This transcript was automatically generated and might contain errors.

[0:06] Gordon Cox: Welcome to Stagecraft, Variety's Theater Podcast, bringing you backstage and behind the scenes with the stars and creators of the hottest shows on Broadway's, off Broadway's, and on the page.

[0:17] Gordon Cox: I'm your host, Gordon Cox.

[0:19] Gordon Cox: On this episode of Stagecraft, I'm talking to the novelist Emily Neuberger's.

[0:24] Gordon Cox: While the coronavirus pandemic shuts down Broadway's for the foreseeable future, we can at least read about the theater in Neuberger's new book, A Tender Thing.

[0:32] Gordon Cox: Set in the golden age of 1950s Broadway's, the book follows the tumultuous debut of the fictional musical A Tender Thing, a controversial, groundbreaking new show about an interracial romance.

[0:43] Gordon Cox: Our point of view character is Eleanor, an aspiring musical theater performer, who runs away from life on a farm in Wisconsin to try to make it in New York.

[0:51] Gordon Cox: When she gets cast as the lead in A Tender Thing, she learns about all the ways that Broadway's both is and isn't like everything she'd always dreamed.

[0:59] Gordon Cox: In a time when Rogers and Hammerstein were still at work, and The Music Man is the newest hit on the boards.

[1:05] Gordon Cox: With A Tender Thing coming out April 7th, I'm talking to Neuberger about her own background as a performer, what it's like to release a novel during a pandemic, and how she went about researching and recreating 1950s Broadway's.

[1:17] Gordon Cox: Hi Emily, thanks for joining me.

[1:19] Emily Neuberger's's: Hi, thank you so much for having me.

[1:22] Gordon Cox: So congratulations on A Tender Thing, which is your first novel. Tell us a little bit about your background and how you came to write it.

[1:54] Emily Neuberger's's: So it's always been a huge part of my life, um, even though I've also always been a writer. So when I started working on a project in graduate school, it rapidly became clear that I wanted to focus on Broadway's and especially that particular time period of Broadway's history.

[2:13] Gordon Cox: Yeah, why? What was what's the uh I mean it is it's not called a golden age for nothing, but uh what was the appeal for sort of telling a story set then?

[2:22] Emily Neuberger's's: Well, I think part of it was just my theater fan personality wanting to show people what was so great about it who might not know about musical theater. Um I think that the musicals of that time, like the Rogers and Hammerstein musicals, especially, but also West Side Story, of course, and Lerner and Loewe, they have this reputation of being these very family-oriented sort of saccharine pieces of art. And I think that's kind of a misconception made by the musical film versions of those musicals.

[2:59] Emily Neuberger's's: And um, I often find that the real versions, the stage versions, have a lot more bite to them, and they're saying a lot more about the social fabric and they were taking a lot of risks. So I was really interested in writing about a time when we think of the 50s as being very um, you know, hearkening back to some like values that are, you know, misogynistic or racist or homophobic, and um the entertainment really largely reflecting that sort of scrubbed over family values type of environment and theater actually taking a lot of risks to question those things.

[3:37] Gordon Cox: Yeah. And when did you you mentioned you uh grew up as sort of a theater fan. When did you discover musical theater and where was this?

[3:46] Emily Neuberger's's: Oh my gosh. Well I grew up um in Long Island and also in the Chicago area. I moved when I was about nine and um really my grandmothers are both huge theater fans. One of my grandmothers, she showed me The Sound of Music when I was probably three or four and um that kind of started everything and then I just collected cast albums and devoured them like my whole life. I can't really think of a time before musical theater really.

[4:19] Gordon Cox: And what uh what do you consider your favorites?

[4:22] Emily Neuberger's's: Oh no that's a complicated question. I don't know like you probably I have like a favorite and then you know that I that come next but can't really compete. But I think West Side Story is maybe my favorite just because of the love story and the score but really I mean there's so many. Lately I've been listening to Cabaret a lot. Um that's that counts as my favorite I like you have many many uh on the list but Cabaret is it's for the short answer that's my favorite.

[4:52] Emily Neuberger's's: Yeah I mean it's appealing to me now the society on the brink of disaster for some reason it's been appealing.

[5:03] Gordon Cox: And so you mentioned t tell us about what your are did you were you an actor as well? You mentioned you're a vocal performer or so you know a singer but did you perform in musical theater growing up?

[5:13] Emily Neuberger's's: Yes yeah I performed in um tons of musicals and plays. Um I danced a bit, but I was mostly a singing actor, actor, singer. Um, my program at NYU is a it's a music degree, but it's a music degree in musical theater, which is kind of rare. It's classical training, but it's not just the classical repertoire. So um I performed in a lot of shows and a lot of the ones that are written about, like The Sound of Music and Oklahoma and all those golden age musicals. Um so I really started performing when I was about eleven and then went through until I graduated from college and sort of decided not to pursue that when I was in college.

[6:03] Gordon Cox: Um and how then did your background as a performer uh uh influence the way you wrote this book? And how how was it helpful as you uh sort of put this book together?

[6:15] Emily Neuberger's's: Well, it was helpful in a lot of ways. Like the most obvious is that while I still had to do research for the time period, I just had all this knowledge already that I could draw from, knowledge about how a musical is made or how to sing a song that I could write, you know, what it feels like to be singing, um, as well as just some historical anecdotes that I already knew, and I didn't have to go back and sort of discover everything.

[6:43] Emily Neuberger's's: Um but also I think it helped me like performing in so many shows puts the pacing of a story in your body in a different way that reading does. And I think preparing to write a book, the most helpful thing you can do is read, but I think being in all those musicals also helped me sort of understand pacing in a different way than a reader.

[7:07] Gordon Cox: That's interesting.

[7:08] Gordon Cox: Yeah. Um, and how you meant you briefly alluded to the research process. Tell us about that research. And as you, I think like a lot of us theater fans, like we all sort of know about the um, you know, the golden age, but we don't, you know, I'd say if it's still for all of us requires some research. How did you go about that? And what was sort of the most kind of useful information you learned?

[7:31] Emily Neuberger's's: Well, some of the research was about theater of the time, but a lot of it was also just about the time in general. One thing I really enjoyed doing was just reading old newspaper articles and reviews of musicals at the time and including ones not like that are not the hugely famous shows, but just your average flop from you know nineteen fifty. Um and just to hear the vocabulary around theater at the time and how that's changed.

[8:01] Emily Neuberger's's: Um as well as just like reading articles from The New Yorker from that time and just how media was talking either about theater or just the world in general.

[8:12] Gordon Cox: And how was media talking about theater at the time and how is it different from now? What did you learn about that?

[8:18] Emily Neuberger's's: Well away from the internet, there's not really the fan culture then that there is now you know there's so much of um I think Broadway's media now is about engaging with people who may not even see the shows live but are going to be posting about it online or maybe they're in productions in their hometown and there's none of that. But um there's a sort of respect given to the art form that I think isn't quite there anymore in the same way.

[8:51] Emily Neuberger's's: Like that attitude that musicals are frivolous didn't seem to be at least prevalent in the vocabulary of the reviews or the the articles that I saw about it. It was like a more seriously considered art form that I could see. Not that it's completely like dismissed now or anything, but it's it's up the there's so much competition now for our attention spans that musicals have sort of been relegated to a smaller spot in the American entertainment. But they were so huge back then that it was um much more considered of like the average person's life, not just a theater fan.

[9:30] Gordon Cox: Right. What what was the most surprising thing you learned along the way?

[9:37] Emily Neuberger's's: Um well I really enjoyed um some of the horrifying anecdotes about Jerome Robbins.

[9:44] Gordon Cox: Yes, tell us.

[9:44] Emily Neuberger's's: So I mean I'm not sure if these are actually if this is actually true. Like this is a heavily cited rumor that um one in a rehearsal I think of West Side Story, he was so angry I well he has a reputation for being uh absolutely abusive to his performers. And that he was so angry at the cast that he was screaming at them and they were all collected on stage um after a a performance or dress rehearsal and he was walking backwards as he was screaming and fell into the orchestra pit.

[10:20] Emily Neuberger's's: And no one warned him because they were so angry at how he was speaking with them and so afraid of him that they just let him walk backwards and fall into the pitch. But maybe. Um but just stories like that were like the kinds of working environments that we don't hopefully I mean see anymore.

[10:44] Gordon Cox: And s now that we've talked about the setting, t tell us a little bit about sort of the plot of the show within the novel and kind of why uh why why it deals with the specific issues that it's dealing with and what you sort of uh felt like felt like you could do with this fictional show that is addressing this set of issues at that time.

[11:06] Emily Neuberger's's: Um so the story the the musical within the book is also called A Tender Thing. And um it's a forbidden love story between a white woman and a black man and it's um sort of inspired by West Side Story. It's not based at all on the West Side Story rehearsal process or anything like that.

[11:27] Emily Neuberger's's: But um one fact that has always stuck in my brain uh since I learned this in high school, I think, is that West Side Story actually opened on the same day as the integration of the high school in Little Rock, Arkansas. Um which to me always seemed like two wildly different events that they that they happened on the same day is incredible to me, especially just because of what West Side Story is saying about integration versus you know, the horrifying racist protests and like violent actions of people with those students in Little Rock. And um I was impressed that writers could be putting those ideas on stage at that same time that people would be protesting that way. So that made me think about if I made up a show about instead of um the love story and West Side Story, it's about a white woman and a black man, which I thought at the time the stakes would have been a bit higher even and that audiences even in New York wouldn't be willing to watch that at that time.

Um so that is the general plot, but of throughout the book, the plot of this show changes slightly as they react to the audience's reaction to the show. So they make edits throughout the book. And um at first they make edits to sort of uh allow the audience's dislike into the rehearsal process and they make the show a bit more the easily stomached by those audiences, and then at the end they sort of give up on that pursuit. Well, I shouldn't really say. But yeah, so the part yeah, the impetus of the show is the love story, and then it changes it in iteration throughout the book.

[13:24] Emily Neuberger's's: And sections of the book are sort of named after elements of musical theater uh musical theater pieces and musical theater storylines. And in a lot of ways, I feel like your protagonist, Eleanor, could sort of have just walked out of, you know, another like a musical like 42nd Street, um, which I feel like is a conscious choice on your part.

[13:44] Gordon Cox: Yeah, Annie.

[13:45] Emily Neuberger's's: Yeah, right, exactly. Um and so tell us uh why you made that choice and why uh she was the right point of view character for the story.

[13:55] Emily Neuberger's's: Um well there's two reasons. One is I like the idea of um an improbable heroine, and I mean that is that is it's kind of a just a little homage to musicals because the um the theme of a girl coming out of nowhere and becoming the star is repeated in so many shows. But it's repeated for a reason. I mean, that did happen back then. I think it still happens now. I mean, it's probably less likely now, especially with social media followings and things like that playing more into casting, but it still does happen. Um, that talent can just win you apart. And especially when the character that they're playing is supposed to be very young. Like they need a young person to play her. And I mean, when they weren't finding stars who had YouTube followings or anything like that, it was just more likely that you would have a a nobody, so to speak.

So I was interested in in that rapid ascent, because I it would be more um I think it put more pressure on Eleanor, the main character, as she becomes a star because she's in this political hot seat. And if she was more versed in theater and just more savvy, I she would have been able to handle it better.

[15:21] Emily Neuberger's's: And I wanted it to be about someone who really is not equipped, does not have the tools that she needs in order to navigate that sort of world. Um, and also because so much of the book is about not just racism, but like racism as in like a direct uh aggressive prejudice, but it's about the more quieter racist biases we have. And so by having her come from Wisconsin and not really have any sort of life experience, I will showing how she's not she thinks of herself as someone who's more open than she is. And by coming straight to the city out of this very small town, very small white town, um, and encountering people of color for the first time in this major way, she's really shocked by how much she needs to change and how much she needs to learn and she has to become aware and she's forced to become aware quickly.

[16:29] Gordon Cox: I'll have more with Emily right after the break.

[16:41] Gordon Cox: And now here's more with the novelist Emily Neuberger's.

[16:44] Gordon Cox: Did you find it challenging to write about uh perspectives on these issues that were sort of era appropriate while balancing kind of the 2020 um you know more appropriate in most ways more progressive viewpoint um on these issues like was that was that an unusual uh how how did you sort of strike that balance in terms of figuring out what was uh what how sort of distinguishing how we uh in 2020 feel versus how these characters would feel and you know realistically react to things.

[17:17] Emily Neuberger's's: Yeah that was really difficult. Um and I had to ask myself a lot of questions along the way uh I think the most obvious is that I don't use really charged racial slurs at all in the book, even though they would definitely be using them at the time, even though some of them might not even have been considered slurs at the time. I just didn't feel that a reader today needed to see those words on a page in order to understand that racism was more of a quotidian occurrence. Like it's that trauma that those words cause now is not like that it it's just nothing makes that necessary, I guess. So I just decided not to do that at all, even if it would be historically accurate. Um but that was pretty easy choice.

[18:13] Emily Neuberger's's: The other more complicated question is I think you hear a conversation sometimes about like, well, back then people were just like that. That's kind of a vague way of saying it. But I wanted to balance the idea of Eleanor specifically where she comes from, when she comes from yes, she would think differently than we do now. But what about that is excusable and what about that isn't excusable? And I think that evolved as the book evolved, like draft through draft. I didn't want to excuse her biases and racism because of when she comes from, saying like because she's from 1958, it's more okay. It's more like okay, all right, if she's from 1958, then we have the reasons for those things, but that doesn't necessarily excuse the behavior.

[19:12] Gordon Cox: Yeah.

[19:13] Emily Neuberger's's: And the the book is set uh in the late fifties, as you said, and uh you mention, and in fact, we sort of meet briefly greats like Richard Rogers and Murdoch Wilson. Um, but the kind of composer who looms largest is this fictional composer who's like who's the uh a very important character in in the novel named Don Mannheim. Is he uh based on anyone in particular?

[19:38] Emily Neuberger's's: Um no, he's he's fictional, but he's inspired a bit by uh stories I read about Steven Sondheim, but uh again, like wildly different. Um, but what always interested me about Sondheim is how he talked about his solitude growing up and his difficulty connecting with people, which is a theme you see a lot in his musicals.

[20:06] Gordon Cox: Yeah.

[20:06] Emily Neuberger's's: And um not very often in I mean, you see he characters who struggle to connect with a specific person in a lot of musicals, but not just this sort of gnawing loneliness that often appears in his. And so I found that really inspiring, and especially how that would play into or how homophobia and the need to stay in a closet might play into why he would be writing that way, specifically in that time period. But yeah, he's not based on Sondheim, it's just that specific dynamic was interesting to me.

[20:40] Gordon Cox: How do you imagine Don Mannheim's music sounds?

[20:47] Emily Neuberger's's: I he sort of sounds like a amalgamation because he's a young he's kind of at the very beginning of the height of his career in the late fifties, and the contemporaries that I was writing about that were famous at the time were really established by then. So they had sort of an older sound. So I was imagining someone who is sounding like the music that's coming. So he's engaging with back and roll a little bit. He's still using a full orchestra. He's using heavy brass and using jazz influences and percussion and um those chord progressions that are not often found in classical music. But he's also taking more risk with popular music and adding that into his scores. So he's just a bit less dodgy or traditional than um, you know, a Richard Rogers or someone like that. But he's not really inspired by a specific composer sound.

[21:54] Gordon Cox: Yeah.

[21:55] Emily Neuberger's's: Um and is there uh is there anyone else in the novel who uh who but like Harry the director is a very difficult director, although I would not call him Jerome Robbins. Um is there is there anybody else who particularly inspired any real life figures who particularly inspired uh the writing of the novel.

[22:17] Emily Neuberger's's: No, um this isn't directly an answer to that question, but one aspect that I was really inspired by, not by a one specific person, but just something that I see a lot in theater, which is that Eleanor and Charles, who plays for CoScar have like a have a very strong platonic friendship. And something that I see a lot in theater with people who play lovers, either like a heterosexual man or a heterosexual woman or whatever sort of combination you can think of.

[22:52] Emily Neuberger's's: There's a kind of platonic friendship that arises, I think, from pretending to be in love. That if there's not really any strong sexual chemistry, it often just goes away completely when they're off stage and they can be friends in a way that you don't necessarily see in other professions and have these really intimate friendships by going through really emotionally trying things on stage every night together as partners, trusting each other and taking these risks and becoming vulnerable together, and then on top of it by demonstrating romantic love together. So they have this strong platonic friendship, and they're both heterosexual and it doesn't become anything else. And that to me is definitely inspired by friendships I've had in theater or seen in theater.

[23:42] Gordon Cox: And tell us a little bit about the process of writing it and selling the book. Is this did did you find that the book industry is sort of interested in books about theater? Do you do does do book publishers believe that there is a sort of appetite for people who are interested in reading about theater?

[23:59] Emily Neuberger's's: There's definitely they think there's definitely an appetite. And I sort of discovered that as I was writing it, and it made me worried and excited. Yeah. Like if there is if there is there a space for me or not. Um it's I mean I am still very close to the theater community. My best friend works on Broadway's. I mean, well, she's having a difficulty. But yeah, obviously, yeah. Um, but what what show is she in?

[24:35] Gordon Cox: She uh she's a wardrobe um oh yeah, cool.

[24:39] Emily Neuberger's's: Um, and so that crossover, I mean, what was interesting to me is seeing how similar they are and how different they are, but the sort of whole team aspect that's required to produce a work of art, the business, and then also all the creative people who are not actors or are not writers or the people you think of when you think of a book or a musical. Um there's all these teams of people who are huge, hugely passionate about what they do. Um so I wrote the book in about a year and then revised it with my agent for about another six months before we pitched it to editors. Um and I think the theater, I mean that was like a a hook for them for sure because they don't see that often.

[25:29] Emily Neuberger's's: Um I I I mean I can't really say how much it played into their decision.

[25:36] Gordon Cox: No, of course, but I just wondered if it it uh I I was hoping that the answer would not be, oh, I actually found it a real challenge because everybody believed nobody wanted a book about theater or something like that.

[25:45] Emily Neuberger's's: Oh no, definitely not. If it definitely not. It was like, oh, I didn't know this about musicals. I didn't know that about musicals. I mean Yeah.

[25:54] Gordon Cox: Um well that was I was gonna uh one of my questions was what are uh like do you have a favorite novel about the theater? Because as you mentioned, there sort of aren't that many.

[26:05] Emily Neuberger's's: No, um, and actually I I don't, which is I mean I can't think of one either for myself. So yeah. I love Meg Woolisfer's book The Interestings, which is not about the theater, but it's about um teenagers at an art camp and then later they're adults, and they're not all performers, but some of them are. Um and it just sort of captures the youth artistic sort of fervor that a lot of when a lot of teenagers sort of find the arts and it sort of saves them. Um and she captures it really well. But no, I I yeah, I don't read about it a lot, and I wish I did, honestly.

[26:47] Gordon Cox: Yeah. What how are you finding the experience of releasing your first book in the middle of a pandemic?

[26:55] Emily Neuberger's's: Um, great. Just um uh well it's not how I imagined it would be for sure. I received all my books, my finished copies, um, the first day of quarantine. Well hi just very differently. I had a a tour and a a bunch of events that are now canceled, um and or possibly rescheduled. So that was I mean that emotional aspect of being able to celebrate with my friends and family, losing that and meeting readers in person is really that was really disappointing and I let myself sort of feel that. But at the same time, like the book is still coming out, and um honestly I thought I would be more disappointed when I first suspected the events would be canceled, but since then the world has become so terrifying that this just does not seem like the top worry right now.

I'm so excited it's coming out and I'm so grateful that it's even I've even had the chance to go through this experience. So um and then I've seen so much support online from people for debut authors especially, but also just books in general. Um that's been really heartening.

[28:13] Gordon Cox: Yeah. Are you working on your next novel and is it also set in the theater?

[28:18] Emily Neuberger's's: Uh I am working on it, but it's not set in the theater, but it is historical.

[28:25] Gordon Cox: Um can you tell us about it?

[28:28] Emily Neuberger's's: Yeah. A bit. I don't really want to go into it too much, but um it's a love story, uh which a tender thing has some romantic elements, but it's really not a love story. Um so I wanted to go much more into that realm and it's about um it's set in France after World War One and it's a love story.

[28:52] Gordon Cox: Do you still perform?

[28:55] Emily Neuberger's's: I well, I actually recorded the audiobook for a Tender Thing, um including just singing. So that was the most recent thing that I did, which is so fun. Uh and not like anything I've done before. Um, but it was um I mean it took a very long time, but it that was really exciting. And I don't perform as much, but um I do sing all the time. It's just it's difficult when you're not 100% a performer to do it in a sort of balanced way if I didn't want to pursue it professionally to find an outlet that's not so time consuming. It's very difficult. But I sing it all the time with friends or family or in my apartment.

[29:43] Gordon Cox: Yeah.

[29:44] Emily Neuberger's's: And uh uh these days, uh, theater lovers are looking for, you know, things to occupy us when now that we can't go see theater at night. What are you finding? Uh do you have a favorite uh as we mentioned, there are very few books about at least novels about the theater. Do you have favorite maybe uh his you know, uh nonfiction books about the theater, or do you or do you have a favorite sort of TV or movie uh about the theater that you might recommend to people looking for something to watch?

[30:14] Emily Neuberger's's: Yeah, well, a couple things. Um if you haven't already, uh I mean these have been out for so long, but Stephen Sondheim's annotated lyric books, Finishing the Hat and Looking Made a Hat are just like the I mean, you don't read them cover to cover really, but they're I think some of the best books out there if you want to learn about theater. Um I also just love biographies of major theater people. Something Wonderful, the Rogers and Hammerstein biography that came out I think a year ago, maybe two. I loved that. That's nonfiction. And if we're gonna for television or movies, I mean Were you a Smash fan?

[31:03] Gordon Cox: I was a huge Smash fan.

[31:05] Emily Neuberger's's: I was a huge and I was definitely on Team Megan Hilty and I don't understand how too much. Um definitely that. Um also a big fan of the search for Elwood. Um mostly I think I just love the filmed versions of musicals. And some of the movies are great. I actually watched Cabaret the other night. That's why I got hooked on it. And man, the movie is just so amazing. But yeah, instead of movies about them, I think just the dumb movies. Like the uh I mean the Sondheim film movies, the Into the Woods original Broadway's cast. That is great.

[31:44] Gordon Cox: Yeah, oh yeah.

[31:45] Emily Neuberger's's: Um I mean I did love the Cat movie, but probably.

[31:54] Gordon Cox: But it it was great fun.

[31:57] Emily Neuberger's's: Exactly.

[32:00] Gordon Cox: Um as we uh for last question, what are some what's the what are the newer musicals that you have really responded to lately? We've talked a lot about, you know, sort of golden age shows and uh shows since, but what what in the last you know five or ten years have you really loved?

[32:15] Emily Neuberger's's: Oh five or ten years. I mean I was fortunate enough to see Hamilton at the public. Um actually the same day as Michelle Obama, so it was just kind of a really strong memory in my mind. Um and obviously I mean I absolutely love that. Um I really did really enjoy Beetlejuice and I thought it was so fun and clever and um I just really hope they get to come back. Uh yeah. And um I'm really wanna see Stick. I love the soundtrack and I haven't gotten a chance to see it. And uh I just wish um I like I'm just I'm I'm so nervous for all the new shows that are like just about to be launched right before and then like this close. So I have my fingers crossed because I really want to see it.

[33:12] Gordon Cox: Um yeah, that's like top of my list.

[33:16] Gordon Cox: Yeah. Well, while we are uh waiting for those new shows and old shows to come back, uh, we can content ourselves by reading a tender thing. Uh, congratulations again on it, and uh thanks for talking to me.

[33:27] Emily Neuberger's's: Thank you so much.

[33:28] Gordon Cox: Thank you.

[33:37] Gordon Cox: That was Emily Neuberger's, whose book A Tender Thing is now available. If you like what you're hearing on this and other episodes of Stagecraft, you can rate and review us on Apple Podcasts, and you can subscribe and find past episodes there and on all the other pod places, including Spotify and on the Broadway's Podcast Network, which is a great place to find more food for your ears to help fill these long theaterless nights. I'll be back with another new episode next week. Thanks for listening and see you soon.