This transcript was automatically generated and might contain errors.

[0:15] Eva: Hello everybody and welcome to this very special episode of My First Show.

[0:20] Eva: Why is it special?

[0:22] Eva: Because my guest is special.

[0:24] Eva: And yes, I have many special guests, but this one is someone that I adore both inside and out.

[0:31] Eva: She is a multi-hyphenate, a writer, a screen actor, a stage actor, a producer, a musical theater aficionado, and someone that I've sung show tunes with late night.

[0:46] Eva: It's so nice to have you here, my good pal Shakina Nayfack.

[0:51] Shakina Nayfack: Hello.

[0:52] Shakina Nayfack: Hi, yay, thanks for having me.

[0:55] Eva: Do you remember that night we sang show tunes?

[0:57] Shakina Nayfack: Of course, show tunes and Indigo Girls, if I'm not mistaken.

[1:01] Eva: You're right.

[1:04] Shakina Nayfack: It was, I think, a little bit of Oklahoma, Rent, and Indigo Girls.

[1:07] Eva: Yeah, right.

[1:08] Shakina Nayfack: Exactly.

[1:09] Eva: That's right. Well, I have a million questions for you, but the first one that comes to mind is a simple one, which is how are you and how are you doing?

[1:22] Shakina Nayfack: Well, thank you for asking. You know, I think that I am doing well given all the circumstances. You know, I'm trying to harness as much positive, creative, affirming energy as I can around myself through my work and my relationships, and just trying to, you know, keep the faith.

[1:42] Shakina Nayfack: And yeah, that seems to be working, you know, against all odds, which is great.

[1:49] Shakina Nayfack: How are you?

[1:50] Eva: Oh, that's so nice. No one ever asks the host how she is.

[1:56] Eva: I'm fine, I'm healthy, I'm safe, I'm actually spending some time with my family right now.

[2:04] Eva: And I haven't murdered any of them yet, so it's a win.

[2:11] Eva: Not heading to a Florida jail anytime soon.

[2:14] Eva: And I'm okay. I'm trying to stay positive. I'm just trying to look to the future. You know, it's interesting to think about this moment. You know, we're in a period of COVID, we're in a period of racial reckoning, and you are an artist and an activist. That's how I think about you. And I'm really just curious how this moment now compared to the moments you were spending pre-March 2020, how has your activism and your art really changed?

[2:51] Shakina Nayfack: That's a great question. You know, I think I have a particular point of view having come of age as a queer youth artist in the 90s, which is that I've already kind of survived one plague, you know, and so that's always informed my artistic practice. That idea of like growing up in the shadow of HIV/AIDS, and like coming into yourself as a sexual being, as a gendered being during that time, you know, for me really made me aware of the conversations that we have to have, for example, around like consent and protection and things like that that are now part of like everyday social interaction.

[3:42] Shakina Nayfack: And in the same way, you know, I've always been an activist and for the majority of that activism, like very early on in my teenage years when I was working as a queer youth activist, I learned that, you know, no identity exists in a vacuum and like justice is only sustainable if it's intersectional. And so in this particular moment, I think I felt well-suited at first to be out in the streets with like an urgent response and call to action, and that's where I just like threw myself. And then as some opportunities became available to, you know, return to my creative work in a new socially distant work from home way, I've been seeking ways to bring the issues that matter to me, you know, to those platforms, whether it's, you know, audio or visual or, you know, any of the things that I'm trying to do artistically. So yeah, in short, I'm just doing more of what I've always done harder in harder circumstances, you know what I mean? That's what I'm doing.

[5:01] Eva: So this is a show about firsts. Usually, it's about first shows, but since I have you on it and you sort of spoke to it, can you tell me about your first activism? What was the first political, like enriching eye-opening moment for you?

[5:20] Shakina Nayfack: Yeah, you know, I don't know, the timeline is blurry, but a few that I really remember was on sort of a global scale. I participated in Hands Across America, which I think was in like the early 80s, when it was like to end homelessness or hunger. I'm not even sure what it was to end, but it was this big thing about getting people to line up holding hands, which of course would never work now as a symbol of unity. But did work then, I must have been like four or five or six or something. And then I remember going on a march to save a canyon in the neighborhood where I grew up where they were going to, and eventually did anyway, build a toll road through this beautiful canyon in Laguna Beach, California.

And I also remember being really young and doing Project Angel Food. I mean, I must have been like seven maybe with my older brother and my aunt was driving us around and my older brother and I would get out and bring Christmas dinners to people living at home with advanced HIV/AIDS who couldn't get out and who didn't have people to cook for them.

[6:28] Shakina Nayfack: Yeah, so those were very formative experiences for me, all happened when I was really quite young.

[6:35] Eva: And you had politically socially progressive parents, is that?

[6:35] Shakina Nayfack: Oh, generations and generations. Yeah, my great-grandmother was like a union organizer in Chicago after she had immigrated from Russia. She was a union organizer in the garment factories, and then my grandfather, the wonderful man who her daughter married, was a lawyer who did a lot of work to protect and defend the working people in California. And then my mom has been an activist for young people in the juvenile justice system. And then I'm, you know, been a, like I said, a queer activist since, yeah, since I was a teenager.

[7:20] Shakina Nayfack: Yeah.

[7:21] Eva: So generations.

[7:22] Shakina Nayfack: It's in your ancestry.

[7:25] Shakina Nayfack: Yeah, it's literally in my blood.

[7:27] Eva: Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so is the theater.

[7:32] Shakina Nayfack: No, it's true. I mean, you are now a writer, a soon-to-be Audible writer.

[7:40] Eva: Yeah.

[7:41] Shakina Nayfack: Is that the right way to say it?

[7:42] Shakina Nayfack: I guess I like that. I've been audibled.

[7:44] Eva: An audibled writer.

[7:46] Shakina Nayfack: You were, you know, and this is one of the many tragic stories of the pandemic and the way it had to stop theater in its tracks, but you were about to have your Williamstown debut as a playwright with a beautiful, beautiful play that I've actually had the pleasure of reading. And it, you know, it is seeing the light of day, or I guess it is hearing the light of day.

[8:12] Shakina Nayfack: Absolutely. It shall be heard. Will you share a little bit about Sean Burry, the play, its development, and how we can all hear it soon?

[8:21] Shakina Nayfack: Yeah, absolutely. I'm so excited to share it with you and with the world, really. This play is called Sean Burry International Hotel and Butterfly Club, and it is a largely autobiographical play that's about the unlikely community of mostly women and mostly trans women that I fell into and fell in love with during my time in Thailand while I was recovering from gender confirmation surgery. And the character's journey is inspired by my journey. It's not like only my journey, but all the characters in the play are inspired by real people who I also met on that journey. And it's really, yeah, like I said, it's a love letter to them. And it's a love letter to the American theater. It's written in the style of like a mid-century hotel comedy, then like takes, you know, these sort of like contemporary departures.

But yeah, like Noises Off, or there are like a lot of doors that open. It's not so much a farce, but more like Stage Door, you know, is really the one that I hold up to as like this is what I want to create, like Stage Door, but instead of a bunch of actresses living in a hotel in Chelsea, it's a bunch of trans women with new pussies in Thailand.

[9:41] Eva: Oh my god.

[9:41] Shakina Nayfack: And it's true to life, right?

[9:43] Shakina Nayfack: Yeah. I mean, it's literally, you know, and I've shared it with people who've gone through the same experience. Some of the cast members are also in the Butterfly Club, like the actual, you know, we're all sort of veterans of the same program, I guess you'd say, you know. It's amazing because they're like, oh, that was totally my experience. I mean, not the same people, not the same conversations, but the same kind of experience. And that hotel lobby was a real magical place, and the sisterhood that forms there during the time that you're going through the most vulnerable transformation of your life, you know, it's just really a remarkable community to capture creatively. And so this play was meant to premiere, as you said, at Williamstown Theater Festival this summer.

And Mandy Greenfield had the brilliant idea when theater shut down to save the season by moving it to Audible. So it's actually part of Williamstown Theater Festival's entire summer 2020 season, which will be recorded and released for Audible this fall. I don't have a release date yet, but I know it's coming soon. They said late fall, so get ready for it.

[10:54] Eva: Amazing. Well, I can't wait for you to be audibled and for us to be audibled along with you.

[11:00] Shakina Nayfack: Yeah, I think it's gonna be really crazy, you know, because it sounds so beautiful, and we recorded it, you know, 13 actors, nine of them trans, all recording from their own computers at home on like Amazon Chime with sound engineers and a director, and you know, it just was the most unreal kind of production process to salvage what we could of the energy of the show, and it really does ring true in the recording. So I'm really excited for it.

[11:31] Shakina Nayfack: Yeah, yeah, there's something about the art that was made during this time that is just relevant and almost inspired more fully by what we're all going through, right?

[11:49] Shakina Nayfack: Um, you know, I've heard a few interviews with writers about the way that their plays have taken shape or movies or TV shows that have begun to get captured, or certainly audiobooks and audio plays.

[12:02] Shakina Nayfack: Um, it all takes on such new meaning when you are literally isolated or going through something, and at the same time you're reading text and reading lyrics about being isolated and going through something.

[12:16] Shakina Nayfack: Yeah, and the ripple effect of how this moment will affect the cultural production, you know, that emanates from it.

[12:23] Shakina Nayfack: I mean, that'll take a long time before we really understand the thematic and technological, you know, interventions that COVID-19 forced upon us.

[12:35] Shakina Nayfack: And even though we're being innovative in front of the limitations that we face, you know, there are all these things in the collective unconscious as we reel through this trauma together that are gonna find their way into the work.

[12:51] Shakina Nayfack: And it'll be really interesting to look back on, you know, the writings of the COVID years and what COVID plays are, the way we talk about AIDS plays, you know.

[13:01] Shakina Nayfack: Totally, totally.

[13:03] Shakina Nayfack: Well, let's rewind to the pre-COVID days.

[13:07] Shakina Nayfack: Yes.

[13:08] Shakina Nayfack: And maybe even to the pre-AIDS days, maybe not.

[13:12] Shakina Nayfack: Um, to ask you, which is the same question I ask every guest when they come on the show, which is what was the first show you ever saw?

[13:23] Shakina Nayfack: So I put a lot of thought into this because, you know, truthfully, I'm not exactly sure.

[13:29] Shakina Nayfack: As I said, like the memory's a little foggy.

[13:32] Shakina Nayfack: But I think the first show I ever saw was a dinner theater production of Bye Bye Birdie in Long Beach, California, in or around Long Beach, California, with my grandparents and my mom and my aunt and my brother.

[13:50] Shakina Nayfack: I think that was the first.

[13:53] Shakina Nayfack: And all I really remember is like pelvic thrusts and girl painting, which is, you know, on brand.

[13:59] Shakina Nayfack: It is a brand.

[14:01] Shakina Nayfack: And it is, you know, ninety-five percent of what exists when you put on Bye Bye Birdie.

[14:07] Shakina Nayfack: Yeah.

[14:08] Shakina Nayfack: Um, and you are, let's just say, far from the first guest to cite Bye Bye Birdie as one of those.

[14:15] Eva: Oh, that's amazing.

[14:16] Shakina Nayfack: Yeah, I mean, I think I must have been like five, you know, I was very, very young.

[14:21] Shakina Nayfack: But there was a dinner theater that my grandparents would take us to.

[14:25] Shakina Nayfack: Um, so I know that I saw Bye Bye Birdie there, I saw The Music Man, I saw Brigadoon.

[14:34] Shakina Nayfack: I think there might have been one more.

[14:36] Shakina Nayfack: I think I saw Damn Yankees there as well.

[14:38] Eva: Oh, all the goodies, all the goodies.

[14:40] Shakina Nayfack: That was like my introductory education, you know, to the world of American musical theater.

[14:45] Eva: And were you like, I'm gonna do this one day, perhaps with better costumes and direction?

[14:52] Shakina Nayfack: I loved it.

[14:53] Shakina Nayfack: I loved it so much and I wanted to be a part of it.

[14:56] Shakina Nayfack: And I think I did, I didn't know I would do it one day, but I knew I wanted to do it one day.

[15:03] Shakina Nayfack: But even from that early of an age, there was like this disconnect, you know, as a young trans person, especially one who didn't have anywhere near that vocabulary to express that idea.

[15:16] Shakina Nayfack: There was already a disconnect of like, well, that couldn't actually ever be me, you know.

[15:21] Shakina Nayfack: Um, so it was more like a longing, you know.

[15:26] Shakina Nayfack: I think that like for the majority of my life when I watched musical theater, it was longing that I felt first and foremost.

[15:39] Eva: Yeah, yeah.

[15:40] Shakina Nayfack: Because you were seeing characters that you wished to be.

[15:44] Shakina Nayfack: Yeah, that I wished I could play, you know, that I wished I could be seen as, or just in situations that I would love to be in, or singing notes that like I wished I could reach, you know, especially after puberty.

[15:57] Shakina Nayfack: Like it was very sort of like a dysphoric leap, you know, which was why just like flipping the script and sort of saying, well, let me just like make myself my own protagonist in my work, you know, um, whether that's Manifest Pussy or Butterfly Club, like a Hedwig style cabaret or a giant great American play, you know, like why not have a punk rock trans mystic as a central character?

[15:57] Eva: Yeah, yeah, no, that's actually really funny to hear that, um, and that makes sense, right? That you're a creator and you understand the art form very well and you know it, and so why not create for yourself while you're, you know, while you're creating lots of things for yourself, why not create roles and plays for yourself?

[16:51] Shakina Nayfack: Yeah, don't dream it, be it, you know, ROCKY HORROR PICTURE Show, which was another hugely formative movie musical for me as a kid, but don't dream it, be it, that's just like so legit.

[17:03] Eva: Mm-hmm.

[17:03] Shakina Nayfack: Do you remember when you first saw Rocky Horror?

[17:07] Shakina Nayfack: I think I was in fifth grade.

[17:08] Shakina Nayfack: Oh, I was way too young.

[17:08] Shakina Nayfack: I was in fifth grade when I saw the movie, and then I think I was probably in sixth or seventh grade by the time I actually like snuck out and got to go see it in the theaters, but I was way too young, you know, but loved it and it was perfect and it saved my life, so who knows to say?

[17:08] Shakina Nayfack: I was always amazed at the youth outings to ROCKY HORROR PICTURE Show.

[17:35] Shakina Nayfack: Oh, I organized one for my temple youth group when I was like 15.

[17:42] Shakina Nayfack: I went, I went, I went with my Jewish youth group.

[17:45] Shakina Nayfack: That's when I went.

[17:45] Shakina Nayfack: And I remember like for years, I was just skipping that outing for whatever reason.

[17:51] Shakina Nayfack: And then I finally saw it with friends and then was like, this is the most amazing movie on the planet.

[17:58] Shakina Nayfack: There's a youth group outing to go see it every year.

[18:02] Shakina Nayfack: I will be going next year.

[18:04] Shakina Nayfack: I would love to do a Where Are They Now of the people who first saw ROCKY HORROR PICTURE Show on their Temple Youth Group outing.

[18:11] Shakina Nayfack: I think that would be an incredible podcast side step for, you know, myself.

[18:17] Eva: I love it.

[18:17] Shakina Nayfack: I love it.

[18:18] Shakina Nayfack: A documentary style.

[18:19] Shakina Nayfack: Oh my god, it's so genius.

[18:22] Eva: Um, what was the first show you were in?

[18:25] Shakina Nayfack: The first show I was in, I, in third grade, I did a production of Jack in the Beanstalk, wherein I played Jack.

[18:34] Shakina Nayfack: And then in sixth grade, I think, potentially seventh, I did A Midsummer Night's Dream, and I was Bottom.

[18:46] Shakina Nayfack: Those are like my first two full-length plays as an actor.

[18:52] Eva: Yeah.

[18:54] Shakina Nayfack: And then I don't know, um, and then I guess in my like new life, I did the first production of One Woman Show was on my birthday when I turned 33 at Joe's Pub.

[19:11] Shakina Nayfack: Wow.

[19:12] Shakina Nayfack: Yeah.

[19:12] Shakina Nayfack: Which was really cool.

[19:13] Shakina Nayfack: And that was like I had not performed on stage in over a decade and was like, you know, oh, that's not for me, that'll never be for me.

[19:21] Shakina Nayfack: I'll just go be a director.

[19:23] Shakina Nayfack: And then I started my transition, and then I was like crowdfunding for my gender confirmation and like created the show to raise the money and did the show at Joe's Pub, and then it's like, there I am, I'm on stage at Joe's Pub, like doing the thing that I always dreamt I might one day do.

[19:40] Shakina Nayfack: And it's just kind of gone on from there.

[19:43] Eva: And that was the show that you took to North Carolina as well as a kind of...

[19:48] Shakina Nayfack: The way it all happened is I created One Woman Show that was like my first solo show.

[19:53] Shakina Nayfack: And I did that like leading up to my trip to Thailand.

[19:56] Shakina Nayfack: And then when I came back from Thailand and my whole world was rocked by that experience, obviously, I was like, I want to write a second show about that experience.

[20:05] Shakina Nayfack: So before I wrote Chombury International Hotel and Butterfly Club, I wrote a companion piece to One Woman Show called Post Stop.

[20:12] Shakina Nayfack: And I also performed that at Joe's Pub on the one-year anniversary of my surgery.

[20:17] Shakina Nayfack: And then I did it downtown a little while longer.

[20:20] Shakina Nayfack: And then I was like, oh wait, the real show is both the before and the after and during.

[20:28] Shakina Nayfack: And so I put One Woman Show and Post Stop together, and that's what became Manifest Pussy.

[20:36] Shakina Nayfack: And the occasion to do that was when North Carolina introduced their anti-trans bathroom bill.

[20:42] Shakina Nayfack: I was like, I want to go on tour, I want to go down there.

[20:46] Shakina Nayfack: Everyone's boycotting, everyone's pulling out all the arts organizations, and I was like, I want to go there and just be in that space, like putting this stuff in their faces and cheering on the people who are feeling attacked.

[21:00] Shakina Nayfack: And so I was like, well, I can't like go down and like do two shows and rep, you know, and I guess I could, but that seemed like a lot of work.

[21:07] Shakina Nayfack: So I was like, now is the time to manifest pussy.

[21:10] Shakina Nayfack: And I put them together up at the O'Neill, and then went on the road.

[21:17] Shakina Nayfack: We did it at Joe's Pub for like a premiere show the night before we left on tour, and then we went on tour to North Carolina, like in a van with the band, you know.

[21:26] Eva: I think you're our first guest whose first professional gig was produced, written, and starring themselves.

[21:39] Shakina Nayfack: I mean, I had, you know, like plenty of other attempts along the way.

[21:43] Shakina Nayfack: And certainly as a director, I had other firsts before I had put myself in anything.

[21:48] Eva: Um, like what?

[21:49] Shakina Nayfack: Well, I had like my first, the first show I directed in New York City was a production of John Seude's folk rock opera called The Disappearing Man that I directed in Cloud City, this warehouse in Brooklyn, and it was like the coolest show that nobody saw.

[22:05] Shakina Nayfack: Like if you were one of the 200 people that saw that show, it's like forever changed your life, but no one else knows.

[22:10] Eva: Right.

[22:10] Shakina Nayfack: And it was so Brooklyn that like at one point it actually snowed through the roof through like a hole in the room onto like a romantic train station scene.

[22:21] Shakina Nayfack: Um, and then in LA, I had my first like big professional debut show is this project I'm still working on called Junk, which is a rock opera by the Swedish pop band Brainpool.

[22:36] Shakina Nayfack: I've been working with them for years and years, like on and off in sort of this epic concept album that keeps trying to find its way to the stage.

[22:45] Shakina Nayfack: But, um, yeah, I had been, you know, I had been really self-identifying exclusively as a director for over a decade, um, and considered that to be my career path until one One Woman Show.

[23:00] Shakina Nayfack: And then I was like, wait a minute, I really like this. Do you think people like this? Am I good enough to do this? Like could I do and then I book Difficult People and then I was like, now I'm gonna be on TV.

[23:10] Eva: What do you mean?

[23:11] Shakina Nayfack: And uh yeah, now I'm like on an NBC sitcom. Like, I don't even know what that means. I know I don't know how that happened on network television, right? Network television, a trans woman starring in a network sitcom because it's 2020 and it's at least 20 years too late. But here we go. Um, you can't see me, but there's a giant smile on my face. Hopefully you can hear it. My fists are in the air because I am shaking them with joy by the fact that there is a network television show starring a trans woman.

[23:47] Eva: It is so delightful and perfect and wonderful.

[23:51] Shakina Nayfack: And you're right, 20 years late. But um, but it looks amazing. I watched a trailer. Um, can you tell us about connecting and and what whatever you can care?

[24:03] Shakina Nayfack: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, first I'll say it's an ensemble comedy that I co-star in with a group of really brilliant actors who are also a very like diverse and eclectic group of humans. Um and they're all hysterical and and truly brilliant. And we have been creating this show in the world that we're all living in, about the world that we're all living in.

[24:25] Shakina Nayfack: So in the midst of trying to just cope with the chaos and insanity, we're still like getting up at ridiculous hours to like put on our own makeup and set our own cameras up and set up film lights in our house and work with an art director to set decorate our apartments so that we can socially distance Zoom shoot film on iPhones, a new network sitcom that feels just like every NBC sitcom that you've loved your entire life.

[24:54] Shakina Nayfack: Like it's so sitcom-y that you but it's about the moment that we're in. I mean, we we start the show in March, just when the stay-at-home orders had dropped in Los Angeles, and uh and and go all the way through to like our present moment.

[25:12] Shakina Nayfack: And so everything that we've all experienced in the last few months is like the territory that we try to cover in this show as this group of friends meets for their weekly Zoom call. You know, they used to have these family dinners uh once a week, and when they couldn't anymore, like everybody else in the country in the world, we know we got on these Zoom calls and tried to hang in there together, and that's the basis of this show.

[25:40] Eva: Yeah, that's amazing. And I was really excited to see my dear pal, Parvahish China on it with you.

[25:50] Shakina Nayfack: And then it it suddenly occurred to me that you've probably never met Parv.

[25:56] Shakina Nayfack: No, I've never met anybody. I've never met, I have met a single person that I work with. I've met one PA who um comes to my apartment every day at the end of shooting to pick up the phones that we shot on and the sound cards from the mic pack.

[26:13] Shakina Nayfack: But um, I've otherwise everybody that I'm on the show with, we've only met over like grainy Zoom calls.

[26:19] Eva: It's amazing because I had to do some ADR, which is for your listeners, ADR is when you have to like re-record audio that didn't quite match up or work well in the edit. So you get to see a clip of the show that's being edited, the episode that's being edited, and you have to sort of re-record your voice to match up.

[26:36] Shakina Nayfack: And that was the first time that I saw like what everyone really looked like. Because it was like high def quality, you know.

[26:43] Shakina Nayfack: And I was like, oh my God, well, these people are gorgeous.

[26:43] Eva: Oh my God.

[26:49] Shakina Nayfack: Well, Parv gives the best hugs. So when you finally meet him in in real life, you'll learn that. He's an amazing heart and soul and quite possibly the funniest human being on the planet.

[27:01] Shakina Nayfack: He developed um a show called Found, uh, which is a musical I produced um several years ago. He was there.

[27:08] Eva: Awesome. We'll have to talk to him about that.

[27:11] Shakina Nayfack: Please, please.

[27:13] Shakina Nayfack: Yeah, you know, I I hope my prayer for the show is that people, you know, fall in love with these characters and and and really do want to like ride out quarantine with us. Uh and that we'll get to the point where the episode happens that these friends get to reunite and then I'll actually get to meet these actors.

[27:29] Eva: That's like my dream.

[27:31] Shakina Nayfack: Yeah. I mean, that's a really good story arc.

[27:33] Eva: So really good story arc.

[27:34] Shakina Nayfack: It would be so beautiful.

[27:35] Shakina Nayfack: Yeah. So we've we've shot eight episodes so far, and then we're kind of in the ellipses to see like, you know, what everyone thinks. Um, and uh Thursday nights, you know, we got at least we got eight in the can.

[27:47] Shakina Nayfack: Or we had got six in the can and two more to shoot, honestly, in the next two weeks.

[27:50] Eva: Okay.

[27:51] Shakina Nayfack: Thursday nights is Must See TV night.

[27:53] Eva: Isn't that true?

[27:54] Shakina Nayfack: I'm literally on Must See TV.

[27:58] Eva: I know.

[28:00] Shakina Nayfack: I mean, what is time anymore and what are weeks? But it's still cool.

[28:04] Eva: Yeah.

[28:05] Shakina Nayfack: I know. I know.

[28:11] Shakina Nayfack: Okay, you're on Must See TV. And to those probably anyone who's under 30 may not know what we're referring to.

[28:21] Eva: Sorry for you.

[28:22] Shakina Nayfack: But this was what was it? Like early, early 2000s, late 90s.

[28:27] Shakina Nayfack: I think it was like like late mid to late 90s through the early 2000s because Must See TV was like started. I mean, I remember it from high school and into college.

[28:36] Eva: Right?

[28:36] Shakina Nayfack: It was Thursday night prime time was and is the shit.

[28:41] Eva: Yeah.

[28:42] Shakina Nayfack: Oh my god.

[28:42] Eva: On NBC.

[28:43] Shakina Nayfack: No, like on NBC.

[28:45] Eva: Yeah.

[28:46] Shakina Nayfack: Yeah.

[28:46] Shakina Nayfack: So your story of Monica is what is what we're learning today.

[28:50] Eva: Yeah.

[28:50] Shakina Nayfack: I mean, it's interesting because am I a Monica or am I a Phoebe? Or like, am I a Rachel? I'm not the I like I don't think I think that um OT is the Rachel.

[29:00] Shakina Nayfack: Like I'm pretty sure OT is the Rachel. But um, but then Michelle and I uh were like, well, who's gonna be the Phoebe? Who's gonna be we'll find out? We'll let the audience decide.

[29:11] Eva: Right, right, right.

[29:13] Shakina Nayfack: Oh my god. But it's cool.

[29:15] Shakina Nayfack: And the and the character is so dope because I, you know, I get to the character was not written to be trans, but the way they auditioned the show, they like every character on the breakdown just said identifies as, you know, male or female depending.

[29:30] Shakina Nayfack: So uh it was very open to to anyone to audition. And um, and this character, you know, once I came on, the first thing they did, Martin and Brenda did the show creators, they uh they hired a trans writer for the writer's room, which is amazing and is should be a must for anyone else doing something like this.

[29:47] Shakina Nayfack: Nothing about us without us, and that goes for like every identity that they're trying to represent in the product.

[29:52] Shakina Nayfack: And um, yeah, you know, I've been able to say some things on well, soon on network television that I I don't know if they've ever been said on network television.

[30:04] Shakina Nayfack: Uh certainly not in a sitcom. I've never seen it. So I'm really excited to, you know, use the platform to I don't know, become everyone's like trans best friend they didn't know they had, so they can get over their bullshit and just vote Trump out of office, right?

[30:20] Eva: That's right.

[30:21] Shakina Nayfack: That's right.

[30:21] Shakina Nayfack: Yeah.

[30:22] Shakina Nayfack: We've got a few weeks. We can make that happen.

[30:24] Eva: We can.

[30:25] Shakina Nayfack: We can.

[30:26] Shakina Nayfack: Um, nothing about us without us. I would like that to start to be chanted at the next several events and rallies uh everyone finds themselves at.

[30:36] Shakina Nayfack: Because that is a beautiful, beautiful statement.

[30:38] Eva: Yeah, I can't tell you who coined it, but I know that it it comes from, or at least that I learned it from disability activism around the issue of representation.

[30:47] Shakina Nayfack: Um, because disabled actors, again, you know, are always losing parts to abled actors who take disabled roles and win awards for it.

[30:56] Shakina Nayfack: So it's sim very similar to the experience that trans folks have with casting.

[31:01] Shakina Nayfack: Um, and I think, you know, in the in the broader conversation of representation, it's just like a really good motto.

[31:08] Eva: Yeah.

[31:08] Shakina Nayfack: God, it's great.

[31:10] Eva: If you could be in any show, anywhere, at any time, what would it be?

[31:17] Shakina Nayfack: Well, you know, I feel like if I could also have any talent, I might pick like a dance musical that's out of my league right now. But honestly, you know, the thing, the candle that I want to keep lit is I want to be in Butterfly Club on Broadway.

[31:37] Shakina Nayfack: You know, I want my play to come back when theater comes back, and I want to fill one of those theaters, you know, eight shows a week and have uh nine trans actors on stage, you know?

[31:54] Shakina Nayfack: Like I just I see it, and so I'm just like I'm holding that that uh that candle.

[32:00] Eva: Um I'm not gonna let that dance uh uh show comment slip right by us though.

[32:06] Shakina Nayfack: Sure, sure.

[32:07] Shakina Nayfack: Yes, when you talk about dance musical. This is dream time, so there's no obstacles from the dream happening.

[32:14] Eva: So what and we'll return to to your to your um other Broadway dream, but what would the dance musical Broadway dream be?

[32:23] Shakina Nayfack: Gosh.

[32:24] Shakina Nayfack: I mean probably A Chorus Line.

[32:30] Shakina Nayfack: Cause it's it's my ultimate, I think.

[32:34] Shakina Nayfack: I mean, just you know what, you know what it's subtle for? I just want to learn the opening combination.

[32:39] Shakina Nayfack: Remember during the early part of lockdown when all the alums of the Chorus Line National Tour and Broadway Revival were showing like doing the step kick kick kick kick touching.

[32:51] Shakina Nayfack: I think I don't need to be in the show, but I think that I would like to like take a master class in which that combination is being taught just to like know what it's like to have it to for your body to go through that.

[33:03] Shakina Nayfack: Those moves are so iconic and that music and the the energy behind it, the hope and the expectation and the anticipation and the desperation, uh, it's just so charged.

[33:13] Shakina Nayfack: I love it.

[33:13] Eva: I love that combination.

[33:15] Shakina Nayfack: I actually think you'd brilliantly perform Tits and Ass.

[33:18] Eva: So I mean, I think that it is really like Val is definitely trans in 2021. For anyone who's casting.

[33:26] Shakina Nayfack: Do you know what I mean?

[33:27] Shakina Nayfack: Like ultimately.

[33:29] Eva: Yeah.

[33:29] Shakina Nayfack: So yeah.

[33:31] Shakina Nayfack: That'd be great.

[33:32] Shakina Nayfack: She's cute.

[33:33] Eva: Yeah.

[33:34] Shakina Nayfack: Yeah.

[33:35] Shakina Nayfack: I could play.

[33:36] Shakina Nayfack: I could play Val.

[33:36] Eva: Why not?

[33:37] Shakina Nayfack: No, you could. You could really kill that.

[33:38] Shakina Nayfack: I certainly feel a whole lot more powerful after I got Tits and Ass, I gotta say.

[33:44] Shakina Nayfack: I'm really, I'm only in the beginning.

[33:46] Shakina Nayfack: Actually, you know, this last past weekend, I took my first Zumba class with my mom at the JCC of Silicone Valley or wherever online.

[33:57] Shakina Nayfack: So my mom takes this JCC Zumba class and I took it with her.

[34:00] Shakina Nayfack: And my mom and I were on FaceTime while we like zoomed Zumba on the computer.

[34:05] Shakina Nayfack: And um, and I have these like mirrors on my uh, you know, wardrobe cabinet, so I kind of like saw myself out of the corner of my eye.

[34:13] Shakina Nayfack: And I saw things like shake in that didn't shake before.

[34:16] Shakina Nayfack: And I realized that that was like the first time I had danced since having uh all the the uh gender-affirming bodywork that I had in the last year.

[34:30] Shakina Nayfack: Wow. And it was really great. I was like, this feels good, this looks good. I'm excited. I'm actually, you know, developing—well, I am not developing, but Kit Yan and Melissa Lee are developing this incredible musical called Misstep that is about, um, like an early midlife trans woman who, um, decides that she's gonna connect with the spirit of her dead gay father by, um, living his dreams to compete in the, uh, aerobics dance competition. And so she becomes, uh, an aerobic stance, like, I don't know, legend. You know, it's like a sort of an underdog dance musical where a trans woman decides that she's going to win the 80s, you know, the 80s challenge of her dreams. Um, and it's really joyous, and it's got some huge cardio numbers. So I'm really excited because if that's still in the pipeline, she will be dancing on the Broadway.

[35:34] Shakina Nayfack: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, leave it to a JCC Zumba class to feel good about yourself. I love that.

[35:42] Eva: Yeah.

[35:43] Shakina Nayfack: Yeah, zoom up with Amy. She was great. You were living your best septic generic life. There was a moment she got really, really into it at the end of the class, and, um, and her ponytail came out, and she had this like long gray hair like halfway down her back, and she was just like flipping her sweaty gray hair back and forth, and I was like, I love the JCC.

[36:08] Shakina Nayfack: I love it. I love it. I love how honestly and authentically you wear your Judaism also, like it's so like holy to who you are as an actor and as a person. It's quite inspiring.

[36:22] Eva: Oh, that's cool to hear. Thank you.

[36:23] Shakina Nayfack: You know, I'm like, I always I have a lot of trouble with that. Um, like I get in a lot of trouble with that, I should say, because I'm I'm also like a very Christian woman and somewhat like Buddhist on the side. And so, like sometimes people want to try to take that away from me, you know, because like, uh, I can't have my own belief system and worldview or whatever. Um, but it's just it's really interesting that the number of, uh, times folks have like invalidated my Judaism and my Jewish heritage, um, and my like Jewish spiritual identity because, uh, the breadth of my faith practice.

[37:09] Shakina Nayfack: And, uh, yeah, it's interesting. But so I think I'm sort of unabashed about it because it's like an important piece of who I am, but it's also not in any way the totality of who I am. And you know, that allows me to be a maybe sort of casual and sometimes brazen or whatever. I don't know, it's just part of it. And you know what? Zumba is a lot like, um, quote unquote Israeli folk dancing that you might have done at like Jewish summer camp. Um, it's, uh, I've learned that that folk dancing is actually very like sort of pan Eastern European, but, um, but Zumba's not unlike it. It's just that you're, you know, it's like got sometimes they wanna like, uh, put some Latin rhythms in there, but some of those movements I'm like, I'm just doing the grapevine that I did at, uh, you know, summer camp.

It's the same thing. I'm grapevine and clap, you know. I'm gonna step, I'm gonna grapevine, I'm gonna clap, and I'm gonna burn some calories. We're doing what we can to stay in shape, just get through it.

[38:07] Eva: That's what I'm saying. We're just trying to get through it.

[38:09] Shakina Nayfack: Exactly. Exactly. I took water aerobics this morning.

[38:12] Eva: Okay and especially distance pool. So we're doing what we can.

[38:15] Shakina Nayfack: That sounds like a dream.

[38:18] Eva: It was. I miss swimming. I haven't gone swimming since everything shut down. I really would love to be in water.

[38:25] Shakina Nayfack: I know. It does, yeah, the virtual mikvah is very important whenever you can do it.

[38:34] Eva: Absolutely. I'm all about a baptism or a mikvah any anytime. I, it's funny, I talk about that in Manifest Pussy. I have a line where I'm like, you know, I love ritual cleansings like mikvas or baptisms. Like, like whatever, give it to me. If it's a ritual cleansing, I'm in.

[38:48] Shakina Nayfack: So there's a section of the show we don't tell the guests about. It's a bit of a surprise, but I think you're gonna like it. It is a lightning round.

[38:55] Eva: Lightning round.

[39:01] Shakina Nayfack: Where I put 30 seconds up on the clock. I list off the names of classic musicals. You give me the gut reaction, the one word, the two or three-word gut reaction of what you think the emotional theme of that musical is.

[39:19] Eva: Oh no.

[39:20] Shakina Nayfack: And by the end, I see how close you and I are matched up.

[39:23] Eva: Oh god. Okay, this sounds great. I hope I don't offend anyone.

[39:26] Shakina Nayfack: All right. Putting our time on the clock.

[39:31] Shakina Nayfack: A Chorus Line.

[39:33] Eva: Hope.

[39:34] Shakina Nayfack: Wizard of Oz.

[39:36] Eva: Family.

[39:37] Shakina Nayfack: Falsettos.

[39:38] Eva: Well, I already said family. Um, life.

[39:43] Shakina Nayfack: South Pacific.

[39:44] Eva: Racism.

[39:46] Shakina Nayfack: Jesus Christ Superstar.

[39:48] Eva: Salvation.

[39:50] Shakina Nayfack: Into the Woods.

[39:52] Eva: Wisdom.

[39:53] Shakina Nayfack: Lack of joy.

[39:55] Eva: Dreamgirls.

[39:57] Shakina Nayfack: Passion.

[39:58] Eva: Hmm.

[39:59] Shakina Nayfack: Beautiful.

[40:00] Eva: Because I also already said family. So but isn't it interesting? The running theme that tends to like, especially connected to who you are as a person.

[40:10] Shakina Nayfack: Family is important to you. Your family history obviously has a lot of meaning. Your love of theater and your early experiences were with your family. So you feel that and see that when you're seeing musicals.

[40:22] Eva: And I love the, I just love, uh, I just love the story of interdependence.

[40:28] Shakina Nayfack: Tell me more.

[40:29] Eva: Tell me more.

[40:30] Shakina Nayfack: Well, I like, I like when people realize they need each other.

[40:33] Eva: Yeah.

[40:34] Shakina Nayfack: You know, I think I spent a lot of time trying to not need anybody. And stepping into the vulnerability of needing and being needed is really important part of evolving as a human being because that's kind of how you arrive to the greatest expression of the capacity of your being if you're not like actually allowing yourself to fully give and fully receive, you know, then you're just limiting your experience of life.

[41:12] Eva: Totally and God if there's anything anyone has realized in these last six months I imagine one of the things the most important thing is that you're needing people you rely on certain people even if you don't see them even if you can't touch them. There is a reliance that we have on other people and they are the most meaningful thing that we can hang on to in the darkness.

[41:43] Shakina Nayfack: People who need people are the most luckiest people in the world.

[41:47] Eva: In the in the world in the world.

[41:49] Shakina Nayfack: Yeah, we all need each other right now so maybe, yeah, I don't know, I was gonna say in some sick way we're all actually lucky. We're not, but this is a pivotal moment in which we're faced with a big decision about how we want to re-enter the world, you know, and what we want to bring with us.

[42:09] Eva: Um, what we're ready to leave behind.

[42:11] Shakina Nayfack: Yeah, yeah, and for that, we will hopefully rise from the ashes and be hopeful and find optimism.

[42:21] Eva: You are an incredible, incredible person that I am so grateful to know and so grateful to have met. So happy to connect with you in this way. It's been wonderful. Thank you for being here.

[42:33] Shakina Nayfack: Yeah, thanks.

[43:01] Eva: Special thanks to Leslie Papa and Whitney Holden Gore at Vivacity Media Group. For more info about the podcast, visit bpn.fm backslash my first show. Follow me on Instagram at Eva R. Price.

[43:25] ♪ Musical number: "People" — performed by Shakina Nayfack ♪