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[0:06] Gordon Cox: Welcome to Stagecraft, Variety's Theater Podcast, bringing you backstage and behind the scenes with the stars and creators bringing Broadway, Off-Broadway, and the theater industry back to life.

[0:17] Gordon Cox: I'm your host, Gordon Cox. On this episode of Stagecraft, I'm talking to the three stars of the new play, Morning Sun. That's Blair Brown, Edie Falco, and Marin Ireland. All three are among the industry's busiest screen actors.

[0:33] Gordon Cox: Brown's major TV roles include The Days and Nights of Molly Dodd, Fringe, and Orange is the New Black. Four-time Emmy winner Falco has led series including Sopranos, Nurse Jackie, and the current American Crime Story, Impeachment. And Ireland has starred in Homeland, Sneaky Pete, The Umbrella Academy, and the current Why, The Last Man.

[0:54] Gordon Cox: But all three are also theater veterans who regularly return to stages on Broadway and off it. And the new off-Broadway play, Morning Sun, represents the rare opportunity to see them on stage together. The trio play three New York women in this new play by Simon Stevens. And all three of them, Brown, Falco, and Ireland, are in the virtual studio with me to tell us all about it. Hi, Blair, Edie, and Marin. Thanks for joining me.

[1:20] Blair Brown: Thanks for having us.

[1:30] Gordon Cox: What's it like being back in the theater and performing in front of people again?

[1:43] Blair Brown: It's a very difficult play, too. You sort of thought, maybe this wasn't a good idea, maybe to start with something much simpler. But now we've been doing it for what a month, I guess. And now it's like, oh, this is what we do. I find. I don't know what you all feel.

[1:54] Edie Falco: I agree with you on that. It very quickly became, oh, that's right, this is doing a play. The only difference is if you can see anything out in the crowd, they all have masks on, which is sort of—I dare say I've gotten used to it. And I also kind of like that their reactions are a secret. I don't know who's laughing, who's smiling, who's sleeping, who's yawning. I sort of like the mystery of all that.

[2:20] Marin Ireland: I do too. Their personalities are gone, and actually in a theater the size of Manhattan Theater called the small one, you people are so close to you. And you can get really thrown. There was actually a woman the other night who had a mask on that was red sequin, and I must say I had quite a few moments of my eye just kind of zipping off to the side to kind of go, What is that? Oh, that's the woman with the red mask. Sequin mask.

[2:39] Edie Falco: I have to say also I feel like we talked about this when we started rehearsing a little bit, but there's also something about this that feels right now like it matters more than ever before being in a room with people telling a story, and also like it couldn't matter less in a way that feels actually really interesting and helpful, kind of perspective-wise. Like doing a play feels like it simultaneously holds, you know, this sort of ancient, beautiful connection thing that we've all been craving, and also like, you know, with everything else going on, we're just hanging out, we're just being together. It's really okay.

[3:23] Marin Ireland: So all that other extra stuff that used to kind of crowd into your brain when you were doing a play in New York, kind of has burned off a little bit, I think, in a way that for me feels really, really nice. And I think we've all experienced that just even sitting backstage, you're sort of like it doesn't have that same feeling like, oh, though it's right before the show, you know, just in the good way, but there's some other stuff that's burned off a little bit I think perspective-wise that feels really good honestly to me, but as even though there's something sad about it.

[3:55] Blair Brown: I think also remember when we first got with an audience it felt like we were in this together in a way that I never feel. I always feel like we do our thing. I love rehearsal, it's my favorite time. And then the audience comes in and you know one enjoys them and you have to have them right, but it isn't like the kind of focus of what you're doing.

[4:13] Edie Falco: Yeah, this actually does feel shared in a way that I've never experienced. I have like a very strange sensation sometimes being out there. I mean, I don't know if I—I don't know if I've told you guys this, but as soon as I see you out there, the two of you, I just want to like hug you really strongly. I just want to like hold you. And then some nights I have that sensation with the audience too because we're—the vulnerability of all of us in that space, you, the three of us and all of them, it feels so much more intense than I remember it feeling. And maybe it's just, you know, the fog of memory, but I think it's this time everybody feels so vulnerable and we're all still in this traumatic moment together.

And I just feel like the way everyone is vulnerable together in that space, literally being exposed to each other in a way that has a different degree of heightened quality than it did before. I just want to like hug everybody in the room, and that was not necessarily my sensation before.

[4:30] Blair Brown: Like you said, it does feel I think that it's that vulnerability of the audience too. Everyone has had all kinds of losses, whether it's time, actual people, experiences, you know, all kinds of things. And that we are in this in a way that it's a perfect kind of play in that way to be doing at this time, which I wasn't—I mean, it wasn't planned to be done this way. It wasn't written for the pandemic. But everyone has all kinds of private moments, and you never know when you hear a sort of sound of a cry or a gasp or something in the audience. It's all different places because we are such individuals.

[5:57] Edie Falco: Yeah. I wonder if actually we could talk a little bit for the listeners who haven't had a chance to see the show yet. Tell us a little bit about, you know, what it is and how it tells its story because it sort of spans decades and is a full lifetime, and you know, you all—there are multiple characters that at least two of you play. And I just wonder how do you describe it to people when you tell people what you're doing.

[6:24] Blair Brown: It's tricky, right? Because you don't want to give too much away because part of the—I imagine part of the pleasure of the experience is sort of discovering it in the same way that at least a couple of the characters discover what's happening.

[6:42] Edie Falco: Yeah. I usually—yeah, I think there's nothing better than that to come into an audience not knowing anything.

[6:49] Blair Brown: Yeah.

[6:50] Edie Falco: Because this play in particular is going to be lots of different things to lots of different people. And it's like a word. Their interpretation afterwards could be, you know, diametrically opposed to one another. So it's three women in New York City, is what I've been telling people. And everybody kind of teases out their own meaning and their own pattern and what's actually happening. And they're all valid.

[7:13] Blair Brown: I mean, they're all—as you know, there was so much space for interpretation with this. Even from when I first got the script, it would say like one, two, two, three, one, two, three. Like that's the character's names. Very hard to follow. There were no scene breaks and stage directions or anything like that on the page.

[7:32] Edie Falco: And it's interesting, Blair, when you said that before too, because I remember we've—I think we've also all talked about this in rehearsal, where it's like, in some ways, there's nothing simpler than this play because there's no—it's so bare and sparse. There's just one, two, three. There's three women on stage. There doesn't need to be anything else. You could do this production with nothing else. And in some ways, there's almost nothing more complicated and sophisticated, I can imagine, than this play. So it sort of is both at one time, which is kind of staggering.

[8:05] Marin Ireland: It has that like Carol Churchill energy to it where it feels very accessible in the kind of humor and the interpersonal behavior and dynamics, but it also is so kind of epic ultimately in the kind of scope and view of the world and all of that.

[8:30] Gordon Cox: Yeah, I wondered how you came up. You sort of answered one of my questions, which was how much of how the play is presented is in the script and how much of it was devised by your director, Lila Neugebauer, and the designers you're working with, and you all in rehearsal. How do you think about the space that this show is performed in? Because it's—in one sense, it's a very realistic, kind of sparsely furnished apartment, and then it's lots of other things, and it's like both more specific and more nebulous than that, right? Like what—tell me about sort of how you figured out where you are locating yourselves and who you are in this space.

[9:08] Edie Falco: So much of it had to do with Lila, I think, and the design team who were meeting long before we all got together. This play, I imagine, will be done again and could certainly be done any number of different ways, and I think a lot of them probably badly because there are ways of interpreting this that are so different. And we talked early on about just how specific should we be with where we actually are in space and should we make it more specific if we change scenes. And, you know, I luckily didn't give my two cents because I just sort of watched the whole thing unfold in front of me with people who are better, you know, able to make those decisions. But I was so—Lila in particular, so really overwhelmed with her intelligence and her perception leading this group of soldiers to make this play with so little guidance from the script, I thought.

[10:14] Blair Brown: Yeah, there's nothing on the page. There's nothing. I mean, it says something in the introduction, you know, that he's written about a space defined more by light and sound than anything else, and—but that's it. So there's no stage directions, there's nothing.

[10:31] Edie Falco: So it—but I remember, you know, Lila also has her company, The Mad Ones, where she devises plays, and I remember feeling like she's particularly well equipped for something like this. Also just her taste level is exquisite and her intellect, unbelievable, her imagination. Also her appetite for exploration and for what she would call in rehearsal, like data gathering, you know, information gathering, where it's like, let's try a draft, let's make mistakes because we'll learn something from it.

[11:07] Marin Ireland: There, I think I can say this. She did this really cool thing that I've never done, and she's never done in a rehearsal before, where every time we were about to approach a new section, we would do a thing first where she would just read the whole scene—all the parts, all the parts—and we would just move around the space. Because we didn't have familiarity enough with the words we had. And also, but also this play was terrifying to come to apprehend as an actor moving around in space.

[11:39] Edie Falco: Like, yeah, what would I do? I mean, where are we? We don't know what's happening. So the idea of trying to be like move somewhere with an intention felt bananas. So she was really like, I'll just read it, and you guys just sort of float around wherever, and like just see what comes up in you. And it was kind of fantastic because it removed that normally as an actor when you're sort of moving through a scene for the first time, you can be like, Oh, well, I'm mad at her, so I'll move here, I'll go get a couple of—

[12:07] Marin Ireland: Yeah.

[12:08] Edie Falco: And it—there isn't that same thing in this, and it really unlocks. There isn't any of that same thing. It's not like there—where was I just—what was I just doing? None of that. That's all at the window. But now we unlocked it. You have to sort of be in the moment. You're now—now you're here. Yeah, just here this is.

[12:26] Marin Ireland: So it unlocked that thing for me, at least, for sure, of like, oh, well, this isn't gonna function in my body like a regular play. And maybe we—we also, I think we all found collectively something really interesting, which is that most of the time, if we found ourselves doing the same thing our characters were doing, literally at the time, it felt wrong.

[12:48] Edie Falco: Yeah, we didn't—we would find ourselves being like, well, then we have to do the opposite because it's something. But you had to like—we all had to learn this in this very wild kinesthetic way that felt exactly like you said, Blair, like kids. Strange kind of friction, a very odd kind of friction that's actually harmonious, but not a friend of mine who came, who's a designer, looked at it. He said, This play is so disturbing because actually just visually—and this is something I didn't know, obviously, because we're in it—it's never symmetrical. There's always—it's always an angle, there's a shaft of light, there's a shaft of sound, there's something that always is just taking you and unsettling you, which is fascinating. And again, opens the play up then for everyone to think what they want to think.

[13:27] Blair Brown: And you know, Gordon, you were saying too about the space itself. I think that we similarly in that space, we're finding our way in terms of like it should be a space that feels familiar, but the three of us have never been in it before. So we had to continually find a way to feel like how do we discover what we need, and that the space has things for us if we need them, and the space sort of transforms around us and can be so many things, but isn't really any one thing.

[13:59] Edie Falco: That's that wonderful detail. There's a little teeny rubber ball under the bench that very few people see. It's just clearly goes left by the last person who was here.

[14:08] Blair Brown: There's no explanation for it. Most people don't notice it. There's like a single cheap head bottle that's a movie that I'm sure no one sees but us. I love it.

[14:19] Edie Falco: And so I would say one of the things. Oh, Gordon, sorry to interrupt. One of the things about Lila that I think is quite extraordinary and really uncanny is that for all her sort of, as Marin was saying, all her taste and her intellect and her, you know, abundance of ideas. She always comes from an emotional place. She just drives it as an emotional place. So she talks to the designers, she talks to us and creates that kind of feeling as she's describing it. So that we're all there, we're past our brains, actually. We're into a sort of visceral response and can go forward. And it's uh it's extraordinary. I've never really experienced it with another director strongly and clearly.

[14:59] Gordon Cox: I'll have more with Blair, Edie, and Marin right after the break.

[15:11] Gordon Cox: And now here's more with Blair Brown, Edie Falco, and Marin Ireland. Did the three of you know each other before uh before you started to work together? How did you how did you all connect on this?

[15:23] Blair Brown: Through Simon Stevens, he made this play. Made this play for Edie, and then we also joined in there. Tell us a little bit about that, Edie, and how the how that how you first got attached.

[15:32] Edie Falco: Well, this is a fur, it was a first for me, where um Lynn Meadow said that she was uh commissioning a play by Simon Stevens for me. Which kind of I I mean, I didn't know how to respond to that, frankly. Um and I knew who Simon was in regard to uh uh the curious incident. Um I was a huge fan of that play. It saw saw it a whole bunch of times, saw it with my kids and stuff like that. So uh it was like one of the bigger honors that I've had, even just that sentence, almost if it didn't even come to be. But uh Simon and I went out a bunch of times. We went out and had meals and walks and uh coffees and stuff like that over a long period of time. This feels like I don't know, twelve years ago at this point, which I'm sure it's not, but um it was a a long time ago.

And there were time I was told many times, if you don't like the script, you just say no, you don't have to do this, you know. Maybe you know somebody else will do or whatever, or or whatever, they'll scrap it. So it was all very amorphous. And then at some point the pandemic came in. So the idea that this is actually up and happening now, I'm still not entirely sure I'm uh believing what I'm seeing, you know. Um, but that that was how it started.

[16:41] Gordon Cox: Do you have a sense of how those conversations with him informed what the final product is?

[16:48] Edie Falco: You know, I've asked him a couple of times, and he said he doesn't remember because he took notes and but he said a lot of this is is based on the life of his sister and uh two friends of his to whom he dedicates the play, who I believe had gotten ill at some point in the last number of years. So he's got lots of details from lots of different places in his brain. I live in the West Village, and that was yes, that's right. And the hand, he asked me to make a handprint on a map of the West Village, like this. And he followed my my the line that my fingers made. He did the walking tour. The walking tour of the West Village based on my handprint. Just as like a, I think I I mean my guess is just like as like an exercise.

Yeah, for the heck of it. And he would like to stop at places along the handprint line and record. There's actually one moment in a noodle shop in our play that there were some lines in that moment that he copied, he wrote down that was a mother and a daughter talking in this noodle shop. He sat down.

[17:53] Blair Brown: Oh wow, I didn't know that.

[17:55] Edie Falco: I didn't know. So it would just be it was almost more like just an exercise. Like he was walking that road, and then he would just stop somewhere and write down some things or think about some stuff or take some notes or whatever, and um little things like that that have made their way in. And he also did the Greenwich Village Ghost Tour, which makes an hearing play, which I'm sure will be selling out now with the press that it's getting. But um things like that, like, but I I know it feels to me only having met UED through this play, it feels like infused with you in that way that somebody like Simon can just sort of make happen in a magical way.

[18:37] Marin Ireland: It was uh disarming for me. I mean, the as far as I'm concerned, the further I away I am from the character, the more fully I can inhabit it. It really is just like you are just diving into your imagination, you know, based on someone else's I don't know, vocal rhythms or where they're from, or you know, so this was uh a little a bit stoltifying for me. Um you know, every place that's made reference to are places I pass every day of my life. So uh I've had to in my mind uh you know create some distance from a lot of these places, and that I am in most ways very unlike this character, but it took it took some re-jiggering of me, you know, working on the script to create a distance that I was comfortable with.

[19:23] Edie Falco: I remember when we were first talking about wigs, you really wanted a wig because you wanted to look in the mirror and not see yourself.

[19:29] Marin Ireland: Yeah, I wanted to have anything to separate this character from my real life, you know. And so uh Blair and Marin, how do you think about how how did you what attracted you to uh to this play, and how do you think about the parts you're playing? Because as you say, your numbers, and uh you are in some ways even less specific than the role that Edie's playing.

[19:49] Blair Brown: Like, what I've always wanted to play to have been a sort of lifelong goal. So bucket list done.

[19:57] Marin Ireland: I'm aspiring to play it too one day.

[19:57] Edie Falco: One day.

[20:01] Blair Brown: One day. Don't give up hope.

[20:07] Marin Ireland: Um, you joined in next. You've been.

[20:10] Blair Brown: Well, I've known Simon forever. I did this uh uh the US tour of 448 Psychosis, which was uh which was um from the Royal Court in 2005, I think. And Simon was invited along on that tour as one of the royal court's playwrights for a few weeks. So he toured with us for a little while, um uh in like some rock in towns like Columbus, Ohio, and stuff like that. And um we so we got to know each other, and I actually this is a really wild connection with Blair is that while we were doing that tour, me and uh the other actors in 448 participated in like the first ever reading of his play on the shore of the wide world, which Blair ended up then doing the production of at The Atlantic many years later.

Um, but uh so it's been many years, and every time he'd come to the city, we would spend time together, and I would see his shows and all of that, and so he invited me to the first couple of little tiny readings when the play was just being born, where he was like, I'm in town for something else. You come here, it's not even finished, but maybe we can just go in a room with you and me and Edie Falco. And I was like, Okay, sign me up. My hero, my actual hero of my entire life. It's so embarrassing to tell her this. I'm getting more and more used to it every time I tell her, but I've like, you know, my my hero.

[21:36] Blair Brown: So I um yeah, so it was Simon, but also then so I couldn't say no to Sy anything Simon asked, but then especially the fact that it was a hero Eve. And then somewhere along the way we tricked Blair into doing that.

[21:50] Blair Brown: No, I just gotta can you I gotta call to sort of say there's a play, Simon Stevens wrote it. Uh Lila, I've worked with Lila and Simon both. Edie Falco, Marin Islander and Marin, I know from from reading Edie, I just know. And uh I just said yes, I sight unseen. It was like, I don't care what the play gotcha. I'll just be there. And as I say, and then little did I know that two was waiting for me.

[22:12] Marin Ireland: No, I have to say I've been really freaked out uh by playing three in the first w chunk of the play, especially. Um partially because uh I don't want to give too much away of anything, but I sort of start the play more sure of things than the other two. And um one of the things that's really helpful as an actor is when you're especially on in a play, is when you get to use your natural adrenaline rush to start the play somehow and fold it in because it's real scary when a play starts. And so I d it's been very tricky to know how to um begin. And I again I don't want to say you know, anything that I I like to allow everybody to have the the full, you know, experience of walking into the theater and experiencing it brand new, but part of it is Lila and I decided to have I kind of come out and greet everybody in a way.

And I sort of just feel like I mean something we talked about in relation even to doing the play in this in this current climate we're in is being like I mean in reality I am always just me out there, even when I'm other people, and there's a different sense of that now in terms of doing plays. Lyle and I talked about starting the play, and it felt like, well, I kind of my character sort of my my number three knows what's going on a little bit more, and it feels a little silly to try to be like blackout, lights up, you know. Like so it is that weird thing. It's like I it's so it sounds a bit creepy, but I feel like we're all we're all people breathing in a room. Yeah, you know, there some people are sitting in the chairs in the dark, and some people are up here.

[23:54] Edie Falco: Yeah, but and I've never felt that in on stage before that there is just that sort of we could just be that they could come up. I mean, it just could happen.

[24:01] Marin Ireland: No, there are times uh when I've I don't want to say stop the show, it sounds very dramatic, but where I've um stopped the dialogue to ask people in the audience to address their phones or their hearing problems or whatever, and I've and I've never because it feels like my person could do that, and also we're all just in this space together, so it feels like if we don't if we don't address it given the play that we're doing, what yeah, what's this what is this? What’s the solution? We all know we're here, we're all hearing that noise. You know what I mean? Let's just make this a better experience for all of us and sharing it together, which is an experience I've never had before.

[24:44] Edie Falco: It's the other day when you did it at the matinee. It was beautiful, Marin said. So, you know, help your neighbor. And it was like, wow. The idea that the person sitting next to you is sort of your neighbor and can't figure out this device and you could help them. It didn't happen, but it was a really nice thing.

[24:57] Marin Ireland: I think I heard that. I think I heard that there was a phone that kept going off during one of your shows.

[25:01] Edie Falco: Yeah.

[25:02] Marin Ireland: And people in a thumbs up, it's like, yeah.

[25:11] Edie Falco: It was it wasn't. It was just like.

[25:12] Marin Ireland: Well, because I think I did realize it had been going on for so long. I did have the thought that that is a person who doesn't know how to do to turn it off. They would, I think they probably would if they could. But that doesn't mean they know how ridiculous or they can't hear it exactly. So that's why I thought, you know, they might not turn it off after this, but if I say it in a nice enough way, the audience will will be able to watch it and hear that sound for the rest of the play with a little more of a relaxed sensation. We've all at least acknowledged it. You know what I mean? Like we've all acknowledged it. We can move on together, and then they won't have to proceed to the end of the play, going like, ugh, that no one seemed like I bet that worked.

I bet that worked. I think it's a good idea. I felt like the room felt a lot warmer afterwards. We were all just friends hanging out. And I think we've also gotten used to the idea of this has happened a couple of times, and it's not a shock to the actors, certainly. And we dive right back in as if it didn't happen. And if we commit to moving on, the audience seems like they're with us immediately.

[26:09] Edie Falco: For sure.

[26:10] Marin Ireland: And now I feel like I know that you guys know if I'm gonna do it, then you're like, okay.

[26:15] Edie Falco: I look forward to it, actually.

[26:16] Marin Ireland: I look forward to it.

[26:19] Edie Falco: I don't want to like bait any bait anybody, be like, oh, now people are gonna like leave their phones on and see you, like, and I'll get a special video.

[26:25] Marin Ireland: Oh my gosh, can you imagine? Ridiculous.

[26:29] Edie Falco: One of the things that struck me watching watching the show is that I had just seen uh the Lehman trilogy uh, you know, a couple weeks earlier. And I wonder if anyone has said this to you before. But it feels like this play is sort of in conversation with that play, in that it is that play is also sort of three actors in a specific space that becomes a lot of other places, and it's telling a story that sort of spans decades. But Lehman trilogy is about these three men and the kind of company that kind of that they form that kind of shakes the world and the foundation. And this is about three women, and there's something very uh uh um purposeful in the kind of ordinariness of the tale, right?

And of the the people we are talking about in this show. I wonder how do you respond? How do you think about kind of how what the show is and what the drive to tell this particular story in its kind of you know unremarkable remarkableness, uh what that what is that drive, and how do you think about it in the show?

[27:34] Edie Falco: I think there are more ordinary people than there are extraordinary people in the world. And uh I think everybody deserves to be represented in storytelling, you know. Um I feel the same way with film and television, and I think we might even be moving towards that very slowly. Um but I have always personally found that to be more interesting to to uh to tell stories about regular people for whatever reason, maybe just because my you know, um all of our lives perhaps have been overwhelmed with stories of you know famous people and fabulous people and beautiful people.

[28:10] Marin Ireland: You're playing Hillary Clinton right now in a TV show that's airing right now, right?

[28:13] Edie Falco: Yeah, that that woman that no one's ever heard of.

[28:16] Edie Falco: So there's something about the totally remarkable-ness of getting through a life as a human that I find so deeply moving. Um, and this hits all of that for me.

[28:28] Marin Ireland: What's that?

[28:28] Edie Falco: It's a huge achievement getting to our life. It feels like absolutely that's the thing I really feel about this experience. Like, and especially now. And generally we've all had this collective trauma, yeah, and now we're kind of like, okay, getting our feet on the ground and just getting up in the morning and getting through the day presents its own challenges as we kind of reconnoiter, you know.

[28:54] Blair Brown: Yeah.

[28:54] Edie Falco: Blair, did you have something to add?

[28:56] Blair Brown: Oh, yeah. Oh no, I was just thinking the i because part of the problem always when you are playing famous people or we see famous people being portrayed, it's actually trying to get to the ordinariness of them. In fact, I mean, we know the other stuff, but it's that, and that's how are they like you and me? We don't get, yeah. And reminding us to like that somebody isn't only worth listening to or learning from if they've if they were the first person to do this, or they made this giant thing or whatever, but there's something about this play that's also about like listening to each other, and that it's not just about listening to the most notable people or what about listening to sort of everyone around you and everyone that's already kind of in your life, and that the things we all learn from each other making it through a day are profound.

[29:48] Edie Falco: Uh, the Lehman thing has been brought up already to us a few times by people and it is so interesting to me. I also know I'm Simon and Ben Power are buddies and friends, so it's an interesting kind of group mind thing at work. I'm sure there was something in the air in Britain, something in the water. Um, but it is fascinating. I think that there is something for whatever reason, in the way kind of art kind of moves through spaces and times where it's like this sort of focus on a kind of muscular, robust, like a imagination ask of the audience. Uh feels like something about that feels like there's there's a connection there in terms of the moment that we're in, and all and coming out of like a really intense Marvel movie moment time of like asking of being like, well, if you're gonna be in the theater, let's be in the theater, you know.

Let's you let's let's do what we can only do here in the theater. Let's this could this is just this can only be a play, you know. And there's something like I think too, coming out of the pandemic, there's a sense of yes, you don't really know who that person is that's standing right behind you in line. You have no idea what they have accomplished or done, and that I think we're all more aware of that. I hope and I hope that stays. Of you know, just being kinder to people and just taking them in. There's a moment of regard and then move on because New York we're all so smashed together all the time. But there's a tenderness that I it's worth maintaining and cultivating, I think, that's come out of the pandemic. And that's what this play does, I think.

[31:32] Gordon Cox: One of the things that I think is notable about all three of you and the way you work across all genres, you all do lots of work on screen and film and television, but all three of you are regular theater actors. You never go very you're never away very long from the stage. Um and I wonder if you could just tell us a little bit about why, what keeps bringing you back? What is the thing that uh that really gets you gets you back in front of people on a stage?

[31:57] Blair Brown: This is a bad habit, really.

[32:01] Edie Falco: I mean, you're about to be in another play after this one, right?

[32:04] Blair Brown: Glutton for bad it's where um I started, you know. My um my mom was an actress when I was growing up. She did community theater, and I just used to go with her and watch rehearsals and watch performances, and I was obsessed. I would go with her every time she went, everywhere she went. And it was the most you know, I wish it was another word, but it was magical that these people who had real jobs during the day at night, they all got together and read a script and put on costumes and did the show and you know, put on their makeup. I was just I couldn't believe what I was watching. And so uh that's kind of where I started. And you know, you become, you know, successful in this industry, depending on what one's definition of that word is, and the magic can disappear.

Uh you're so far from the nucleus of the idea that started in somebody's brain. There's so many people between that and you that it really can become like a job. But theater is never like that, you know. You just we're all it feels so much closer to the ridiculous magic that I knew as a kid that I can't believe adults are allowed to do. You know?

[33:17] Marin Ireland: Well, it's that invention of story in a l in a in a room with some people that just seems incredibly precious. I mean, I remember once working on a big television series that I was happy to be working on, and I thought, but I do feel I'm working like on an aircraft carrier or something. You know, and it there's no sense because there's just not possible that kind of movement is not possible. There are just too many people waiting to do that. And it's rare to be in conversation in those jobs.

[33:45] Blair Brown: Right.

[33:45] Marin Ireland: I mean, sometimes you're lucky enough, but sometimes you're it's rare to even be to be in conversation with uh the people who are writing it, or and then you know, it really gets kind of written in the edit ultimately, which is a room that you're never invited into, uh or rare rarely perhaps. And so to be returning to a place where every day in the room we're all I mean, at least especially in the rehearsal process, we're all in there together uh all day. It's a really um it kind of returns you to that kind of um really rigorous, like I think of that word again, like muscular, like athleticism, where you have to really kind of invest in the entire story you're making and not just okay, what are these four pages I do today?

[34:32] Blair Brown: Right.

[34:33] Marin Ireland: I don't even have to have read the next 20 potentially ever to know what the hell I'm doing today. And there's like there's a there's a sort of um simplicity to it and and it r it it feels like it's uh the heart of the the heart of the whole matter.

[34:49] Blair Brown: Well it's how it once started. I mean, once people piled in a wagon, hauled yourselves off to a county fair, you hopped out, you did that. I mean, there were no sets, there was no, I mean it was just people kind of going, okay, let's come on kids, come on kids, let's make a show. And still, I think, sort of a hard nut inside you.

[35:04] Edie Falco: Yeah, I mean, that's ultimately the thing I think we probably all would say is like we keep coming back if like a good thing comes to us. So when a good play comes around, you know it's gonna be so hard and it's gonna like ruin your play your life and play you. You can't say no when a good thing comes along. It's just too taboo.

[35:27] Blair Brown: Because it's not often enough.

[35:28] Edie Falco: Yeah. You know, there's just so much content these days, and something comes along that makes your heart beat a little faster. And I you know, you dive headfirst into the experience, I find.

[35:39] Marin Ireland: Yeah.

[35:39] Edie Falco: And the ones are most exciting, the ones like this one that we do where we think, I have no idea what this is. I have no idea. Is this funny? Is this sad? Will this work? Who knows?

[35:48] Blair Brown: Yeah, I don't know if at this point any of us are like um, oh, you know, it's been a little while. I I'm gonna look for a play. You know, I think it's it's like you're lucky enough something comes to you and you go, Oh my god, can I do this?

[36:00] Edie Falco: Right.

[36:00] Blair Brown: Oh god! Um but you can't not.

[36:04] Edie Falco: You can't not.

[36:05] Blair Brown: Exactly.

[36:06] Gordon Cox: And uh for our last question, I wonder if uh each of you can tell us a little bit about what you have not yet had the chance to do on stage that you would like to do, whether it's a particular role or a kind of role or a kind of piece. What what's on the on the list of things that you uh are aiming to do on stage coming up?

[36:27] Marin Ireland: I like working on new plays. New plays with new writers that are just kind of discovering their voice or maybe have had a few things produced. But I'm I'm kind of I mean, Simon's prolific, but I'm kind of in it right now. This play's never been done. I am not, you know, recreating a role uh originally played by Kathy Bates, which was a thing I was doing for 45 years. Um, and because there's no way people aren't gonna compare it, compare the production, compare the uh the performance and all that. Discovering it the way we have discovered this play, I could do this kind of stuff forever. You know, if the pay was better. But um, but this is the kind of stuff I love.

[37:09] Edie Falco: Yeah.

[37:10] Blair Brown: Oh, yeah, I would agree. I would agree. The other thing is that I also love um some of these kind of young, young productions directors, actors that are taking on Shakespeare, but doing kind of really new versions, edited versions, um, you know, switching out all kinds of things, just kind of making it uh waking it up, shaking it up. Um I would love to do some more of that. I do it sort of once a week, well, I don't right now, but once a week all through the pandemic, a bunch of us had a sort of gathering once a week where we would work on things like that. And I thought, oh, I wonder if any of this will ever see the light of day, or it would just be we've zoomed it for the last year and a half together once a week. Um, but it's it feels like a new play. That's what I would say. That could feel like a new play.

[37:56] Edie Falco: Yeah, I think uh I there's there's definitely some of the the oldies but goodies that I've never gotten to do, but I also can never give up the addiction to new plays. So I think the solution is to do like Simon has um his adaptation, he has adaptations of Chekhov and Ibsen, and I think that's probably the solution is to do Simon's of those things. He has some he has some Chekhov and some Ibsen that uh that I think that the three of us should get to do, could to have a crack at.

[38:32] Blair Brown: I would agree.

[38:32] Edie Falco: Um I love that idea. But uh, but yeah, I it's funny. I think I I just I feel very like um like related to the two of you now. It's true.

[38:45] Marin Ireland: And I so I always feel like I'm like what I'm about to say about myself, I think is probably also true for you guys too, which is like I get asked that question. I think that we all we get asked that a kind of question, like what haven't you done that you want to do? And I I sometimes wish I was the kind of actor that was like, I want to play Medea or whatever, so that someone would like call me up with that. But I think what's amazing about why I have always admired Blair and Edie so deeply is that I see in them that quality that's like you're just sort of looking for the thing you've never done before, and you don't know what that is.

[39:22] Edie Falco: Yes, there's not a particular one thing. It's just like I hope someone surprises me with an idea that I've never even like the thing you want to do is the thing you've never before even conceived of.

[39:33] Marin Ireland: Right.

[39:33] Edie Falco: That's the most exciting thing is being like, I never thought of doing that.

[39:37] Blair Brown: Right.

[39:37] Edie Falco: That's the cool scary thing, because you're looking for the scariest thing. So if it's something that you're like, oh, there's that thing I've always had on my list, then in some way you've already thought about it, and it's less scary than the things where you're like, how do I play number three? So what do I wear?

[39:53] Marin Ireland: Yeah, and I remember when you're a kid when I was a kid being like you have your like bucket list roles, and then realizing as I got older, like, oh, in a way, those are almost like templates of the kind of things I wanted to do, you know. Um, they aren't necessarily like the thing that I need to do to cross off the list, but I can think, oh, in a way, I kind of played that part when I got to do that. I got because what I wanted to exercise was this thing or whatever. Um, but it's kind of it's funny. I think the thing that's the most exciting to us is something we could never have imagined. And that somebody else can dreamed up, but that has the three of us in it.

[40:29] Edie Falco: Yeah.

[40:29] Marin Ireland: That is the other thing. That's my next requirement. Anything with the three of us can be in it.

[40:33] Blair Brown: It's worth the challenge.

[40:36] Edie Falco: It's worth the challenge.

[40:37] Marin Ireland: Anything the three of us can be in, pretty much I think we'll do. I'll say putting it out there.

[40:42] Blair Brown: Totally.

[40:43] Gordon Cox: I look forward to seeing you in the next new thing that we can't conceive of yet.

[40:47] Edie Falco: Like, because it's too scary.

[40:50] Marin Ireland: We're in a new rep company. We've just started and we're pretty um compact.

[40:56] Edie Falco: Yeah.

[40:57] Marin Ireland: We can play any different. Guys, girls, whatever you want.

[41:00] Edie Falco: Clearly.

[41:01] Gordon Cox: Uh well, thank you, all three of you. Thanks so much for your time. It was great to talk to you.

[41:06] Edie Falco: Great to talk to you.

[41:07] Marin Ireland: Great to talk to you too.

[41:08] Blair Brown: Thank you.

[41:12] Gordon Cox: That was Blair Brown, Edie Falco, and Marin Ireland from Morning Sun.

[41:18] Gordon Cox: Now playing at Manhattan Theatre Club's City Center Stage One.

[41:22] Gordon Cox: Falco can currently be seen in FX's American Crime Story Impeachment, and Ireland appears on Hulu's Why the Last Man.

[41:31] Gordon Cox: You can catch Brown next on stage in The Minutes this spring.

[41:35] Gordon Cox: If you like what you're hearing on this and other episodes of Stagecraft, I'd really appreciate it if you took the time to rate and review us wherever you listen to podcasts.

[41:45] Gordon Cox: It really helps us grow our audience of folks who love theater as much as you and I do.

[41:50] Gordon Cox: Or tell a friend about Stagecraft, or give us a shout-out on social media.

[41:55] Gordon Cox: Find past episodes or subscribe on all the pod places, including Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and on the Broadway Podcast Network, which is a great place to find more theater for your ears.

[42:06] Gordon Cox: I'll be back in two weeks with another new episode.

[42:09] Gordon Cox: Until then, find me on Twitter at G Cox Variety.

[42:13] Gordon Cox: Thanks for listening and see you soon.