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[0:06] Gordon Cox: Welcome to Stagecraft, Variety's Theater Podcast. Your backstage pass to intimate conversations with stars, creators, and industry leaders. On Broadway, off Broadway, and beyond. I'm Gordon Cox.

[0:19] Gordon Cox: On this episode of Stagecraft, I'm talking to the writer Tori Sampson. She's a playwright who first attracted attention in New York with the 2019 Playwrights Horizons production of her play, If Pretty Hurts, Ugly Must Be a Motherfucker. Now, after a delay precipitated by the pandemic, her latest, This Land Was Made, is now running at the Vineyard Theater. It's a fictionalized account of a shooting in 1967 Oakland that sees ideologies clash and cohere in a turbulent time, all told with the writer's signature comic touch. Sampson is also a busy TV writer, which is to say she's currently busy striking along with the rest of the Writers Guild of America. And so, in addition to talking about her stage work, she can give us a perspective on the strike from the point of view of one of the many, many playwrights who love the theater but earn a living in TV. Hey Tori, thanks for joining me.

[1:10] Tori Sampson: Thank you for having me.

[1:12] Gordon Cox: Before we talk about This Land Was Made, I wonder if we could first talk a little bit about your backstory, because in every bio of yours that I've ever seen, you mentioned pretty early on the impact of the work of Carol O'Connor, who's the TV actor who played Archie Bunker on All in the Family.

[1:39] Tori Sampson: I was exposed to Carol O'Connor through my mother, who loved sitcoms, and she would watch All in the Family when I was a kid. I grew up in a very radical Black household, so my mom was very strict about content that we digested in any way, form, or fashion. Everything was very intentional with her. And so we had limited television time. We watched like an hour of TV a day, and it was The Cosby Show. But she would watch late at night, she would watch All in the Family. I think at that time it was probably on like Nick at Night or something. And she would laugh so hard at this show. And every time Carol O'Connor said something like extremely racist and bigoted, sexist, it just tickled her. And I was just as a kid, like, oh my gosh, this is the kind of stuff that you usually get very upset about, and you always have like a huge speech prepared for anybody who says these words.

And so she would really break down comedy for me and satire and the importance of television shows that are not just there to entertain, but can you like just how special it is when someone can write for the masses, but also hit on the specifics of what is troubling our society and where we are as a nation and how we can improve. And just like a sort of a reflection, just like, you know, I was a sociologist before I was a playwright, and I think part of that my interest in that was just watching sociology through entertainment and through television. And so I became very infatuated with at that point Carol O'Connor became All in the Family, George Jefferson, you know, all these shows where they sort of just allowed these characters to be who they are.

They weren't censored, in fact, they were intentionally bigoted, intentionally sexist, and it kind of just brought out how simplistic their viewpoints were, the problems with their thinking, you know, and how idiotic it was at some points. And America sort of just ate it up. And I always thought that that was really interesting and really smart, and in a really beautiful way to create art and entertainment that also moves the conversation forward, and just a reflection of society. And so that's when I started to understand sort of like the genius behind all that, and that was Norman Lear, but I was very much so introduced, I think to Norman Lear's work through All in the Family and Sanford and Son.

[4:15] Gordon Cox: Right.

[4:16] Gordon Cox: Yeah, yeah. And you identify really strongly as a writer of comedy. What in particular about humor kind of unlocks the things that you want to do as a writer?

[4:32] Tori Sampson: I think humor unlocks people in general. I think humor is, you know, a universal language that we all speak. I think everybody wants to laugh, everybody wants to have that form of catharsis in their lives. It's medicine in the way that it heals, you know, a lot of our ailments that we're dealing with just in society. And I think for me, just as a writer, I want to bring comedy to my stories because I think it's a way of galvanizing and unifying audiences. That's, you know, that goes back to All in the Family. If a show where, you know, a middle-aged white guy is speaking big, you know, openly and offensively in my sort of militant radical Black mother can have access to that television show and understand it and appreciate it, I don't think she could do that without the comedy.

I think the comedy is what drives draws her in. I think the satire is what drew her in. And I just feel like it's probably our most powerful vehicle in the as artists as writers is to understand comedy, understand the power of comedy, understand the structure of comedy.

[5:48] Gordon Cox: And how and when did you discover writing? You mentioned that you studied sociology for a while.

[5:56] Tori Sampson: Oh, I've always loved to write because I've always loved to read. So as a kid I would just, you know, stay in my mom would drop us off at the library in the summers at like eight o'clock in the morning and she'd come and get us whenever the library closed, so seven, eight o'clock at night. She was in college when I was a kid and she was a single mom, so she didn't have childcare. So she would just drop us off at the library and we just stayed there all day. And so I really fell in love with reading at an early age and from that, you know, when you're reading, you kind of just, it's kind of a gateway drug to writing. So when I was a kid and I also like grew up with my mom was really into like hip hop and country music.

She loved hip hop, she loved country music, she loved folk music a lot. So I listened to and gospel music. We listened to a lot of different music in my house. So the first things I started to write were like songs, raps, church songs like for Sunday school. So I started off in that arena of like thinking I wanted to be a songwriter. And then I just moved, you know, up the ladder a little bit and like started writing short stories and stuff like that. But I always, always, always loved writing. As a kid, I was really an athlete, and my first dream for myself was to play in the WNBA. And when that didn't pan out, I moved towards sociology. And I loved sociology because we could write.

[7:34] Gordon Cox: And when did you find playwriting specifically?

[7:37] Tori Sampson: When I was 21, my senior year in college. I went back to Boston. I went to school in Indiana and went back to Boston for a holiday break. And I went to go see Fences by August Wilson at the Huntington Theater. My first time in the theater, professional theater. And I always describe it to people as like I levitated in my seat. I just was so amazed by everything I was seeing on stage. And it just like sort of hit me in the chest. It's probably like my most powerful experience I've ever had, engaging in somebody's art. So I sort of stayed in the theater like 30 minutes after the play was over, just sort of digesting it, and the usher was like, "You gotta go," like we were sweeping up around you, getting on the train back home, and I was just reconfiguring my future in my head.

I was like, "How can I be a part of this thing? What is theater? Who writes these plays? How do you get things on stage?" Like that was really the beginning of my career as a playwright, was just going to see a play, being completely transformed by it and wanting to be involved in whatever that was.

[8:53] Gordon Cox: Right. And so you ended up going to Yale for a graduate degree, yeah, in playwriting?

[8:59] Tori Sampson: Yeah.

[9:00] Gordon Cox: Yeah, yeah. Um, and let's talk now about This Land Was Made. It's a play that you've been developing with the Vineyard off Broadway since before the pandemic, is that right?

[9:11] Tori Sampson: Yeah, since 2018.

[9:13] Gordon Cox: So, okay, before we get too much into it, for folks who haven't had a chance to see it, how do you describe what it's about?

[9:20] Tori Sampson: Oh, don't ask me that. It's so hard to describe your own work. I think the thing that I've said most recently that I maybe want to repeat that I feel like it resonates with me more, is that I wanted to talk about the sociology and the anthropology of the Black Panther Party, but with the lowercase P as in the people. So the people of Oakland, the people of the Panthers, and what they were like, what they were up against in this period in this time. Yeah, and just really a comedy about some regular people who congregate at a bar every day in Oakland, California, and one day Huey Newton walks into this bar and he changes the course of their lives forever.

[10:09] Gordon Cox: Uh, you mentioned you talked a little bit about your mom, and you mentioned in the program that you have a personal connection to the Black Panthers. Can you tell us a little bit more about that?

[10:18] Tori Sampson: Yes, my mom's aunt and uncle were Black Panthers. They were a part of a Boston chapter in the 70s. My mother went to go live with them when she was about ten years old. And they raised her in Black Panther ideology, and it really impacted her to the point where, you know, she started to raise my sisters and I with the same mindset that her aunt and uncle raised her with.

[10:45] Gordon Cox: Right.

[10:46] Gordon Cox: Um, and so what is it about your, the play is about a, um, it's sort of based on a shooting, a real life shooting that happened in Oakland in the 60s, um, with that Huey P. Newton was involved in. What is it about that story that you feel like drew you in and that you wanted to kind of explore more?

[11:08] Tori Sampson: I really enjoyed the mystery of it all. I think the politics behind Huey Newton, his relationship with Oakland, his relationship with the authority, his relationship with politics all really interest me. And to know that there was a time in which Huey could have been put in jail for the rest of his life or maybe even sent to death for the killing of a police officer, but wasn't because all evidence led to a missing person, you know, and that person was never discovered. I feel like that's sort of a dramatist dream to hear a story so powerful and to know that you can play with time and space and truth and lies and fact and fiction to create a story for me.

[11:56] Tori Sampson: I just immediately was went on the internet and was like typing in like, has anybody written about this? What are the stories I've written? You know, and I kept coming up empty and I was like, Okay, this is mine, I'm gonna take this and find a way to tell a story about the person who was in the car, um, this missing person from my perspective and just a story that I thought might be worth telling.

[12:17] Gordon Cox: Yeah, yeah. And so how did you then think about uh creating that balance between, you know, what is real life and what is, you know, your own uh your the the fiction that you bring to it, you know, your the characters that you bring. What how it is how much do you think about sort of honoring what is real life and being truthful to what is real life and then uh how did you think about imagine sort of interweaving uh your own imagination into that.

[12:45] Tori Sampson: Yeah I did like a lot of research on what was what people knew happened and um very fortunate for me that there was there's just a lot of holes in the story in general. And so there was a lot of place for me to play. I think for me it was really important to honor Huey Newton's character and you know not as like a character in the play but his actual character um to make him a person to give him humanity the same way that I'm was determined to give every character in the play humanity. And so you know a lot of times we talk about Huey Newton we only see him you know with the le black leather jacket and the fist put up and and um his very militant speeches but I got to interview some black panthers like Ed Bullins and Kathleen Clever while I was writing it.

You know, it was very evident to me that Huey was a funny guy and that he was down to earth and he was one of the people and so I just wanted to do that as well was like to to let him engage with the people of Oakland as just the person. And so that was that was really important to me and I think just as a dramatist in general I like uh playing with time and space and magical realism. I love all of that sort of stuff and so as long as I am honoring the way that I like to create art and and the stories in which that I'm pulling from. I think that that for me is is the balance there. But I there was a lot of space in this particular story to play with. And I also am very clear in the very beginning of the show with Sassy's speech that like we don't know exactly what's what's happened.

These are all different versions of different stories. You've heard different versions of this story. This is my version of the story that I believe is true. But also I kind of heard it from her who heard it from him, you know, and then at the end, you know, she sort of says, like, don't be making shit up. It's like I'm always hinting to the audience that like it's your job to figure out where the fact and the fiction is in all of this. And when things are stories are passed down, there's always a little truth, a little bit of misconstruedness in here and all that sort of stuff. And so I wanted to hint at that too. Um and and just you know, let people know that like I'm also a a human being who was, you know, not born in this time period, and I'm a dramatist and I want to create entertain create and entertain um at the same time.

So for me, you know, I don't put a lot of pressure on myself to be accurate, but I do put pressure on myself to take care of my audience and to let them know this is the type of story I'm telling. So I don't want you know what I mean. That that's important.

[15:21] Gordon Cox: Yeah, yeah. What were the inspirations for the characters? Were there any real life inspirations for the characters who you created for to sort of fill the life of the play?

[15:32] Tori Sampson: Uh no, I wouldn't say like real life inspiration for my personal life. I think for me, it was more about what the characters represented for this play and this production. I was really interested in the the politics of blackness, the politics of the time, and sort of what that meant in 1967 and what it means now. So for me, it was more about like the black, the black, you know, sassy representing the free spirit, the wild child of that time, you know, and and then having black moderates, black conservatives. That was really important to me was just feeling filling out the world and and understanding like black blacks people in black politics are not a monolith. And so what does that look like when one when all those sort of personalities clash?

They're all born in the same city or being at least being raised in the same city, living in the same neighborhood, congregating at the same bar, but have multiple understandings of what it means to be an American, what it means to be a black American, what it means to be proud to be an American. And I really that was really more interesting to me than pulling inspiration from my life was more so pulling inspiration from uh different conversations I've had with with black Americans who have very varying uh opinions and ideologies on um the po the political nature of this country and of the their color as it relates to this country.

[17:04] Gordon Cox: Yeah. Uh over the years that the sh show was developing um over the pandemic and the uprisings for racial justice did uh how has the time and everything that has gone on in the time that has uh passed since you started working on this how do you think that has influenced the way the play developed or has it?

[17:04] Tori Sampson: It definitely has it um influenced the way the play developed I started writing this play in 2015 um and so that was that was a different time period than obviously when we're talking about tw 2023 and I think you know, this is 2015 is um is Trayvon Martin, it's it's Mike Brown, it's the rise of BLM. It's a lot of stuff happening at that time, and I think for me, the big question I had when I was writing this play at this time was what does it mean for Troy to embody the language that a lot of white officers and Americans have spoken over and over during this time period about their fear of black people, their fear of dying, their fear of not making it home to their kids, their fear uh there's just a lot of fear.

Um and so I was like, Well, what if this this black guy has that same fear and he's saying you can't put a gun in my hand when I'm trying to protect myself and expect me not to lose, and I was just trying to make it home safely. I was just trying to defend myself. Does the conversation change at all? Is there any understanding? Are black people allowed to fear for them fear for their lives? Trayvon Martin certainly wasn't. And so those questions were really on the tip of my tongue and brain and amongst, you know, my friends and families around the dinner table and and coffee shops, I think that conversation was just happening a lot more often. Um and it was just a it was a firecracker conversation. So that I think that for me was really potent in 2015 and the development of the play.

[19:03] Gordon Cox: And as we move forward, I then became more interested in the politics. I'll have more with Tori right after the break.

[19:21] Gordon Cox: And now here's more of my conversation with the playwright Tori Sampson. In addition to your stage work, you work a lot in TV, which means you're not working in TV right now. Uh you're on strike. What's that look like for you? How does that how how does that impact your day-to-day?

[19:39] Tori Sampson: Well, I'm not working. I was in a writer's room up until the day of the strike. So, you know, immediate pens down. I've been in theater since you we were I was in rehearsals for this show when the strike, um the first day of the strike was I think maybe week two of rehearsals over two and a half, some around that time. So I've been in the theater for all this time. As I'm moving back to LA, I will join the picket lines uh when I get back back to LA and I'll participate every day um in that because I've missed so much time um while I've been in theater. Um and I think probably the reality of everything will set in when I'm back in LA. I think I had a different reality from a lot of my peers because I was working in the theater and had this play that was taking up all of my time and energy and space, brain space.

[20:32] Gordon Cox: Yeah.

[20:32] Tori Sampson: So I really haven't had the opportunity to sit with the strike and all of its um repercussions and you know I I I haven't sat with that intellectually yet. Um and I will in the next couple of days.

[20:49] Gordon Cox: Yeah. One of the things that really strikes me about your resume is that although you as a as a as a lone writer, as a playwright, um, uh I like really gravitate toward comedy, the many of the shows you've worked on are like Citadel on Amazon Prime and Hunters on Amazon, and there's this uh upcoming show on Netflix called His and Hers, uh that appears to be these are all very sort of action-y thrillers, is what it seems like to me. Or some version of action-y thriller. And I wonder if you could just tell me a little bit about what what's been instructive for you about being in these rooms and telling these kinds of stories.

[21:27] Tori Sampson: That's a great question. I think at the heart of each of these stories is comedy, even though they're drama shows, they're hour long, so of course they're drama, and that's just the way things pan out in television. But at the heart of them, they're they're comedies. I think Hunters is really funny. I mean, yes, we're killing Nazis every five seconds, but all the characters are so so funny. And I think that that was one of the reasons I was brought on to Hunters was to inject some of that into the show. Um, and so and so that's been great. I I think it's hard to write a true drama. I mean, think about succession. Like, succession is a comedy, it's an hour long, it's a drama, but it's a comedy, and I think there's more um nuance that's happening in television with that, with comedy drama um shows.

And so I feel sort of right at home in these shows because even with Citadel, who's you know, it's the same showrunner as as Hunters, um, is you know, ask uh the same, you know, requirements of the writers in the rooms like this is this is a drama, yes, and this is a spy, you know, spy crack, but let's let these characters be full and let them be funny and let them engage with each other in in a real way. So it's definitely still a comedy space. I still get to flex those muscles. Um the same with theater. Like the shows I write in theater are I consider them to be comedies, but there's a point in time when they become real. You know, there's a point in time when everybody has to sit with the reality of the show and what's happening. And I feel the same way with the the the shows that I've been working on in television um that there's just a lot of room for both.

[23:07] Gordon Cox: What do you find most challenging about TV and film work?

[23:12] Tori Sampson: I think probably learning how other people's brains work and and figuring out what they want from you. In theater, I am basically the showrunner. Yeah. And television I'm working to bring somebody else's vision to life. And so learning how they write the style in which they write in um learning the type of storyteller they are so that I can pitch stories that fit into their ideas and and what they're after that takes a lot of brain work. It's it's it's it's challenging to figure out how other people think and wanting to serve them the best way that you possibly can to bring their vision to life.

[23:57] Tori Sampson: And then also you're in the room with a lot of other smart people who are pitching constantly, so you need to be very alert all the time to follow all the threads that are happening in the room. And so one of my biggest superpowers is daydreaming. Like I love to daydream. You can't daydream in the writer's room; too many people, like you'll lose it. You'll lose the thread and then you'll come back to reality and you're like, what are we talking about? I guess like I was in my brain for like the last two minutes. So um yeah, that's those I guess those are the things that I found most challenging in the beginning and I found to be um a great way to exercise that muscle and to and to strengthen that muscle is really just being in tune with other people at all times.

[24:44] Gordon Cox: And what's most rewarding for you about the TV work?

[24:50] Tori Sampson: Instant, the instant sort of gratification of seeing your work. I think sometimes in theater it takes a long time to see your shows appear, if you do get to see your shows appear. But in television, going on set and seeing all of the people working to see your vision come to life and all the actors and all that stuff happening, and then like in a couple of months you get to watch it with your friends and family, I think that's like very, very rewarding to see your work on the screen and to have your friends and family watch it that don't live in New York or regionally wherever your shows are, um, or can't afford theater tickets. It's more accessible. So the accessibility I think of television is also very gratifying.

Um yeah, because you get to share your work with a lot of people who you love, um, who might not otherwise be able to see your work as a writer. That's really gratifying. And also when your showrunners appreciate you and find you valuable and they're like, thank you for doing this, your episode was really great. I appreciate this. And you know, because when you walk into a writer's room, you just want to make sure you're doing a great job for that showrunner. That showrunner has worked so hard to get their show greenlit; you just want to make sure that their vision, their dreams come true. And so that's my goal when I walk into a writer's room. How can I be of service to you? And if I am doing that really well and they appreciate it, then I feel good when I go home at night that like I'm doing something valuable for somebody else.

[26:29] Gordon Cox: Are the rooms you've been in, do they tend to be virtual or in person?

[26:37] Tori Sampson: Both actually. I just, the room that I was in when the strike happened was virtual.

[26:43] Gordon Cox: Can you tell us what the show that was for?

[26:45] Tori Sampson: His and Hers.

[26:47] Gordon Cox: Okay.

[26:48] Tori Sampson: Yeah. The show, the room I was in immediately before that, I think it was like a two-week difference before that was Citadel.

[26:55] Gordon Cox: Citadel was in person every day.

[26:56] Tori Sampson: Okay.

[26:57] Gordon Cox: Yeah.

[26:59] Tori Sampson: And one of the things I know that people talk about in the strike is like sort of the decline of like opportunities for young TV writers to kind of learn all the skills that eventually go into showrunning, which sounds like a giant job where you have to do all the things all at once. Um are you, it sounds like you've been to sets and things and seen how that works. Do you feel like you're starting to learn, uh, kind of gather the knowledge and the kind of skill base to look ahead to maybe running your own show someday?

[27:31] Tori Sampson: Yes, I've been very fortunate, very, very blessed and fortunate. I'm not gonna knock on wood all the time. I've worked with the best showrunners in the business, the most giving and generous showrunners. I've been on every set of every show I've worked on. Um, the last show I worked on, um, is going to be premiering on Starz in a c, like, uh, I think later on this year, yeah, um, it's called Three Women. And I was a writer-producer on that show. So I was on set for months on end. Oh wow, and I got to shadow some directors, but I was there, you know, from prep all the way through to the sh, to the editing, and I got to see all the cuts and everything. I just got to be a part of all of it. When I was on Solos, I was on set with David during the pandemic, you know, to produce the episode.

So I've been able to write and produce my own episodes of television, which have been absolutely great and stunning. And David Wild has also taken me under his wing to mentor me as a director. So that's been great. Um, because we both have that ambition to write, produce, and direct, and obviously he's miles ahead of me with that and he's been taking me under his wing to just mentor me so that I have the opportunity, um, when the opportunity arises that I'll be prepared to begin directing in television too. So I've just had great mentors who when I ask them for things, they're like, yeah, absolutely. And um, and yeah, so it's been great. I definitely feel like I'm being um groomed for that time period when the opportunity arises for me to be a showrunner that I'll be writing.

[29:12] Gordon Cox: Yeah.

[29:13] Tori Sampson: Yeah. What is the, what are the biggest lessons that you've learned from all your work, uh, writing for the screen that you, uh, feel like you're gonna carry back with you when you work in the theater?

[29:26] Tori Sampson: I mean, there's so many things. I think something that I really adore about what we do in television is when we're writing, we come up with these big ideas and then we sort of dwindle it down and we put it on the page and we go back to each other and we go over the scripts over and over and over and over, and we go through every line, every word to try to make sure that we're servicing everybody. And it's a different type of collaboration than exists in theater, but I think that's the thing I enjoy most about theater is the collaboration. So I just want to make sure that in both industries that I am in, that I'm always being a good collaborator and allowing other people to have opinions and a voice in a space in any place that I'm in.

And so as a playwright, I do, I'm very cognizant of my role in the room and the sort of authority that I have in the space. And I always want to make sure that everybody I'm working with feels very included and knows that they, as artists working on a project that has my name on it, that they have a voice too. And I think one thing that I found very powerful working with specifically, um, David Weill and Laura Easton as showrunners was that they always made us feel like we had voices, even though they're running these huge productions, you know, multi-million dollar productions, that they were just not like, no, it's mine, and you do just do this thing that I'm asking you to do. It was always sort of a big collaboration for everybody involved.

And so I, that's for me is one of the things that I just hope that I can continue to um nurture for myself is to always be a great collaborator, um, and also to be a great mentor for, you know, I'm, as this is like my third, this is This Land Was Made is my third show. Um, and you know, I'm growing, I'm growing as a playwright, and you know, the same way I'm speaking to you about how David Wild has mentored me and taken me under his wing. I hope that that's a lesson that I'm learning for television and for theater, that I can, you know, do the same for other young playwrights that are desiring, um, a little bit of mentorship, some we have questions that I can be that person for them too, because uh, it's so important.

So it's more so I think about the way that I see people carry themselves in television that I admire, who have a lot of pressure being put on them every day to produce big shows for big networks. If they can still find the time to be kind to people, to allow people's voices into the space, um, then I can do that too.

[32:13] Gordon Cox: Yeah.

[32:14] Tori Sampson: Yeah. This is the part of the podcast when I usually ask people what's next for them. And I know you've talked already a little bit about going to LA and maybe getting on the picket lines and stuff. But, uh, do you have, do you anticipate having some time to work on a new play or anything or a play you've been working on already?

[32:31] Tori Sampson: Yeah, so my next play is called Black Girl Nerd, one nappy-headed girl's superhero driven to discovering her blackness. Um, and I hope to produce it um soon.

[32:44] Gordon Cox: Great.

[32:45] Tori Sampson: Yeah. Uh, is it or I guess why is it important to you to keep one hand in the theater as you are, you know, continuing to explore all your screen work?

[32:56] Tori Sampson: Oh, I love theater so much. I think my, um, the chair of my department when I was at Yale put it best, which was she always said theater is magic. When you put on a production, it's just magic because it, and the sheer giganticness of it to be able to take something on the page, bring all these people together, make live theater with costumes and lights and set, all of this stuff happening, you know, on our limited budget, it's just magic that it actually happens. But along the way, that's like a big magic. But along the way, there's all these little moments of magic that are happening. Somebody's enlightening you, somebody's trying something that's so different. As a playwright, you're like, oh my gosh, I never even thought about that.

You just illuminate something huge in this play for me. It's just all these small moments of magic that draw you in, and you can't escape it. Like there's nothing else like live theater. There's no feeling that it goes back to August Wilson at the Huntington Theater when I was 21 years old, and I levitated. It's like that feeling, you cannot get that anywhere else other than live theater. And once you get bit by it, you can't escape it. You're never gonna want to go back. It is like a drug. You want it, you want it one. You just want to inject it into your veins. Um, and then I get to work with my friends. I love working with my friends. I get to work with them. I see them every day in rehearsals, and we're just working on and playing together, um, and discovering story um and making magic. And I just think it's so much fun. And I feel so blessed and fortunate that people keep allowing me to do it.

[34:42] Gordon Cox: Yeah, yeah. Well, uh, we hope that the uh writer's strike gets resolved uh quickly and you can get back to work. Um, and we also look forward to seeing what you've got for us on stage uh when it comes up.

[34:55] Tori Sampson: Thank you so much.

[34:56] Gordon Cox: Yeah, thanks so much, Tori. It's great to talk to you.

[34:58] Tori Sampson: You too.

[35:02] Gordon Cox: That was Tori Sampson, whose play This Land Was Made is now playing at the Vineyard Theater off Broadway. If you enjoyed this conversation and others we've had here on Stagecraft, I'd be so grateful if you took the time to rate and review us wherever you listen to podcasts. It really does help. Or tell a friend about Stagecraft. Find past episodes and subscribe at all the places you get your podcasts, including Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and on the Broadway Podcast Network, which is a great place to find more theater for your ears. Until next episode, find me on Twitter at G CoxVariety. Thanks for listening, and see you at the theater.