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[0:06] Gordon Cox: Welcome to Stagecraft, Variety's Theater Podcast, bringing you backstage with stars, creators, and industry leaders on Broadway, off Broadway, and beyond.

[0:16] Gordon Cox: I'm Gordon Cox.

[0:18] Gordon Cox: On this episode of Stagecraft, I'm talking to Jodi Picoult. She's the best-selling author of more than 25 novels, including My Sister's Keeper, Small Great Things, and The Pact, and the co-author of two YA books with her daughter, Samantha Van Lear.

[0:32] Gordon Cox: What some of her readers might not know is that she also has a hand in a growing number of theater projects. Her YA novel, Between the Lines, has been adapted into a new musical that premiered in Kansas City, and she's the co-conceiver, with her Between the Lines collaborator, Timothy Alan McDonald, of Breathe, a musical of interlocking vignettes about life in the time of COVID that premiered digitally in 2021.

[0:54] Gordon Cox: Now, Between the Lines is making its off-Broadway debut in a summer run in New York City, and Picoult is in the virtual studio with me to tell us all about taking her story from page to stage, and about all the other stories she plans to bring to the stage in the future.

[1:08] Gordon Cox: Hey Jodi, thanks for joining me.

[1:11] Jodi Picoult: Thanks for having me, Gordon.

[1:12] Gordon Cox: Yeah, of course. You and I first talked about Between the Lines. I looked it up. It was back in December of 2019 at an event at the 92nd Street Y, and there was, of course, a whole timeline for Between the Lines that was then pushed back by a couple of years due to the pandemic. What has it been like to finally get the show to the stage in New York by now?

[1:36] Jodi Picoult: It has been both miraculous and rewarding, and also the hardest thing I've experienced in a 30-year career. You know, it was just so meaningful after a two-year hiatus to get back into the theater that we were supposed to be in, to be in the rehearsal room, to feel so lucky that we were all there, able to tell this story together and then COVID swept through our cast and we had to cancel a whole bunch of previews and then norovirus swept through our cast and we had to cancel a whole bunch of previews and you know and even now we are back on track and we have another actor who's out with COVID all of a sudden and it just you know it just doesn't stop. As you know doing theater in the time of COVID is really really challenging.

And especially when you are an off-Broadway musical and you don't have the depth of resources that you know for example the music band does, it's a little harder for us. So you know we cannot wait to be ready and steady and telling this story over and over and I do feel like we've kind of crossed that hump. We have had steady performances, the audiences are loving it and you know it does sort of feel like a dream coming to fruition but it certainly was not the way I wanted it to come to fruition if that makes sense.

[2:58] Gordon Cox: Yeah, of course. And you're based in New Hampshire but I know you've just spent a chunk of time in New York. How much and how were you involved in like the rehearsals and the previews and all of that?

[3:10] Jodi Picoult: I have been involved since day one. You know, I was the one who brought the project to the attention of Daryl Roth really just asking her for advice on how to turn it into a musical and I was delightfully shocked when she wanted to produce it. And you know she was the one who sort of guided me in how you wind up turning a book into a musical. I found our songwriters, the incredibly talented Elisa Samson and Kate Anderson. And I was still trying to figure out. Sorry, we should say I just want to say for folks who might not know who they are, you've heard their songs on Olaf's Frozen Adventure, and they wrote some of a lot of the songs on Central Park, the Apple Twitter.

[3:50] Jodi Picoult: Yes, exactly. Excuse me. Go ahead.

[3:52] Jodi Picoult: Yeah, and no, of course. In fact, it was on the strength of their songs from Between the Lines that they were hired by Disney. So clearly I must have done something right when I found them. But you know, but then I was still sort of unsure about writing a libretto because it wasn't something that I had done on my own at this level before. And Daryl introduced me to Timothy Allen McDonald and basically locked us in a conference room with a beautiful view of New York City and said, let's see how it all goes. And it was awesome. It was like meeting the other half of my brain that I didn't know was missing. And Tim was incredibly gracious in allowing me and my daughter to be part of the process from day one.

So we've all really functioned as a writing team. In fact, I literally just had to send some new pages out this morning to someone. You know, and so it's been lovely to be included like that. And to understand the joy of collaborating as a writer, because when you write a novel, it's very lonely. This is it. I'm in my office and it's just me. And having all those other brains to work off is really a just a delightful experience to the point where I wasn't ready to stop. And so Tim and I wound up collaborating on other adaptations as well.

[5:05] Gordon Cox: Yeah, yeah. And well, I'm gonna ask you more about that. But even I wonder if we could even rewind back a little further before we talk specifically about the origins of Between the Lines. What was your involvement in theater before this? I mean, first of all, even growing up, were you in plays? Were you like t tell me about how you've been involved up until this point in theater activities?

[5:25] Jodi Picoult: Well, I mean, you are looking at an Eliza Doolittle. I'm just saying. I could tell. When I was in eighth grade, that was my big claim to fame. I think I got the role only because I was the only person who auditioned who could do a British accent, any kind. No one should ever ask me to sing in public ever. But you know, I love theater. I grew up with theater. I remember going to theater every single birthday. My grandma would take me to New York City and we would see a show. And that was a really special memory for me.

[5:58] Gordon Cox: And what were your standout shows from those?

[6:02] Jodi Picoult: Oh, I still remember very distinctly seeing Patti LuPone in Evita. Oh, yeah and just being like transformed by that, right? I mean, I was very young and I just remember thinking like I was magnetized. That's what it felt like watching her perform. My mom, you know, we used to listen to cast albums in the car all the time and then when I grew up, I and I was an adult, my kids wanted to do musical theater and it didn't exist where I live in New Hampshire for kids under high school age. So I started a teen theater group with one of my best friends.

[6:39] Gordon Cox: How many years ago was this? When how long is this?

[6:41] Jodi Picoult: Oh gosh, almost almost let's see, how old are my kids now? I would say almost like 15 years ago.

[6:48] Gordon Cox: Wow.

[6:49] Jodi Picoult: It's still going. And I don't direct anymore because I don't have time, but I still produce it. And my best friend who was a composer and I wrote original musicals that were full length and family friendly, and all the money we raised every year would go to charity in New Hampshire. To date, we've raised over $150,000 for local charities. And I love that. I love being able to see kids transform through theater. There are so many transferable skills that to me, I think it's part of what keeps me feeling young is being able to work with all of them every year. So I've been really lucky to do that, but I hadn't done anything on a grander level than that. And when I started to think about Between the Lines, I wanted it to be seen by a lot of people. And I felt like it should be a Broadway-bound musical, you know. So I felt like I had to kick it up a notch for that.

[7:45] Gordon Cox: Yeah, yeah. So tell us a little more about that. So it started as a you and your daughter wrote this book. As I understand it, it was actually your daughter's idea, the initially the germ of the idea. So you wrote this novel together. When and why did the idea to make it a musical come to you?

[8:02] Jodi Picoult: So, you know, Sammy was the one who came up with the idea. She was 13 years old, she's now 26. And she pitched it to me like this: what if every time a book was closed, the characters in it had lives and personalities different from the ones they played in the book when it was open? And what if there was a girl in the outside world who was obsessed with a fairy tale prince because he was really cute in his illustration? And he was in bad circumstances too. And then one day he spoke to her and wanted out of his story as much as she wanted out of hers. And I just thought, man, she's talking about a literary crush. We've all had them, right? I mean, I'm still waiting for Mr. Darcy. And I just thought it would be really fun to write that together.

So we did. We spent two summers writing right here at my desk, side by side, taking turns typing. When she went to college a couple of years later, we wrote the sequel from 10 to 12 at night via speakerphone. And you know, it just wasn't done to me. The only way I can describe it, and I know it sounds weird, is the book sang to me. I could hear music in it. And I wanted to see if anyone else could too. And that was what led me to Kate and Elisa, our songwriters. The first time that I met with them, they came to me with the book marked up with highlighter and post-it notes, full of notes, and with all basically all their ideas of where the music was in the text. And I think it's a mark of how much they connected with the material that the three spec songs they wrote to get the job are still in our show.

[9:36] Gordon Cox: Right. Yeah. And what is it? Did it sing because of its kind of fairy tale nature? Do you have a sense of why what particular about that?

[9:46] Jodi Picoult: The storyline setting sung to you. Yeah, you know, to me, it was a little bit Disney and because you have this rich, highly orchestrated fairy tale that sounds like the old Sherman Brothers stuff, you know. When you see the show, the orchestrations are so gorgeous. Greg Anthony Rassen is just an astonishing talent. And yet then the songs in the real world are pop and are very contemporary. And the magic of our songwriters is that as the two characters meet from the fairy tale world and the real world, those sounds begin to blend. And I just thought that was a really fascinating concept for a musical that I hadn't seen before. And that excited me, you know, a little bit. So I was so delighted that the girls like they got the assignment, you know, they totally understood.

[10:43] Jodi Picoult: And what they created was something that feels very contemporary, very realistic, but also escapist at the same time. One of the best descriptions I've heard for the show is that it doesn't feel like a Disney movie, it feels like a Pixar movie. And I think that's a really subtle, you know, it's a really subtle difference, but it's a good one because there's something that's a little more, I don't know, current and realistic, I think, about a Pixar movie than your traditional Disney movie. So I kind of love that.

[11:17] Gordon Cox: And what made you wary about taking on the book just you or just you and your daughter?

[11:25] Jodi Picoult: I really wanted someone to hold my hand through the process. You know, for me, I had written librettos before, but I hadn't done it at such a high stakes way. You know, it wasn't something that I was trying to sell to the Broadway community. And I wanted to make sure that my instincts were right and that I knew what I was doing. I wanted a mentor, really. I mean, I guess that's the best way to put it. You know, I can tell you, I am a writer, I am 100% confident in my ability to write and my ability to craft dialogue. What I needed to understand a little more was sort of the hidden art of being the librettist that I really didn't know about. You know, a really good libretto writer disappears.

[12:16] Jodi Picoult: Uh, that's the best way I can put it. You know, you're the one who organizes the entire story. You decide where the act breaks, you decide where the songs go, you set the song so carefully that if you're doing it right, it feels like it's flowing out of conversation. There's actually a moment in "Between the Lines" that Julia Murney has that is one of my favorite moments in the show. It's a very touching song that a mother sings to a daughter. And she's having a conversation with her daughter beforehand. And the way Julia chose to interpret the song, the first two lines are spoken and lead right into the music. And it flows so naturally that you don't realize there's a song coming. And that's my favorite kind of libretto writing.

[13:06] Jodi Picoult: Yeah, I do feel like being a book writer is kind of so invisible and so little understood that when a musical works, you get none of the credit, but when it doesn't work, you get all the blame. So it's really win-win.

[13:19] Gordon Cox: And so as you were working on this adaptation, what did you find was easy to shift from the page to the stage? And what ended up surprising you by being more challenging?

[13:32] Jodi Picoult: There was a lot that was challenging. I think it's easier to start there because the first thing is this was a series. This was a two-book series. And musicals don't often get sequels unless, you know, like your Harry Potter, that rarely happens. And so one of the first things Tim said is we got to figure out an ending. And so Sammy and Tim and I brainstormed and came up with something that I know is extremely satisfying, is a very traditional Jodi Picoult twist at the end of a story, and that gets a gasp every night. I'm psyched for that.

[14:05] Jodi Picoult: Yeah, it's a departure from what happens in the novels, yeah. Absolutely. And it had to be, but it also leaves you with the same feeling that you get when you finish the series. And that ultimately is what a good adaptation is for me. You know, I, as someone who's had stuff adapted for other mediums a lot, I don't mind changes. You know, you're never gonna replicate an entire novel in a musical or in a movie. But when you mess with the story and the feeling that the story is supposed to leave you with, that to me is a failure of adaptation. And so the fact that we were able to make a change here that wraps up the musical that leaves you knowing how our main character has evolved in a way that's positive, it's the right ending for this adaptation. So I'm really excited about that.

[14:56] Jodi Picoult: The other thing that was really hard was figuring out whose story this is. You know, in the book and the series, it is equally told between Delilah and Oliver, our two main characters, the girl on the outside and the prince on the inside of the fairy tale. And trying to figure out, you know, you just can't have a musical that functions that way. It's always got to be one person's journey that you're following. And that was a real struggle to figure out how to tell Delilah's story without minimalizing Oliver's. You know, we have to care for this character, even though he's really just a character. So that was quite a journey.

[15:34] Jodi Picoult: Tonally, we also had some trouble because this is not a kid's fairy tale, and this is not a kid's show. The book was written for a middle grade audience, and we very intentionally aged it up for the musical.

[15:49] Gordon Cox: So what I love, tell me more.

[15:51] Jodi Picoult: Well, because I didn't want this to be TYA. And I thought that there was a world in which we could make jokes and we could tell a story for an audience that, you know, was somewhere that kind of fell into the pocket of the 18-year-olds who are obsessed with musical theater up to their moms who are still pining for Mr. Darcy. But also is entertaining enough that you're able to bring your kids to but also your grandma. What I love about the musical is that there are jokes that land on every level. There are jokes that go way over the kids' heads. There are jokes that only women get that men don't, which I kind of love. You know, and so I love that. I love that we've managed to create something that I think attracts audiences of a very wide range.

There just doesn't seem to be a lot of that on Broadway these days. I think there's stuff that either panders to a lower level or that is highly esoteric or meant to be for adults only. So it's kind of nice to have a show that feels like it sits in a sweet pocket.

[17:06] Jodi Picoult: But I will say it was very easy to adapt the dialogue because, you know, I wrote it once so that was simple.

[17:11] Gordon Cox: And so the show premiered at KC Rep in Kansas City. What did you learn from that production and how much does what we are seeing off-Broadway resemble what that initial production was?

[17:29] Jodi Picoult: It changed a lot after KC Rep. That was an amazing production. We had such a good time there, and they were so good to us, and we sold out our entire run. I know it was a very financially successful venture for them. And I think what we learned was where the stress points of our story were that needed to be shored up before we moved on. So, you know, for example, one of the arcs that Tim and Sammy and I worked on very hard after Kansas City was the arc between Delilah and her mom Grace. There is a very realistic mother-daughter story that's told in "Between the Lines." And I am so crazy proud of that because I have spent many years thinking about this. And I think you can count on one hand the number of realistic mother-daughter musicals.

You know, you've got "Gypsy," but I don't think that's a very good measure. You've got "Mamma Mia," also not a good measure. I think "Hairspray" is a good one, but I really don't think you get past maybe five. And I love that we tell that relationship like it is, warts and all. You see the tension, you see the love, you see the struggle and the fear and the redemption. And that is an arc that we worked on very hard after Kansas City because it felt lacking. I'm really happy with how it lands right now. And so that was a big thing. There were a bunch of numbers that changed as well that we just felt were too young or needed to just for pacing, needed to sound a little different. And you know, as usual, Sam and Anderson always knocks it out of the park, and they created some incredible stuff for this version.

So I would say that that's changed. We also were working with a very different stage. You know, Second Stage is a much smaller stage than KC Rep, and that required a lot of adaptation and rethinking, I think, on the part of our incredible director, Jeff Calhoun.

[19:36] Gordon Cox: I'll have more with Jodi right after the break.

[19:47] Gordon Cox: And now here's more with the author, Jodi Picoult. At what phase in production were you when the pandemic hit in mid-March?

[19:57] Jodi Picoult: Oh, Gordon. So we were two weeks away from starting rehearsals.

[20:03] Gordon Cox: Okay.

[20:04] Jodi Picoult: Yeah. And I could tell you this because I live in New Hampshire and my kids have all moved out, and I took everything I needed to go to New York for six weeks, and I had it all sitting on my son's bed in his empty bedroom. And I was getting ready to pack it all up. And you know, we heard about the pandemic was coming, and then Broadway closed down, and I waited a few more days, and then we were told, you know, we're gonna wait a couple of weeks, and then of course, those weeks turned into months and years. And I still remember the day that I unpacked everything and just said this isn't happening. And I don't think I've ever cried so hard. It was really, really devastating. I mean, as you know, writing a musical is a long game. It takes, you know, it takes a long time to get a musical to fruition in this industry. And to have been so close to the finish line and to have that ripped away was devastating.

[21:03] Jodi Picoult: Even longer than writing a book.

[21:06] Gordon Cox: Oh god, yes.

[21:07] Jodi Picoult: Yeah, I can write a book in nine months. This musical's been going on for eight years. You kidding me?

[21:12] Gordon Cox: Right, yeah. And so how did "Breathe"? You talked a little bit about the project that you worked on sort of in the interim during the pause. How did "Breathe" come about? Tell us about that.

[21:23] Jodi Picoult: Well, so ironically, one of the last things I did before the musical, before Broadway shut down was go to the wedding of Ariel Jacobs, who plays our Delilah. And when we were at that wedding, I was there with Jeff Calhoun and with Tim McDonald, and we left there and everyone at our table except me got COVID.

[21:45] Gordon Cox: Wow.

[21:46] Jodi Picoult: And after Tim recovered, we were talking because we talk all the time, and we both felt the need to chronicle what was going on in the world right now through art, which is I think what writers do. And so we came up with the idea of creating loosely linked vignettes that would illustrate a bunch of different couples and how the pandemic was affecting them, through humor, tragedy, activism, comedy, like, you know, all of it. And we wanted to employ as many people as we could because the whole industry shut down. So we came up with the idea of producing this on our own and hiring at first we hired four different sets of songwriters to work on each individual vignette. And then the George Floyd murder happened, and we both felt that that was inextricably tied to the pandemic.

And we really wanted to include something like that in our musical, but also knew that wasn't our story to tell. And so we reached out to the incredible Doug Lyons who came on board to write that little mini vignette and also to provide the music with Ethan Packchar. So we created this, and silver lining of the pandemic, we wound up with a cast that no one will ever get full of Tony nominees and Tony winners because nobody was doing anything.

[23:18] Jodi Picoult: And you know, even creating it was such a struggle. I was never in New York. I wasn't there because I have asthma and I was so terrified of catching COVID. And in fact, as I told you before this interview began, I have finally been felled by COVID. I have it right now. But you know, at the beginning I was really scared. And so I basically watched through a lens of someone's camera as they were filming at the 92nd Street Y. We had each vignette film one at a time. We had to scour the theater in between. We had five different stage managers. I mean, it was insane the logistics of doing this, but we managed to capture it and to stream it. And I'm incredibly proud of what we wound up with. It was actually recognized by the Library of Congress and inducted into their COVID-19 Hall of Fame for basically art, the response that artists had to COVID-19, which makes me feel like we did something right, which is really nice.

And it was really fun to write something that I that wasn't an adaptation of my work either, which was really great. And yeah, and that was like that was my first other project, you know, that I was doing with Tim.

[24:33] Jodi Picoult: And then we've got a whole bunch lined up now, which is super fun.

[24:37] Gordon Cox: Was there anything about the experience of working on Breathe that you have now carried over how you're approaching this new iteration of Between the Lines?

[24:48] Jodi Picoult: Yes. Um, I'll tell you what I learned from Breathe. I learned to think, I learned to think from the side of a producer. I think that when you are the writer, often you feel like, well, why isn't anyone telling me anything? Why is communication so hard? Why is it, you know, like you're constantly thinking about what you don't have? And when you're the producer and you are just doing your best to hold it all together, to make this actually happen, to try to be as inclusive as possible. It is true that occasionally something slipped through the cracks, not intentionally. Right. And I think it was really a good lesson for me in grace. And something that I hope to carry with me now is you know, as I move on and write other projects.

[25:35] Gordon Cox: Do you have a sense of how your experience of the pandemic and everything that happened, you know, in the interim affected sort of the creative development of the show at all? Like, has it changed the way things you apply?

[25:49] Jodi Picoult: Yeah, you told us you told the story. Tell us more.

[25:51] Jodi Picoult: Yeah, totally. Um, so first of all, one of the funniest things is our casting. Um, because of COVID, we wound up changing casts, recasting. And I know that um our prince, uh, who is uh Jake David Smith, and he is phenomenal. What a star. He was actually cast by Tim McDonald and Jeff Calhoun when they both had COVID and didn't know it. Oh, great. And yeah, it was great. They had no recollection of him or of his audition. So we're very fortunate that he turned out to be a star. Um, because you know, who knew it could have gone another way. Uh so um anyway, I uh that's that's one thing that's very funny. I think the other thing that it really did for us was, you know, every writer is going through this now.

We have to figure out when, well, when did this actually happen? Was it pre-pandemic or post-pandemic? We don't have our students wearing, you know, masks in the school. And we've actually set it in 2019 for that reason, um, if anyone's paying attention. But it also really, I think it really required us to go back and look at the stakes in Delilah's life, um, to make sure that they felt rich enough and real enough for her journey. Uh, and I think that's true of honestly, it's true of everything that we've been writing. Um, we actually have another project that's about to launch in the UK immediately after this, um, an adaptation of The Book Thief. And that if that was really interesting because revisiting that through the lens of the pandemic was um really radical. You know, the whole message of The Book Thief is, is humanity worth keeping alive at this point? Right. Um, and you have very, very different answer to that question after a global pandemic.

[27:48] Gordon Cox: Yeah. Um, I'm gonna ask you more about that, but before I do that, um do you have a sense of how the experience of the pandemic has affected the way audiences are receiving the story?

[28:01] Jodi Picoult: Um, yeah, I do. Uh, in a way, and I, you know, you're gonna get me on tape saying this. Uh, as devastated as I was to not open in 2020, I really feel like we're opening at the right time. Um, Between the Lines is a joy spot. That's the way I always describe it. It is very hard to um it's very hard to watch that show without a smile on your face or without laughing, or to not leave the theater feeling better than you did when you entered. And right now, we are all broken and we all need that. We all need a little light in our life. We all need a little empowerment. Um, the message of Between the Lines is live the story you want if it's not the story you're in. My God, was anyone in a story they wanted to be in in 2020?

I don't think so. You know, so I love that in a way we are a musical representation of the idea that uh we've gone through something that was really challenging, and we're all here to tell the tale. Now, how are we gonna fashion the rest of our narratives? How are you gonna change your life knowing everything you've learned in the past two years? I think that's something that almost everyone on this planet is struggling with. And for that reason, Between the Lines becomes the perfect musical right now.

[29:27] Gordon Cox: And what are you alluded a little bit to this, but I wonder what are the plans after this is a limited engagement off Broadway? It's at the Tony Kaiser Theater where Second Stage puts up shows regularly. So you only have the stage for a limited amount of time. Uh, what's next after this?

[29:42] Jodi Picoult: Well, you know, I frankly would like to take the Dear Evan Hansen path straight from the Tony Kaiser into Broadway. I don't get to I don't get to make that decision. Um, you know, I'm not producing this, but I have utter faith in Daryl Roth, who, you know, uh is certainly knows what she's doing. And I think that one of the things that a lot of people who are not in the theater industry don't realize is that in order for a show to get to Broadway, you've got to support it before it gets there. Because, you know, if you don't, we'll never, we'll never get there. So we need our audiences to come to the Kaiser. We need people to talk about it and tell their friends to come and to say, I had a really good time seeing this musical.

I think you'd like it too. Um, we all want to get to Broadway, but the way that we do that is by having an overwhelming fan base for this show. Um, of the things that again, I'm really proud of in Between the Lines is that it is the coming of age story of a young girl. And again, that is not something we get to see on Broadway very often. We see a lot of boys coming of age, you know, there's Evan Hansen and there's Be More Chill, and all the new musicals that are coming up tend to be focused on young men. And especially in the world today, when women are being told in this country that, you know, you might not matter as much as you think you did. It is really rewarding to me to see audiences night after night coming to a theater to celebrate a young woman's story because that says to me that the things that women go through matter and the feelings women have matter.

And um, I'd like to ride that straight into Broadway. I think it's a really important thing for the Broadway community to represent as well. They're starting, Broadway is starting to really understand representation a little bit better after many, many years of not doing such a great job of it. And um, I love, I love seeing, you know, A Strange Loop and things that wouldn't have been on Broadway 10 years ago coming to Broadway now. And I just hope that the Broadway community remembers that there are a lot of stories about women and told by women and written by women that have not yet made it to that stage.

[32:02] Gordon Cox: Yeah. So in addition to your novel writing schedule, which is still going proceeding a pace, you've got your newest book comes out in October, is that right?

[32:13] Jodi Picoult: Mad Honey, which is uh your co-written with Jennifer Finney Boylan.

[32:17] Gordon Cox: Yes. So in addition to that, I was gonna ask, and so what else have you got on your theater plate?

[32:22] Jodi Picoult: But it seems like you tell us more about uh about The Book Thief.

[32:26] Jodi Picoult: Yeah. So uh the other thing that came out of Kansas City is um the creative team that we assembled of Elisa and Kate and me and Tim we love working together. And I really did not know that that wasn't really a thing, you know, for writing teams. I we just hit it off and we kind of became a little family and we started to get separation anxiety after Kansas City and thinking, well what if we can't write again together? So we decided to make a list of books that you would most want to adapt as a musical that I didn't write. And The Book Thief was on all four of our lists. And I had done an event with Markus Zusak, the author and I wrote to him and I said we'd really like to adapt your show, your book as a show.

And he was delightful and very supportive. And we decided that that's what we were going to do. So we've been working on that for less time than Between the Lines. I think we're up to five years now, but we are having our world premiere um in Bolton in the UK at the Octagon Theater under the direction of Lottie Wakeham. And we literally finish launching Between the Lines and a month later, literally a month later, we go to the UK to start the process all over again for The Book Thief. We're super excited. It is orthogonally different, you know, to um to Between the Lines. Uh Between the Lines, as I said, this is a joy spot. There is no way anyone is going to say a musical about the Holocaust is a joy spot.

Uh and it's not, but it is, and it also sounds so different. And this is, I think the thing that's most exciting for me. Kate and Alisa are not just geniuses, they are also chameleons. And they do not produce the same sound over and over again. They can write anything. And to me, when I listen to the score of The Book Thief, it feels to me epic, uh, kind of like a Les Misérables for the ages. Um, but it really is about whether humanity is worth saving. What have we done to ourselves? And what is redeemable about humans at this point in time? And can an ordinary person change the course of the world when it seems to be headed in the wrong direction? That's the story of The Book Thief. And again, it feels really timely and really relevant. Uh so I'm very excited to put this up in 3D and to see it on the stage for the first time.

[34:59] Gordon Cox: Are there other theater projects that you're working on as well?

[35:04] Jodi Picoult: Yeah. I mean, I've totally been bitten by this bug. I uh the other thing that again working with Kate and Alisa because we just love them, we've just gotten the rights to uh Austenland, which was a book in I think 2007 and then a movie um after that. And uh that's going to be, I think, another I I'm gonna phrase it as an adult comedy. That's how I see that one turning out. But we literally have that one just simmering because we have too many things on the front burners right now.

[35:33] Gordon Cox: Yeah, great. Uh well, we look forward to seeing all these things uh and watching them materialize. Thanks so much for taking the time to talk with me.

[35:41] Jodi Picoult: Thanks, Gordon.

[35:42] Jodi Picoult: Oh, thank you so much for having me, Gordon. It's been a pleasure.

[35:48] Gordon Cox: That was Jodi Picoult of Between the Lines, the new musical now playing off Broadway at the Tony Kaiser Theater. Her newest novel, Mad Honey, co-written with Jennifer Finney Boylan, hits bookshelves in October. 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. It really helps us grow our audience of folks who love theater as much as you and I do. Or tell a friend about Stagecraft, or give us a shout-out on social media. Find past episodes, and subscribe at all the pod purveyors, including Spotify, Apple Podcasts, 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 Cox Variety. Thanks for listening and see you at the theater.