This transcript was automatically generated and might contain errors.

[0:12] Sarah Goodman: Hi, I'm Sarah. I'm a sound designer and professional lesbian theater geek. I'm a huge fan of all things theater, Broadway, cabaret, and pop culture. I've got tattoos of Bernadette Peters and Liza Minelli. And this year I met Bernadette Peters because of this podcast. Dreams come true, people. In this podcast, I'm looking at theater through a queer lens and discussing the intersection between the craft and the LGBTQ community. I want to take a moment to put a special emphasis on the letter T. No LGB without the T. Our trans friends and family have always been at the forefront of every queer rights movement in America. We will not allow our community to be erased. Trans people have always existed and will always exist.

I love my trans friends and family, and I'm here for them during this tough time. We all need to stick together as a community. Remember our community leaders like Marcia P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera, who led the Stonewall riot. Those bricks didn't throw themselves. We owe so much to our trans friends and family. We gotta stand up and fight for them because they've always been fighting for us. Today on Good Show, my guest is Ria T. DiLullo. Ria T. DiLullo is a native New Yorker, theater artist, and holistic movement coach. Ria founded The Skeleton Rep(resents), an indie new works development company with a mission to explore modern myth in 2015. Through TSR, Ria runs a playwriting residency, has produced and directed 11 full-stage shows, three short play festivals of myth-based work, 60-plus salons of new plays, countless readings, a three-part pandemic film project, and an award-winning feature-length indie film, The Great Vanishing: Part IV.

Ria T. DiLullo is playing Maria Chabot in the exciting new play, Georgia and the Butch, coming to The Tank February 25th through March 12th. It is a play about Georgia O'Keeffe, the famed painter, and her relationship with Maria Chabot during their nine-year relationship between 1941 and 1949. They exchanged hundreds of letters, and this play uses the letters to create a dialogue between the characters. I'm so excited to see the play next week. I had a fantastic conversation with Ria at the Welcome to Times Square studio a couple weeks ago, and I can't wait to share that conversation with you. It's coming up right now. So today is a very special episode of Good Show. We are live in person with my guest, Ria T. DiLullo. Thank you so much for being here today.

[2:55] Ria T DiLullo: Hey!

[2:56] Sarah Goodman: Um, and we're here at Welcome to Times Square. This show is powered by Welcome to Times Square, the premier billboard experience that lets you be a star for a day. Wow, and we're both stars today.

[3:06] Ria T DiLullo: Absolutely.

[3:08] Sarah Goodman: But you're the star of a new show, Georgia and the Butch, um, playing at The Tank and co-produced by Skeleton Rep. So tell me all about this play.

[3:18] Ria T DiLullo: Oh my gosh. Where do I even start? So it is, uh, so Georgia and the Butch is Georgia O'Keeffe, who, uh, most people probably have at least heard the name and maybe have an association or two, uh, in particular, of her close-ups of flowers.

[3:32] Sarah Goodman: Yeah.

[3:33] Ria T DiLullo: A lot of people know those.

[3:34] Sarah Goodman: Yes.

[3:34] Ria T DiLullo: Or maybe her desert paintings with the cow skulls and things like that. Uh, and then there's The Butch. And so this play is all about who is this woman who built Georgia O'Keeffe's house at Abbey in New Mexico that is an international, you know, pilgrimage site for people who love Georgia O'Keeffe's work today.

[3:54] Sarah Goodman: Yeah.

[3:54] Ria T DiLullo: And her name was Maria Chabot. She was 25 years Georgia's junior.

[4:00] Sarah Goodman: Wow.

[4:01] Ria T DiLullo: And was totally a gender nonconforming human being. Grew up in Texas, traveled the world with Dorothy Stewart, who was another, uh, famous, famously unmarried. There's a lot of those.

[4:11] Sarah Goodman: Uh-huh.

[4:13] Ria T DiLullo: Historians will say they were best friends.

[4:15] Sarah Goodman: Yeah, yeah.

[4:16] Ria T DiLullo: So many best friends.

[4:17] Sarah Goodman: So many good friends.

[4:18] Ria T DiLullo: Good, good friends. My deep dear companion.

[4:21] Sarah Goodman: Exactly.

[4:21] Ria T DiLullo: My romantic partner.

[4:23] Sarah Goodman: That's right. There's like a term from the 19th century called the romantic friendships.

[4:29] Ria T DiLullo: Okay.

[4:30] Sarah Goodman: Yes.

[4:30] Ria T DiLullo: There's a legacy of that kind of floating around here. But so Maria was very hands-on. She like, she taught herself how to build a house. She, uh, one of her long-lasting legacies is the Abiquiú or the native market in, uh, native arts market in Santa Fe. And so that was something she created, and that's what a lot of people to this day, if they know her, they know her for that. But no one knows her as a close companion of Georgia O'Keeffe's for 10 years.

[4:59] Sarah Goodman: Wow.

[4:59] Ria T DiLullo: And so this play is, uh, looking at the letters they wrote to each other over the decade of the 1940s.

[5:05] Sarah Goodman: Amazing.

[5:05] Ria T DiLullo: And all the text Georgia and Maria Chabot speak are excerpts of their letters.

[5:11] Sarah Goodman: Oh wow, so it's kind of like verbatim theater.

[5:13] Ria T DiLullo: Oh, amazing. And then we have a third figure, um, Mary Wheelwright, Mary Cabot Wheelwright. And so she acts as our narrator. She in real life is the woman who introduced the two of them.

[5:18] Sarah Goodman: Okay.

[5:18] Ria T DiLullo: And so she acts as the audience's guide, kind of through piecing together what's going on. Because the letters are only written when they're not in the same place, but they spent the summers together. So we need a way to bridge the gap there.

[5:37] Sarah Goodman: Yeah.

[5:38] Ria T DiLullo: Yeah. So historical women, uh, unearthing Maria Chabot, giving her a chance to tell her own story through her own words.

[5:44] Sarah Goodman: Wow.

[5:45] Ria T DiLullo: Through my body.

[5:47] Sarah Goodman: That's so cool. I'm so excited to see the show. I'm coming on opening night, which is later this month on the 25th of February. And how long is the show running?

[5:57] Ria T DiLullo: It's an odd run, limited engagement. So it's eight performances over three weeks.

[6:02] Sarah Goodman: Okay.

[6:02] Ria T DiLullo: So great. Get in, relax, and get in there, everybody. Go to The Tank and see the show. It's gonna be so cool. So tell me more about, uh, The Skeleton Rep, which is The Skeleton Rep(resents) in parentheses. How do you say this? How do you verbalize that title? Do you say Skeleton Rep or do you say Skeleton Represents?

[6:19] Ria T DiLullo: So often what I say is The Skeleton Represents exploring modern myth.

[6:25] Sarah Goodman: Ooh, okay. Tell me more about that.

[6:27] Ria T DiLullo: So our, uh, the mission, I, I am the artistic director and the founder of, uh, Skeleton Represents, and the mission to explore modern myth means we want to develop new plays, new stories that either take myths from the past and bring them into the present, or look at what is mythical about our own age and bring those stories to the stage. And I have a, my undergrad degree is in American studies in identity and representation.

[6:47] Sarah Goodman: Cool.

[6:53] Ria T DiLullo: And so Americans don't get myths. Our country's too young. Yeah, but we do have legends. Uh, and so one of the things that I've decided, uh, fits within the mission statement is telling stories of real people no one knows about, but we should.

[7:09] Sarah Goodman: Yeah.

[7:09] Ria T DiLullo: And so that's where this bridge kind of comes in and telling this story under The Skeleton Represents umbrella.

[7:16] Sarah Goodman: Very cool. When did you found the company?

[7:19] Ria T DiLullo: Ten years ago.

[7:20] Sarah Goodman: Wow, congratulations. That's really amazing.

[7:23] Ria T DiLullo: That's like legit.

[7:25] Sarah Goodman: Well, it's, I mean, we are, we are holding it down in the indie theater world, you know.

[7:29] Ria T DiLullo: And as you probably well know, the indie scene is going, I mean, the entire theater scene in New York and in the country is going through some huge changes.

[7:38] Sarah Goodman: Absolutely.

[7:38] Ria T DiLullo: It's really a struggle right now. A lot of the smaller companies are struggling to stay afloat, to get funding, to keep their physical spaces.

[7:46] Sarah Goodman: Yeah, I know I noticed you, uh, you had Wild Project on at the end of last year.

[7:51] Ria T DiLullo: I did, yes, on a Mari De Cassada. Um, and I really hope the Wild Project can pull out the funding to keep their building because that's such a cool space.

[8:01] Sarah Goodman: Yes, and like they collaborate with Club Slum, who's another club thumb beacon of the indie scene here.

[8:06] Ria T DiLullo: So, uh, yeah, so indie theater, you know, needs to be alive and well. It's an incubator for the next best thing, the next greatest thing. You know, I think one of the great rises was, uh, O'Marry.

[8:17] Sarah Goodman: Oh yes, yeah.

[8:18] Ria T DiLullo: From Loved O'Marry. Such a, and didn't you also recently have, uh, I had Bianca Lee on my show as well, yes.

[8:25] Sarah Goodman: Very fun.

[8:26] Ria T DiLullo: Yeah, she's incredible.

[8:27] Sarah Goodman: So, so good. Um, tell me a little bit about what brought you to theater to begin with. Were you a theater kid growing up?

[8:32] Ria T DiLullo: Oh god, I was totally a theater kid by accident. No one in my family is a theater person in my immediate family.

[8:41] Sarah Goodman: How did that come into your life?

[8:42] Ria T DiLullo: So I grew up, uh, I'm, I grew up here in New York City, and for ages five through twelve, I lived out in Queens. And I went to a magnet school that took us to see, uh, the Queen's College theater productions as like part of our school trips. And so I got to see all of their shows, and I just fell in love with the storytelling element.

[9:02] Sarah Goodman: Yeah.

[9:02] Ria T DiLullo: Do you remember any specific productions from that time?

[9:05] Sarah Goodman: Not from that early on. I remember a few key productions.

[9:10] Ria T DiLullo: Oh, that's fun.

[9:12] Sarah Goodman: Shh. Be quiet out there, New York. Come on, Times Square. It's usually so quiet out here.

[9:20] Ria T DiLullo: Uh, so one production I do remember strangely was a production of Cymbeline.

[9:25] Sarah Goodman: Oh, wow, okay.

[9:26] Ria T DiLullo: That just like captivated my attention and my imagination. And I actually hand-wrote a letter to the theater company.

[9:32] Sarah Goodman: Oh my god.

[9:32] Ria T DiLullo: It was just like, I loved this show. This is beautiful. I want to be an actor.

[9:37] Sarah Goodman: Yeah.

[9:38] Ria T DiLullo: And the company like wrote me back a card. Everyone from the show signed it.

[9:42] Sarah Goodman: That's really sweet.

[9:43] Ria T DiLullo: Yeah. And I had this incredible, there was this incredible program for young kids out near where I lived in Queens. And it was called Showbiz Kids. And this incredible woman, Elaine Lamont, ran the program. She was in her 60s. She wore, uh, pastel pants suits.

[10:00] Sarah Goodman: Yes and costume jewelry and matching kitten heels, and she smoked two packs of camels a day on Shelter.

[10:06] Ria T DiLullo: Elaine.

[10:08] Sarah Goodman: Let's love it.

[10:09] Ria T DiLullo: She is fabulous. And so I learned, uh, craft at a very young age, from the ages of nine through about 14 with her. And she put us through the ringer.

[10:17] Sarah Goodman: Yeah.

[10:19] Ria T DiLullo: You'd come into the door, and there's a 13-step checklist. And if you did it wrong, the next week you had to sit on stage with a crying onion sign and wait for someone with a perfect record to check you in step by step. Like she was no bullshit.

[10:31] Sarah Goodman: Wow.

[10:34] Ria T DiLullo: That is so intense.

[10:36] Sarah Goodman: She was super intense. She was all about preparing.

[10:39] Ria T DiLullo: This is when you're nine years old.

[10:40] Sarah Goodman: Uh, that was, uh, starting at 11. I graduated Showbiz Kids was sort of most mature group.

[10:48] Ria T DiLullo: That's how it was.

[10:49] Sarah Goodman: The standards are so high for Showbiz Kids.

[10:50] Ria T DiLullo: It's very high for Showbiz Kids. We performed at Q Tip, Queen's Theater in the Park as our like final end of year thing.

[10:55] Ria T DiLullo: Yeah.

[10:56] Sarah Goodman: Wow, that's so cool. I actually worked on a solo show featuring her in, uh, Judy Gold's solo performance class. I was her TA for years and years and years. So I've been working on bringing her back to life.

[11:07] Ria T DiLullo: Oh, I need to see Elaine in action.

[11:10] Sarah Goodman: Yeah, she, she's a trip.

[11:11] Ria T DiLullo: Yeah, I bet. She has like kids playing. She's like, if you don't know show, then you can't be a Showbiz Kid.

[11:19] Sarah Goodman: And so we'd have to do these like we'd have to perform as the legend. So like I did a year of where I was Ethel Merman. I did another year where I was Mae West.

[11:27] Ria T DiLullo: Are you kidding me?

[11:29] Sarah Goodman: This is so amazing.

[11:31] Ria T DiLullo: Wow, wow. That is incredible doing a Mae West character study as a tween.

[11:36] Sarah Goodman: Yeah, absolutely.

[11:37] Ria T DiLullo: Yeah. Because I was this tall at 12.

[11:39] Sarah Goodman: And she was like, I have to prepare you for the real.

[11:41] Ria T DiLullo: And you are quite tall.

[11:42] Sarah Goodman: I'm only five feet. So when you walked in, I was like, wow.

[11:46] Ria T DiLullo: I am. And I carry tall.

[11:48] Sarah Goodman: I'm five nine, but I carry like someone much taller.

[11:51] Ria T DiLullo: Personality.

[11:52] Sarah Goodman: Yeah, absolutely.

[11:53] Ria T DiLullo: Yeah. Maria Chabot did too.

[11:55] Sarah Goodman: I bet. That's the interesting thing, is like Georgia O'Keeffe comes off so quiet in so many ways and reserved, and there's all the, you know, footage of her and her like white collar with the kimono wrap she made herself.

[12:09] Ria T DiLullo: So stoic.

[12:10] Sarah Goodman: Yes.

[12:10] Ria T DiLullo: And I get the sense from Maria's letters because I read all the letters that they wrote back and forth.

[12:16] Sarah Goodman: How many are there?

[12:18] Ria T DiLullo: The book of it is over 500 pages.

[12:22] Sarah Goodman: It's good.

[12:23] Ria T DiLullo: Over 700 letters. And so this is cool. So Carolyn Gage is the playwright. I must shout her out. She is incredible. And she brings a lot of historical women and historical lesbians to light through her plays. So go go check it out. Go find Carolyn Gage's website. I will link to it in the show notes for sure. She's a beast of a playwright. And uh so I went up to visit her in Maine. She lives in Maine, and she had me come, you know, stay and hike and look at theater. It was amazing. And uh she's like, Wait, I wrote this thing, read it with me. And so she read Georgia, I read Maria, and I was like, what is this? This is uh about two and a half years ago. And she's like, Do you want to read all the letters?

I was like, I do want to read all the letters. So she handed me the physical book. Oh my gosh. And she had put all these post-its in at the top of it. I brought it back to New York, read every single letter. I was like, Can I make notes, Carolyn? Yeah. And so then I put all my tabs on the side of the book. Oh my gosh. Um, where's this master duck? I'll send you a picture of it if you would love to see it. It's crazy. Um, and she actually gave me co-curator of the letters credit for sort of in this with her. Yeah. Um, but yeah, it's like Maria, Maria wanted to be a writer really bad, but she had no patience for editing. And like, if it wasn't perfect the first time, then she'd throw out a C T fan.

Like, like she was this big, strong, capable woman who like didn't like to revise and had a lot of sort of emotional manipulation problems. And so, like, you see this like big personality coming up against Georgia, who's just like, no. And it's tough. She's, you know, she's 25 years younger than Georgia. She's she's 26 to 35 over the course of this show. Wow. And doesn't feel like she has a place in the world. She's always, and you know, she doesn't conform. She's like, oh, my mother only wants to talk to me in terms of clothes and permanent waves and being a young lady. She says, I have no business running off into the country, burying myself away from everyone and everything with a woman 25 years older than myself.

Scandal. George is like, your mother's a different generation. There's nothing I can say about that. Oh my gosh. That's amazing. There's a lot of texture there. Um, but to perform it is almost like poetry. Yeah. Because they're letters, they were never meant to be read aloud. So it's it's this interesting mix of performing as an actor, but storytelling to kind of tell these long letters.

[14:56] Sarah Goodman: Yeah. And so in your involvement and sort of noting the book and working with Carolyn, I'd love to hear about what your experience is like. Um, I think in your on your website, I read that you sort of consider yourself like a midwife in creating plays, like developing a play. So tell me a little bit more about that and how how you um how how you were involved in developing this play.

[15:19] Ria T DiLullo: Yeah, uh, so that term I was working with a play doula. Yes, a creative doula. Yes. Uh that came about because I was working on a different project with someone last fall, and at the end of it, he looked at me and he's like, So, like you didn't direct this project. Like, what do I call you? Creative midwife. And I was like, please, I'm not sure. All my calling cards. Yeah. And then I changed it to dual it because midwives come in at the end, doulas are there the whole time. Okay, part of the whole process, not just the birth. Exactly. Exactly. So skeleton rep is also an incubator space because we only do new work, which means people have to be juggling, like if they've moved to New York, how do I survive in New York?

How do I find a job that lets me continue to fulfill my function as an artist and my calling as a creator? And I have the great gift of being from here. So there's certain parts that are built in. Yeah. And I'm pretty good at processes. And so I'm good at kind of saying, like, okay, what what are you going for? What are the skills and tools you already have available to you that you know you have that you don't have to worry about? You don't have to actually think about it. So then what are the habits we need to build to make a sustainable practice for you on the macro and then on the micro, this very specific project. What's your goal? Yeah. And what's standing in the way? And how do we move it out of the way?

Right. Uh, and so that's a big part of what I do uh in my life as a artistic director and as a creative doula. And with Carolyn, it's it's different because she's, you know, she's in her early mid-70s. She's been doing what she does a long time. She is hyper focused. And so it was more this collaboration was more about saying, you know, you haven't because of the nature of your work and the lifetime that you've lived, you haven't necessarily had the platform to put your plays up in the way that I think they really deserve.

[17:15] Sarah Goodman: Certainly.

[17:15] Ria T DiLullo: Like she's she's telling such important stories. And as we were saying, kind of before we started rolling, is we don't get a lot of butch representation in theater. No, I mean, there's there's barely any queer women representation, period, let alone butch, femme in between. Like there's just not a lot of it. Women who love women, we we just don't really see them in theater. We see a lot of other types of queers coming out lately, which is great and deserves to be celebrated. Absolutely, for sure. We need to keep holding that space, but like, where's the arm and the outreach that says, like, oh, this identity also belongs here, you know? And and Carolyn, if she were here, would probably say, like, because it's threatening.

[17:54] Sarah Goodman: Absolutely.

[17:55] Ria T DiLullo: Threatening about these identities and giving them the space they actually deserve to hold. Yes. And, you know, women-loving women are decentering men. And I think that's really difficult for a lot of people to handle. It's the patriarchy.

[18:08] Sarah Goodman: Men and women alike, I think, struggle with that, right?

[18:10] Ria T DiLullo: Absolutely. So, you know, just to let Carolyn know she's here in the room with us. Like, that is that is totally a part of where she's coming from. And as an indie theater company, I don't have to worry about any of that.

[18:23] Sarah Goodman: Yeah, you get to be bold and get to tell the stories you want to tell.

[18:27] Ria T DiLullo: Right. And a partner like the tank is so valuable because they give emerging artists free space to do work. So they do a box office split, which means I can actually take the risk and tell the story and not really worry about, you know, am I gonna recoup my very large, you know, budget line item of the theater by doing this. Which truly I think is what's choking the industry right now. The theater owners have so much power. They they are putting such an enormous cost on shows in order to survive. And the commercial aspect often outweighs the artistic value because at the end of the day, you gotta make the money or you get kicked out of the theater, right?

[19:10] Sarah Goodman: Yeah.

[19:10] Ria T DiLullo: So having a free space to be able to explore is so freeing and amazing. And like really what we need for art is is more of that around so that people can really express what they're wanting to express freely.

[19:25] Sarah Goodman: Absolutely. Absolutely.

[19:26] Ria T DiLullo: And Megan Finn, the artistic director of the tank, has been doing such an incredible job. She actually won a David prize, which is one of the big

[19:30] Sarah Goodman: Oh, I remember hearing about this this last year.

[19:36] Ria T DiLullo: That's right. So she she launched a program called Revenue, and it's basically taking the tank's box office split model to spaces uh to partner with people and say, like, we have space, you're dark this night. Why not bring an indie show in here for a night or two or a week, you know?

[19:53] Sarah Goodman: Yeah.

[19:53] Ria T DiLullo: Um, so anyone who is looking to do some indie theater in New York, check out Revenue. It's a way to get it.

[19:57] Sarah Goodman: Awesome.

[19:59] Ria T DiLullo: Yeah, that's so exciting. And when it comes to audiences too, there's always this chatter about like, oh, we're it's so hard to get audiences in to see theater. It's like, well, as a company that specializes in new work development, part of the issue is that the work is underdeveloped. So it doesn't matter to put identities and bodies on stage if you're not telling a good story. You're actually doing a disservice to those people in those communities by putting something up that's not ready for a commercial market.

[20:27] Sarah Goodman: Yeah.

[20:28] Ria T DiLullo: So that's what part of it too is Carolyn is such a stickler for structure, but we have this strange parameter around it in that we're only quoting the letters, and then we have Mary Wheelwright's character as narrator. So we've how do we create a dramatic narrative arc when you're only using quotations? Is kind of an interesting experience and experiment. And I think we're doing a pretty good job of it. And then, you know, filling in the gaps with uh staging and all of that amazing stuff. And what's cool is because people know who Georgia is, or at least that name has some recognition.

[21:00] Sarah Goodman: Yeah.

[21:01] Ria T DiLullo: And there are so many queer communities here in New York. The outreach for this is actually really exciting to do working with uh Emily Owens PR. She's great.

[21:08] Sarah Goodman: I love Emily.

[21:09] Ria T DiLullo: Emily gets me all my best guess.

[21:13] Sarah Goodman: She's.

[21:13] Ria T DiLullo: Yes, of course. That's how I'm sitting here with you.

[21:15] Sarah Goodman: That's right.

[21:17] Ria T DiLullo: And so, like reaching out to art history departments around New York City and different queer communities and spaces and things like that, and saying, like, here's a discount code. Let's get you in here. Like, come see this piece that brings in a real person, real people, historical people, people that are not on stage very often, as we've mentioned now a few times.

[21:37] Sarah Goodman: Yeah.

[21:38] Ria T DiLullo: And it's 75 minutes. So like jump in.

[21:39] Sarah Goodman: Love that.

[21:41] Ria T DiLullo: Get your 18, 20, 30 ticket, and like in come see what this is, what is possible when we remove a lot of the parameters of producing.

[21:52] Sarah Goodman: That's so cool.

[21:54] Ria T DiLullo: And it's it's just such an exciting story because, like you said, it's sort of like the history books have left out this really important detail about George O'Keefe's life, you know, this really long-term relationship. You said nine years and 700 letters. Like that is a deep, deep relationship that is very personal. And um, we were joking before about, you know, historians will say they were best friends, but truly, like this is something that we see in history all the time. And I think George O'Keefe's always considered like a queer figure, but digging into that is something we really haven't seen.

[22:33] Ria T DiLullo: So it's very exciting to be able to uncover sort of this lost piece of her story.

[22:39] Sarah Goodman: Absolutely.

[22:40] Ria T DiLullo: And yeah, and Maria Chabot's a trip in and of herself. Like she's uh Zibby Wilder is her, I think, great great grandniece, and went on like a pilgrimage to New Mexico to read her letters. Georgia O'Keefe's estate has all of Maria Chabot's estate within it. And so uh if you want more on Maria, Zippy Wilder does a great blog on her website about her journey unearthing this relative of hers. Uh and she was a spitfire and she was a problem. Like she was she was incredible and really, really capable. And also, you know, when you don't have a space in the world for yourself, uh, that can have some tough ramifications, and it plays out on our psyche and it plays out in how we treat other people.

[23:25] Sarah Goodman: Yeah.

[23:25] Ria T DiLullo: And we get to watch the complications of that on stage. Like this play doesn't just say, like, here's a really cool lady that you didn't know about. Here's a woman behind the woman. It's like, here's a woman behind the woman who is a three-dimensional person who has highs, who has lows, who is complicated, um, who struggles and achieves something so impressive and never actually gets to experience the fruits of her labor.

[23:51] Sarah Goodman: Right.

[23:52] Ria T DiLullo: Like wear her flowers, right?

[23:53] Sarah Goodman: Yeah.

[23:54] Ria T DiLullo: Yeah, both in history and in the moment. You know, I won't spoil the end, but it's uh there's a reason.

[23:59] Sarah Goodman: No one knows who she is.

[24:02] Ria T DiLullo: Mm-hmm.

[24:03] Sarah Goodman: Yeah, gotta dive into that when we see the show.

[24:05] Ria T DiLullo: Absolutely. So cool. Um, I'd love to talk more about gender representation.

[24:11] Ria T DiLullo: And you said um Maria's character is gender non-conforming, and we're in a time politically that is really prickly around gender presentation, gender representation. Our current administration in America is fascist, down, it's like rough, right? So how does it feel in this moment to be portraying this character, to be telling this story? Um, does it make you nervous? Does it make you excited? What do you what do you what are your thoughts on that? Uh it's a it's the biggest gift I could ask for at this moment in time is uh you know, as someone who also never felt like I quite fit into the molds, and even the molds we have right now, I'm like, that's still not right for me. And I think Maria would probably feel the same way.

You know, there's this incredible letter when she's I think 12, maybe maybe 13, and she's like, I'm gonna live life as a boy and see what it's about. And there's this amazing photo of her, like this. She's got this like really cool haircut with the slit in it. Yes. Um, she writes a letter to Virginia Woolf and it's like, I read Orlando, and like I want to be your mentee, basically. Yes. Um, Virginia Woolf writes her back and is like, cool your jets, but like I'm glad you like the book. Um that's great. And then she's like, Oh, you know, never mind this boy thing, like, but I'm gonna, you know, wear blue jeans. Um in a time women didn't wear pants, I'm gonna run off to New Mexico. And in a time where it was even crimin, I'm criminalized to wear clothing that was not, you know, associated with your gender.

Yeah, yeah. And uh, so what's what's to answer your actual question? It's it's it's freeing, it's liberating, it's exciting, it's delightful. It's my favorite part of the week is getting in the room with the other actors and with our director. And yeah, and uh it's like unchaining myself to to get on stage. You know, I've I've been one of the things that's come up for me is some folks have been asking me, oh, how are rehearsals going? I'm like, the to give a place for my anger, like my very real, very righteous, very deep-seated, very long-standing anger. Yes. And to then be able to play this character, this real person. She's I keep reminding myself, she's like, she's not a character, she's a real person.

I don't have to invent any reasoning behind any of my lines. I just need to do my research. Yeah, yeah. And it's I don't have to make myself smaller than I am on stage being her. I can actually stand up at my full height and at my full voice and at my full bravado and at my full force as a human being. Wow. Which there aren't a lot of places in this world where I've been able to experience that, especially actually not as an artist. I was an athlete for a good portion of my life and highly competitive. And so in that space, I could be as, you know, big and strong and loud and capable and forceful as I was. But the I haven't experienced that going very well as an artist. And so it's really exciting to be an actor, as someone who hasn't acted in a long time, but has a long-standing passion for it.

To say, like, I actually don't have to be the diplomat. I don't have to be the director. I don't have to be the producer when I'm in rehearsal. I can just say, like, I am putting on Maria's cowboy boots and I am stomping around and I am at full voice and I am at full emotion. Yes. When I get to be her.

[27:24] Ria T DiLullo: Yeah. And again, they were letters. So it's it's filled with emotion. It's like you have to go there to make the lines mean something. Yeah. Yeah. You know, people used to care enough about communicating with each other where they would sit down and write out a letter, write out their feelings and thoughts and mail it away. Yeah. And do right and do it every day. Solve it. Multiple times a day. Yeah. Yeah. Like Maria was so obsessive about her relationship with Georgia. She actually would draft her letters. Wow. Yeah. Oh my gosh. And so her annals have all of her drafts of letters and then all the letters Georgia sent her, like pristine and well preserved, and all of Georgia's letters that Maria sent her were like thrown in a box, some are torn.

And so they go back to Maria's drafts to reconstruct some of her letters in order to publish this. Oh, that's fascinating. Yeah. Wow, that's so cool. What a gift this is for all of humanity, truly, to be learning all of this rich, rich history. Absolutely. And like I encourage more people to pick up Carolyn's plays, especially, especially gender non-conforming people who feel like I haven't been able to be my full passionate self in the arts. And for you know, theater companies looking to do big, important, passionful work. Yeah. You know, and what's cool too is like you don't need a lot of production value to tell these stories because they're real people, like they fill it in for you. Yeah, yeah. You don't need all the bells and whistles. You really don't, which is kind of exciting too.

[28:58] Sarah Goodman: That's cool. I'd love to hear more about your athleticism and sort of your parallel lives of movement and movement coaching and theater and sort of like how do those things intersect? Where do they diverge? Um, I think it's really interesting what you said about like feeling more embodied as an athlete and being able to really like stand in your power as an athlete. Like, how do those things connect?

[29:20] Ria T DiLullo: Yeah. Well. And maybe maybe start with giving a little context to the listeners about your journey as an athlete.

[29:26] Ria T DiLullo: Sure. Yeah, I can definitely start there. So I I've been moving my whole life. I I was large early, but meaning I grew quickly, I matured quickly. And I was fortunate enough to find myself in spaces where they that the fact that I wasn't the same size and strength of other girls my age really didn't matter. So, like I did um probably six years of martial arts as a kid. But what was good about that is when you get to sparring, it's not about matching someone like okay, you're an 11 or 12-year old female, so we need to match you with an 11 or 12-year-old female. It's like actually we need to match you by size and weight and belt. Yeah, totally. Your your skills, your your strength. Which means I was sparring with boys who are often, you know, four years older than I was.

And and that's just because of the way that that space is designed and its equity. So that you know was really valuable to me. I was uh my big sports in high school were I was a volleyball player, uh, I was a lacrosse goalie, which you know, I'm the size of the goal, so that worked out really well for me. Um and uh I was a basketball player, which was my sport between sports, uh, but I really found a niche. I was a prodigy rower uh crew.

[30:38] Ria T DiLullo: Cool. And uh there's not a lot of places to learn how to row here in New York City. And because of again, it's it's how fast can you pull the boat uh relative to your weight as well. Uh and we just didn't have like the team wasn't big enough for there to be a boat full of women my size. And so I trained with the men's team.

[30:56] Ria T DiLullo: Wow in the men's boats because that was more accurate before I got to college, where there were lots of women like me. And I was like, oh look, here we all are together. Um but like I remember the boats, the men's boats, the thing is women's hips are much wider than men's hips. Oh, interesting. Yeah. The boats to be aerodynamic are like as small as they can be. So like if the women's boat is the exact width of my hips, the men's boat is probably two to three inches shorter.

[31:23] Ria T DiLullo: Oh wow, narrower rather. And so I would come home from you know my summers of practice and stuff with my like thighs all torn up because they'd be rubbing against the gunnels of the boats. Gosh, yeah, like you're squished in there.

[31:35] Ria T DiLullo: Yeah. Oh my goodness. But like I was thrilled, you know. It's like I didn't care.

[31:39] Ria T DiLullo: Battle wounds, yeah and all that stuff. Um, but then my my uh body took a turn in college after I got recruited to row. Uh I was I got injured uh pretty for anyone who knows crew I a girl behind me caught a crab which means her ore didn't catch the water the right way.

[31:59] Ria T DiLullo: And these oars are eight feet long. They're made of wood. Yeah they're heavy right super heavy.

[32:04] Ria T DiLullo: Yeah. And so the girl behind me lost control of her oar and it slammed into my low back and I had pretty severe scoliosis and like was athletic through all of that. Um and it just like sent this me into a cascade of injuries that like really truncated my rowing career. I was you know had Olympic 2012 dreams and aspirations and things like that. And that was within months like completely shattered. And so left you know chose to leave the team. I wasn't kicked off or anything. I was just like my body clearly is telling me I have to quit yeah for for my longevity.

[32:39] Ria T DiLullo: Yeah.

[32:39] Ria T DiLullo: Um, which was really really hard for me for my coaches for my family.

[32:43] Ria T DiLullo: I'm sure and then all of a sudden I was like oh I have all this free time what'll I do? I guess I'll go back to theater.

[32:47] Ria T DiLullo: Ah I guess we always get pulled back in don't we?

[32:53] Ria T DiLullo: And uh and then I started on this so I you know always had this uh long history of athletics and theater on and off on and off through my youth and then they really started to marry together uh uh right as I was graduating college as I started taking lessons from this woman who was a technically a Pilates teacher but actually she specialized in holistic movement and yeah I I want to dive deep into this. Please tell me everything exciting stuff.

[33:22] Ria T DiLullo: And uh, and what was so funny is I was sidelined from a dance class. I had this like terrible third-degree ankle injury um in my senior year of college. And this woman was auditing the class. Her husband's a professor at the grad school and she came up to me and was like, I think I could help you. And I'm 21 and I'm like, whatever. Like, okay, weirdo. You know, like, sure, like, weird. It's like, you know, 40-something year old. She's like, I think I can help you. Like, okay, maybe. But then she did it two more times and I was like, she was very insistent. Yeah. And I was like, all right, I gotta see what this is about. Yeah. And I was in so much pain all the time. I didn't realize until actually fairly recently, maybe three or four or five years ago, that I was like, oh, I wasn't a bitch growing up.

I was in pain. Isn't it interesting the amount of pain that we can endure, especially people who are socialized female, um, to just that's just life, right? You don't even think about how it's impacting you.

[34:24] Ria T DiLullo: No, it was just like be like toughen up. Yeah. You know, yeah. If you can't handle it, get out. Yeah. You know, I really took that to heart. And I'm I'm glad I'm as tough as I am for all of it. But uh it it there was like a healing that had to happen in grief that had to happen for that young person that you know had to struggle through all that and never be seen for the potential. Uh, and to have to choose to step into it, you know, at this stage in life, which is exciting to even get to a place where I can do that.

[34:53] Ria T DiLullo: Um, but she so I go to do this session with her and I go to lay on my back and she just takes these like two little pink balls you can get them on Amazon, like puts them in my back. We do all these tiny movements, and like the feedback my body gave me at the time, I would have labeled it as pain, but now I understand that it it wasn't noceptors triggering, it was like deep movement patterns finally occurring that had been so shut down and locked down for so long.

[35:20] Ria T DiLullo: Wow. And I stood up at the end of this, you know, 50 minute session and she's like, all right, go go look in the mirror. And my shoulders were level for the first time in my life. Wow. You know, after having this severe scoliosis. Oh my goodness. And I was like, I'm hooked. I'm in. One session put you in that much more alignment.

[35:37] Ria T DiLullo: Yeah. Wow. And it, you know, it didn't stick around forever after that one session. It takes a long time to develop new motor patterns, you know, or all that good stuff. Uh, but I started working with her uh twice a week for a year and it just got me hooked. And I was like, how do I learn more of this? And she's like, Oh, it's this woman, she lives out in Portland. I was like, I not of course she lives in Portland. Of course she lives in Portland. Like, where else is this happening but in Portland?

[36:03] Ria T DiLullo: Um, but I always kept my eye on like how do I get back to this space. This is super interesting, you know, moved back to New York. Um, and because she had been a Pilates teacher, I'm like, well, I need a job and I can't sit at a desk. I know that about myself. So I don't know, maybe I'll like get a my Pilates teacher certification.

[36:18] Ria T DiLullo: So I did that, but I always had this other bend to my work, you know, in studios full of dancer instructors. I was sort of the only one that came from an athletic background. It's always, you know, built a little differently than the other teachers. And I looked at the way people move differently. I was always more interested in how is someone's body making its way through space to make the shape, not make the shape by all means necessary. It's just a bit different. More about the journey to it and not the designation. Yeah, and like if your body can't, like, there's a good reason for that, and it's not my job to force it or shove it.

[36:55] Sarah Goodman: Yeah.

[36:55] Ria T DiLullo: And then what was cool is during the pandemic, this woman reached out to me and was like, hey, that teacher I told you about in Portland has gone virtual. Oh, if you want to take lessons from her, like that's now available. Cool. And so I actually went super hard, super deep. I was taking, you know, almost she offers 10 group classes a week. I was taking almost all of them. And then she offered like foundational, which is, you know, long meetings and we go into the nervous system and it's seven stages and how the different parts of the body actually operate at each stage, both from a physiological level, but also there are emotional patterns that go with all of these things and behavioral patterns that go with all of these things.

[37:37] Ria T DiLullo: Yeah, thus the holistic approach, right?

[37:40] Sarah Goodman: Exactly.

[37:41] Ria T DiLullo: And that it's you know, and so when I'm working with folks, either as artists or people who come to me as clients just for the movement, whether it's, you know, they want to their knee won't stop bothering them when they're deadlifting or their pre- or post-surgery, or they have an autoimmune or whatever it is. Or if I'm working just with actors, I'm like, we have a way to get more in touch with this instrument that you know, we present these characters and these worlds through. And if we've got our own holding patterns in how we move through the world that we don't even know about, then we're probably not accessing all of our tools that are available to us.

[38:17] Sarah Goodman: Totally, like you're almost like locked up in certain ways, right?

[38:20] Ria T DiLullo: Exactly.

[38:21] Ria T DiLullo: And so that's part of and so like these two worlds I've been marrying towards each other for a really long time. But because also the science on the holistic movement end is still figuring itself out and so new, it's tough to have language just yet that describes exactly what the offering is. It's sort of like, well, you kind of just gotta like get in the room and I gotta hand you these little pink balls and like you gotta follow the cues and like feel what you have to feel it.

[38:49] Sarah Goodman: Yeah and one of the things I say is um can you sense the change you don't have to be able to label it yet.

[38:55] Ria T DiLullo: Yeah the label isn't important but can you sense that there's something different yeah and that begins to unlock people's ability to actually just have heightened awareness just to start like being aware doesn't mean having to have language to describe awareness it means can I sense you know beyond just the five that we get taught about we actually have 18 to 22 senses.

[39:19] Sarah Goodman: Wow that's a lot more there's a lot it's a lot more you know and and it just unlocks a different way of being with people and of being in the room and and I for me it also gives much more play like theater you know that's that's the thing that I always find really exciting about what sport and and performing arts have to offer is they both share the word play.

[39:42] Ria T DiLullo: Yes which to me is actually in a very is in the joyful state of the nervous system is where we have access and faculty and availability to everything and there there becomes that sort of collective consciousness that comes in either in the team setting or in the audience actor right the way the design it all works and and so I I actually think there's more the what is that phrase the sum is greater than the parts when we actually are in that full play place.

[40:13] Sarah Goodman: Oh I really love that that's really cool.

[40:15] Ria T DiLullo: And I think that's it's so important for people to remember the joy of it all, right.

[40:21] Sarah Goodman: Um, yeah, especially now we're in weak leak times. We need joy.

[40:24] Ria T DiLullo: We need joy and connection and and remembering what makes us human.

[40:29] Sarah Goodman: Absolutely.

[40:30] Ria T DiLullo: Yeah, absolutely. So I want to segue into asking about what is important about live theater today in a in an age where so much of art is only for entertainment.

[40:44] Ria T DiLullo: I think that live theater actually has a much deeper calling and a much deeper root. So one of the things when I teach play structure to folks, and then we go over genre, is I go real old school when I talk about tragedy. And that we don't actually use the word as it was intended these days.

[41:04] Sarah Goodman: Oh, speak more about that.

[41:05] Ria T DiLullo: I'd be happy to. So tragedy for the Greeks was not a sad story. Tragedy for the Greeks was a telling of a narrative that created by the end catharsis for every audience member for their society.

[41:26] Ria T DiLullo: Wow.

[41:27] Ria T DiLullo: And left you purified as an individual and as a society. And so tragedy actually always ends with a glimmer of hope. If we think about Hamlet, it doesn't end with everyone dead, right? We get that big speech at the end about the future of the kingdom.

[41:48] Sarah Goodman: Right.

[41:48] Ria T DiLullo: And so I think that theater, live performance, when it steps into its full calling, can actually deliver us as the both the people embodying the narrative, but also then the audience fully participating in their conscious awareness and then in their unconscious coming together, that we can get to a place of catharsis and that soul purification that can only happen in the theater.

[42:19] Sarah Goodman: Yeah.

[42:20] Ria T DiLullo: And so that to me is its value. And the thing is, is it actually just takes a lot more thought and a lot more work up front to create stories that can do it. But if the Greeks could do it, and if other histories and societies could do it with this far less resources and all this stuff, yeah, like spectacle and catharsis are not the same. You know, we're not gonna get there through pyrotechnics, or we're not gonna get there through, you know, one great dance number or the coolest costume change of all time, you know. Like and I love those things. Don't get me wrong. I love all of that. But for me, when I really when theater achieves catharsis, I go, that's what we're here for. That's actually its calling, that's its spiritual purpose.

[43:01] Sarah Goodman: Yes.

[43:02] Ria T DiLullo: And so that's what I've really started to steer into when I'm working with folks. It's like I'm not actually interested in sort of an entertainment-based script and plot. I'm like, I want to get into how we heal people on us on that soul level, on that psych level, yeah, through through performance. And it means, you know, being really diligent about our structure. It means really the plays structure, it means being really specific. It means cutting out anything extraneous so that we don't dilute the medicine that is the performance.

[43:32] Sarah Goodman: Wow. I really love that approach.

[43:34] Ria T DiLullo: I feel like it's taking it sort of beyond just art or entertainment and giving it sort of like a loftier goal, just on a human level of like, what are we really trying to do with this, right?

[43:49] Sarah Goodman: What's the purpose of this whole thing?

[43:52] Ria T DiLullo: Yeah. Exactly.

[43:53] Ria T DiLullo: Yeah. Yeah.

[43:54] Ria T DiLullo: And kind of the cool thing about like why human beings have been doing theater for all this time, right?

[43:59] Sarah Goodman: Yeah.

[44:03] Ria T DiLullo: Every society and and the ritualization of it. You know, the Greeks had their it was a dionysis, it was the festival of Dionysus that, you know, their top playwrights would, you know, bring in their three plays for the year and then vote. And it was like what they were voting on in the tragedies was like who achieved catharsis?

[44:23] Sarah Goodman: Yeah.

[44:23] Ria T DiLullo: Who who helped our society purify its soul so that we can live another year in the doldrums because we can't get there on our own. You know, like like the mundanity of life and the day-to-day of things, like we can get hyped and we can get amped and we can get angry and we can experience joy and ecstasy, maybe, but but really that that other thing underneath that releases us and sets us free so that we can go back into regular life, we're missing that element from our society. We we don't have a way to purify our souls as a collective anymore.

[44:57] Sarah Goodman: Yeah.

[44:58] Ria T DiLullo: And I really think that's if if theater chose to take that up as a mission, like we would have audiences again. Theater wouldn't be as expensive to produce anymore because we wouldn't be relying on a spectacle to make emotion, yes, to elicit a response. Um and it it means being thoughtful, careful, um, and and having something much greater than anyone's self in line. Uh, for anyone who saw uh Half God of Rainfall a couple of years ago at New York Theater Workshop, I think that's probably the closest, not the closest. I I believe that show achieved catharsis um in its performance. But in, you know, I saw 60 shows last year, I saw 40 the year before. And as someone who's not a nominator, like that's a lot.

[45:43] Sarah Goodman: Yeah.

[45:43] Ria T DiLullo: Um and that was in a hundred shows in two years. That was the only one.

[45:49] Sarah Goodman: Wow.

[45:50] Ria T DiLullo: Wow. That's really interesting. What do you want the audiences to walk away with after seeing Georgia and the Butch?

[45:57] Ria T DiLullo: Catharsis.

[45:58] Sarah Goodman: Yeah.

[45:59] Ria T DiLullo: Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. But I mean, the uh it's everything we've talked about, right? It's it's get to know this person, Georgia O'Keefe, not just this painter, not just these still severe photographs of this woman. It's uh there were eccentric gender non-conforming women have been around forever. Um at Mary Wheelwright, uh, because Carolyn Gage actually gets to write her voice. We get to experience some of that in her way. Uh and to say, like, through Maria Chabot and and through my conjuring of her to say, take up your space. Be your big large self. You can achieve incredible things. And give yourself the chance to do it differently so that you can celebrate yourself and be celebrated by those around you, not do the work and then be shunned for your capacity.

[46:53] Sarah Goodman: Mm-hmm. Wow, that's really awesome. I'm so excited to see the show. Thank you so much again for joining me. Um, tell the listeners where we can follow you, how we can follow skeleton rep. Um, give me all the plugs.

[47:06] Ria T DiLullo: All the plugs. Uh so we do. It's skeletonrep.org is the website, and then it's at skeleton rep are the handles for socials. And then for me personally, it's Delulia. So uh my last name, my first name.com, and then same thing for social handles is Deluloria. You will notice there's a lot of cross posting.

[47:32] Ria T DiLullo: Between this. I have that going on with my own stuff too.

[47:34] Sarah Goodman: Yeah.

[47:35] Ria T DiLullo: Yeah, exactly. When you are your own entity.

[47:37] Sarah Goodman: Exactly.

[47:38] Ria T DiLullo: Yeah, that's right. Well, I've enjoyed our conversation so much. Thank you so much again for being here today. I really appreciate it.

[47:44] Ria T DiLullo: Yeah, thank you so much for having me. It's been an absolute pleasure.

[47:47] Sarah Goodman: Yeah, same. I've really enjoyed our conversation. It was so much fun.

[47:49] Ria T DiLullo: Cheers.

[47:50] Sarah Goodman: Thank you for listening to Good Show. Make sure to follow me on TikTok and Instagram at Good Show Podcast. Good Show is part of the Broadway Podcast Network. Check us out at bpn.fm slash goodshow. Thanks for listening. I'm Sarah Goodman. Goodbye.