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[0:13] Sarah Goodman: Hi, I'm Sarah. I'm a sound designer and professional lesbian theater geek. I'm a huge fan of all things Broadway, cabaret, and pop culture. I've got tattoos of Bernadette Peters and Liza Minelli. In my podcast, I'm looking at theater through a queer lens and discussing the intersection between the craft and the LGBTQ Plus community. AKA Me, my friends and family. Today's guest is Emil Weinstein, the author of the new play BECOMING EVE. Full disclosure, I have not seen BECOMING EVE yet, so I will not be able to rate it on the Good Show Queer Scale, but I will say that I have a sneaking suspicion that I'm finally going to get a show that has the highest queer rating on the Good Show Queer Scale, which is are we gonna get in trouble for this?

Because technically this play already got in trouble for being too queer by the Archdiocese, um, with a controversy over its potential performance at the Connolly Theater. We get into that a little bit more in the episode. But first, let me tell you a little bit about my guest, Emil Weinstein. Emil Weinstein is a writer and director whose work spans theater, television, and filmmaking. He graduated from the David Geffen School of Drama at Yale, where he directed the first workshop production of Slave Play by Jeremy O'Harris. His productions as a theater director include Twelfth Night and Romeo and Juliet at Two River Theater, Comedy of Errors and As You Like It, upcoming at The Old Globe, and developmental work with EnGarde Arts, Rattlestick Theater, Shakespeare and Company, and New York Theatre Workshop.

For television, Emil worked as a staff writer on Amazon's A League of Their Own, one of my favorite shows I've ever seen, and directed four episodes for the final season of The L Word Generation Q for Showtime. His shorts, Candace, and In France, Michelle is a Man’s Name, played at festivals around the world, winning multiple awards, including two Academy Award Qualifying Grand Jury Prizes. BECOMING EVE is Emil's Off-Broadway playwriting debut. I had such a great time talking with Emil. He was wonderful. We had a great conversation. I hope you enjoy it. Here is my chat with Emil Weinstein.

[0:33] Sarah Goodman: Today's guest is Emil Weinstein, the author of the new play, BECOMING EVE, which is opening at New York Theatre Workshop. Actually, it's already open, right?

[2:20] Emil Weinstein: It opened on Monday.

[2:22] Sarah Goodman: Oh my god, congratulations. Happy opening. How was opening?

[2:25] Emil Weinstein: It was so much fun. It was really, really fun. We had a great night.

[2:29] Sarah Goodman: Oh, amazing. I would love for you to tell the listeners a little bit about this play, BECOMING EVE, and what it's about. And after you give a little brief explanation, I want to jump into the whole Connolly situation.

[2:42] Emil Weinstein: Oh, yeah. So much drama to discuss. But BECOMING Eve is based on a memoir by Rabbi Abby Hava Stein. And it's the true story of Abby, who's been transformed into Chava in this play, coming into herself as a trans woman who was also raised in Chasidism in a very, very isolated sect in the middle of New York City of Chasidism. She had no sort of access to the outside world until she was about 19 or 20 years old when she listened to the voice that had been telling her that she was a woman and that she needed to leave. And Hava figures out how to convey to her father what it means to her to be herself and what it means to her to be a woman in like biblical and Talmudic terms because her father of a culture that can only understand things in its own terms.

So Hava tries to use the terms of that religion to explain to her father who she is. And meanwhile, it's like peppered with flashback scenes about her childhood, in which Chava's represented by a growing Bunraku-style puppet. Um, we sort of theatricalize this idea that she presents in the play of a soul and body in mismatch and sort of feeling like there's this separation between who you really are and who your body is, and the puppet, which is operated by two to three puppeteers at a time, is like this sort of living embodiment of that. Um, yeah, that wasn't the most succinct but I love that.

[4:34] Sarah Goodman: That's perfect. It sounds really fascinating. I'm so excited to see the play. There's been a lot of buzz about this play. For those who may not know, can you tell my listeners a little bit about what happened? This play was originally supposed to premiere at the Connolly Theater several months ago, right?

[4:48] Emil Weinstein: Yes, it was originally supposed to premiere at the Connolly Theater, and then basically the Archdiocese of New York, aka the Catholic Church, owns the building, and they had this clause in their contract with the Connolly, which I mean, I can't imagine that they'd ever use before. If you've seen the stuff at the Connolly, it's like, you know, my friend Cape Rance's amazing show, like the queer wild stuff. But for some reason, this was the play that the Catholic Church said was too much. And so they banned it from being performed at the Connolly, which meant we lost our space and we had to scramble to find somewhere else. And it was really tough and also weirdly sort of not surprising as a trans person that this was happening over the fall when also, you know, Donald Trump was getting elected. Like there was such trans people were weaponized so much by the right wing this last, I mean, the last few years especially.

[5:45] Sarah Goodman: Yeah.

[5:46] Emil Weinstein: That like, I mean, it wasn't surprising to me that we were facing that kind of discrimination from the Catholic Church. But at the same time, the play is a lot about like shame and religion and undoing religious trauma. And it would have been wonderful to do the play there, but it's also really nice to do it in a more neutral space. And honestly, the Abraham's Art Center, it's a much bigger theater than the Connolly. It's like 300 seats.

[6:09] Sarah Goodman: Wow.

[6:09] Emil Weinstein: And it also used to be a Yiddish theater and is on the Lower East Side. And it just feels like, and it's right next door is like this amazing Hasidic bakery that like we all went to all through previews. So it feels like it's at the perfect home now, but it was really tough. And honestly, you know, as a theater person, I was just I was I was just so unpleasantly made aware of how even though we think of our industry as so progressive, like when it comes to trans people, we're actually quite behind and we haven't really had trans plays by trans people until pretty recently. I don't know. So I hope the theater community also was like, oh gosh, like we still have a ways to go on this, even though we think of our experience as as liberal or progressive or whatever.

[7:01] Sarah Goodman: Right, right. I'm so glad this play finally found a home and is happening now. It's really more important than ever that we hear trans stories, especially ones that are so relevant to the cultural overlaps, like you said, about religion, about family dynamics, about history and all of that is like really coming to a head right now.

[7:34] Emil Weinstein: Yeah, and like it's what's so fun about theater is it like you're practicing being human in real time in front of other human beings, and like it very much the play is really an argument piece between a father and a child, and we hopefully all can relate to it, even if you know we weren't raised as Chasidim, as I definitely wasn't. But even if we weren't Jewish or even if we're not queer, like that sort of generational divide that happens again and again, but like I really feel like we're going through right now feels like something that's like really useful to put on stage because like people can then go home and argue with their parents and be like, they did it, I can do it.

[8:17] Sarah Goodman: Yeah.

[8:18] Emil Weinstein: And I'm very I'm I'm very like pro bringing the conflict out into nonviolently bringing the conflict to light. Um, but that's just because I'm Jewish and used to argue with people.

[8:28] Sarah Goodman: Yeah, I was going to say, isn't it such a strong part of the Jewish culture and the and Judaism to question and to debate? Like that's a huge part of the ethos of that culture.

[8:40] Emil Weinstein: It is, and it should be hopefully brought into the other cultures too, because I think it's I think it's a really good thing that we do because we stay close through conflict.

[8:50] Sarah Goodman: Yeah.

[8:51] Emil Weinstein: And I think people oftentimes avoid conflict a lot. And I think that's something that's in American culture. Like people really avoid conflict, and then it kind of separates us even further.

[9:01] Emil Weinstein: And they do. They avoid conflict and avoid and mask their emotions and try and hide their emotions. And it's really I was hanging out with some British folks last night, and I was like, you know, you guys are the ones who are known for like hiding and repressing your emotions. But I actually think Americans, I was I was finding the British folks to be so grounded. And because I feel like often Americans we're we're so individualistic that we're like posturing and pretending.

[9:27] Sarah Goodman: Yes.

[9:27] Emil Weinstein: And like actually the repression doesn't even come from, you know, manners. It comes from like trying to convince people that we're something that we're not or that we're not. I don't know. It feels like posing. There's a lot of there's a lot of posing in in our culture right now in the United States. And it just I think like real like emotional conflict and like feeling like I think we we were we're hungry for the authenticity that like snaps us out of like our I don't know our repressed state of yeah posing I guess.

[9:44] Sarah Goodman: Yeah, absolutely. So this play is an adaptation of Abby Hava Stein's memoir. Can you talk about your collaboration with Abby and what it was like working with her on this piece?

[10:12] Emil Weinstein: Yeah, I met Abby five years ago and started working in earnest on the piece about four years ago. But as soon as we met, I felt like a really intense connection with her. We are born like two months apart. We both grew up in New York. Um, probably our families are from the same small sheddle 200 years ago, and so she feels very much like family, and also we just like communicated really well off the bat. Um, it's been exciting because so much to me of the piece has been about like honoring who Abby is and honoring how much she loves Judaism and how and her politics, and like I just really look up to Abby as a leader and a person. She's just one of the I mean, she hates the word brave, but she's one of the bravest people I've ever met, and also like lives her values in a way that is rare and like extremely admirable.

And so it was like a tall order to adapt the play because I was like, I want to make this something that's worthy of Abby, of her story, of her intellect and of her bravery. And also I was raised in the theater and like dramatic structure and like character arcs and all of that that stuff is like really important to me. And so I wanted to create like a really good piece of drama at the same time. And it was like, how can I change enough of this? Because the book, any memoir, like there's drama in it, but like a memoir in and of itself is not dramatic. It's like a biopic, like even the best life story, you know, can make a terrible movie. We still need that, like you need beginning, middle, end, you need a conflict, you need a climax. You need central themes, you need and those storytelling elements, yeah.

[12:00] Emil Weinstein: Yeah, and at first, and I didn't have it for a long time. I like it, it's really just an adaptation of the memoir for about a year and a half, and it was like, this is interesting, and I know there's something here, but like it's not a play yet. And then really, I like went into the text and looking at the text that Abby used to come out to her father, which involves the Isaac and Abraham story. I was like, Oh, this is the play, it's the Isaac and Abraham story. Like, I'm just doing a retelling of the Isaac and Abraham story through Abby and her dad. The whole time, but then also in like this metaway, it're gonna be the Isaac and Abraham story, and her life is gonna be peppered out, peppered throughout, but really like the container of it is this sort of because I mean we're all retelling, we're either retelling stories or we're breaking forms.

And I think for this play, because already, like, there one, I wanted it to be in a New York theater institution, and like we and I and that means that like it needs to serve an audience that is pretty wide, and that also I know isn't gonna be necessarily like steeped in queer thought or like used to trans folks, though, you know, hopefully they are, and hopefully, now like I think 50% of Americans say they know a trans person, so hopefully, you know, we're we're more familiar than not. But I think I wanted to write something that was like really formally sound and intact and almost traditional, and like the retelling of the Isaac and Abraham story was really useful because it's like this you know, patriarchal parable that still kind of doesn't is still kind of baffling, and it felt really nice to have something that was sort of that sturdy and also that kind of formal to kind of I feel like I like turned the memoir inside out to make this thing that I feel like hopefully stands up as a piece of drama on its own, even without being a true story, but then also because I'm so close with Abby, like it needs to pass her smell test at every step of the journey, and there's still things that like I made up like her dad.

There's this whole bit in the play about Jaws, and I won't give anything away because you haven't seen it, but there's this little thread about the movie Jaws and her dad having snuck out when he was 15, 16 to see Jaws, and like Abby was like, My dad would have never done that. He's like way more like he's never, and just stuff like that. Where I'm like, I she allowed me to make my own characters within her story and to like take her and like angle it 45 degrees.

[14:30] Emil Weinstein: Yeah, you're fictionalizing to a certain extent in order to like enhance the material. But she always wanted it to be as authentic as possible to even if it wasn't like her specific fam, like she was she ended up being like so welcoming about like me making little changes to who these characters are. But we always tried to be like really rigorous with presenting the Hasidic community, honestly, because we didn't want to paint them. Like we're fine painting everyone in an honest light, but we don't want to paint people in especially overly negative lights when there's already so much stigma around like living in a closed religious community, which frankly, you know, live however you want. And I think people can be happy in many different societal structures, and in no way in a in many ways, actually, I think the tragedy of it is like how much Abby loves her community and what it feels to like to how does she square that with her own identity and what she wants out of her own life, yeah.

[15:30] Sarah Goodman: Yeah, we'll be right back.

[15:32] Sarah Goodman: And we're back chatting with Emil Weinstein, the author of the new play BECOMING EVE. So this is your playwrighting debut, right?

[15:40] Emil Weinstein: But you've been a writer, you've been doing a lot of writing. I really want to ask you about the L Word Gen Q and A League of Their Own. But before we get into your TV work, I really want to talk to you about what it's been like to be making your debut on this play, and what is it like to be working with such heavy hitters like Brandon Uranowitz and Judy Kune? Like, what a privilege to have such incredible actors in your piece.

[16:01] Emil Weinstein: It is such a privilege. I like pinch myself every day that I get to work with these people that they're speaking words that I wrote. It's been crazy. I'll just start there that like Judy Kune, Brandon Uranowitz, Richard Schiff. I my dog was named Toby after his character in the West Wing growing up. So like oh wow. Yeah, the whole cast is really sad. I'm just calling out those two because I'm a big musical theater girly. And Brandon was on my podcast. And Brandon is one of the most masterful actors I have ever seen. They all are some of the most masterful actors I've ever seen. It's like it's it's insane. And the puppeteers are also like world-class puppeteers and what they're doing. So it just feels so cool. Extremely fortunate. I feel extremely fortunate to like and and sort of am still on cloud nine about the cast and will, I think, beat till the day I die. Then I'm like, I can't believe these people are doing my play.

[16:53] Emil Weinstein: Um, but I came up as a director, went to grad school for directing and worked on a lot of new plays, and like my most formative, really artistic experience in grad school was directing Slave Play and like watching Jeremy's ascent. And I was a small part of it by doing the workshop production and showing him that play on its feet for the first time. But like I learned so much about being a writer from him and from also directing new plays and being in the other seat next to the playwright. And I think I'd always wanted to write, but in so many ways, like because of my trans journey and just like not knowing myself super well for a long time. I knew I knew myself deeply, but I also was in a battle with myself a little bit.

Like writing is so vulnerable and so exposing that it was like almost like I wasn't ready to do it yet. Um then during the pandemic, which was also when I started transitioning, I had started writing right after grad school because I was like, I kind of I needed to make money, and I was like, there's money in Hollywood, and like at that time people were interested in queer scripts, which hopefully they will be again, but we're in a little bit of a Trump era.

[18:07] Emil Weinstein: The Trump slump. But it's gonna end. That's eventually. It will. Hopefully sooner than we think. Agreed. God is willing. But I think anyway, I started writing right about then. And it like felt very much like transitioning and coming out and like coming out as a writer. So and it's a coming out play. So I feel extremely fortunate that I've gotten to come out as a writer with this play, and also that I've gotten to be a writer. I love directing too. It's really, really, really fun. It's more fun than being a writer by far. Really hard. Being a writer is really hard, but in a really different way. And I really love it and love working with language, and it's so bloody hard.

[18:48] Sarah Goodman: Yeah.

[18:48] Emil Weinstein: Just because it's rewriting. I mean, you're just we cut 15 minutes during previews, which I'm super. But like the best writing I've done, the best writing I do is my cuts, like at the very end. And it's annoying because I'm like, no, it's the monologue that took me six months. It's like, no, it's it's that you decided to cut this, this, and this, and like then it works.

[19:11] Sarah Goodman: Yeah.

[19:13] Emil Weinstein: I think that's so smart though. I mean, editing really is a huge part of writing that I think people under like it's underrated how important it is to like be concise.

[19:23] Emil Weinstein: And more isn't more.

[19:25] Sarah Goodman: More isn't more.

[19:26] Emil Weinstein: Yeah. And also like if yeah, also so much of theater, so much of theater and film and all of it is about momentum and like and about like what is the audience like feel like what is the emotional ride that they're going on. And like at some point it's just sort of like, oh, I love this scene. For example, we cut a we cut a scene right at the end of previews that I loved. And everyone loved it. It just was stopping up the momentum of the play. And it just like, yeah, it was like a rock in a river where it was just like it would fl it flowed better without the scene, and it was like really sad, but also glad that we did.

[20:05] Sarah Goodman: Yeah.

[20:06] Emil Weinstein: And it wasn't I never made a better choice in the whole process than cutting that scene.

[20:11] Sarah Goodman: Yeah, I think sometimes like the work you've put into things that later get cut is still present in the piece because it's it's part of the whole vision, right? It's it's sort of like actors create a lot of subtext, a lot of background on their character that the audience never gets to see or hear, but it's it's part of their performance.

[20:42] Emil Weinstein: No, it's really true, and that's been the saving grace of like all of the all of the things that I've had to cut that I've loved is like it's in there somewhere in the performance, in the subtext.

[20:57] Emil Weinstein: No, and like you say, it's like the theater's magical like that too. You never know what is gonna kind of come out, especially like later in a run, that like a line that you didn't even realize that connects to that scene. You know, it's it's it's still so flexible too that it's like we don't even know how it's informed to the play yet, but yeah, it's a living breathing thing, right? That that changes every single time they do the play.

[21:20] Sarah Goodman: Yeah, theater is wild, it's it's awesome. But I also really love film and TV and would love to talk a little bit about your work on L Word Gen Q and A League of Their Own, some very iconic queer media that we've had in the last handful of years, which you know, there still really isn't that much of, which is wild. I mean, think, you know, it's 2025 in the last several years. There have been so few pieces that have focused on queer people. And these were two like really, really iconic shows that I think brought the community together, especially the Sapphic community. I'll say I used to have a podcast about the original L Word, which is a show that I both love and hate with all of my being. It's so iconic and so problematic all at the same time.

[22:07] Emil Weinstein: And like so good and so bad.

[22:09] Sarah Goodman: Yes, all of the above. So please talk talk a little bit about your work on those shows, what that was like for you.

[22:14] Emil Weinstein: Oh true. Both of those jobs were like, I don't know. I've been really, really lucky that I've gotten to work on things that I've believed in and like that I can put my full soul into, like with full love. And I those were two projects that like I felt so lucky I got to work on and were just like love baby projects because like a league of their own was amazing, and it was it was amazing from the start. We our Zoom room was started in October 2020. So it was like a really interesting time. We had all been quarantined for a long time, and we're kind of trying to get used to what this new version of life was, and it was like a room full of just genius human beings who were from like all different walks of life, all over all over the world, because everyone was sort of spread out during COVID.

There was like someone working in Germany and people in LA and people in New York. And I was in Philly. And it was just, it was very, very special from the start. And also was like a writer's room full of like just like sapphic icons, in my opinion, of playwrights that like it was and it just was like, we're just gonna make something really, really, really beautifully queer. And it didn't feel radical at all in October 2020. And now I'm like that show can never be on TV. And that's it. And unfortunately didn't get as long of a life as it deserved. Cause it was such a beautiful, one of the best TV series I've ever seen, truly.

[23:43] Emil Weinstein: Oh my god, I love it so much. I got to go to set for it too, which was also just Oh, that's awesome. It was like heaven. I was like walking around like in the night. Like it was like, wow, I've like woken up in heaven and it's this 1940s baseball fever dream.

[23:57] Emil Weinstein: It was just with like such great actors and such loving people and such the crew was also like hugely queer and female, which was fucking awesome.

[24:07] Sarah Goodman: Yeah.

[24:07] Emil Weinstein: And hopefully the real queer media renaissance is coming. We just have to go through this, I guess. But I hope if it doesn't come back, like things like it come back. I love sports shows. I'm not like I'm so not athletic, but I love sports as a metaphor on TV and my next bars of sports movie, and like it's just so inherently dramatic and fun. And the team dynamic is like something that's so human, you know. People really love community, and like a team is a community.

[24:36] Emil Weinstein: It is, and also like it's just really fun to have your characters all live in the same house as a writer, too. Cause you can just you there's like yeah. I mean, that's and to transition to Elber Generation Q, which is always hard because they it was always hard to get all those characters into the same room, especially with the two separate generations. So one way they figured it out on that show was to have these like big events in every episode, like different events that sort of brought everyone together. Um or like a holidays were a big thing in the season in season three.

[25:05] Emil Weinstein: Yeah which was really fun because yeah, I I got to direct, I worked as a director on that, and directing TV I find to be like the most fun job in the world. It's like it's like driving a giant cruise ship where it's like everything is working and it it is exactly what it is, and you know the path, and it's your job to basically like lead this giant machine to its destination safely and on time and with as few casualties as possible. And also hopefully you're making a good piece on TV. But like there's so little I mean you always have to have an ego as an artist, but like it's really fun when there's a job where you're like, oh, act uh for me, I really like putting my ego away because it's just like more fun, and it's hard to do as a writer because it's like your body feels like your words, blah blah blah.

But like as a director, especially on TV, where it's like you're not you're not inventing the world, you're not inventing the tone, you're not inventing the characters, you're not inventing anything. You're walking into a thing that already exists and like helping it, helping it exist more.

[26:15] Emil Weinstein: And that was really fun. You're like fostering it all to come together.

[26:19] Sarah Goodman: Yeah.

[26:20] Emil Weinstein: And you're like the you're like making it making it happen, you're like turning it into a real thing from but also you have so much help and such compared to theater, you just like have such a well-oiled gigantic infrastructure around you that like it feels like playing in a playing in a playroom with any toy you could ever want and like the most skilled people to help you bring your dreams to life.

[26:47] Sarah Goodman: Yeah, yeah. That's really cool.

[26:48] Emil Weinstein: I don't know. I love I love being on and theater at its best can feel like that, but there's always so few resources and like also egos get in the way even more. I don't know. I find I find there to be more ego drama in theater than I do in film and TV vibe.

[27:01] Sarah Goodman: Oh really, that's very interesting.

[27:03] Emil Weinstein: But maybe that's just because the money that you get paid like sweetens it, so you just don't care as much. I don't know. Anyway, I loved working on Elward Generation Q. I I got to work with like true heroes of mine. I got to work with Rosie O'Donnell a lot when I love Rosie O'Donnell.

[27:18] Sarah Goodman: On both of those, I got to meet Rosie and I'm so cool.

[27:21] Emil Weinstein: Yeah, what a cool overlap between the two shows.

[27:24] Sarah Goodman: Yeah, it was I mean, she's so cool.

[27:27] Emil Weinstein: Yeah, and then the new cast and the old cast. I I mean I loved that show. And it was also like 300 shows in one, and it was really funny to shoot it because it would be like, okay, we're in this scene, and it's sort of like a college drama, and then in this scene we're in like a like wild pool party slapstick thing, and then in this scene we're like we're doing a sex scene and it it just was really fun and like candy to work on and not too serious, which I also appreciated, even though everyone takes everything seriously because they have to, and especially actors, but yeah, yeah.

[28:02] Emil Weinstein: I got to work with Kilani and uh and Kate Manning on like some like hot, sexy scenes together, and I was like, if my teenager yourself, I would like watch the L word non-stop as a teenager. It was like the only thing that kept me alive. It's like if I could wake up and see that this is what I'm doing, I would just be and my dream, all my dreams would have come true. So I yeah, I just feel like that was that was like true dream come true territory. Um as is this play, and I just feel very lucky to be here and experiencing it and hopefully contributing to more queer people experiencing things that feel like reflect them.

[28:40] Emil Weinstein: Cause it's so yeah, it's slim pickings out there, especially if you're not I mean, if you're a sister under gay guy, there's always gonna be media made for you. Like they just see men as people, so they are a market that they can sell to, right? They do not see women as people inherently, and especially if you're a woman who is not attracted to men or is not interested in men, you are you're gonna be able to do that.

[29:06] Sarah Goodman: Right, that rejection of cis male culture is really not flying.

[29:10] Emil Weinstein: It's not flying, and I've heard TV executives say so many times that like even women-led pilots are too hard to sell right now. They just want men, men, men, and it's so stupid, it's literally throwing money away. Cause I'm like, women are 51%. I mean, and not even to talk about queer people and all of the people in between, but like what the fuck? Why are we selling things just to men? But this is the idiocy of our fucking parents' generation late state capitalism, and it's why you don't get queer media um in the same way. Um yeah, and we've really backslid, and I think anytime we experience like economic hardships, it always hits marginalized communities the hardest.

[29:55] Sarah Goodman: It does.

[29:55] Emil Weinstein: And not only are we in like a recession right now, but we're in this really scary cultural backslide that is like very rapid, like the most rapid backslide I've ever seen in my lifetime.

[30:07] Sarah Goodman: I know absolutely wild.

[30:10] Emil Weinstein: But it's so amazing that despite that, there's still incredible art being made that is both validating to the people who create it and then the people who get to see it, which is so special and important.

[30:21] Sarah Goodman: Thank you. Well, I feel really lucky that this play happened when it did, because it's been, yeah, it's been a really hard few years. And like I I've really personally felt the backslide of again, uh not against, but the backslide of like, yeah, cutting all the queer shows, cutting all the really like slimming down the queer characters, just like deciding not to have that discussion anymore.

[30:49] Emil Weinstein: It's alienating and cause these conglomerates are like, you know, so giant that they're like, Oh, we can't put a trans person on Disney Plus, that will break the whole world. And I'm like, Yeah, it's wild.

[31:00] Sarah Goodman: It can be so hard. I think one thing that really does help push the needle in the right direction is storytelling, good storytelling.

[31:07] Emil Weinstein: I think really brings people together. And I want to ask you specifically what you think is important about theater today.

[31:14] Sarah Goodman: I mean, I think that what you were saying about collective power, like we are so disconnected from each other right now, especially with like social media, like it it's very we're all very isolated, it feels like and we have been we we have been since f for a long time, but I think especially after COVID, like we felt a lot of collectivism, and then it got like taken away, and now we like but we have some ink because it felt collective for second. Anyway, I think sitting in a theater with 300 other people feeling emotions is a really good way to remember how similar we are collectively, because it's like that is the thing.

[31:59] Emil Weinstein: The fact that most of us 99% of us are non-sociopathic people who want goodness in the world. Unfortunately, I mean a lot of the 1% of sociopaths that exist in my person in my own. They're just very loud and out there, you know.

[32:17] Sarah Goodman: They're loud, they're successful and they they were they they thrive in the society as it as it as it is now.

[32:24] Emil Weinstein: But not but most of us are feeling deeply feeling people, deeply empathetic people who like want the best for everyone.

[32:34] Sarah Goodman: Yeah.

[32:35] Emil Weinstein: So and I feel I at least when I'm sitting in a theater and we're all like laughing and crying at the same time, that helps me remember that. So even just like that's why I think theater is gonna be essential. I also think theater is just so like political, like in and of itself that like you know, they can silence us on multiple scales. Hopefully, they won't ban plays. But yeah, I don't know. I think it's like a collect it's collectivist in its in its formulation.

[33:00] Sarah Goodman: And I also think I'm obsessed with puppetry and puppetry, and I've taught my mom teaches puppetry all over the world, and like it's languageless expression of like trying to make something just feel alive, and there's like something so beautiful about it, and it's also like the fact that it takes three people to operate one to bring one thing to life, like also feels like just a beautiful metaphor for like just having empathy for how much everyone is going through, how hard it is, yeah, and working together for like a common goal.

[33:30] Emil Weinstein: Yeah. And if you can empathize for a fucking inanimate object, can you please empathize for other human beings?

[33:37] Sarah Goodman: Yeah.

[33:38] Emil Weinstein: Yeah, absolutely. That's really beautiful. I love puppetry. I'm so excited to see this puppet in this play. I think it's gonna be really cool.

[33:45] Sarah Goodman: There is something really, really magical about puppetry. I think it's it's it's also so ancient. It's something that humans have been doing for such a long time, and it's so cool that it's persisted, like throughout technology, you know, and how how things have changed. There's still some really like raw, physically tangible things that we do to connect with other humans, and that's one thing that I think is so special.

[34:09] Emil Weinstein: I completely agree. It like moves me in a way that I like don't even have words for when I watch puppetry sometimes.

[34:15] Sarah Goodman: And I'm just like Yeah, yeah.

[34:18] Emil Weinstein: Well, I'm so looking forward to this play. Thank you so much, Emile, for giving me some of your time today. I'm really, really excited. Is there anything else you want to share with my audience before I let you go?

[34:27] Emil Weinstein: No, I'm so excited for people to see it. And we haven't even talked about Tommy Dorfman, who is the shining star of the production.

[34:33] Sarah Goodman: Oh, Tommy's amazing. I saw them in Romeo and Juliet.

[34:36] Emil Weinstein: Oh my god, she's literal like shining star, just to say, buckle up because it's an amazing performance and one that I'm just in awe of. But thank you so much for everything today. This was so fun. Congratulations. I'm so glad this play is happening. It's really important. I'm I'm so happy that it ended up getting a life after all of the drama with the Connolly, and I'm just hearing wonderful things about it. The cast is so great. I'm so looking forward to it.

[35:03] Sarah Goodman: I can't wait for you to see it. All right, that's all I have today for Good Show. Like I said before, since I have not seen the play yet, I am not able to rate it on the Good Show Queer scale, but I think later on in the season, I'm gonna do a wrap-up of all the things I've seen, and I'll be able to uh rank everything I've seen on the Good Show Queer Scale and we'll chat more about BECOMING EVE. Please follow Good Show on Instagram and TikTok at Good Show Podcast. Good Show is a proud member of the Broadway Podcast Network. Check us out at bpn.fm slash goodshow. That's all I've got for you today. This is Sarah Goodman, and this is Good Show. Goodbye.