Shin: Um, so I've heard about it through then, through that. And then I would say too, once I listened to the music and the story itself, um, it became Kim was like a dream role for me personally.

[9:26] Sarah Shin: Um, I actually remember when I was 14 years old, I had a community theater director that I worked with. He said, Oh, this college is looking for someone to play Kim.

[9:39] Sarah Shin: Oh wow for their musical. So you should go audition. And so I did. And but the director's like, you're 14. Like you should not be. Um, so it was like an interesting thing of now when I look back at it, I wonder like, why did that director, knowing that I was 14 years old, still like tell me to go audition for this show?

[10:00] Sarah Shin: And and I think just with remembering that it was once a dream role for me, uh, I feel like uh there's a lot to reflect on in that.

[10:12] Sarah Shin: Or I've come a lot, I've I've come I've thought a lot about what that what that means and what how that fits into the bigger picture of the w the representation and roles that do exist out there in musical theater for um Asian femmes.

[10:26] Sarah Shin: So um I still love singing the songs like karaoke alone in my room, you know, but uh like but uh I'm not sure if I necess yeah, I'm not sure if I necessarily need to audition for it anymore.

[10:43] Andrew Child: Would you say I'm at yeah and Micah I do want to hear about your previous relationship if anything with MISS SAIGON but Sarah would you say is it fair to say that this is not a dream role anymore but also not a role that you have any interest in um yeah no I don't think it's a dream role anymore.

[11:06] Sarah Shin: I think um like the role that ex the the way that the role is now taken or the character gets to kind of live on in different plays like this is not a true story.

[11:19] Micah Rose: Okay.

[11:19] Sarah Shin: Um and then also there's um there's a there's an untitled fuck MISS SAIGON play out there too.

[11:26] Sarah Shin: That's the um like seeing I'm much I'd rather be in those plays.

[11:31] Andrew Child: Okay.

[11:32] Sarah Shin: Um yeah that's what I'll say about that. And I think I also for me in general as I think about um the as I kind of maybe um specify or get more specific about the art that I want to make I've also become more specific about the roles that I want to act in and find me personally more interested in directing I guess or getting getting to be a in the bigger pic getting to have a hand at what the story we're telling is about.

[12:03] Micah Rose: Okay.

[12:04] Andrew Child: Yeah.

[12:05] Andrew Child: Yeah let's um uh backpedal to Micah uh did you have any relationship with MISS SAIGON prior to creating space around that tour performance?

[12:18] Micah Rose: Yeah, I guess more anecdotally uh or yeah, less, less of personal experience, but more of just like the how representation works in in the arts and especially um uh as as marginalized communities like looking for uh I grew up in a uh a multicultural but I'd say like very like white liberalized if that can even be said um space in northern Virginia um and so for me growing up in arts like I was looking for you know Asian representation uh but then more specifically Filipino representation in the arts and so you know I I I had known uh since I was watching Disney princess movies that Lea Salonga um is is that voice and then when I grew into theater and musical theater and I learned of MISS SAIGON and I found out like oh that's how Lea got to be on you know the the the global stage uh to start out um that was sort of my first interaction with MISS SAIGON uh it was like just the excitement and passion for like this um this artist who I really cared about and care about and love um uh and admire and then um yeah and then by I think senior year of high school the the the the production starring Eva Noblezada another Filipina had begun and so I went to see the like filmed version of that with uh uh a fellow Asian artist in the DC area and it was not it was my first time actually seeing it and it was just not like I was so ecstatic to see all of the Asian artists in it and the the the the realm of of of of of beauty amidst the the storytelling that that I think that the show is so successful at engineering.

[14:12] Micah Rose: But we were both like I had never seen it before and I was like oh this is what that is okay um and just seeing how mixedness specifically like uh mixed uh Asian mixed Southeast Asian and and white American characters are treated in that both the engineer and then um Tam Kim's son um just just experiencing that uh started to become a bit of a radicalizing point for how I cared to see uh stories that I am kin to be shared on on on larger stages.

[14:49] Andrew Child: I do think I mean both of your sort of backgrounds with the show what immediately comes to mind when the tour was coming around to Boston um I was working wardrobe at the time on Pacific Overtures and I yeah um I remember um the actors on that uh one of them in particular uh making sure to get a photo of um their daughters in front of there was like a billboard stand in Copley you know with all the posters on it and it was on all three sides it was Pacific Overtures the tour coming from MISS SAIGON and the third side was the tour that was following was gonna be the king and I um and so getting a picture of your daughters in front of that but then when we really get down to the nitty gritty of it, you know, between those three shows not an Asian writer composer present.

[15:50] Micah Rose: And I also believe with those three productions, not a director with the production I was working wardrobe for, not a designer, you know.

[16:04] Andrew Child: Yeah.

[16:05] Micah Rose: Well, this is so that's so fascinating to chart that around it, just the oral history for a moment about this time in like Boston local theater, is that that sort of spring season around when we were doing this is a not not this is not a true story, is also when I was production intern and the only person of color on the production team for Allegiance. Um the Boston regional premiere of the musical based on George Takai's family story in the incarceration camps on the west coast and Midwest. Um and so a lot of the actors in that production, many of those local actors then went a few of them then went on to be in Pacific Overtures. Um and a friend that we were rallying around who is in the cast of Allegiance was then the understudy for the Engineer in MISS SAIGON.

Um and so I think we see in that dynamic how like what yeah, what roles and what stories and who's writing the stories that are available to us to then fulfill and achieve and create. Uh the American Repertory Theater's season 2018 to 2019, which featured three creations by Asian FEMS. Um we had Diana Owen Residence at Clairvoyance, we had Sarah Porcolab's Dragon Cycle, um and we had Endlings by Celine Song. Um and yet because of sort of the hierarchies that exist within American theater and American regional theater, those were mostly that's not true. Diana and Sarah both source pretty locally but I'd say like Endlings, right? For example, you know, American Repertory Theater, they're often bringing in and they've changed since but often bringing in New York actors and folks not in town.

And so the opportunities then become limited to what are the regional houses playing, what are the tours that are playing. Um so I think that's just an important to think about when thinking about power and agency and authority to tap into narratives that feel truly representative of us. Like are they only existing in specific echelons or whatever you want to call it of like tiers of theater.

[18:55] Micah Rose: So I'm I am curious because if we stay local to Boston, sorry for listeners across the country, you know, catch up, you know we're throwing a lot of names out there. The three plays you just listed from the ART listeners, if you can you know get your hands on the texts of those. Um I s those are that's some of the best theater we had happening in Boston at the time. Like I can close my eyes and like Endlings, um, which went on to New York. Um and Sarah, you were working on that, correct?

[19:31] Sarah Shin: Yes.

[19:32] Sarah Shin: That yes, that was I was the assistant director on it. Um and uh also beautiful there too, you know?

[19:41] Micah Rose: Yeah.

[19:41] Micah Rose: The same heartbreak, same pain, same love, all there. That was so beautiful. Not to, you know, say that the other two were not also beautiful, but Endlings like is one that I'll die remembering seeing that show. Um but where was I going with this? Oh so right now Boston Lyric Opera has been doing programming around they're doing Madame Butterfly again. Um and uh I'm still on email lists for the city of Boston. I get all sort of notifications about like we're we got it this time we we see you we hear you but we're still doing it. Um I guess if you have thoughts on that I'd love to hear them but I'd also love to know um with this story Madame Butterfly or MISS SAIGON like is that a thing? Is that something that you think is worthwhile to say let's put a panel together let's dissect what's wrong and let's keep reviving them keep doing them but sort of commit to fixing them. Is that something that either of you have any interest in being involved in or seeing the productions that are a result of that?

[21:09] Andrew Child: Alright so this is gonna take a minute for me to just kind of map what the what my reactions to this are. I'm never opposed to conversation. I think critical conversation is is why is part of why ATAB is founded because we need these community spaces. But what I will say about specifically the the this butterfly project the continuous like the word reanimation just keeps coming to mind for for talking about these like zombies of plays that are just like really white imaginations of violence that is endured by people of uh of communities that that that these authors are are not truly entrenched in of wars that their society and culture perpetuates but that they have just so much distance from from from the the lived experience of trauma.

And so for us to continuously like trigger ourselves as as Asian peoples as as Asian community and then more specifically as artists and cultural organizers around the the response and and continued debate around the survivability of these stories. We know that they're survivable they have continued and continue to make money for white people for generations now for gener for literal centuries. And so it's wild to me that that that that is the like the the the fulcrum or or you know the the full the apex of the debate is around that and how do we continue to do it instead of like how do we address the root causes of of harm that precipitated these stories existing for white people to consume in the first place.

[22:52] Andrew Child: And so what comes to mind is a Tony Morrison writing that that I will I will paraphrase a bit, which is around that the very serious function and problem of racism is that it distracts us from doing our work. And so to me, when we have these processes that are trying to ask these questions and create these conversations that again are not for our community, but for the white audiences to which these institutions, these opera institutes, these performing houses, these national tours, these Broadway houses are presenting to their whiteness, their white donor-based, their white money-based. What comes to mind too is what Bell Hooks writes about the lens and the camera. And she she describes so beautifully in a lecture at the New School how the camera as an institution is just so representative of the white gaze of white money, that any time a person of color, a queer person, trans person, disabled person, person of margin of compounding marginalized identities comes under the film camera, what have you, we are there's a there's a to cite Zaboy's a double consciousness going on that is so violent because we may not even be able to feel it in the moment because we are may are all simultaneously being fed a story of agency of you are able to of you are doing this, you know what you are doing, you are empowered and you are making these choices.

You, you as an actor, as a performer are at choice, but we really we're not because how did we get to be saying the words on that script? Because a white person had an idea and they wrote it down, and they were able to, for years and years, despite the violences that that they embedded in those scriptings, revision and and repair and and fix without actually transforming their their body of work and how they are making money.

[25:21] Andrew Child: And so yeah, it's it's been wild to to see how these uh these uh institutions are re-engaging the harm of like I I've just had multiple community members who have been tapped for this process specifically, um, and who have just shared like uh the repeated pattern of lessons not being learned of being engaged for a quote unquote coffee or you know, other like meet and greet, and then it turns into a one-hour extractive conversation about how we would love to partner and collaborate with you and and why does this trigger you so much, and what are all of the issues that we need to be considering? It becomes consulting calls and not any without any sort of reciprocality, without any sort of care for what we are going through as people when we are being re-engaged in these conversations again and again, again, distracting us from our real work, from our world building that we care so deeply of.

And I just I I have to also just share a bit of like I think where I'm at in my rage right now, in this very moment, because coming into this podcast recording, um, last night I was attending an online vigil between organizing communities in diaspora and back home in the Philippines, because last week five of our comrades were massacred.

[26:55] Micah Rose: And so I want to read a little bit from the statement by Liang Network, um, who's a community, uh, who's the community that hosted the vigil I attended last night. Um, and who, yeah, I'll just I'll start by sharing this statement and go from there.

[27:13] Micah Rose: On the evening of February 23rd, Chad Ba'ok, Drain Muho, Ele Jin Balonga, and their two drivers, Robert Aragon and Tirso Arnyar, were massacred by the armed forces of the Philippines, AFP in Nubataan de Valda Oro, while coming home from a visit to rural communities in southern Mindanao. Soon after, the Army Division responsible boasted about the brutal massacre on their Facebook page, falsely accusing the five victims of being armed members of the New People's Army, uh, one of the longest running uh communist forces, armed communist forces in my in my home of the Philippines, uh, and claiming that they, the Nubataan five, were quote, killed in an encounter, close quote. However, the families living in the surrounding communities of Nubataan stated that they never witnessed nor heard any gunfire fight.

In truth, the victims were unarmed civilians who had been active in supporting the Lumad indigenous struggle for self-determination. They were deliberately targeted by the AFP because of the far-reaching impact of their service. The statement continues more into depth of these people's lives. They are teachers, they are medical practitioners who serve the Lumad struggle. And what is happening right now in the Philippines and the Philippines continues to be a colony of the United States and American global capitalism, even though it was granted so-called independence sometime after World War II question mark. And what that has meant for our communities in the Philippines is that this NTF LCAC bill has been passed that criminalizes communism to the extent that if, like these individuals, this community, these familia, when they are stopped by the armed military of the Philippines and asked to denounce to denounce Lumad struggle and voice support for the NTF El CAC bill, that if they chose not to, which they chose not to, they chose not to endorse this bill on public record, they were executed, extra legally executed.

And not even for being communist, for simply working with indigenous communities. So this is how global imperialism continues to criminalize indigenous peoples, the masses who are organizing it against tremendous violences.

[30:02] Micah Rosegrant: And so this is just like a slice of the realm of, and even I am critically distant, right, from these on the ground realities. But thinking of Joy James and what she writes about secondary and tertiary trauma, like being in organizing communities, and you know, the people who radicalize me are the people who were living and working with Chad and Gerain back home in the Philippines. These are the realities that I'm connected to that are to me historically undivorceable from the violences that are the center point of the stories of Madame Butterfly and of MISS SAIGON. Those stories do not exist without all of the historical context of how America showed up in these motherlands for us. And so it is excruciatingly violent to me that in our American bourgeois and petite bourgeoisie classes, we are continuing to have these debates around like, oh, can we perform this?

How do we do that? How many Asian academics and like high-tier artists can we platform to create a case to argue that oh we can still do this, and oh it's good because it's still paying us, and it's just like stop, please stop, because we are still dying of these very things that you claim to be divorced from our reality.

[31:27] Micah Rosegrant: Um I want to cite one more historical tracing of this, which is that two years ago in 2020, our dictator president Duterte pardoned US military officer Pemberton for killing in cold blood Jennifer Laude, a trans woman who he had romantically approached and then slain, as his tradition of multiple trans panic defenses in the US and abroad. And he never served jail sentence in a Philippine prison. He was kept safe by the US military base through which he was able to exist in the Philippines, through which he was able to pursue quote unquote justice and be freed and returned back to his home country after enacting this violence on our people. So when I see when I see Kim, when I see Chocho, when when we, you know, not even I, but but globally, this we of peoples, we we are not separable from the ongoing violences from the ongoing state of the world.

And so it's so wild to me that we can continue to isolate and bubble these conversations like they are not deeply connected to the transformation the world needs to undergo to end these telling of stories for new ones.

[33:12] Micah Rosegrant: I mean, bringing in so much context around, you know, we we hear the conversations, um, and it's I really appreciate how much specificity and care you just brought to sort of laying out so many things that I feel like in theatrical spaces when we talk about these works, when we, you know, quote unquote open up the can of worms that is MISS SAIGON, so much is kept vague. So I very much appreciate how much there is no other word for it, but the specificity and the care that you just brought um for the listeners out there um for the larger larger conversation around the works in this books. Um thank you. I'd I'd love to know um as I'm sitting here with two young theater leaders um who are my age and or younger, um, who I mean I read a smattering of your credits at the beginning, but really are theater leaders and are already doing so much work.

How is this specificity this reality? How is this affecting the work that you are both doing? If we can sort of come away from MISS SAIGON just for a moment and just sort of hear about like what does this look like for the future of our art form? Um, and I'd also if if you have anything coming up with ATAB or anything you wanted to talk about there, I'd love to hear that from both of you as well.

[35:03] Sarah Shin: Um yeah. Um I think we're based on Yeah, based on kind of the history and the traditions of what is in there or what what it what it has existed in the theater um and with what's happening in the day to day in our world um I am in a place of I I joke about it but I kind of am serious about it of just no more trauma. I I don't want to I don't wanna I don't want to be sad. I'm I'm sad in my day to day or I'm exhausted in my day to day by the tra by trauma by being reminded of trauma that I see something happening in the news that affecting me and I've seen I've seen I've read um these plays um and um recently I've also just in my past gigs have done a lot of things that are um centering Korean and Korean American people which has been nice but also um has made me think a lot about audience and why am I doing this and and uh who am I doing this for and why I and I want it to be for me um so or for like my community but if it's just to explain and be a tour guide for others then it's just not as fulfilling so something um so I I kind of am interested going forward in um I want to create more theater and works that it's like ridiculous and stupid.

Like it's like I wanna, or it, or it's just like imagining, imagining a better future. Um, just making being that change, being the new thing that I want to see rather than responding to or reacting to um trying to emerge from trying to pull myself away from the from the harmful things in our history. Just just making the new thing, just starting the new idea, um, and starting a new conversation, I think is kind of what my um my energies have been going.

[37:21] Sarah Shin: Um so with ATAB, um, what we've been um working on this past year is a program called Found in Tran Translation, um playing on Lost in Translation, but and um thinking a lot about how um we're it's it's a reading series that is plays that are bilingual, or or we're attempting to bring together talk about being multilingual um through these plays. And um we did a um play called Chosen Family by Jessica Lou Pelletier, um, that was these uh Vietnamese American students in Vietnamese school, um, bond having being being their chosen family in multiple ways in their Vietnamese-ness and also queerness. Um and then right now we're doing um staged readings of this play called A Deal by Zhu Yi, and we're doing an English version and a Mandarin version.

And the point is to to see what what is different when you um are watching in different languages. Um, or or just like what is what hits people differently. Um, and then in the summer, we'll be doing a radio play called The Ghost of Keelong um by Jamie Lin. That'll be a radio play, outdoors, and kind of more on the lighthearted fun side, but it's still like a Taiwanese um folk tale, I believe. Um, and just really being interested, we're more just trying to get more Asian communities interested into the theater rather than showing maybe potentially a white theater audience more Asian representation. Like we kind of are just redirecting our focus in that way to get and and um be to center those experiences where English is not the only language that um, or it's just not the language that they're using and and making them feel involved and included in in the theater.

Um and that just is really fulfilling to me. And it's also something we're doing um with PAO Arts Center and Chuang Stage. Um so it's just like all it's like we're we're our squad, our API, a API squad working together to just make things for A API people.

[39:38] Micah Rosegrant: That's amazing. Thank you for sharing all that. Yeah. Micah, did you have anything that came to mind? Anything that you wanted to add, either about your own work or about uh the found in translation or other works with ATAP.

[39:53] Micah Rosegrant: Yeah, I mean, I'll say that like I've taken a bit of a step away from my uh time like producing with ATAB. Um I'm still very much online with them and and keeping in touch with all of the incredible world building happening. And it's it's such a like pleasure to to get to be in creative community there. Um, but we always founded it as like a a grounds for connection and social time and and I think um the way that like uh life's moved to me has been um into uh into a uh a time of questioning like whether theater is even like the vehicle and medium that like I I can care about and still feel passion for sort of for all of the I don't know histories and cognitive dissonances I was like rousing earlier.

And and so yet and that said um sort of inspired by Sarah and I both worked on clairvoyance um when Diana O was here um and uh I uh assistant directed for Dragon Cycle when Sarah Porkalab was here. And I'd say like truly that year I think absolutely changed my life and what I believed was possible because those to me didn't even and we and we programmed with ATAB to go see those events and seeing them in community with others was so powerful. I think it it it it it led Sarah and I down uh into it drove like furthered us deeper into the sort of like soaring and blooming I feel like we're in a season of now um and uh so for me that's that's manifested uh as uh uh uh an artist residency at Company One Theater called we and other queer goddesses uh and so I'm co-creating this with Alison Chu of Chong Stage and Africa Smith um who's multi-hyphenite artist but also a producer at C1.

And so together the three of us are are looking at we and other queer goddesses as a series of gatherings that um really honors the the global lineages of theater as a space to to commune with what is sacred to us. And it and it centers queer and trans peoples, peoples of color. And in a sharing space around, like Sarah is saying, the future we care about already living in, instead of dealing with like all we address the ongoing and historical harms by tending to what's next and what is already there and what has all been, right? And so that we launched with Tea for Tea, which was an online tea brewing event. And so yeah, I'm really excited. We're going to be doing some altar installations at the Boston Public Library, along with like zine-making workshops and other stuff like that.

And so this is just like really, I think a space of science fiction of what uh like Sarah and I's like larger values and missions are as like uh creators and world builders. Um and uh there's one more thing. Oh yeah, and and I just I I think what I was saying earlier about like what already has been is so important to me because um I think it's just so crucial that that we get in touch with our community instead of the genealogy of the white dominant American theater field and industry, like like the American musical theater industrial complex, if you want to call it, um, because it is tied right to the like uh nonprofit industrial complex, to the academic industrial complex, which also, by the way, like side notes that we can't even get into this, but like all of those different projects are actually really related to uh state projects of surveillance, um, looking at ways that American arts funding has been uh uh uh what is the phrase?

[44:59] Micah Rosegrant: Uh let's just say the CIA and the FBI have very strategically funded what pedagogy was taught from the 70s and 80s and continues to be the literal academic pedagogies and syllabi we experience today in writers' workshops, in uh American theater training. Um I think we have to be really critical and aware of that and actually delve into that history. Um if we are folks who are you know entrenched in in academic sides of these art forms. Um so I think uh for me it's just been so crucial to tap back into the the community uh genealogy of art making, because um, yeah, queer and trans peoples of color making space in Boston for us to exist is heavily precedented, also heavily suppressed. But communities like Unbound Bodies Collective here in Boston, for example, are pursuing incredible projects like their current one, Roots and Futures, which essentially creates the space for them to ask like, how did we, unbound bodies, get to be where we are today as a black, queer, trans-led uh arts collective creating living altars and creating um yeah, like visionary uh artistic creative experiences and experiments by tracing back like the larger history of Boston's specifically black queer artistic creative communities.

Um yeah, and so so relating connecting more to to these ancestries has been deeply fulfilling and deeply um needed as we continue to form a more, I'd say, organized response and organized resistance to the traditional ways that we've thought of opportunity being able to exist um or being gifted or given.

[47:00] Micah Rosegrant: Next, I'm chatting with Liana Santa Ana, who was the alternate for Kim in the most recent Broadway revival of MISS SAIGON. Liana, thank you for chatting with me today.

[47:12] Liana Santa Ana: Yeah, thank you for having me.

[47:14] Micah Rosegrant: I'm excited to be in conversation with you. So tell me a little bit about your obviously intimate relationship with the musical MISS SAIGON. How does that sort of begin for you?

[47:28] Liana Santa Ana: Right. Um, so I think I grew up always having the soundtrack playing in my house. My mom was really obsessed with the musical. She's a big Lea Salonga fan, as I'm sure many Filipinos are. So yeah, it it was always a part of my childhood. I remember like just listening to the soundtrack in the car when I was like a toddler and being like what what's happening in this part? And my mom would like explain the story to me. It's a pretty intense story to be hearing when you're young. But yeah, it's always been part of my growing up as a young Filipino woman. And when I started getting interested in acting it was always, you know, oh Kim in MISS SAIGON is the Asian role for for Asian female women. So it was always something that I aspired to.

It was always like a dream role for me. And then the revival announced that it was coming back to Broadway and I was right I was 16, 17 years old at the time so it was like a perfect age. The timing just worked out great. So I auditioned for it at 16 years old. It was a year long audition process. But at the end of the day it ended up working out that I got offered the alternate and I I was in SAIGON from 17 to 18 years old. I was in a senior in high school when I did it um going back and forth from school. So yeah, I it's it's wild that I like graduated high school at the same time I was like doing a show at night. Um but yeah, it it it was a big part of me coming into my personhood and coming into my adulthood and finding out who I am in the world and how I navigate it as a Filipina woman.

[49:25] Micah Rosegrant: Would you say that having the chance to audition for and then play this role? Did that at all change your relationship with the character of Kim or with the context of this musical in general?

[49:39] Liana Santa Ana: I think my relationship to the show has changed a lot since I initially auditioned for it and was in it. Um yeah, I I don't think I would like to at this point um just just my relationship to the show in general has changed a lot. Um yeah, I sorry.

[50:01] Micah Rosegrant: Yeah, how do you think it has changed? How has it developed?

[50:05] Liana Santa Ana: Um I it's I truly I think it's a problematic show now, the content of it. Um like on the one hand I am so grateful for the people that I met, the family that I made doing SAIGON, and also the really I feel so grateful that my first professional experience was I was surrounded by so many Asians. Um and so I felt really supported in that environment. Um but also you know it's it's a show that's written by a white team that was still held by an all-white team, cis pet, no uh not head, um, but cis white team, you know. So it it now my view of MISS SAIGON is that it's a it's a the it creates an image of Asian people, of Asian women, not from the perspective of Asian people, despite it employing, you know, Asian bodies on stage.

What struck me more and more as I was doing SAIGON and the years following is that how we're represented on stages is also something that we have to think about. And you know, yes, Kim is this like strong character. Um all of the women in that show necessarily had to be strong, but the it's also so traumatic, you know, um doing that show, witnessing it, um, and like bearing that history. Um and in certain ways I think MISS SAIGON romanticizes a lot of trauma that Asian women specifically went through and are still going through because of Western imperialism. Um, you know, at the end of the day, we just have to ask what that representation is ultimately doing, and who is it serving? Because I don't know if it's serving Asian women, yeah.

[52:25] Micah Rosegrant: Do you think if there are producers listening to this podcast, do you have thoughts in your mind of how someone could approach MISS SAIGON if they wanted to revive it again or produce it elsewhere and sort of come to terms with that reality of the show, that it's maybe standing on the shoulders of trauma but not representing it in a healthy or productive way?

[52:54] Liana Santa Ana: Um I I mean I think the first step would be to employ Asian people behind the scenes, you know. Um have give the director, have the director be an Asian female, what an Asian woman, like if she wants to take up that role. Um but then again, like I also think it's a lot of labor to ask of you know, if the show were to come back and like if it were helmed by Asian people, like I think it's a lot of labor to ask to like make it better, like make it consumable. Um so like it it feels like an educational props project that like once again people of color are tasked to do. Right. Um so you know, I don't I don't know if like bringing the show back is something that I'd really love to see there, cause mostly because I think there are just there's so many more shows that are being written and are written about you know Asian people that I think could serve us better.

[54:07] Micah Rosegrant: So if there are listeners out there who their only concept around Asian representation on the stage is MISS SAIGON, or is you know, a soundtrack with Lea Salonga, do you have artists who are working today, or theater companies or groups or productions, or anything really that you would urge people to check out that you maybe think gives a better look at Asian representation in theater?

[54:37] Liana Santa Ana: Yes. I well, one show specifically is coming to mind. I really loved Cambodian Rock Band.

[54:45] Micah Rosegrant: Okay.

[54:45] Liana Santa Ana: Um it's by Lauren Yi. Um, I saw it at was it wasn't a secret. I I don't know. It was somewhere. Um, but it was I just thought it was such I thought it was so much it did it did a better job at addressing trauma in a way that didn't feel like exploitative of Asians on stage.

[55:15] Micah Rosegrant: Um thank you so very much for chatting with me today. This was really wonderful.

[55:19] Liana Santa Ana: Thank you.

[55:22] Micah Rosegrant: Yeah, of course. And with us today is the author of that chapter, Jeanmarie Higgins of Pennsylvania State University. A new works dramaturg, Jeanmarie publishes widely on the intersection of theory and practice. She is the editor of Teaching Critical Performance Theory in today's theater classroom, studio, and communities. And her performance criticism is published in Theatre Journal, Partake, Journal of Performance as Research and Theatre and the Macabre from University of Wales Press. Jeanmarie, I am so honored that you are joining us today. How are you?

[55:57] Jeanmarie Higgins: I'm doing great. Thank you so much.

[55:59] Micah Rosegrant: Thank you. So the first question we've been asking all of our authors is why is your show a key musical?

[56:10] Jeanmarie Higgins: MISS SAIGON is a key musical because it became a way for people to talk about race and casting in a moment in American history when we were at war. And race was forefront in everyone's mind. So sometimes a show comes along that encourages us to talk about the larger world. And this is one of them specifically about race and within our industry, within our field about casting.

[56:44] Micah Rosegrant: And you know, we when we submitted the list of potential shows uh for you to choose from, this is the one that you chose. What was it about this experience of MISS SAIGON that made you want to codify it for future readers?

[56:58] Jeanmarie Higgins: Well, I saw it uh, you know, uh on Broadway when it opened here in New York. And I remember having uh a very strong reaction to it. I was really young, and so I kind of wanted to reconstruct that experience. Um, and now that I'm older to understand what it was that I was feeling. Um, there were certain moments of the show that I found really um uh shocking, and uh, but not the not the moments of the show that were supposed to be shocking.

[57:32] Micah Rosegrant: Such as what?

[57:33] Jeanmarie Higgins: Such as what? Well, you know, the helicopter was um in the, you know, of course, if you if you know about the sort of the stage craft of MISS SAIGON, that this flying helicopter was the big draw. It, you know, there's a there's kind of a schematic, um, like watercolor ish uh drawing, you know, drawing of it on the poster. Um, and it you're supposed to go to the show because you're going to see a helicopter fly on stage. Um, and ultimately, um, it depended on where you were sitting in the audience for that effect to have the effect that it needed to have, not unlike the ceiling falling in for Phantom of the Opera. Um, when I went to see that in college, I had very uh inexpensive seats and I watched the ceiling recede from me and and fall on someone very, very far below me.

Um, and um it was actually sort of a comic moment. Not that the helicopter in MISS SAIGON was comic for me, but I I didn't understand what the big fuss was about when I saw it. It didn't really impress me.

[58:45] Micah Rosegrant: And do you think dramatically it would have been more effective had we not even seen that helicopter and we could have focused on the human emotion of that moment?

[58:53] Jeanmarie Higgins: Yeah, you know, that's really well said. I think that your attention in that moment is divided between the people and the machine. And now that I'm older and I think about things like this a lot when I see theater, that there was an there was a focus on um the stagecraft on what the musical could do, uh what this producing team could do um versus the life and death moment that they were depicting on stage. Um and really the the stage is kind of divided into two parts in that scene.

[59:25] Micah Rosegrant: Let me ask you do you think that the problems began with the casting of Jonathan Pryce as a European actor to play an Asian character, or do you think it starts even earlier with the team that's assembled to tell this particular story?

[59:40] Jeanmarie Higgins: Oh, it's absolutely the team that's assembled to tell the story. And as I write in my chapter, the more that I dug into the casting process for this show, the more I believe that the casting of Kim was a far more horrifying process in terms of uh, you know, how it was done and and how the actors were um were uh were treated, uh versus this casting of Jonathan Pryce, who was a star, I mean, not a musical star, but certainly a very, very well-known actor um in England.

[1:00:15] Jeanmarie Higgins: And uh so my interest really shifted. Um, but yeah, I believe it started very early in the team's decision that they should be the ones to tell this story, um, and that the story is going to focus on a young Asian woman, and that they were the ones to cast that young Asian woman. So it started way before the Jonathan Pryce controversy.

[1:00:43] Andrew Child: One of the things that you talk about in your chapter, which I I will be honest with you, I read it once and then I start over and I read it again because I just I find it so fascinating, is this audition process for the role of Kim, which was documented. Can you tell us, for those of us who might be unfamiliar with the role of Kim in MISS SAIGON, what is the essence of that particular character? And then we'll talk about uh how they auditioned actresses for this role.

[1:01:13] Jeanmarie Higgins: Yeah. So, as a lot of people will know, the source material for MISS SAIGON is Madame Butterfly. So there is a woman who is left behind after um a man leaves her, and the show becomes about in MISS SAIGON. This is transferred to you know Vietnam in the 70s. And there is a um Kim wants nothing more than to, as she actually actually says to be an American. I should be an American, she says, and um, or I should be American. So what happens in the shift that MISS SAIGON makes from the you know the the source material is that um Kim longs to have a certain um nationality, and to do that she needs um an American man. Um and that's you know, that's that's the role of Kim is someone who is uh trying to deal with the fact that someone left her behind um and still she pines for this person.

Um and in the end, she doesn't end up with him. So it's you know, it it it really is a tragedy about a young woman who um is sort of is discarded. Um and that's certainly not um real that's not good marketing for a musical. Um yeah, so the the response then from the team, in my opinion, was to make Kim a very strong quote unquote character so that we don't feel terrible when she's destroyed. And uh yeah, and and so and you know, and in the staging, it's reinforced in the staging, it's reinforced in the music, it's reinforced in the lyrics, but it's really um the casting that really brings it home because they you know they launched this worldwide, you know, casting process to find the perfect Kim.

And the way they described Kim's character was that she needs to be uh she needs um to be uh sort of I think they called it uh something like hopelessly charming, but she also needs to be able to sing American music. So she and she needs to do that, she needs lungs of steel. So what I latched on to is this idea that she has to be 18, she has to be very charming so that this GI will fall in love with her, make that plausible, and she has to be able to sing American music. And there was a lot of talk in the casting process about whether an Asian actor would be able to sing quote unquote American music.

[1:03:48] Yes, that popped up.

[1:03:49] Jeanmarie Higgins: And you know, before we did our interview today, I wanted to go back and rewatch this documentary, and I was sickened by a lot of it. Um, but one of the things I found so fascinating was one of the creators, and the camera's not on the individual at the time, says, quote, you've got to understand the plot. You know, it's a it's orientalism, right? They're assuming that anyone who is um brought up in um what they would would have called an Eastern culture would not have any knowledge of Western forms, uh, which of course is not true.

[1:04:20] Andrew Child: Yeah.

[1:04:21] Jeanmarie Higgins: Um, and so they were worried that she wouldn't, you know, the actor playing Kim would not be able to understand the plot because maybe she was too young, maybe she didn't have the language facility, yes, but also that she wouldn't know, um, she wouldn't understand the references to the European opera on which it's based. Let's imagine that we have a time machine and you can go back into into either that audition room or into the writer's room before they even get into auditions. What would you like to see changed?

[1:04:52] Micah Rosegrant: I would uh ask them to assemble a team of artists where the Asian community is represented forcefully and legibly. I would uh have asked them to, when they went on this retreat in, you know, in in Provence, I think it was, to write, you know, to hammer out the the plot and the the script, um, I would have brought a whole team of people with me to talk about the ways that, you know, talk about the legacies of of the Vietnam War, the legacies of France in Vietnam, the legacies of the United States in Vietnam, so that uh instead of superimposing the story of uh Kim onto this Western story um that they might have learned from storytelling, um ways of storytelling from other cultures, maybe even Vietnamese culture, um, or to uh to reconfigure the character so that she has more um has more agency, that you don't need to rely on the actor to be really, really charming, quote unquote.

I don't even know what that means, um, or really strong, you know. Uh what if she really got to um in some senses win? And I mean win uh what she wants. Why does this why does the story have to end the way that it ends in the source text? It doesn't.

[1:06:18] Jeanmarie Higgins: Do you feel that the creative team is relying on an actor to solve problems that are obvious in the text that they don't know how to solve per se?

[1:06:26] Micah Rosegrant: Well, I think, well, I don't know. I think Broadway does that all the time. You know, I think that um, you know, the idea of casting is not um always about, you know, the actor who can uh you know best interpret the role. It's the sort of the talent of the actor or the star power of the actor, the name recognition of the actor. And that's why it's so difficult to have um a casting process with any integrity once you start talking about selling tickets for, I think the in 1991 the tickets for MISS SAIGON were over $100, which at the time was completely crazy. You know, that was the highest a ticket has had been, I believe.

[1:07:05] Jeanmarie Higgins: Oh, yes.

[1:07:10] Andrew Child: So yes.

[1:07:12] Jeanmarie Higgins: So yes.

[1:07:13] Andrew Child: So yes.

[1:07:15] Andrew Child: Let's uh pivot now, if we may, and we'll come, I know we'll come back to the role of Kim and Lea Salonga. Um, Jonathan Pryce as the engineer, which is really what started off this entire discussion. You you have found brilliantly another discussion to be had that really was not being discussed at the time. But the primary discussion is this idea of Jonathan Pryce being cast as the engineer. Can you tell us, if you know, why was there no discussion amongst the the team or how did it get so far that they allowed this European actor to play a character of Asian descent?

[1:07:51] Micah Rosegrant: That I don't know. I I don't uh I don't know, um, and I'm not sure I could know how that decision was made. Uh but some of the some of the facts around you know, Price's career um make it a strange choice to begin with. Um, because he was not a musical theater actor, and uh no one really thought of him as a musical theater actor. So uh it it kind of strains the imagination, but I really don't know.

[1:08:21] Andrew Child: Do you think um had he been anything but Asian? So, for example, if it was uh supposed to be a black character and they put a white actor in black face, do you think there would have been more controversy?

[1:08:33] Micah Rosegrant: Well, okay, so that's a really easy question and a really hard question. So the easy the easy part of the question is yes, of course it would be um minstrelsea is this sort of transcendental signifier for racism in our culture. And yellow face for some reason passes more easily in our culture than blackface does. Um, but yellow face is a real thing with a real history.

[1:08:54] Jeanmarie Higgins: Um, so that's the easy answer.

[1:08:56] Micah Rosegrant: And the tough answer is, I don't know. Um, you know, there's it's um blackface is never as bold as it would have appeared in you know the 1840s in New York City, right? Yes.

[1:09:10] Jeanmarie Higgins: Um, it's subtle.

[1:09:12] Micah Rosegrant: And and so um, you know, this sort of the the makeup on the engineer was very bold, but to make him Eurasian, as they they argued, um it it involved, you know, just just makeup, really. And you know, when you watch the audition document or the the the rehear the making of MISS SAIGON documentary that you refer to so often in your chapter, the first shot of it is Jonathan Pryce in full makeup.

[1:09:42] Jeanmarie Higgins: And uh it is horrifying.

[1:09:44] Micah Rosegrant: It is absolutely horrifying. Once again, we don't have a crystal ball or a time machine. Had he played the engineer in London from the beginning without any makeup on whatsoever, do you think that there would have still been this controversy? Or is it the act of putting on yellow face that moved it into the discourse?

[1:10:05] Jeanmarie Higgins: I think in 1991, it was especially the latter, right? I don't want to, I don't want to hedge. I want to actually answer your question, and I'm gonna say it is the yellow face that that is the problem. Um, to have an actor um of one who identifies with one race or ethnicity play someone who is mixed of another race or ethnicity in 1991, that might have gone by without much comment. Where it it it but Price's makeup, especially was a way for the um Asian American actor community to channel its point, right? So it was almost like they were given, uh, unfortunately given like the perfect sort of case study to argue that hey, not only is this happening, um, the actors in this cast are not Asian. Um, not only is this happening, but we need more United States actors in this play.

And moreover, if you do a survey about representation on stage of Asian of Asian people and Asian American people, you'll find that Asians in 1991 are practically invisible. And strangely, that doesn't change much until very recently, but such a large percent uh percentage of Asians who are represented on stage now on Broadway come from Hamilton, come from one show.

[1:11:28] Micah Rosegrant: So it's not a wide swath across commercial theater in New York. It's really one show that's giving this workout.

[1:11:35] Jeanmarie Higgins: A significant percentage, yeah.

[1:11:37] Micah Rosegrant: I can't remember the exact number, but yeah.

[1:11:39] Andrew Child: And let's imagine that show closes, which of course it won't, but let's imagine that it does. That number drops incredibly wow.

[1:11:50] Jeanmarie Higgins: That did not realize that. I was watching um a talk show appearance with Jonathan Pryce when uh it was was appearing in London, and the talk show host asks Jonathan Pryce, you know, tell me about the makeup. And the host actually puts his hands to his eyes and pulls his eyes back to signify the makeup, which is offensive in itself. But then Jonathan Pryce says, and I quote him, I'd rather be there without them. Meaning that he would rather be doing the performance without the prosthetics. If Jonathan Price is such a highly established actor that can get cast into a musical without any sort of prior musical experience, did he not have the clout to say, I don't want to wear this?

[1:12:33] Micah Rosegrant: I I think my character can speak for itself or the audience can use their imagination.

[1:12:38] Jeanmarie Higgins: Yeah, and again, I really don't know because as you know, um my my poor editor, um, I got off on a different path and I just ran with it.

[1:12:48] Micah Rosegrant: No, I love it.

[1:12:50] Jeanmarie Higgins: I love it. But but yeah, the um I don't know. Um, and you know, being a college professor right now in a theater department, I think about what my students would say, and they would not want him to play the part no matter what. Period. Done. Period. End of story. But back in 1991, it was uh you you got a pass as long as you were not putting on yellow face, which is the sin that was committed here was that crossover.

[1:13:20] Micah Rosegrant: Yeah, and this is anecdotal and just one example. But when I saw MISS SAIGON, I remember that um is it Foy? Is that how you pronounce the character's name? Um was played by a Latino man, and I remember that because it was someone I'd worked with on projects, and I was excited to. He gave us a backstage tour, actually. Now that I think of it. Um I brought some high school students with me that I was teaching at the time, and so um, but again, uh, you know, not an Asian actor, but playing an Asian character, but playing an Asian character more convincingly because his skin was darker. And I don't know if they they uh put makeup on him to make his skin a different color. Um I don't know. So it seems like there was just this idea of passing what could what could pass, and we'll put that in the show and hopefully no one will say anything.

[1:14:10] Andrew Child: Okay, so now let's talk a little bit about when this show comes to New York City, the controversy that it sparks, and then how that discussion is still happening today. Can you walk us through a little bit about the reaction to the from the various unions of when they announce we're bringing in MISS SAIGON with a $33 million advance, by the way, in ticket sales, which is which is pretty healthy, with Jonathan Pryce repeating his role.

[1:14:36] Micah Rosegrant: Yeah, I don't know about the I don't know about the union's response, unfortunately, Rob, but I do what I do know is the so I can working backwards, I can tell you about the critics' response. Um polls of, you know, where people sort of like fell down on this, um, because Ms. Saigon has arguably the most famous uh review of any Broadway show ever in The Village Voice.

[1:15:03] Andrew Child: Um, that says you know, every I'm not gonna quote it correctly, but it's but it's the title of the um the title of the review is Heat Seeking Bomb.

[1:15:14] Jeanmarie Higgins: So uh yeah, and so the voice basically said that uh, you know, every every culture gets the theater it deserves, and we have MISS SAIGON.

[1:15:27] Andrew Child: Yes.

[1:15:28] Jeanmarie Higgins: Uh I will I have the quote right in front of me uh from your from your wonderful chapter, and it you're it says every civilization gets the theater it deserves, and we get MISS SAIGON, which means we can now say definitively that our civilization is over.

[1:15:28] Andrew Child: That our civilization is over, yeah.

[1:15:44] Jeanmarie Higgins: Uh that's that is a infamous, infamous critical review.

[1:15:50] Andrew Child: You know, uh talking a little bit about what actors equity's position was, Colleen Dewhurst at the time, uh, she called it a minstrel show, I believe.

[1:15:59] Jeanmarie Higgins: Yeah, she did.

[1:16:00] Andrew Child: Yet, and then Cameron Macintosh, as I understand it, said fine if if you're not gonna allow him to play the role.

[1:16:07] Jeanmarie Higgins: Then I won't bring it to, yeah, then I won't bring it to New York.

[1:16:10] Andrew Child: None of your actors will work.

[1:16:12] Jeanmarie Higgins: Where were if you know the answer to this question?

[1:16:17] Andrew Child: This is the only show I think at this time in New York that would have had a dearth of opportunities.

[1:16:24] Jeanmarie Higgins: I'm sorry, a wealth of opportunities for Asian American or Asian performers.

[1:16:29] Andrew Child: And by Macintosh saying, I'm not coming in, sort of like Hamilton closing, it just drops everything to about you know zero percent. Do you know how that community particularly felt?

[1:16:41] Jeanmarie Higgins: I'm assuming it was a tug of war, which is we yeah, I'm sorry, go ahead.

[1:16:45] Andrew Child: Yes.

[1:16:45] Jeanmarie Higgins: No, it was. It was a tug of war, and without knowing sort of the tiny details, I do know that they came to an agreement and did hire more uh United States actors and did hire more Asian actors.

[1:16:58] Andrew Child: And so in that regard it worked, but they didn't win.

[1:17:01] Jeanmarie Higgins: Um they didn't win with the engineer.

[1:17:05] Andrew Child: And do you know so Jonathan Pryce was able to come over?

[1:17:08] Jeanmarie Higgins: I believe he was, yeah.

[1:17:09] Andrew Child: And yes, didn't he?

[1:17:10] Jeanmarie Higgins: Yeah.

[1:17:11] Andrew Child: Oh, oh yeah, he played the role.

[1:17:12] Jeanmarie Higgins: But I did I see him see?

[1:17:13] Andrew Child: I barely read it's so interesting.

[1:17:14] Jeanmarie Higgins: I barely remember him.

[1:17:16] Andrew Child: But again, this is many, many moons ago, right?

[1:17:19] Jeanmarie Higgins: Like I remember this show so well, but I just don't remember him.

[1:17:22] Andrew Child: Well, according to the producers, he was the only one that could do it.

[1:17:25] Jeanmarie Higgins: So it's it's sad that his performance is somewhat for regrettable in your memory.

[1:17:30] Andrew Child: Um it's he was the only one, apparently.

[1:17:33] Jeanmarie Higgins: But it was a charisma performance.

[1:17:36] Andrew Child: I kind of remember that.

[1:17:37] Jeanmarie Higgins: It was like a yeah, yeah.

[1:17:38] Andrew Child: And he spoke a lot of the he wasn't a great singer, and there was a lot of sort of like vaudeville type of dancing.

[1:17:44] Jeanmarie Higgins: I mean, this is like like you know, me in my 20s remembering something.

[1:17:48] Andrew Child: So who knows?

[1:17:49] Jeanmarie Higgins: Uh no, of course, you know, I was I I went down to Lincoln Center a while ago to watch it again.

[1:17:53] Andrew Child: And you're absolutely right.

[1:17:54] Jeanmarie Higgins: It's first of all, it's I don't know what world he's supposed to be a part of because it's very vaudevillian.

[1:18:00] Andrew Child: Yeah, it's very vaudevillian.

[1:18:02] Jeanmarie Higgins: I do remember that.

[1:18:02] Andrew Child: And he speaks in a very almost New York City speak dialect.

[1:18:08] Jeanmarie Higgins: It's it's it's interesting.

[1:18:10] Andrew Child: It's interesting.

[1:18:10] Jeanmarie Higgins: But he did win the Tony Award for it.

[1:18:13] Andrew Child: So, and that the agreement was that he would not wear the yellow face makeup, but he could still do the role.

[1:18:20] Jeanmarie Higgins: What do you think that message is sent to the community when it says we're not only gonna bring him over, we're gonna give him the Tony Award for it?

[1:18:29] Andrew Child: What what message does that send out to the Asian and Asian American community?

[1:18:34] Jeanmarie Higgins: Well, that I mean, I I that the Tony Awards really don't reflect much about what constitutes an excellent performance in that time and place.

[1:18:46] Andrew Child: I mean, I'm not a musical theater historian.

[1:18:49] Jeanmarie Higgins: I'm an historian, I'm a theorist, you know.

[1:18:51] Jeanmarie Higgins: I'm really interested in, you know, um casting practices and representation, but um for me, as kind of an outsider to musical theater in a way, sort of an outsider insider.

[1:19:03] Andrew Child: Um, to me, I think, oh, the Tonies does, yes, I understand that that is the highest award that is given for a performance in a Broadway show, but does it matter?

[1:19:13] Jeanmarie Higgins: Of course, it matters where where it matters, right?

[1:19:16] Jeanmarie Higgins: Not in terms of like who's the best actor, where it matters is who's going to work in the future and how much money you are going to command for you know your performances in the future.

[1:19:26] Jeanmarie Higgins: Um, you know, Broadway's a commercial enterprise.

[1:19:31] Andrew Child: So that's that.

[1:19:31] Jeanmarie Higgins: But in terms of, you know, actors, I don't know.

[1:19:34] Jeanmarie Higgins: It gets very, very complicated for me and also very simple when I think when I think, well, I don't know.

[1:19:39] Jeanmarie Higgins: I mean, it really is about uh it really is about money, um, the Tonies.

[1:19:45] Jeanmarie Higgins: So to me, it's you know, it's basically saying there's a certain kind of way to give a Tour de Force performance.

[1:19:53] Jeanmarie Higgins: This is the way to do that.

[1:19:56] Jeanmarie Higgins: And this is the person we're going to give the award to.

[1:20:00] Jeanmarie Higgins: The fact that it wasn't an Asian actor, given the opportunity to have that role, is just, you know, insult to injury, I would imagine.

[1:20:08] Andrew Child: Frank Rich of the New York Times uh commented on the the uh the the not allowing Jonathan Pryce to come over as as the initial discussion saying, quote, uh the barring of Mr. Price is insupportable on every level by refusing to permit a white actor to play a Eurasian role, equity makes a mockery of the hard won principles of non-traditional casting and practices, a hypocritical reverse racism.

[1:20:36] Jeanmarie Higgins: Thoughts on that particular quote, especially through a 21st century lens of a discussion that we're going through today.

[1:20:43] Jeanmarie Higgins: Yeah, and then I think he goes on to talk about, well, by the same rule, wouldn't we say that Morgan Freeman should not have been able to play, I forget who it was, Oberon or He was no, yeah, and that's it's Cameron Macintosh who backed up Rich and he was playing Petruchio in Taming of the Church.

[1:21:02] Andrew Child: Right, right, right, right.

[1:21:03] Jeanmarie Higgins: So yeah, to say, well, then by that um by that token, no pun intended or pun intended, um, you know, Morgan Freeman shouldn't have played this Shakespearean, you know, character.

[1:21:17] Andrew Child: Um yeah, well, it's this uh quote unquote reverse racism that that that held sway there for a while.

[1:21:26] Jeanmarie Higgins: It really feeds into the Wilson Brewstein debates of you know, '91 or is it '91, I think it was when they were at town hall.

[1:21:33] Andrew Child: Can you illuminate our listeners a little bit about that debate?

[1:21:37] Jeanmarie Higgins: Sure.

[1:21:37] Jeanmarie Higgins: So uh the way that I understand it, you know, Robert Brustine, who I believe was the artistic director at ART at the time.

[1:21:45] Jeanmarie Higgins: Correct.

[1:21:46] Jeanmarie Higgins: Um wrote this um crazy essay about how uh there are a lot of new plays happening right now.

[1:21:53] Jeanmarie Higgins: And the only really what he's saying is the only attraction that these plays have is that they're written by people who are not white.

[1:22:00] Jeanmarie Higgins: And that in addition to doing plays by people who are not white, we should do good plays, sort of saying that, you know, these plays are not good, they're just by people of color.

[1:22:09] Jeanmarie Higgins: Um, and uh he in other places has argued that uh for for what we think of now as colorblind casting, the idea that race is invisible, we don't think about it.

[1:22:22] Jeanmarie Higgins: When we cast something, we just cast the best actor, as if that's not a loaded term and that doesn't come with a wealth of biases and you know, all of that.

[1:22:30] Jeanmarie Higgins: Um, and uh August Wilson at the time, you know, the the uh the playwright uh uh wrote back to him in um in a in a journal, I forget which journal, it was eventually republished in I think Theater magazine or something like that, or American theater rather, um, saying we need a black theater for black audiences and black actors.

[1:23:08] Jeanmarie Higgins: And that is what black actors need is funding to do black theater for black audiences.

[1:23:14] Andrew Child: And the essay is called The Ground on Which I Stand, I think.

[1:23:17] Jeanmarie Higgins: And that becomes, and that's happening around the same time that this is happening.

[1:23:22] Jeanmarie Higgins: And I think what Frank Rich is doing is is making kind of a less intellectualized um argument uh of Robert Brustin's, that you should cast the quote unquote best actor, and that somehow a white actor playing an Asian character is the same as a black actor playing a role that was arguably for a white actor, although it's Shakespeare.

[1:23:48] Andrew Child: So, you know, he sets things in Italy, but the characters aren't Italian really.

[1:24:58] Jeanmarie Higgins: And uh the idea that the idea of colorblind casting um doesn't help African American artists because um African American theater is alive and it's vibrant, and the one thing it does not have is funding and money.

[1:24:58] Jeanmarie Higgins: So I don't know.

[1:24:58] Andrew Child: It's it's a it's a moment though, uh, the late 80s, early 90s, where we're really talking about, we're really questioning the idea of uh colorblind casting and the best actor for the role.

[1:24:58] Andrew Child: Now, Jean-Marie, let me ask you, because this uh the opinions of Mr. Rich and Mr. Brewstein are actually still in the discourse today, because now there seems to be a movement from either a new generation or more enlightened generation that's saying, No, it we should not do whoever's quote unquote best for the role.

[1:24:58] Jeanmarie Higgins: What would you say to those that still come to the from the Brewstein or Rich philosophy on how casting should be executed?

[1:24:58] Jeanmarie Higgins: How can you how can you change their mind to see the other side of the equation?

[1:24:58] Jeanmarie Higgins: Well, you know, I'm thinking about the work of some scholars I really admire.

[1:24:58] Jeanmarie Higgins: Um, Brian Herrera and Maria Enriquez.

[1:24:58] Jeanmarie Higgins: Um, Brian writes about the casting for In the Heights, um, and Maria writes about uh casting for uh university theater productions, actually.

[1:24:58] Jeanmarie Higgins: And they they they both, you know, they have different areas of um interest and expertise, but something that Maria brings up in in her work is that the idea of the best actor for the role erases all of the situations and factors um that brought the actor to that audition that day.

[1:25:20] Jeanmarie Higgins: And so um, in thinking about the best actor for the role, we have to understand the inequities that actors face on their way to auditioning for whatever that play is.

[1:25:31] Jeanmarie Higgins: Do they have have they had voice lessons?

[1:25:34] Jeanmarie Higgins: Have they had the opportunity to have dance lessons?

[1:25:36] Jeanmarie Higgins: Was there a theater program at their high school?

[1:25:38] Jeanmarie Higgins: Um, were their parents supportive of their uh desire to be a performer?

[1:25:44] Jeanmarie Higgins: And did they have the means to drive them to rehearsal, pick them up?

[1:25:49] Jeanmarie Higgins: So that uh and then also when you talk about language issues, right?

[1:25:53] Jeanmarie Higgins: So international students um notoriously really suffer in university theater um auditions because facility, quick facility with language is something that an audition tests.

[1:26:05] Jeanmarie Higgins: It's also something that can be improved over time in the same way that someone's dance skills can be improved over a rehearsal situation or someone's even someone's acting skills.

[1:26:17] Andrew Child: So gosh, I'm just I I got so I got lost there for a second, Rob.

[1:26:22] Jeanmarie Higgins: But um it's fantastic, keep going.

[1:26:26] Jeanmarie Higgins: Yeah, so so the best actor for the role really means the best actor, the best uh it's almost like the best actor for the role is more like the most apparently best actor for the role.

[1:26:39] Jeanmarie Higgins: If you really think about the best actor for the role, well, it probably won't happen in the one and a half minutes someone has to give you their monologue and their their song.

[1:26:49] Jeanmarie Higgins: Um, it probably happens as a result of relationships that you build with the actors.

[1:26:54] Jeanmarie Higgins: It might be um the result of having a conversation with them, so that our casting practices are so necessarily quick and um that I think that we miss a lot of really um uh sort of gifted performers who just might not have the same advantages as others, um, or who are you know coming to the theater um as a young person wanting to learn and hoping that your rehearsal room might be a place for them to learn.

[1:27:26] Andrew Child: And we're very against that in our production model because we never have enough time to rehearse anything.

[1:27:32] Jeanmarie Higgins: What how how could this be changed?

[1:27:35] Jeanmarie Higgins: What what do we need to start implementing some of those changes?

[1:27:39] Jeanmarie Higgins: Well, as far as the professional theater goes, I do not know.

[1:27:42] Jeanmarie Higgins: Um, but two things come to mind um as far as university theater goes and also training university actors to go out into the world and become professional actors.

[1:27:56] Jeanmarie Higgins: The first thing is is uh it's not a very practical solution, but I think it would have an enormous impact.

[1:28:03] Jeanmarie Higgins: If we could really instill in young people a love of theater, not of being in theater, but of theater, then we might ask them over the years uh that they're with us in class or rehearsal to let go of the idea of um virtuosity being perfect, doing it right, um being a triple threat.

[1:28:28] Jeanmarie Higgins: Oh, you know, those sorts of those sorts of labels that can make uh people feel like they aren't good enough um so that if they love theater they're not going to care whether it's good or bad and that's the theory.

[1:28:41] Andrew Child: I'm big on theories Rob very big on theories.

[1:28:45] Jeanmarie Higgins: We love a theory because one day we hope the theory will come to fruition and be so really just you know to teach um students to love to love theater and to treat it as something that everyone can do um the more inclusive you can teach I mean being inclusive is a skill that you can teach people.

[1:29:04] Jeanmarie Higgins: Collaboration is a skill that you can teach people.

[1:29:07] Jeanmarie Higgins: And so what if we you know brought up a generation of theater makers who wanted to include as many people as possible and who were just interested in seeing theater and didn't have much interest in saying whether it was good or bad.

[1:29:20] Andrew Child: That would be fantastic.

[1:29:22] Jeanmarie Higgins: Maybe your may your theory become a reality.

[1:29:25] Andrew Child: Yeah.

[1:29:26] Jeanmarie Higgins: Would you talk a little a little bit about uh national objection?

[1:29:31] Andrew Child: Uh the Karen Shimakawa.

[1:29:34] Jeanmarie Higgins: Uh uh Yeah, which is uh a book that of listeners, if you click into today's uh show description, you can go to a link to purchase the book.

[1:29:42] Jeanmarie Higgins: Would you tell us a little bit about this book and how it helped your research in this particular chapter?

[1:29:47] Jeanmarie Higgins: Yeah, um, there's so many scholars who who write in this area, but Karen Shimakawa uh is one of the first ones I encountered and uh really opened my eyes to the ways that um especially sort of high profile commercial Broadway theater can reinforce negative stereotypes about Asian women in particular.

[1:30:09] Jeanmarie Higgins: Um, there are other scholars, of course. There's Esther Kim Lee, there's um, there's uh Claire Concession who writes about Chinese theater, there's uh, there are this is a really um sort of amazing uh body of theory and scholarship. But Karen Shimakawa's sort of overarching argument in her book, it's called National Abjection with an A, um, is that the Asian body on stage is something that uh we do not want to deal with for long. And so we somehow um jettison it, we throw it aside, we kick it uh out of our out of our consciousness before we have to really deal with it. Um, and so that Asian characters on stages tend to be more stereotypical and more sketchily drawn, and um the women are often standing in for something else, like um in MISS SAIGON, Kim is standing in for Vietnam.

So, you know, he leaves Kim, the United States leaves Vietnam. Um, which at the time I guess sounded cool. I don't know, but how um how horrifying to uh to equate uh a person with a country that that that someone abandons uh when they're done with them? Um, and of course I'm thinking of Afghanistan as well. I'm thinking about those same sort of images um recently where um, you know, but on you know, on stage, um, you know, Shimakawa is arguing that you know Asian women tend to stand in for ideas and for places in ways that other characters do not. How do we well, how do we rectify the power of MISS SAIGON?

[1:32:02] Jeanmarie Higgins: And I'm using that word in terms of commercial power with um future generations. There are many actors that I've spoken to that that are Asian that say the first show I saw was MISS SAIGON, and you know, I saw Lea Salonga, I I saw this individual, I saw that person, and it made me realize that there was a place for me on stage, but the container in which the show is being housed might be a little faulty. How do we can can we do MISS SAIGON in the future? And how do we reconcile its power and at the same time its detriments? Well, you know, I find most questions really complex and nuanced and interesting, but I'm gonna give you just sort of a the first thing that comes to my mind, and this might be a little bit just kind of off the cuff.

[1:32:50] Micah Rosegrant: We love it.

[1:32:51] Jeanmarie Higgins: Um, cast Kim as an older person. Just make her an adult. That would be really helpful. I too was blown away by Kim's performance in MISS SAIGON. It is a, you know, there are some beautiful songs in that musical. So first of all, um, I would say cast Kim as an older, cast an older actor, have her read older, um, so that it's not, she's not a child. Um, I would uh that the opening number with all of the sort of sex workers, you know, doing that kind of cabaret style, um uh, you know, really aggressive kind of dance, I would I would theatricalize that as much as possible um to make it as grotesque as possible so that we're not meant to believe that these are the ways that women behave, that this is that this is a stereotype.

[1:33:50] Jeanmarie Higgins: See, now I'm getting nuanced and interested. Sorry, Rob, but that this is a way that we we can theatricalize it to show us how we see sex workers, how we see it in our mind's eye. That's what we're seeing. Then cut the stupid, you know, helicopter, and please cut that film of those children at the top of the second act.

[1:34:13] Micah Rosegrant: Oh yes.

[1:34:14] Jeanmarie Higgins: Yeah, yeah. I mean, don't cut, I mean, that sounds who am I, right? But you know, the you know, it you could do that differently. The song could be sung, but it really is an anthem about how great the United States is. And the play, it's about how we abandon the Vietnamese people. I I can't reconcile that. That's the thing, that's where I that's where I get off the bus. That's where I'm like, ding ding, I'm getting off this stuff. Got it.

[1:34:37] Micah Rosegrant: Um, how going forward, how and looking back at the same time. This is a very gee Marie, this is a very complicated setup to an easy question. So thanks for bearing with me. What did MISS SAIGON do in its casting process or in its audition process that is either still with us today or is not with us today because of how it was created back in 1991 with the MISS SAIGON process?

[1:35:06] Jeanmarie Higgins: Um, we put the actor on one side of a table and we stay on the other side.

[1:35:13] Micah Rosegrant: And that's that's something that is still with us today?

[1:35:16] Jeanmarie Higgins: Yeah. Um, I'm not saying everyone does that, but that's pretty, you know, pretty common. We don't uh we don't allot a lot of time um to uh to casting. Casting happens quickly. Um, you know the the sort of energy of um young women auditioning for a play is different than a bunch of young men auditioning for a play.

[1:35:46] Jeanmarie Higgins: There there is, I see it at school, I see it uh this sort of um it's almost like you're going out to a party. This is the way that you know a young woman will will dress for an audition because she wants to look a certain way. And and you can't get around that. I mean, the second you put a young woman within any kind of representation, including, you know, standing on the other side of a table to audition, you're already in a situation um where someone has power and someone doesn't. How do we how do we break that cycle? What is your theory on how we break that?

[1:36:22] Micah Rosegrant: Well, you know, I've seen directors do really cool things in auditions that I think have have been really um have been really opened my eyes, you know, I just the simplest thing. I have this friend, um Robin, who she's a director uh in Chicago and um she directs for storefront theaters, Steep and Griffin and uh these smaller storefront theaters. She directs a lot of Simon Stevens plays um and sort of edgy like British playwrights or whatever. But anyway I worked with her for a long time at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte and she would ask students to come in uh not only with I mean some I can't remember whether she ever asked them to prepare a monologue. She probably didn't but she would ask them to come in with um uh a story or an activity and she would never sit behind the table she would always she'd let them do what they do and then she would come out from behind the table and she would speak to them and just have a conversation and she was great at casting and I thought well you know if she can have a conversation with people and cast the show in the ways that she's cast shows that I've seen her cast shows I've seen her cast maybe 10 12 shows um then it kind of kind of proves you don't have to do it the way that that we we ordinarily do it.

[1:37:39] Jeanmarie Higgins: Could do it differently.

[1:37:40] Micah Rosegrant: I yeah listen I I love that and I hope to God that people start going in that direction.

[1:37:44] Jeanmarie Higgins: It should feel it's there's something about like you said that table which becomes such a barrier and such a reminder of the power dynamics in a room. When when we talk about things today like for example we'll use Hamilton as an example. Hamilton, when it first came out, was celebrated for the diversity that was seen on stage.

[1:38:07] Jeanmarie Higgins: And now, a couple of years after Hamilton is opened, now it's being criticized in some ways for the diversity, because one, you know, it's there's a feeling of it's not an accurate representation of uh what blacks and Caribbean Americans were going through at that particular time. How do we make sure that we can tell stories appropriately at the same time giving people creativity?

[1:38:33] Micah Rosegrant: You emphasize that every performance is a new performance, and that the play itself, and in the moment it was uh premiered, you know, um, we need to historicize that moment. Because if we are going to say, okay, we we we shouldn't do Hamilton because, or then we have to look back and say, well, I remember when Cats came out, everyone thought that was the most avant-garde thing that had ever happened, right? Or Starlight Express, oh my gosh, people are roller skating around the you know stage.

[1:39:08] Jeanmarie Higgins: Um, and now we we some people, maybe not me, maybe me, uh, giggle a little at both of those shows, right? Um, and you know, you think of shows like Rent, you know, if you if you said to my students, we're gonna do rent, they'd be like, oh, it's so sappy. You know, because they didn't live in that moment, right?

[1:39:25] Jeanmarie Higgins: So every show is going to have these sort of legacies of the moment it was created in. And Hamilton was a lightning rod. No matter what you say, it was. And it did a lot of work uh for a lot of issues that needed to be addressed. Now, how do we do it in the future? I do not know.

[1:39:45] Micah Rosegrant: Um, I wonder how free uh, because I I honestly don't know. I wonder how free uh artists are to rewrite um and to sort of refine their shows once they open um on Broadway. I really don't know.

[1:40:03] Jeanmarie Higgins: Well would you if you had the final say on this would you have would you be fine with that with them saying we can go back and we can we can redo it.

[1:40:12] Micah Rosegrant: I think that would be amazing but now it's a commodity and it's already done and so now it's working for the producers while they sleep, right? So to put more you know resources into rewriting it, they're saying well it's not they would say oh it's not broken, why would we fix it?

[1:40:25] Jeanmarie Higgins: But if for example, you know, someone with power uh like say you know Lynn Manuel um would say yeah I want to rewrite this that could that could be exciting wouldn't that be exciting a new version of of Hamilton that addresses all of these issues because there's a lot of issues in Hamilton and the gender issues in Hamilton are really really you know they're tough.

[1:40:47] Micah Rosegrant: Would you would you be so kind as to expand on that as as we are talking about gender in in problematic situations.

[1:40:55] Jeanmarie Higgins: This is what is so difficult Rob is that you know sometimes uh you know the powers that be or the forces that are or whatever um divide uh you know oppressed people into little groups so that you you can't sort of band together and and work together to to lobby for what you need and want. One of the the sort of moments in Hamilton kind of stands in for the problem for me is when um he's singing a song about um how how is he going to say no to this and um and you know he's he's debating whether or not he should um cheat on his wife with this woman that he finds really beautiful and attractive.

[1:41:31] Jeanmarie Higgins: And I'm thinking she didn't ask you to come in and have sex with her. I don't know what you're talking about. Say no to what.

[1:41:41] Micah Rosegrant: It's a very good point.

[1:41:43] Jeanmarie Higgins: So, you know, and again, that's it's kind of a silly point. And like I, you know, that's it's okay, right?

[1:41:48] Micah Rosegrant: It's not a silly point.

[1:41:50] Jeanmarie Higgins: Well, thank you, but you know, it's not that it's not um, how do I put it? Like, I I would ignore that completely if some of the sort of what what the what the um the act, you know, the the the acting community is is lobbying for um in terms of representation and and depictions in Hamilton, I would I would put that on a shelf. But again, you know, it gender needs to be part of the conversation because gender and race are always implicated um with each other.

[1:42:18] Micah Rosegrant: I would love to ask you, Jean-Marie, because you you work with so many, you know, young students, young professionals, young academics, that are going to be entering a world in which a lot of the thinking is still of that rich Brewstein mindset. How do young people hold artistic leaders accountable when they feel that something is not uh holding up an appropriate standard?

[1:42:47] Jeanmarie Higgins: Well, you write your own plays, you band together, you start your own theaters, um, you produce your own work. Period.

[1:42:56] Micah Rosegrant: I love it.

[1:42:57] Jeanmarie Higgins: You know, I've been through this the past couple of years as a college professor, as has everyone watching my students in terrible pain, trying to explain why they don't want to do, for example, Anna DeVere Smith, Twilight Los Angeles, why they don't want to do certain musicals that um that that reinforce stereotypes. And you can give them as many explanations as you want.

[1:43:26] Jeanmarie Higgins: It still doesn't, it doesn't uh it doesn't hold water for them. Um, and what I would love to see is for um some of these insanely talented, you know, musical theater students to write their own musicals because that's what's going to change things more than trying to get a very expensive industry to change the way it does things.

[1:43:54] Micah Rosegrant: I love that.

[1:43:55] Jeanmarie Higgins: I love that. Jean Marie, I could go on talking to you all day.

[1:43:59] Robert W. Schneider: Uh unfortunately, our time.

[1:44:01] Jeanmarie Higgins: Same.

[1:44:01] Robert W. Schneider: You're so charming, Rob.

[1:44:03] Jeanmarie Higgins: I didn't know I've never talked to you for more than five minutes.

[1:44:05] Robert W. Schneider: Oh, it's it's such a pleasure to get to talk to you as well. Full disclosure, Jean Marie and I are colleagues, but have never met each other.

[1:44:12] Jeanmarie Higgins: Yep.

[1:44:12] Robert W. Schneider: So your story. I can't I can't I can't wait to actually meet you in person and shake your hand and say thank you.

[1:44:18] Robert W. Schneider: Um, my friends, uh, thank you so much for joining us today. Please make sure to purchase a copy of Fifty Key Stage Musicals by visiting Routledge.com or by clicking in today's show description. If you want to learn more about MISS SAIGON, please also review the links in the below description. I am Robert W. Schneider, and thank you for listening to Fifty Key Stage Musicals, the podcast.

[1:44:37] Robert W. Schneider: Bye-bye.