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[0:00] Dan Tracy: Welcome to Guys Who Like Musicals.

[0:01] Dan Tracy: Welcome to Guys Who Like Musicals.

[0:03] Dan Tracy: We're here talking to my professional friend Maurice Jones.

[0:08] Dan Tracy: And this is I'm so excited to talk to you. Uh, this is a classic example in the Guys Who Like Musicals universe where this is one of my dear dear friends, and I don't I don't get to nerd out and tell you exactly how I feel about you in real life because it's uncomfortable. Please don't be but because we're on podcast land, I can say how brilliant I think you are and how talented, how wonderful, and what a kind and hilarious, amazing human being you are.

[0:40] Dan Tracy: You have done some ridiculous shows. Lifespan of a Fact with Daniel Radcliffe, St. Joan with our friend Condola, Cherry Orchard with Diane Lane, Romeo and Juliet with Legolas, Julius Caesar with Denzel Washington, and a million off Broadway shows and TV shows.

[0:59] Dan Tracy: At least a million.

[1:00] Dan Tracy: At least a million. Currently, you're teaching at Stella Adler. You're teaching Shakespeare at Stella Adler. So I don't know if this conversation is going to add any value to our listeners, but for the love of God, I hope so. Is that okay to say?

[1:17] Maurice Jones: Based on your resume, I must say that was an illustrious introduction. I'm so happy to see. This is incredible. It's a pleasure to be on here with you fellas. I must say I am a fan of the podcast.

[1:34] Maurice Jones: No, that can't be.

[1:36] Maurice Jones: Oh, it's that's the truth. I unfortunately was a little late to it. I didn't realize that Joe was putting on this podcast with you, Dan, until I saw your interview on Playbill, checking in with Broadway's Joe Carroll in the pandemic, and it said that you're recording a podcast, and I thought, what the hell? It made perfect sense, but it just wasn't what I knew you were up to. And so I instantly headed over and subscribed and have listened to quite a number of episodes, and I love what you guys do here. It's pretty crazy.

[2:10] Dan Tracy: Yeah, thank you.

[2:12] Maurice Jones: So an actor is saying his lines, and then out of nowhere, he just starts singing.

[2:27] Maurice Jones: Don't cry for me.

[2:38] Dan Tracy: Um, well, I'm really excited to talk to you for I want there's a million things that I want to get to, but I want to talk about the teaching. I want to talk about the pandemic a little bit. And where are you in the world and what are you doing with these folks at Stella Adler?

[2:55] Maurice Jones: Sure. Um what a great question. As Joe mentioned, I teach Shakespeare scene study at Stella Adler and NYU over there at Tisch School of the Arts, teaching the second year students, and I've been doing it. In fact, we are in the final days of the semester right now. And it was crazy, it was insane, you know, the way it happened. I, like many people were thrust into this space of uncertainty at the beginning of this pandemic. And perhaps, like many people, I was wondering if it was worth it financially to stay in New York. Was I gonna be able to afford rent? Why did I need to be in this crazily expensive city? Is there still space for me in my mother's attic? You know, the questions you ask yourself.

[4:07] Maurice Jones: And it turns out that I had gone to an opening night a few months before the pandemic, and a friend of mine who was the casting director of the show that we saw, I mentioned to her afterwards that I didn't know how much longer I was perhaps interested in being an actor. And she said, Well, what do you think you'd want to do if you weren't acting? And I said, I always thought I'd make a pretty good teacher. And it turns out that she had some connections at Stella Adler, or I should say she knew some people, and asked if I wanted to use her assistance to get a meeting, and it was just gonna be a meeting, and I said sure, not thinking anything was gonna come of it.

[4:21] Maurice Jones: And I went in to meet with the gentleman about a month later, and you know, I didn't have a teaching resume, I had no teaching experience. I really expected nothing to come out of it at all. I knew there were more people who were more qualified than I was, but I left the meeting thinking that I was just doing my friend a favor. Um, and so imagine my surprise when the following month, we're a couple of weeks into the pandemic, I get a phone call. Hey, we remembered meeting you last month and how much you loved Shakespeare and we loved the way you talked about Shakespeare. How would you like to come in and cover two classes for one of our teachers who's out sick? It was just supposed to be a couple of weeks.

[5:00] Maurice Jones: And I thought, you know, I was panicked, to be honest with you. Uh it wasn't like teaching little kids, you know, these are grown-ass actors, some of which my biggest fear was that they would know more than me, and then you know, the imposter syndrome would really set in. But I thought, what the hell? I'll do two weeks of classes in and out. Long story short, I do the two weeks. They go incredibly well. My confidence is bolstered. At the end of my final class, the head of the program happened to be observing on Zoom, and he saw how well the students were responding to me and how they all expressed an interest to have me back. He gave me a call right after that class, offered me six more weeks of work with another group of students.

[5:45] Maurice Jones: Those weeks of work went really well. Then they called me and asked if I wanted to teach for them over the summer at the conservatory, and then they asked if I wanted to direct at the conservatory, and then at the end of the summer they asked if I wouldn't to join them on faculty at Adler and NYU. And in that insane quick whirlwind, I went from being a broke, unemployed, confused actor to a college professor to a college Jones to you.

[6:18] Maurice Jones: That Professor Jones. I make my students call me Professor Jones.

[6:24] Dan Tracy: I know.

[6:25] Dan Tracy: Wouldn't I would too? Are you kidding me?

[6:27] Maurice Jones: Are you kidding? His life goal is Professor Carroll.

[6:30] Dan Tracy: Is it really, Joe?

[6:31] Joe Carroll: It's not.

[6:32] Joe Carroll: No, it's not.

[6:33] Dan Tracy: No, I mean I don't know. But the professor, I actually meant to start the in the interview and be like, welcome, Professor Jones, but screwed it up.

[6:42] Maurice Jones: That's so wild. Um but teaching, like we when we caught up a couple weeks ago, you were saying that teaching was it was always in your ether a little bit in your in the back of your head, like it was something you wanted to do.

[6:56] Maurice Jones: Yeah, you know, I've been fortunate enough to have some wonderful teachers in my time, and when I was in college, I was an RA or a residence advisor, you know, those people who break up the parties in the dorm room because I just I don't know what it is. Man, I always had this thing in me where I wanted to be a figure, an educational figure or an authoritative figure, a leader, or some kind of inspirational leader.

[7:19] Maurice Jones: Yeah, it was just that was always sort of inside of me in that way. And so when I went and got my MFA, which certainly made me a better actor, I was always aware that it would equip me to teach one day if I ever did want to. Um, and so I had always been thinking about it. Will I ever teach? Can I teach? What kind of teacher will I be? These questions were burning, but I uh you know, very fortunately was carving out a lovely career as an actor, and so it was never really pushed to the front of my mind until the pandemic when many of us had to sort of really confront what other things we could do or other things we were good at, or other things we could see ourselves doing.

[8:03] Maurice Jones: And um, you know, I would have tried to pursue this opportunity on my own, certainly, but I was really fortunate that I just so happened to have that evening of drinks with my friend who was a casting director who used to work at Stella Adler, and those pieces beautifully and magically lined up. And I gotta tell you, I really surprised myself every time I say it, but I absolutely love teaching. I truly believe that it is my second calling. And for a long time I sort of rejected that notion because I foolishly was only making space for that kind of thing to be occupied by acting and by my artistry.

[8:44] Maurice Jones: And a dear friend of mine reminded me beautifully one day. She said, you know, you can have two callings. And I hadn't really thought of it that way. And I said, you know what? You're absolutely right. And once I accepted that reality, I stepped with a further front foot into my teaching. And, you know, it's a lot of work. And it's it can be maddening and frustrating at times in the world of academia and you know, administrative shortcomings and foibles, but to work with my kids and to see them grow and progress and have those moments where it clicks when they get it.

[9:22] Maurice Jones: Yeah. It's just there's nothing like it, man. And to do it doing Shakespeare is incredible. As someone who has always loved Shakespeare and always had a wonderful appreciation and a pension for it. And to be a black male Shakespeare teacher is not lost on me at all. I know that there are a few people who can say that. And this isn't me trying to cash in on the cachet, but I understand the value of having someone as a teacher who reflects your experience, who looks like you.

[9:55] Maurice Jones: And I have I've humbly had several messages come to me from students saying that they didn't know that they'd be able to receive this kind of information unless it came from someone who looked like them. And that is incredibly rewarding, and it makes this all the more enriching and important. And I'm so thrilled to be a proud to be a part of it. And you know, I'm still an actor through and through, but I'm really quite determined, especially until the world opens all the way back up, to maybe just ride this until the wheels fall off and see how far it'll take me.

[10:29] Dan Tracy: So you said you said at a point that that when you had this conversation with this woman, and obviously everything was pushed because of the pandemic. I think Joe and I have recognized that we've been pushed into things we never would have thought of either. You were saying you were kind of feeling fed up with being an actor or like you weren't sure about acting for you at that time. What was that about? What what was it?

[10:49] Maurice Jones: This is a whole other podcast episode. You know, the truth of it is, and I always sort of want to punch myself in the face when I say it, because what we do as actors, what we've been fortunate or lucky or blessed or successful enough to do is not an easy thing. And there's many people who don't even have the gumption and the courage to move to a city like New York to give it a try. And for all intents and purposes, Dan, I am quite a successful actor. I work dare I say, all the time. But even in spite of that, there are so many moments when I'm like I suppose I can get in my own head, as many of us do, will this last? Is this gonna be my last job? Or always aware that this job is going to end and then I don't really know how I'll pay rent in three months.

[11:51] Maurice Jones: Right. And those things can bog you down, you know, and I just have over the last few years since living in New York and being successful, I always get I confront that wall of is this too good to be true? This is gonna end at some point. Am I just doing this for the paycheck? Is my heart even still in it? And I just found myself at many times just wanting some perhaps more financial stability is what a lot of it came down to. You know, I was tired of you know, you live paycheck to paycheck so often, and each audition is a chance another time you have to prove yourself over and over again and start from the bottom essentially, and it can be quite draining, especially if you don't have other things gathering your attention or pouring your energy into.

[12:38] Maurice Jones: And as someone who was working quite a lot, it was really only acting all the time. I wasn't really giving myself outlets otherwise. And so it became at a point kind of a desperation. And I hit a spate of doing a few shows in a row that I knew I didn't want to do. And I wasn't, I didn't love the script, I didn't love the people, and I was just like, but I gotta pay rent because I've chosen to be an actor and this is what I'm gonna do. And just those moments were just piling up over the years, and I just thought I always thought to myself, and it was always told to me as a young student, if there's something else that you can see yourself doing, they would deter us by saying, do that other thing.

And that always just kind of nagged at my head, because I never believed there would be something else, but being in the thick of it and realizing how high the incredible highs are, but how you know low those lows can be. I thought, you know, maybe I just not to quit or be done, but maybe this is a chapter of my life that I can, you know, turn the page on. I knew that I'd done some wonderful things, as Joe said, I've worked with some great people, and it wouldn't be a loss to say, you know what, that was great, that was fun. I succeeded at that. What else is there for me out there? Is really what it came down to.

[13:58] Joe Carroll: Well, I always I love just back to what you're saying though about this this thing that happens in acting school when they always say, if you could do anything else, go do it. I've always hated that because there's 10,000 things that I could do. But it's the choice. When the choice comes up, I'm choosing to do something else as opposed to I have to. You know, because then you're stuck in that desperation cycle where it's like you didn't have to go be a teacher. You chose to pursue this path. I mean, somebody at Stella Adler could have called and you would have been like, no, I'm actually, I'm gonna go, I'm not gonna do that. Like, it's not like you were just kind of led to it. You're so bright, and I think so many of us as artists have so much more to offer that it's like we're choosing to do something else.

Yeah, not like if you can do it, something else, go do it. It's like, well, that's no, I'm choosing to be an actor. And I think I choose every day to be an actor. That puts us into this position where we're always in a place of desperation. We're always in a mode where we recognize that we are replaceable and that we should be desperate, as opposed to what I'm trying to get everybody to do is like do all of the things that you do and be an actor. There's certain things you can't do, but like, you know, my girlfriend is working with a guy who has his MFA in acting, and he works in sales for a very popular software company. And he was just on an episode of Elementary or, or uh, Elementary's not on anymore, but like he just uh, the Equalizer or whatever.

[15:34] Maurice Jones: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.

[15:35] Joe Carroll: He was just on episode, he just did it, and I'm like, he has a full-time job as a salesperson. Well, and with NYU too, like I always was jealous of the kids who went to NYU because their professors are working. Like, you know, like y'all are in the shit. You are at the absolute top of your career, and you said, you know what, yes, there was a pandemic, but you were starting to think about teaching, and now you're giving these kids this experience that like you literally you walked off stage. I don't know what you did at the end of what the last thing you did was but what was the last thing you did before the pandemic?

[16:05] Maurice Jones: I did before the pandemic was an off-Broadway play at the Armory called Judgment Day which is this really cool like Austrian expressionistic play.

[16:05] Joe Carroll: Cool, yeah, it was crazy it was the greatest space. Yeah, I did a there was like a show there No Usher performed or something it was crazy Beyonce was there it was a um I was like a Prada show or something crazy.

[16:05] Maurice Jones: Oh my god yeah I mean like the coolest one of the coolest production off Broadway productions and then and then you're walking into the classroom.

[16:48] Joe Carroll: Right you're choosing to walk into the classroom which I think these kids these kids don't realize how lucky they are to be learning Shakespeare from you.

[16:56] Maurice Jones: Maybe they do and I said this when I hope they do because I want to come back I really want to like selfishly I mean this is a tangent Dan if you don't mind but like what are you what are you teaching them right now in Shakespeare? Like what do I I want to know.

[17:07] Joe Carroll: I don't mind I know that I can't get up and do a sh a monologue for you over you know over this podcast but like I want to I think MFA bug is itching him. I think he's like Do I want to go study Shakespeare somewhere am I like that's all of all that's all I've ever wanted to do man. I look at your I look at your resume and I'm like wow Joe wishes he he was doing all of these plays, man.

[17:32] Maurice Jones: Forever. I've been I am so that's another thing I can say because we're on the podcast. I've been so jealous of your career, Maurice, in this way that like it is just stunning. Look at the the play. So what are you teaching the kids? What are you teaching them?

[17:45] Maurice Jones: Okay, we're gonna put a pin in this, and I'm gonna come back to how jealous I am of your career. I still have the I still have the message saved on my phone when when I booked Cinderella and you called me, I still have it saved on my phone. And it's just you laughing. It's just you laughing into the phone. I remember that what the hell Prince Charming and you're laughing over and over and over.

[18:08] Joe Carroll: I was at the movie theater, bro, when I saw that, man, and I was so giddy and so happy for you. Forget the pen. I'm taking the pin out. We're going right here. No, because you are someone who, you know, we met doing Shakespeare. We met doing Shakespeare, which was an incredible opportunity for both of us. We were both, you know, lowly peons in the show, but we were understudying some meaty parts, you meatier than I, understudying Romeo. And it's one of the great regrets of my life that I never got to see you go on and do it.

[18:40] Maurice Jones: Me too.

[18:41] Joe Carroll: At least in front of eleven hundred people. I saw you do it every Thursday morning at our little you know, understudy rehearsal. But, you know, here was this handsome young, talented guy who was like, Oh, hey, I'm Joe. Oh, cool. Oh, you know, I gotta go over to my other Broadway show tonight, because I'm also doing Once a new musical at the same time. First of all, you were living that double dipping dream that so many act at twenty Capital G.

[19:12] Maurice Jones: At twenty two, Joseph.

[19:16] Joe Carroll: All downhill from there.

[19:18] Maurice Jones: All down.

[19:20] Joe Carroll: And you know, I don't know if you remember this, but I remember talking to you and particularly Tony Winner now, Jane Howdy Show, who was in that show with us. About how I wish that I could do musicals in New York. And Jane was like, why don't you do them? And I was like, I told her two things. First of all, I didn't graduate from one of these fancy programs like Joe did at Michigan, where I felt like that kind of thing was in my way.

[19:48] Maurice Jones: Are you wearing a Michigan hat as well, Dan?

[19:49] Dan Tracy: We went to the show.

[19:50] Joe Carroll: Oh, look at that.

[19:51] Maurice Jones: Both of you.

[19:52] Joe Carroll: Oh, look at that.

[19:53] Maurice Jones: And then I was telling Jane, I also don't read music. And Jane immediately dismissed that. She said, Neither do I. You just learn the tune and you tell the truth at it. But I just always knew that your upshot, Joe, was so high, and your ceiling was so high. Because you had just recently graduated and were on your second Broadway show. It was no surprise to me when Cinderella came along. And I saw you in that show. And I was so incredibly pleased and proud and moved. And then I saw you, you did this concert at what was that venue? That big venue on 27th Street where the McKittrick is.

[20:34] Joe Carroll: I don't know.

[20:41] Maurice Jones: Uh no. Um.

[20:43] Joe Carroll: Uh somewhere over there.

[20:45] Maurice Jones: You were sub, you were you were either playing with Paul Nolan or you were there in celebration of him or something, seeing you rock out on that stage. You were a rock star.

[20:52] Joe Carroll: It was um it was uh it was the um uh yeah, it was the farewell concert that we did with. Oh my god. His name's Escape. He played the guy in Once, he was the British dude, Arthur Darth.

[21:04] Maurice Jones: Arthur Arthur Garzell was doing was it was a going away show.

[21:08] Joe Carroll: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. Seeing you up there rocking that guitar, and then when Frozen came along, it was just like, of course. In the most beautiful way. Of course, because that's what's next for you. Because this is who you are. And at the same time, as proud as I was, and as happy for you as I was, I was like, man, I wish I had those gifts or that set of what is Liam Neeson say. A particular set of uh skills.

[21:36] Maurice Jones: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[21:37] Joe Carroll: I wish I always had your particular set of skills. And that's something I was always in awe of and and it's it's it's a beautiful thing, you know.

[21:46] Maurice Jones: Well, I sit here doing the same thing. I mean, it's it's just St. Joan and uh and all of the Shakespeare. I mean, when I saw you in Troilus and Cressida, and you're up, you know, like in the park, like that's the dream. Like that's the action. Anyway, I like we could go back and forth and Dan's gonna like Dan Dan could go get a cup of coffee. But my thought here for everyone listening is that like this is a mirror for what we all do to each other in life. Like, because I want to have pieces of what both of you have, and this is just a good reminder that each of us needs to remind ourselves that somebody wishes they had what we have.

[22:22] Joe Carroll: That's beautiful, and you gotta be grateful because you gotta be grateful, yeah. You know, there have been I've had many conversations with Joe where he's where where we've had conversations with each other where we're not necessarily grateful for what we have, and this I think is a good reminder of like, oh, right. You're a hundred percent right. Our own journey, ours and whatever, you know.

[22:41] Joe Carroll: 100% right. I want to know, I want to know what you're teaching the kids.

[22:45] Maurice Jones: Great. If that's okay. Sure, yeah. I currently am the Shakespeare scene study teacher for the second year students at Tish, Stella School, Stella Adler School of Acting, as well as the Stella Adler standalone conservatory, where I teach the first years, the second years, and the third years. All Shakespeare, all scene study. So they are coming to me in some cases, having learned voice and speech, as it were, verse and text, and they get to me, and I am essentially driving them toward how to tell the truth on stage with this language. The way I tailor my curriculum toward that is by making sure that these students in the 21st century know that they don't have to do Shakespeare from the 16th century.

[23:37] Joe Carroll: Right.

[23:38] Maurice Jones: And so many young people don't realize that. This is also a big goal of mine, with another workshop that I teach at Adler, which is a workshop for students of color to learn Shakespeare or to work on Shakespeare. So often Shakespeare has this unfortunately archaic representation or rather reputation of being old and stuffy and ancient and British, and that there needs to therefore be something prim and proper about it. And I can't stand that, to be perfectly honest with you. And so I institute an exercise, which I'm sure I haven't originated this, but as far as I go with my own pedagogy and curriculum, I made it up. Where I have them take a monologue of their own choosing, garner an understanding of it, and then I want them to completely throw that out, and I have them rewrite the monologue, rewrite the speech entirely in their own voice.

Yes. I encourage them to use their own slang, to use their own phrases and sayings, to use their own language for many of my students for whom English is not a first language, to use colloquialisms and profanity. You are now the playwright of this play that you created, and there's a character named, I don't know, Hamlet, and you wrote this. And in this moment, in the middle of this play you wrote, Hamlet is confronting this decision about whether or not to live or die, to stay or to go.

[25:17] Maurice Jones: How would you write that at a coffee shop in Harlem in 2021 if this was a brand new play? And they do that. And they love doing that. They feel this ownership of it because it's suddenly their expression and it's their language and it's their understanding, which is exactly where I want them to go with it. Because then the next part of that is okay, now I want you to take your rewritten speech, and I want you to take the Shakespeare speech, and I want you to create what I call a blended speech by which you weave your thoughts back into Shakespeare's thoughts, back into yours, back into Shakespeare's, creating one cohesive through line of the speech, and also creating one voice between your own and Shakespeare.

And they really get into that, and they are achieving a symbiosis by which you don't tell where their work and Shakespeare's work end or begin. And then I have them take all of that beautiful, precious, idiosyncratic expression and apply it to Shakespeare's words. You now have a deeper meaning and understanding of it. You've brought it closer to yourself, personalized it, now put all of that understanding into this language. And suddenly, and this isn't the case 100% of the time, but it's quite successful. They realize, oh, not only do I understand this more than I thought I did, but I don't have to put on some affect when I'm saying it, and I don't have to roll my R's, and I don't have to pretend to inexplicably become a British person.

No, you don't. And it's in fact more thrilling and more honest when you don't. Shakespeare has done all of that work. The characters exist. These words, these worlds, the stakes are already there. We want to see you in it. And only by you doing that, talking to my students, can you perform this for a group of people who look like you and have them go, oh, I didn't understand every word Romeo said, but I understand what Romeo was going through. Right. And I understand what Romeo's feeling because you made me recognize it. You hooked me into it, and you made me realize, oh man, Juliet is just like Keisha Johnson sitting down the hall from me right now. I look at her all the time, like Romeo's looking at her in that balcony.

And we I really seek to eliminate this divide, this alienating, frustrating, often Eurocentric divide that can always threaten to present itself and create a disinterest in young people and this work. And sometimes it's a slow trudge. Sometimes some students get it more than others. But I finished one of my NYU classes today, and the progress they made over this year, three scenes each they did. It's like it's like night and day. Which is not I'm not patting myself on the back, but I'm I'm opening them up to an understanding that you don't have to change too much about yourself in order to bring yourself and your truth to this work. So that's what I'm so interested. I feel like we don't have that tradition of that in this country.

You know, I don't know why we think it's supposed to happen in this way. But when you watch the great contemporary Shakespeare actors in Europe, it doesn't feel disconnected from what it is now, you know. And I I was fortunate when I was in high school that my uh drama teacher there was he used the no-fear Shakespeare, which was already this this same work done for you, which doesn't really get personalized and specific enough, but does make it seem accessible, and then kind of opens that all up to you as well.

[29:19] Joe Carroll: Um I think it's I think the way you do this is like also like write that down, take it home and share it with your friends because like that's gotta be the best way I've ever heard it described, and I wish I'd used that in my own words.

[29:32] Maurice Jones: I'm so pleased to hear you say that. Yeah, it's it's genius. It's it's just such a beautiful way in to the language, and that's the thing, you know, when we eliminate that first barrier, because to to a lot of people, this is like a foreign language, it might as well be. Right. So many of these words we don't use, we don't know what they mean, we don't understand them, and they sound silly coming out of our mouths. Right. But if I know that my fi means shit, then I can activate my fi to mean shit. I did this exercise just last week with a student who was working on a speech of Edmonds and King Lear. And in the speech, uh he's saying it's, you know, why bastard? Wherefore bass. And uh he changed bass, which is a word we don't really use.

In his rewrite, he wrote, wherefore bitch ass. And it was, you know, it was silly, and he might have done it in jest, but in order to find that personalization that way into this word that we don't have a connection to, when he got back to the Shakespeare and you heard him hit that B and hold on to that S, you might not know what bass means, but you were like, oh, he's talking about bitch ass. That's it. I get that. I get that. I love it. I love it. Oh, that's amazing.

[30:52] Joe Carroll: I've always I think everybody has a little bit of imposter syndrome with Shakespeare because it's so high and and and mighty. Um, but my I'll just tell the story quickly because I I need to out myself. So I studied Shakespeare in London for a semester in college. While I was in London, I saw uh Romeo and Julia at the RSC. And it was this very cool, dark, it was kind of like no offense to our production, it was kind of like everything that our production kind of wanted to be. Like it was like leather and fire and sex and shit. Anyway, so um at the beginning of the at the beginning of um, you know, what light three under window breaks, the guy who's playing Romeo is stands on stage and he looks, you know, the the Mercutio and and Benvolio come out, they're like talking, they're kind of like ribbing each other, whatever, and then those two walk off stage, and Romeo looks at the the audience and says, he jests it scars that never felt a wound.

And then a light turns on, and he looks up at the light and he goes, What light through yonder window breaks? And he runs off the stage, jumps into the audience, and hides behind a patron in the audience. Ways, comes back out, and says, Oh, it is my lady, it is my love. And I was like, holy shit. What light through yonder window breaks is not some guy like pining at the base of a window for a woman. Dude's about to get killed. The light was just turned on, and he is in it, he's in an enemy, he's in enemy territory. He's about to get murdered. That's what that means. So I st I stole that. I stole that choice, and I did it in my audition room for JV Mercante, and he gave me the job.

[32:32] Maurice Jones: Wow.

[32:32] Joe Carroll: So I stole, I literally stole it from this other guy and did it, and I have never done another Shakespeare play.

[32:38] Maurice Jones: So you gotta see more Shakespeare so you can steal more shit, Joe.

[32:42] Joe Carroll: I just gotta steal more shit.

[32:46] Maurice Jones: That's what we learned today.

[32:48] Joe Carroll: That's what we learned today.

[32:50] Maurice Jones: But that's so that's so important, and I'm glad you said that, because the thing I always harp on with my students is the justification of the language. Because it's so easy to look at a speech and want to just wax poetic and take that backfooted approach and let the language wash over you, but that's boring. When you activate the language as a choice in that way, putting yourself in action, it springs to life. I talk to my students about the difference between reciting Shakespeare and igniting Shakespeare. And choices like that are what ignites the language. It's not just you parking and barking and just saying something. You are saying it because something is happening and you're responding to it in that real time and in that real way. And I bet you that's a lot closer to how Shakespeare envisioned it being done than what we so often, you know, do with it, which is just not that interesting.

[33:47] Joe Carroll: I'm so glad to hear you say that. That's great. Well, I just needed to, I needed to out myself in front of the professor. Um we have to steal.

[33:55] Maurice Jones: I love that.

[33:56] Joe Carroll: We gotta steal. Um I wanted to just, you know, I I want to do a deep dive on one of your projects. We always we ask people about this stuff, and I I would love for you to choose if there's something that like a process. I mean, you've worked with some amazing people. I mean, Julius Caesar with Danzel, and and obviously we we rattled them off at the beginning of the episode, but you know, I don't want to say like who's your favorite celebrity and why, but um, but like what is your favorite well, like is there a is there a story, something that that comes to mind as far as you know, crazy auditions, crazy, you know, really meaningful process that you went through to get to a career uh a show.

[34:31] Maurice Jones: Yeah, you know, I s I s I suppose uh the one that comes to mind is my my Broadway debut, uh, which happened at the age of twenty, uh, and happened in the middle of my undergrad at Rutgers University. And the reason why this was quite seminal is because, and I always sound like an asshole saying this. I apologize to anyone listening who was out there struggling and striving. Believe me, it's not lost on me, but uh that was the second audition that I had ever gone on in my life. First Broadway audition I ever had. I had just declared myself a theater major about seven months before that. And then here comes this opportunity to sign a Broadway contract. And in an instant seemingly, it changed my life.

It changed the trajectory of my life. I had five auditions for that show. And because it was very early on in my professional career, I thought that was normal. I had nothing else to compare it to. They kept calling me back, and there were more people in the room, and I was like, okay, don't know who all these people are, but that's weird. And then they kept wanting to see different things, and you would have been a little proud of me, Joe. My character in the show was supposed to play the guitar. And so my first two auditions were Sans guitar, and then suddenly they were like, come back and bring a guitar and a song. Oh god. It's like, oh I was freaking out. Never picked the thing up a day in my life.

And here was this Broadway contract hinging on it. Fortunately for me, my dad played the guitar. Plays the guitar. And he was able to teach me uh my girl by the temptations. Perfect. Perfect. I mean, so I I I go in for Tony Winner, Dan Sullivan. Yes. And uh Dan Swee over there at Lincoln Center. And Dan Moses Shire, sound director Extraordinaire, and I'm playing my little temptations tune, thinking this is not gonna this is this ain't it. This isn't gonna get it done. Imposter syndrome sat in. Oh god, let me see. I don't know what I'm doing. My fingers were sweating, I was slipping all over the place. Um and then I had another audition after that. All the while I'm in classes in New Jersey at Ruckers, wondering what's happening in New York at the same time.

It was such a crazy experience. And ultimately they called me and said that they were gonna offer me the part. And there was something that was so beautifully validating about that, especially having just declared myself a theater major, deciding to go into this unknown thing. I know that my my parents were surely breathed a sigh of relief. Uh I don't think it was very easy for them to hear, Mom and Dad, I think I want to try to be an actor. But you know, just a few months later, here was a Broadway show, and I it was probably relieving for them, although they knew it was a life of uncertainty ahead.

[37:48] Maurice Jones: But in that moment, it was just really beautiful. And working with Dan Sullivan on that show, with whom I've now worked three times, was really incredible. And as you said, Denzel Washington played Brutus in that dear friend of mine with whom I was just uh emailing today, Jessica Hecht, was in that show. Um just some incredible heavy hitters of Shakespeare. Bill Sadler and Jackie Anteremy and Colum Fiore, who is a giant of the Canadian Shakespearean theater, and Eamon Walker, um, who played Mark Anthony, and uh, you know, veterans of the stage, Peter J. Fernandez and Ty Jones and Henry Rwannit's Patrick Page, um, who is a a friend of mine now, and some kind of knew from the second I heard him open that deep resonant voice that this was somebody I was gonna need to follow. Did you see the thing the the villains, the villains show that he just did?

[38:44] Joe Carroll: I did.

[38:47] Maurice Jones: Did you hear about this?

[38:48] Joe Carroll: Of course.

[38:49] Maurice Jones: I shared it with all my students. Man, what a what a great Shakespearean he is. And he has mastered the villain. Just mastered it. It's like water to him. But that was just an incredible opportunity. You know, looking back, I I would honestly hate to go back and watch that production. Cause I truly, and I'm not being humble, I don't think I was any good in that. I had taken one basic acting class at that point, um, and never done any Shakespeare. Uh so I I don't think it was the strongest work I'd ever done, but it did light a fire under me because it showed me that this thing, which can so easily seem to be unreachable and intangible is actually very haveable. And I I have enough to know that I can do this, and if I can do it once, I'm willing to bet I can do it again.

And so I've just been moving toward that and that pursuit of that ever since then. I owe the entire pursuit of my career to being able to have done that show with that cast and learning what I learned from Dan Sullivan and Denzel Washington. Just phenomenal. Absolutely phenomenal.

[40:01] Dan Tracy: And in that pursuit, in that direction now, and you and and you all the way up to now, what's been your greatest challenge?

[40:09] Maurice Jones: My greatest challenge has been keeping it going, man. Yeah. You know, the the drive is always there, but they don't teach you as a BA at Ruckers how hard it is. They don't teach you about the business of acting. They don't teach you about the ugly side of it and the typecasting and the pigeonholing and the you know what producers talk about in dark rooms and you know the Scott Rudens of it all. And you know, it's been hard because I had this really idyllic idea about acting. It was very romanticized for me in that way, and I had this wonderful first entryway into it, and it was all lilies and flowers and waterfalls, man. Denzel Washington. And Denzel Washington's like, oh, it's all gonna be this is it.

Great. This is it. That's what it felt like. What it's always like. You know, but I I just wasn't prepared for the trudge ahead and how much you would have to keep restarting. And that's not everyone's case, you know. For some people it takes one show and then you're off and running, but that hasn't yet been the case for me, and it hasn't deterred me, but the grind of it, um, Dan, has been the real challenge for it, you know what I mean? Sustaining uh sustaining, keeping uh keeping that flame lit because this city and this industry so often threatens to diminish that flame. And uh that's been that's been something that I've been dealing with. And I I don't think I'll ever stop dealing with it.

[41:53] Joe Carroll: Right.

[41:53] Maurice Jones: I don't think I'll ever stop, man. You know, it's not a meritocracy. It's not, man. I you you learn up to us. And you don't know that until you learn that. And then and then people more successful than you say it, and you're like, yeah, sure. It's not gonna happen. But not to me.

[42:14] Joe Carroll: Yeah, right.

[42:15] Maurice Jones: That was the that was the blessing and the curse of University of Michigan is that they don't bring in the actors who aren't the big stars. You don't talk to them. So you all sit there and you're like, I'm gonna do that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You know?

[42:30] Joe Carroll: Yeah.

[42:30] Maurice Jones: You know, every every single one, everybody's gonna be everybody's gonna be Gavin Creel. Right.

[42:35] Joe Carroll: Right.

[42:36] Maurice Jones: And then and then you we talk to Gavin Creel, and he's like, Yeah, I didn't I didn't work for three years, you know. And he's like, I don't know what the fuck I'm doing. I don't know what the fuck I'm doing. But but that that's never in the in the Q&A. You know, like I mean, and we talk about we've talked to so many people on this show. We love the the the paycheck to paycheck actor, the blue collar actor, the person, the person who's just stringing together a career of incredibly, you know, of incredible work. But like, it's hard, like you said. I mean, it's I was gonna say that in the beginning, like that that that you have had this resume to work on these prestigious productions, and are talking about living paycheck to paycheck, in my opinion, is offensive.

That should not be the case in a developed country with an industry like ours. It does not make any sense to me that we don't support live theater. It obviously I have a podcast about freaking Broadway, so that's gonna be my opinion. And nobody listening to this thinks that that's a surprise, but like it still baffles me that that we can't figure this out and do something about it. That people in our industry don't make a living doing what you've done, doing some of the greatest plays that have existed in the last 20 years.

[43:55] Maurice Jones: Yeah. Yeah, and it's, you know, what what what else strikes me as important there, you know, I um I've been invited to speak as a speaker at a program at Ruckers called the Rucker's Summer Acting Conservatory. It's a boot camp style training program for high school actors. And I've been either a worker and speaker there since 2006, up until surely the call is gonna come any moment because it starts on July 1st and they're gonna ask me to speak. And watching the way my conversation has changed over the years to these kids. Yeah. It's so fascinating to me, to the point where year after year, recently, I tell them, listen, I don't think you want me to come and talk to these kids. I really don't. I'm not the inspirational young buck that I was 15 years ago.

When I said, kids, so glad you're here. Look at your shining faces, whatever you put your mind to, you can do it. This is great. Go forth. Last year I said, kids, listen. I'm broke, I'm tired. You don't want to do this. You know what I mean? And I don't get that blunt, but my message gets more and more honest. You know, this this business is not very kind to actors in many ways. And um, so many young kids, like maybe you both did, and certainly I did, had this grand idea about it, and this idea that if I just work hard enough, then I'll earn it. And because I'm the hardest worker, it'll come to me. And it's just business that doesn't give that back to you. It doesn't give that back to you. And it's it's hard.

It's a hard, hard thing to accept. And yet here we all are still doing it and still trying to do it. And uh, you know, they're about to open this thing back up, and aside from being a little apprehensive and reticent and nervous, I'm jumping for joy at the same time because it feels like my life is coming back a little bit, right? Or the possibility of it.

[46:07] Joe Carroll: Yeah.

[46:09] Maurice Jones: That's interesting. The possibility of life coming back, I think is it's like it's to just have it gone for so long has felt like this part of you. I almost I was saying this to Alex the other day that like once the theater starts to come starts to reopen, and we can sit next to each other and sneeze next to each other again, then I feel then I feel like we can start to have those conversations about like, do I actually want to be here? Do I actually want to like you know, do you know, like the conversations I was having in the winter of of 2020?

[46:46] Joe Carroll: Sure.

[46:46] Maurice Jones: It's like we'll go back to having those conversations, and now we can start to move forward. My my thought there is that this thing is a drug. It is a drug. Live theater getting up there and holding the attention of a thousand people in your damn palm is a drug, and we are all addicts. Absolutely. I will never be able to f to fix to get rid of that. I will get I will find it somewhere else, is the only solution. If I can become like a public speaker and people care what I have to say in front of 3,000 people, then maybe maybe that would feed it. But I'm not sure that it would.

[47:28] Joe Carroll: Well, uh, one thing, Maurice about the teaching. We just Dan and I just helped the um a bunch of students with their showcases.

[47:35] Maurice Jones: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[47:36] Joe Carroll: As they're moving to New York or whatever. And my friend Jeff is a teacher, acting teacher at Michigan right now. And we were talking about that like you are, and same with Shakespeare, you are embedded in a Shakespeare teaching curriculum that is so much more artistic than the grind of trying to get another guest star. I would say.

[48:39] Maurice Jones: You know, I was just having—I had a, um, I was recording an audition today with my good friend, and it was for a series regular. And I'm doing the scene.

[48:48] Joe Carroll: Sick.

[48:53] Maurice Jones: Hope you book, bro.

[48:54] Joe Carroll: Yeah, it'll be sick if I book it. But like I'm doing the scene and I do it a couple times, and she offers me a piece of simple, beautiful advice. And the moment she said it, I thought to myself, of course. I knew that. I know that. And I'm always aware that it's the kind of thing because I surround myself with competent, confident, smart actors who I call on to be a reader for me, and I'm adding both of you to my stable, by the way. In a million dollars.

[49:22] Dan Tracy: Absolutely in.

[49:25] Maurice Jones: But it's those things where like the things she told me is like that's exactly the first thing I would have told my students if I was teaching, if I was working on this scene. But for some reason, when I'm on this side, I can easily lose track of it or lose sight of it in pursuit of putting together a quick finished product of something. But when I'm in teacher mode, there's something that's more embedded and dropped down into what it is that I'm doing and what I'm talking about and how to make it ripple and reverberate and last. And I think being in this position to inspire artistry and to nurture it and to foster creativity is gonna last longer in the annals of my history than any guest star that I'll do with a shared card at the top of show in which I get shot anyway.

[50:20] Maurice Jones: Because sometimes acting feels like it's about sometimes it feels like acting serves yourself and not necessarily the collective whole as much as what you're doing right now must feel like you're serving the greater good.

[50:37] Joe Carroll: Yeah.

[50:37] Maurice Jones: Um it's easier to be of service as a teacher, I think. It's hard, it's harder to be of service as an actor sometimes. You can make that work, but you know, it's harder. Sometimes I'm like, wait, why am I doing this? Is this for me only? Is anybody else benefiting from what I'm doing? Joe is a good head about that because he always imagines the kid in the front row who's never seen a show before, and you've just opened their mind to something. But it's easy to forget that.

[51:03] Joe Carroll: Um what is your uh do you have uh like a resource or you know, Mr. Professor, do you have a resource or a book or some place where people can find knowledge that you would recommend to people that maybe changed your life or could change theirs? Or is not that much pressure and is just something that you enjoy, like something you escape to.

[51:27] Maurice Jones: Wow, yeah. Um, so I am a huge lover of poetry. Um I particularly enjoy uh the works of the Sufi poets Hafiz and Rumi, who often do provide me guidance and inspiration that transcends into acting quite a lot. Uh I recently uh discovered Jim Shapiro's incredible book, uh Shakespeare in a Divided America, which is great. I'm actually gonna be interviewing uh Jim for the Summer Shakespeare Conservatory at Stella Adler, and it's a great book about um the role that Shakespeare has played in racial division in this country and racial unity in this country, and he talks at length about the public theaters production of Julius Caesar a few years ago, which was the Trump Caesar, which was quite an interesting and harrowing experience.

Um say what you will about the man. I particularly enjoyed David Mammoth's book on acting called True or False. True or False. I was actually sharing the just yesterday with my students. You know, he breaks it down in that book. Know the words, know what they mean, mean them when you say them. And I happen to think that that's exactly true. Um and then I uh recently, and this was the inspiration for the class that I was able to create at Adler for actors of color, uh, found the last copy on Amazon of a book which I was told about by Tony Winner Andre de Shields, I called uh which was a book that helped and inspired him, called Shakespeare in Sable, which is a compendium essentially of uh the history of black actors in Shakespeare.

Which I was just really inspired by and awed by, and the rich histories and accounts in that book um are really gripping and beautiful and horrid and hard um and important. And uh it has really influenced my work as a teacher of color and a teacher of students of color, and several of these students of color, as I mentioned perhaps earlier, don't always feel that they find their place in this work. And I think that the existence of books like that and the accounts of actors like Paul Robeson and Ira Aldridge and Raoul Julia, um, may help to ease that tension and bridge that gap, which is becoming my life's work, it seems like. Uh so those are some great, some great reads.

[54:16] Joe Carroll: Yeah. That's awesome. Great list. I love that. And what uh our last last question um we always ask people this is uh what's your unreachable star? Which is this, you know, very cheesy reference to the impossible dream of something that you're aimed towards in the on the horizon, something you'd love to accomplish, something you'd you'd like to manifest for yourself.

[54:40] Maurice Jones: Well, you know, that's a great question, but I find myself conflicted in it because I don't think that I would be an actor if I believed in unreachable stars. I think that what all of us have accomplished at this point to so many people is already unreachable. And here we are doing it over and over and over again. But uh, I suppose what my unreachable star would be would be, yeah, there it is. My unreachable star, going back to my jealousy of Joe Carroll's gift, would be to play Cole House Walker Jules on Broadway. I want to do that so much, and I have to just quickly say this. When I was in college, I was convinced that I was the world's most serious actor. Like I was all about Brando and Pacino and De Niro.

So I romanticized the struggle, all the O's. I wanted to go to New York and sleep on pissy floors and just like have to make it happen and my wrists for this art. And I took myself to smoke packs, cigarettes and wear cigars. Seriously. And a friend of mine who was the artistic director of the musical theater company on campus, she came to me and said, Listen, we have this musical we're doing, and we think you'd be great for it. Would you come and audition for us? I said, Hell no. Absolutely not. I'm a serious actor. I don't do musicals. She said, shut the hell up. You're being ridiculous. Come to the audition. I said, absolutely not. She said, How about this? Just come straight to the callback.

We know that this is a great part for you. And what actor doesn't like being, you know, fast-tracked? And I was like, well, that feels good for the ego. So I was like, okay, sure, fine. I'll go to the callback. But I remember going to my acting teacher and saying, Stacey, they want me to do a musical. And she said, What's the problem? I said, I don't do musicals. I'm a serious actor. And I'm saying this phrase repetitively in jest, or seems like it in jest, but I really thought these things and said these things. She said, Listen to me right now. She said, Do you sing? I was like, Yeah, I mean, yeah, I sing. And she's like, Do you act? And I said, Come on, you know I act. And she's like, Well, what's the problem?

And I said, Stacy, musicals are corny. Musicals are where corny people go to be corny. I just don't understand the world of just being in a scene and then suddenly I'm singing and dancing. It doesn't make any sense to me, Stacy. And she broke it down to me in a way that I'm sure both of you have heard a million times over. But as a junior in 2000, I had not heard it put this way before. And she said, you need to think of it, not like that. But rather that your character is so filled up with an emotion that the only thing he can think to do is sing a song about it. When I tell you, the C's parted. And I it was just like the chorus of angels singing the hallelujah chorus. And I thought that makes so much sense.

Because I could ground that in something. That was like something a serious actor could get their mind around. I'm so in love with you. I'm so angry at you. I'm so exuberant about this thing that the only thing my body can do to express itself is to burst into song. It just clicked. And so I went to this callback. It was for a little show that I had never heard of called Ragtime, based on a book I'd never heard of. And uh I ended up playing Coal House in my very first musical at Rucker's. And that is this is gonna tie us into our podcast here. That's when I fell in love with musicals. That is the first musical I ever love. And it was important because I didn't know that I could love musicals.

And I never turned back from loving them. I did one more after that, once on this island, and I've always just been in this pursuit, although not as strongly footed as it could be. I've still to this day have never taken singing lessons, and I've never taken any musical theater class, but I've always been holding on to the hope and idea that like I could do a musical professionally or do one in New York. And if I ever do, I want it to be Cole House. Cause what great acting opportunities exist in that part. What a role. My God. I would love to see that.

[59:30] Joe Carroll: I think it's super relatable because I could never watch old musicals because I thought they were corny. But we grew up in a time when I I was able to see Spring Awakening when I was in high school and and we had you know and there was rent and those shows were very clear to me that they and they weren't corny. They were like dark and cool, and I was like, that's what I'm gonna do. The antithesis of Bye Bye Birdie.

[59:57] Maurice Jones: Right. You know, yeah, it'll be like right, you know. But we all we all find that in our own way. This has been so awesome. Steve, you are a joy. I'm so glad I now know you. Joe, thank you for bringing him on the show. This was just a huge value add for me, for Joe, for everybody. We get to talk to the professor. Where can people find you in the world?

[1:00:18] Maurice Jones: I'm supposed to have called you Maurice and not Steve. I'm very sorry.

[1:00:22] Maurice Jones: Oh, it's quite alright. For those of you listening and are confused, Maurice is my professional name. It's my stage name. Uh I joined the union on that production of Julius Caesar back in 05, and to my surprise, there was already a Steve Jones and a Steven Jones in the union. And so my first day of rehearsal, they put this name change form in front of me and said, Welcome to Equity. You have to change your name. Uh and so I go by Maurice, which is my middle name. Uh, but it's only Maurice when it's professional, really. I'm Steve to all of you and all of you out there. You're the greatest. Try to be the greatest. Where where can people find you? Are you on on social stuff or I'm not really not on the social media?

[1:01:06] Maurice Jones: You know, you can see on this podcast. Yeah, you can find me here on this podcast. You can find me at your your local uh tea house reading rooming. You can find me riding, you can find me riding the A Train, uh doing the New York Times crossword puzzle, or hopefully on a stage near you soon. But no, I don't really do the social media, man. It's uh I I I recognize it as a trap for myself. And uh I'm a bit of a contrarian also, so because everyone's on Instagram, I refuse to do it.

[1:01:39] Joe Carroll: Yep.

[1:01:40] Maurice Jones: I just can't I did that with Harry Potter back in the day. Like I remember when the Harry Potter books came out. I was like I was like, reading this stupid book. I'm not gonna read this book. I read it, I read it four years ago, and I was like, this is the greatest thing that's ever happened. I don't feel that way about social media, but you kind of do.

[1:01:56] Joe Carroll: Steve, thank you.

[1:01:57] Maurice Jones: I kind of do. I kind of don't know.

[1:01:59] Joe Carroll: Steve, thank you so much.

[1:02:00] Maurice Jones: Absolutely. Thank you for having me.

[1:02:06] Dan Tracy: Thank you for listening to Guys Who Like Musicals. We are now part of the Broadway podcast network. We are hosted by Dan Tracy. That's you. And Joe Carroll. That's me. We're produced by Ryan Kincaid, and Matthew Mucha is the social content manager. You can find us on Instagram at Guys Who Like Musicals, on Twitter at Musical Guys, or the old fashioned way at www.guyslikemusicals.com. If you'd like a chance to be featured on the Ask the Guys segment of our show, please call two zero three nine zero zero seven nine nine zero and leave a message with your question. As always, thanks for listening.