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[0:06] Gordon Cox: Welcome to Stagecraft, Variety's Theatre Podcast, bringing you backstage and behind the Broadway scenes with the stars, creators, and industry leaders keeping theater alive during the pandemic.

[0:16] Gordon Cox: I'm your host, Gordon Cox.

[0:19] Gordon Cox: On this episode of Stagecraft, I'm talking to members of the creative and producing team behind Animal Wisdom, the new musical performance piece that's been described as an avant cabaret seance, in which the composer-performer Heather Christian's confronts the ghosts that haunt her.

[0:34] Gordon Cox: The show was first performed at the Bushwick Star in Brooklyn in 2017, and when the pandemic altered plans for a 2020 tour, a filmed version was shot this spring at the Wooly Mammoth Theater in Washington, DC, and will be available to stream nationwide starting May 15th.

[0:50] Gordon Cox: Later in this episode, I'll be talking with the leaders of the Bushwick Star, Wooly Mammoth and ACT in San Francisco, about their involvement in the project.

[0:57] Gordon Cox: But first, here's the composer and performer Heather Christian's on reimagining her live performance as a film.

[1:03] Gordon Cox: Hey Heather, thanks for joining me.

[1:05] Heather Christian's's: Thank you. I'm happy to be here.

[1:17] Gordon Cox: Sure. Um, so Animal Wisdom, uh, in 2017, um, is a hybrid concert theater seance performance. Um that is sort of uh a requiem within a requiem. Um I worked with the Catholic Church for 25 years and sort of grew up around um ancient religious form. Um, and I was interested in writing a play that followed the uh the EKG of a Requiem mass rather than a traditional dramatic structure. Um, and then I stuck a textually adapted requiem in the middle of it, um, in addition to that. Um practically what that meant is that I um I needed to exercise something out of myself. Um that was sort of the reason why um I have felt haunted my entire life um and right before we opened or not right before like five years before we opened Animal Wisdom um I had come down with a crippling case of what I had defined as career ending performance anxiety and so I tasked myself with um with writing a show to uh to exorcise that demon so that's what Animal Wisdom is it's a show about letting go um of the actual ghosts that you keep um of uh the traumatic events that you carry with you um and hopefully it it attempts to arrive at some sort of communion with a bunch of strangers who you know inevitably have been going through a very similar thing.

[2:56] Heather Christian's's: Yeah um and that was that that was the show.

[3:00] Gordon Cox: Yeah and that was you and a group of actors who you performed with right it was it was you and actor musicians, yes.

[3:06] Heather Christian's's: Right, actor musicians, right?

[3:07] Gordon Cox: Right. And so what do you remember about the experience of that run in 2017? Did it number one, did it work as an exorcism for you and uh yeah it did actually it did.

[3:21] Heather Christian's's: I will I will um I will show my hand a little bit here in terms of what exactly what what a crazy leader I am and say that the the night before uh we closed, I um I got hit like with a lightning strike of like, oh no. Mozart's requiem killed him. Whatever.

[3:41] Heather Christian's's: Yeah, girl, you yeah, yeah, girl, you're Mozart. Um so I was afraid. I mean, it did there is there's a pretty uh violent ritual that I stage in the middle of the show, which is uh we plunge the theater into a complete blackout. And when I say complete, I mean no footlights, no exit signs. We taped over every single like light leap in the in the in the space. Um and uh we listened to this requiem for 27 minutes, which is the exact duration of how long your brain can sustain the chemical release of a panic attack. Um and I uh it was that that was the ritual, I think.

[4:23] Heather Christian's's: Um that that was the ritual that I performed for four months almost every night. Um that sort of got me stronger. Um and once we finished once we finished running the show and I survived it, because that's the hardest shit I've ever done. Um, yeah, that sort of serves as the exorcism, like proving something to yourself, um that you didn't think that you were capable of. That's the real exorcism. Proving to yourself that you have a community that you didn't think you had.

[4:51] Heather Christian's's: That's the exorcism. Um so yes.

[4:55] Gordon Cox: And I don't remember the first part of your question.

[4:57] Heather Christian's's: Well, it actually leads me into my next question, which which was what at the time did you imagine a future life for the show? Did you imagine doing the show again after four months? Or what was what was the future life for that show looking like in your head at that time?

[5:11] Heather Christian's's: At that time, uh I was so exhausted um that I I did not think that the show had a had a second life in it. No. Um the it it also because I wrote it to exist for a very specific version of myself in a very specific moment in time where I was struggling with something. Um and the physical task of doing the show is so immense that I I just couldn't envision a situation where a um you know where any sort of theatrical production uh institution would take on board um the labor of um both hiring a massive choir and um and agreeing to only let me do uh four to five shows a week um because I I don't think anyone can perform this show more than four or five times a week if it's me or if it's another performer.

[6:06] Heather Christian's's: Um so I didn't think that it was going to be feasible for this to have any other kind of life other than you know a record um which we made.

[6:14] Gordon Cox: All right. And so when did the the film version how did that evolve and tell us a little bit about sort of what it looks like. Like is it a film performance? Is it a film adaptation? Like t tell us a bit about it.

[6:26] Heather Christian's's: So it's a film adaptation.

[6:28] Gordon Cox: Okay it's a film adaptation.

[6:30] Heather Christian's's: I it came about because basically I bullied um I bullied I did I I bullied two institutions uh into the idea.

[6:39] Heather Christian's's: Um basically COVID right COVID is the origin story of so much of the art that we have right now. Um I was supposed to in 2020 the summer of 2020 start um a national tour of animal wisdom that was gonna have a big sit down in uh Washington DC at Willie Mammoth and then we were gonna go to ACT in San Francisco and have a big sit-down run there.

[7:03] Gordon Cox: Um and so by that point you had come around to the idea of doing the show again.

[7:07] Heather Christian's's: I had. I had, but also because I had had lots of conversations with um Maria Goyanis at Willy Mammoth, who was absolutely not opposed to me uh hiring an understudy and hiring an alternate performer and finding someone who could give that the show their own personal um life and flavor and not pretend to be me.

[7:28] Heather Christian's's: Um so we were in the process of making that happen.

[7:32] Heather Christian's's: Um so we started pushing these calendar dates back, as we all did. We were like, oh, it's gonna be fine in three weeks, oh it's gonna be fine in three months, and then it's like, well, Wooly was still open to the idea last year, I guess it was summer of last year.

[7:49] Heather Christian's's: Um Wooly was still open to the idea of doing a limited engagement run. ACT was not. Um so the idea was that we were going to mount Animal Wisdom for a more limited engagement with um with uh strictly capped seating at Wooly, and ACT was gonna send a camera crew and they were gonna tape it.

[8:13] Heather Christian's's: I heard this and I immediately uh reacted to it in a negative way.

[8:21] Heather Christian's's: Um because the show is so much about um the space that it's in, and it's so much about um the the individuals that it shares that space with. It's really important um that there be that it be an intimate experience.

[8:38] Heather Christian's's: Um the show is so much about the container. Um and it's and it's my it's like my formative, it's a s it's the story of my formative trauma. I mean, it's putting it's put in a fancy dress, but like ultimately this is a very personal document. Um, and so of course I had this massive emotional reaction, and I was like, we can't do this unless I have the means to control how it is received.

[9:04] Heather Christian's's: And a living room is a much different theatrical vessel than a theater.

[9:09] Heather Christian's's: And I am on board for adapting it in such a way where um the piece becomes less uh a filmed a a filmed version of a theatrical piece and more ritual that is performed in your living room to reconsecrate your external space and your internal space.

[9:28] Heather Christian's's: So that was sort of the directive that I gave myself of um, you know, how how does the show fulfill that function?

[9:36] Gordon Cox: Um with a distant community.

[9:39] Heather Christian's's: Yeah. And how does it did you find what what are some of the discoveries you made along the way in terms of what it looks like and how it exists in that new form?

[9:47] Heather Christian's's: Um, I mean, I'm discovering a thousand things because I've never seen the damn thing before.

[9:51] Heather Christian's's: Oh yeah. You know, um, so I I feel like every every bit of it is a revelation.

[9:57] Heather Christian's's: I will find I I will say that some of the rules that I thought I was breaking that were um really taboo, um, don't actually come across as that taboo when you break 'em.

[10:09] Heather Christian's's: If you just change the directive. Like, um, like speaking into a camera, like using like looking into a camera and talking to it like it's a person.

[10:18] Heather Christian's's: Like it's not that unnerving if you just um you know, if you just establish that that's what we're gonna do.

[10:25] Heather Christian's's: Um and that's the thing, and you get used to it pretty quick, and so it can become a personal experience.

[10:32] Gordon Cox: Um, yeah. How do you think how do you think the show will land differently with audiences in this distance setting versus the audiences who were all around you at the Bushwick Star? Do you have a sense of yet of what the piece carries for them?

[10:47] Heather Christian's's: I I only have a like a hope of what it carries.

[10:50] Heather Christian's's: Um I know that I when we were doing the theatrical performance, it felt like a massive ask to bring a bunch of people into a room who bought a ticket to a theater show and then ask them to um walk down this road of like internal reflection and excavation with me and really think about what they're grieving and what they're carrying.

[11:15] Heather Christian's's: That felt like a massive ask.

[11:17] Heather Christian's's: After this year, I I really do feel like everybody has already had this has had this space, this reflective space foisted upon them, and that we're all kind of looking at ourselves and how we've prioritized our lives and how we move move through the world and what we're carrying and try to figure out a way to carry it more gracefully or let some of it the fuck go?

[11:42] Heather Christian's's: And I feel like this piece what I hope this piece is like a rung on that ladder, or at least like an acknowledgement that that's where we are all at currently.

[11:56] Heather Christian's's: Um and letting it go in some cases can can I mean uh take a page out of the book of the Catholics, like can be as simple as ritualizing it of just saying, I'm gonna let it go. That's what I'm doing right now, and then I'm gonna do a bunch of stuff to s to signify that I'm letting this go.

[12:14] Heather Christian's's: Um and you just kinda do.

[12:18] Gordon Cox: Right.

[12:19] Heather Christian's's: Yeah.

[12:20] Gordon Cox: Has this experience and the experience of, you know, you did a piece for theater in quarantine as well. Have you thought a little bit about or has it made you think any differently about the ways in which liveness is a component an an integral component of the work that you make?

[12:38] Heather Christian's's: And do you think differently about work that is made not necessarily to be performed live? Like what's your what's your what's the interplay for you in terms of liveness and then sort of capture liveness?

[12:50] Heather Christian's's: What's the what how does that figure into your own thinking as a composer?

[12:55] Heather Christian's's: Um I mean, I feel like the I I'm interested in writing for all different kinds of scenarios.

[13:03] Heather Christian's's: Um what's been real tasty about this this period in time is that we're thinking about it right, we're blurring the lines between between a lot of these things right now in a really interesting way of what what is live.

[13:17] Heather Christian's's: For my money, I'm not particularly interested in watching a filmed live thing. But I am interested in pieces that push the boundary and are asking exactly what you're asking, asking that question of what makes it live? Like that's why theater in quarantine is so exciting is because they're like, what does live mean? Let's figure out a million different ways. Figure out what live means. Do you think you'll continue to do that and sort of, you know, poke at that even after we're all?

[13:43] Gordon Cox: Yeah, I think so. I mean, I feel like this has forced me to think about how to marry my love of recording, my love of being in a recording studio with my love of making like three hundred and sixty degree art, which is not these two pools never kind of met. They never really met before. And this has really forced, I think all of us to think creatively about how those things can speak to each other now. So I have more ideas now than I did, you know, a year and a half ago because I've had to have them in order to keep going.

[14:27] Gordon Cox: And speaking of looking ahead, when the pandemic shut theaters in New York town, you were is it two performances into your new show at first note?

[14:37] Heather Christian's's: Yeah, two previews rather, yeah exactly. Tell us a little bit about that show and what the plan I know it's still around and will be back at some point in some form. Tell us a little bit about where when and where we can hope to see that.

[14:52] Heather Christian's's: So Oratorio for Living Things is a, I attempted to write a classical, a quote I'm using air quotes if you can't see me, a classical oratorio in that it is or an oratorio and its form and it has no narrative about the religious epiphany I had when reading a book by Carlo Rivelli who is an Italian physicist called The Order of Time. It got me thinking about how time is really the most holy of trace fossils that we will leave behind as a human species. And so the first act is written in, but and time is something that only scales with us because we are the only ones who clock it. So the first act is written in what I imagine to be quantum time, which is time at a molecular scale and how that I think that feels.

That mostly deals with the origin of species and the forming of elements. Then there's human time and that's a memory act. I collected voicemails from strangers for a couple of years and then set the text into these big classical fugues and then the final act is cosmic time and the only way that we can measure time in space is by when there are collisions that happen. So cosmic time is a lot about violence. So I'm trying to investigate all these different aspects of time, why it's holy, why it's emotional, and take why theoretical physics is an emotional thing in the first place. And it's 12 vocalists in a non-proscenium space, sort of an immersive space. We made an oratory to mount the thing in specifically for it, and it is a sung-through piece and we have a small teapot orchestra of six musicians and twelve incredibly virtuosic vocalists and we're probably gonna have to wait until next year to bring it back because it is literally the deadliest show in showbiz in the COVID era because people are singing two feet away from your face. And proximity is part of what we're using to illustrate a bunch of the concepts that are in the music.

[17:11] Gordon Cox: So I don't know that I want to compromise.

[17:23] Heather Christian's's: Oh, I was just gonna ask actually, so that's not so that you wouldn't consider doing something like or at least not yet doing something like you've done with Animal Wisdom for Oratorio.

[17:32] Heather Christian's's: I don't, not until it's had its moment, I don't think. I think it really needs to have its moment so I can run this experiment to see if it works. And I feel like after that point then we can talk about, you know, whether the thing wants to go to a more traditional concert venue. If the thing wants to, I don't know if this particular thing will have a life as a film or as a recording. Although I mean, I listen to Carmina Burana on repeat and have a very fleshed out theatrical experience every time I do so, but I don't think that's probably for later for this piece.

[18:10] Gordon Cox: All right. Well, we look forward to seeing the live Oratorio when we can. And even before that, we will get to see the Animal Wisdom film. We're looking forward to it.

[18:19] Heather Christian's's: Yeah, thank you so much for joining me, Heather.

[18:20] Heather Christian's's: Thanks for talking about it.

[18:21] Gordon Cox: Thank you.

[18:26] Gordon Cox: Okay. That was Heather Christian's, the creator and star of Animal Wisdom. I'll have more on the show right after the break.

[18:43] Gordon Cox: Now let's take a look at the film version of Animal Wisdom from another angle as I speak with the leaders of three organizations involved in the production of the film. Nola Lane of the Bushwick Star, Maria Goyanis of Woolly Mammoth, and Pam McKinnon of ACT.

[18:58] Gordon Cox: Hi, Nola, Maria, and Pam. Thanks for joining me.

[19:02] Nola Lane: Great to be here.

[19:03] Maria Goyanis: Yeah, thanks for having us.

[19:05] Pam McKinnon: Yeah.

[19:05] Gordon Cox: So, Nola, I wonder if we could just start with you to talk a little bit about your experience with Animal Wisdom at the Bushwick Star. And I just wonder if even then you were imagining being involved in that piece, having a future life in some way.

[19:23] Nola Lane: Yeah. Well, making it was such a bit of an adventure. I mean, Heather, working with Heather is a pretty amazing experience. She's an artist who has very strong feelings about what she's making and such a depth of resources to pull from when she's making a piece in terms of the music and her sense of how she's trying to communicate and what kind of environment she's trying to create. And yet at the same time, it was in a state where Heather was very upfront from the beginning about like she needs help, like some outside eyes to shape this thing and figure out what it is and how it really functions for an audience. So that was a really fun collaboration. But that all goes to say I guess we weren't quite sure what we were going to end up with and how it was going to be received.

And so there wasn't this thought that like, oh, and then it should travel. It was like let's make it, let's figure out what this thing is, let's invest in this moment right now. And the wonderful surprise was to see not so much a surprise, but definitely a relief to see how strongly people did react to it. And how it really had a really great reception when we did it at the Star. So I think that's when the conversation started to happen.

[21:00] Gordon Cox: Maria, I think, you know, pulled my coat at another show we were at together at Jack and said, "Hey, what's happening with that?" And at that time I was, we didn't know, but that's exactly how the conversation started.

[21:19] Gordon Cox: And then so I guess for Maria and Pam, I wonder if you could first just tell us a little bit about what about Animal Wisdom made the show a good fit for your organization and your audiences. I guess Maria, let's start with you in terms of what you responded to and why you were so interested in having it come initially in the plan was to do it on a live performance.

[21:41] Maria Goyanis: Yeah, you know, I've known Heather for a long time, I've seen her perform for a long time in Taylor Mac's shows and in the team shows, etc. But really Animal Wisdom felt like the first time that I was actually seeing the fullness of who it is that she is, aside from her band concerts and things like that. And I went to see Animal Wisdom in the months after composer lyricist Michael Friedman had passed. And I was having just a lot of grief. And what I realized was that I actually didn't know how to process it. I didn't know where to go to process it. I talked about it, you know, and I had not yet sort of had an experience in the theater that actually felt like I was honoring and recognizing his passing for myself.

And Animal Wisdom did that for me. And afterwards, I mean, I was escorted. I literally was like a weeping mess. And I went up to Heather and I said, I gotta talk to you about this, but I can't talk about it now. And it has just basically stayed with me. And I have been, I just think that that piece, in general, right? We don't have as a society a lot of outlets to communally talk in this way about the passing of loved ones, usually is in church, it's a spiritual practice. And what was so moving to me was Animal Wisdom is Heather's, it almost is like her creating and consecrating a space to have a kind of spiritual practice, a requiem with people in that space. And I found that really moving.

So actually it was in my application to be the artistic director of Woolly Mammoth, I wrote it down. I said, you know, they ask you for a seat, and I was like, Animal Wisdom. And knowing that Woolly Mammoth was not a theater company that does musicals. I mean, I think the last musical we did wasn't even a musical, it was Mr. Burns by Anne Washburn with Michael Friedman's songs. Oh, right. And but it's not really musical, it's a play with music, right? So I knew that I was already sort of pushing the envelope in terms of Woolly Mammoth and thinking about bringing music into that space, but there are musicals like Animal Wisdom that are, you know, not just like decidedly not commercial, you know, that are really meant to do something else.

And it felt like Woolly Mammoth could be a space for musicals like that, and it felt like Animal Wisdom would be the perfect first show to do that. Also the fact that the Bushwick Star had done such an impeccable job of putting it up that, you know, instead of starting something from scratch to bring something that actually had existed and that I saw that I knew was going to be moving felt really good. And that's and Andy Donald and I too works with Pam. And that was really sort of where I was talking to Nola of like, okay, let's try to get a tour together. Let's try to actually get something together so that we can make it make sense for it to come to DC and maybe it can go elsewhere. And I know that ACT had been interested in it before I even called Andy. But it was sort of a great marriage. And we can talk about the pivoting to the film. That's its own conversation, I think.

[25:22] Gordon Cox: That's gonna be my whole next question.

[25:24] Gordon Cox: Yeah, but first, Pam, I wonder if we could talk a little bit about how you imagined Animal Wisdom fitting into your own work at ACT and the work that the organization does.

[25:33] Pam McKinnon: Absolutely. I love Maria what you said about, well, a lot of things, but I'm gonna pick up on one Fred, just about space and just about I'm working on a show right now called Communion, and we're, it's an interactive Zoom play, so it's not in space, but that's, you know, my job application at ACT also, you know, pitch a season. It didn't include Animal Wisdom because I didn't have the good fortune to have seen it at Bushwick Star, but I talked about space a lot and what can we do as gathering places and the Strand Theater, our smaller theater, continues to be a new space for us. When I started, you know, half my tenure at ACT has been in COVID, so space less. We've been a time theater, not a space theater. But, you know, I as a director, I think about architecture, I think about rooms, I talk about roominess for plays and for storytelling.

[26:30] Pam McKinnon: I want, I want, you know, to break that fourth wall and not with direct, not solely with just direct address, but in creative ways. And I felt when Andy Donald, my associate artistic director, had mentioned this piece to me. I knew uh Heather Christian's's work a tiny bit. Um, I saw the archival taping of the Bushwick Star production, and truly by the first chorus of the first song, I went back to Andy and said, Yeah, we're in, we're done. This is it. And then also, you know, knowing it was Maria, you know, helming a theater that I had worked uh a few times, you know, woolly mammoth, it just felt like synergy upon synergy of like, well, this just has to happen. And you know, so it was supposed to be, it was yeah, supposed to be live, it was a co-production.

Um, it it it it all it all made sense in a very you know exciting but traditional co-production way. Um, you know, ACT also doesn't have a history of musicals, though they've done some. Um, and I loved that this is a play with music and is so person-centered, not you know, is that a real pit orchestra? It's not that. Um just wanted that that that humanness on on Market Street. And so let's talk about the pivot then, because you know, it was going to it was going to be a tour that would have happened in the summer of 2020, and uh it then that couldn't happen. And one of the things that Heather mentioned when we spoke uh earlier in this episode was about uh the an early idea that involved doing a performance or a limited run that was then filmed for ACT that she had a sort of strong reaction to and didn't think that that was right.

How did you all come to figure out a way to make this movie? And how how massively different is it from what you the more traditional model is as you were just discussing of like putting a tour together with a co-production?

[28:31] Nola Lane: It is massively different. We're not even talking about putting that uh putting the pandemic on top of that, you know, um, so that's the you know, when we talked about the possibility of actually filming it, I remember I I basically was calling around to different filmmakers to see what what could we make this for? Because we can't suddenly just find a million dollars to do an independent movie, and that's like a small independent movie budget, you know? Yeah, and I remember when we talked about it with Heather, what she said really clearly was I already have a really great archival taping of the show from the Bushwick Star. I don't need to do another one of those. If we're going to do this, let's actually challenge ourselves and make it so that it works for the medium.

And that got really exciting, but that also was like terrifying because I don't know how to make a movie, and I certainly don't know how to make one during COVID. Um, and so that that that was it was uh at every step along the way, I sort of was like, you can press the release valve here, Heather. You know, if you're like this this doesn't feel right, like, you know, let's talk through it. Because it really is, as Noel was saying, like her work is so personal, right? If she's not going to get fully on board and able to actually bring the vulnerability that she needs to to actually, you know, be in it, sing those songs, actually share this story, it's not gonna work. You know, it won't work as a piece as a as a piece.

Um so yeah, so we started to pivot. The the thing really started to coalesce, I think, when we found a director. For me, I don't know if that's the same case for for you, Noel and Pam, but like we actually had we talked through different directors. Heather met with some, and um we found um Amber McGuinness, who is Southern Woman theater maker and a filmmaker, had just done feature film and was doing the circuit, and just she fell in love with the piece, and really also the thing that felt like incredibly important in terms of that collaboration was that she knew that she was interpreting a piece, Heather's piece for film, and that Heather was still the key artist, Mary artist and collaborator.

That is that is also incredibly different in film, right? Usually you have a director who's the auteur, who also writes it, who is actually coming with like a that that vision, and this was really about collaborating with Heather to translate a vision that already existed into um into a fit the film medium. And that I feel really so grateful that Amber and her team from Outskirt Media wanted to wanted to work on it.

[31:33] Pam McKinnon: There was also I you know, I will say there were there was an interim moment because because we didn't know that the pandemic was going to be, you know, in our lives for months and months and months. There was an interim moment when Maria, you had uh a set designer design like boxed in screened rooms, right? That's it. I blocked that out of my mind, my friend. Right. Well, and and and and and then we were going to hop it to the Geary. So do my thousand seat theater somehow have a socially distant. We were, you know, uh, you know, ACT also has a conservatory. Our students, our third year students generally get a moment on the Geary stage. We were going to have them in the balcony be the choir.

I mean, it went through many live iterations and possibilities that actually started to go down design roads before we realized ah, film, let's let's find some directors. Let's and then you know, Heather's, you know, great meeting with Amber. I mean, you know, just wanted to bring in that chapter. Holy moly just I really, I really put that out of my mind. Also, because that all happened in the fall when we were all like working on the on what the hell it means to produce during a pandemic. It was just it was so it felt like such a whirlwind, and we're all like, you know, the theater industry is like, you know, furloughing everybody left and right, like people are out of work. Like it was just it felt like the wild, wild west, right?

And even even until we got into that room, I would say I was like, there's a chance that this isn't gonna happen. And the reason is, you know, we originally wanted to film it in January. And you know, DC was not first of all, January was a shit show in DC. I don't know if you remember. There was uh some shit that happened on January 6th, uh the inauguration, all of that stuff, you know, was a total dumpster fire. And then and then we weren't open yet. You know, the the we weren't allowed to actually have more than 10 people in our space. And we were trying to get this waiver, and then we were denied the waiver. And so we actually did end up doing the filming with only 10 people in the theater at one time doing the filming. And man, I would never wish that on my worst enemy.

[33:56] Gordon Cox: Yeah. And so now that you have it, or it's soon to be completed, I believe Heather was saying when I uh when I spoke with her. Um how do you how has digital work fit into for all three of you for your seasons and your audiences? And how do you imagine this one sort of fitting into that work you've done not in spaces now that now that at the moment you're not allowed to be in a space?

[34:22] Nola Lane: Well, I'll jump in real quick and just say, you know, our our the star's kind of approach to digital work this past year has been um to make things that um want to be watched on the screen um for one reason or or another. I I don't want to take the live experience that I uh cherish and try to reproduce it on the screen. Let's let's pivot and make things with a screen if that's where people are gonna be watching it. Animal Wisdom kind of falls in a uh, you know, uh a different category in the sense that as Pam and Maria were saying, Heather said, if we're gonna make a movie, let's make a movie. Let's not just film a live performance, let's make a version of this show that is intentionally made to be watched on the screen.

So that really fits in with our philosophy. And you know, uh it's that it there's kind of you know there's something great about the fact that when you experience something live in a in an intimate setting, um it's a it is that it's intimate, and there's only a certain number of people who can experience it, and that's both like a wonderful thing and also means that not that many people can experience it. So on the flip side, what's really exciting about creating this document, this version of the show is that so many people can have the opportunity to experience it, and that um is the part of like this particular venture that I'm I'm really excited about, you know, releasing it out there.

[35:57] Pam McKinnon: Yeah. And then so uh, well, Pam, tell us a little bit about how digital and screen work has sort of existed for your audiences during all this stuff and how Animal Wisdom fits into that.

[36:10] Pam McKinnon: I mean, at the at the beginning of COVID, um, we pivoted really early. So I feel our spring has been this like let's pull some levers, you know, let's do a reading series, let's do something on Zoom that's truly live and interactive, let's make a movie. Um, and they're they're all so different, they're all coming out of necessity. Um, and I'm I'm excited to see what sticks. I mean, I think that's also what I think a lot of us are thinking about. Like, what is the digital when we come back? And if on occasion a theater consortium like this makes a movie, let's do it. We we can. Um, if on occasion, you know, a Zoom reading series is what, you know, both can excite artists as well as give our audiences a little bit of extra, let's do it.

[37:04] Nola Lane: I'm gonna hold you to that, Pamel. We'll see what sticks.

[37:08] Pam McKinnon: I know, I know. Because I do, I do think that this is it, just seems crazy to me that we would have all of these this learning and these experiments, and then just like put it away in a drawer and not build upon them. You know, how many years? Years since I started in the theater, everybody's been talking about technology and trying to get more in connected into technology, and then we were forced to do it, and now we're gonna basically say, Oh, yeah, but we're just gonna only focus on being live and in person. My none of this stuff is is meant to replace. It's all additive. And so, how can we actually continue to um learn, experiment, think about pushing the field in in these various ways. And I also think continue to cooperate. I mean, that's been I've had more conversations with you know, fellow artistic directors, artists from all over the country, than I know I would have, you know, um had had this not happened, had we not been.

[38:12] Gordon Cox: Oh, tell me about it. Every single um, every single project that Wooly undertook this year uh had at least one partner on it. And that that I you know is very different and also was really exciting for sure.

[38:30] Pam McKinnon: Yeah, yeah. Well, we can't wait to see uh how this all evolves going forward. And we definitely can't wait to see uh Animal Wisdom, which will be out soon. We're looking forward to it. Um, thank you, all three of you for uh joining me. It was great to talk to you.

[38:44] Nola Lane: Thanks for having us.

[38:45] Pam McKinnon: Thank you.

[38:49] Gordon Cox: That was Noel Lane, Maria Goyanis, and Pam McKinnon from the three theater companies behind the film Animal Wisdom. Available to stream May 15th through June 13th. Tickets at AnimalWisdomfilm.com. 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. You can 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. I'll be back in two weeks with another new episode. Until then, find me on Twitter at G Cox Variety. Thanks for listening, and see you soon.