This transcript was automatically generated and might contain errors.

[0:18] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Hello and welcome to The Drama Book Show.

[0:19] David Rigano: My name is Mark-Eugene Garcia.

[0:21] David Rigano: My name is David Rigano.

[0:22] Mark-Eugene Garcia: And today's episode is not hydrophonic, not supersonic, it's stereophonic.

[0:27] David Rigano: Yeah, stereophonic by DAVID ADJMI.

[0:29] Mark-Eugene Garcia: We were lucky to have him come in and he brought kenneth lonergan, who wrote one of my favorite movies.

[0:34] David Rigano: Which is You Can Count On Me.

[0:36] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Oh.

[0:37] David Rigano: So close.

[0:38] Mark-Eugene Garcia: You can count on me, both You Can Count On Me and Congo Star Laura Linney.

[0:42] David Rigano: Yes, yeah.

[0:43] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Congo led me to You Can Count On Me.

[0:45] David Rigano: Congo led me to Tales of the City and also You Can Count On Me.

[0:48] Mark-Eugene Garcia: She should have won the Oscar for that.

[0:49] David Rigano: I still But Congo is by Michael Crichton.

[0:52] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Okay.

[0:53] David Rigano: Yes.

[0:53] David Rigano: But You Can Count On Me was 2001, I think.

[0:58] Mark-Eugene Garcia: And she was up against Julia Roberts for Erin Brockovich.

[1:03] David Rigano: Oh, yeah.

[1:05] Mark-Eugene Garcia: And like the two of them were like winning every like other awards thing.

[1:09] David Rigano: Uh-huh.

[1:10] Mark-Eugene Garcia: And so I feel like it was down to them.

[1:11] David Rigano: Some other people were, I think Ellen Burstyn for Requiem for a Dream.

[1:14] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Okay.

[1:15] David Rigano: Yeah.

[1:15] David Rigano: There was a lot of talent that year, but I will always be a Laura Linney stan.

[1:19] Mark-Eugene Garcia: No, I know.

[1:20] David Rigano: Yeah.

[1:20] Mark-Eugene Garcia: We all know.

[1:21] David Rigano: We all know.

[1:21] Mark-Eugene Garcia: We all know.

[1:22] David Rigano: We saw the picture on Instagram.

[1:24] Mark-Eugene Garcia: But yes, they were both here and discussing the play Stereophonic.

[1:30] David Rigano: And this was for me the third time that I got to take a selfie with another playwright named David.

[1:37] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Yes.

[1:38] David Rigano: Absolutely.

[1:39] Mark-Eugene Garcia: It has been David Henry Hwang, David Lindsay-Abaire, and now David, I wonder what his middle name is, Adjmi.

[1:46] David Rigano: Nice.

[1:48] Mark-Eugene Garcia: And David Stephanie Rigano.

[1:53] David Rigano: That's it.

[1:53] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Yeah.

[1:54] David Rigano: It is.

[1:54] David Rigano: I also got to celebrate him that day because I wore my Stereophonic hat.

[1:59] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Oh, I wear often.

[2:01] David Rigano: I love the actual—it's weird to say the cut of the hat.

[2:04] David Rigano: I like the way it fits.

[2:05] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Sure, yeah.

[2:05] David Rigano: But also there's a reference in the play Stereophonic where they talk about another possibility of a band that one of them brings up, and it's called Mudfuck.

[2:13] David Rigano: And so this hat, if you look close enough, it is the logo for Mudfuck, and it says it on the hat, but it's just black on black.

[2:21] David Rigano: So I wear this hat all the time, and I've worn it to work.

[2:24] Mark-Eugene Garcia: To work, yeah.

[2:25] David Rigano: And it was funny because I told DAVID ADJMI when he was in there, I'm like, "Oh, by the way, I'm wearing the hat from your show," and he looked at me like I was nuts, and then he looked closely, he's like, "Oh my god, is that Mudfuck?"

[2:34] David Rigano: And then he just giggled and was so happy.

[2:37] Mark-Eugene Garcia: So this is only slightly off topic, but I bumped into your husband outside of Two Strangers Carry a Cake across New York.

[2:48] David Rigano: Yes.

[2:48] Mark-Eugene Garcia: And he had brought a friend because you were that night.

[2:52] Mark-Eugene Garcia: And Mark does MMA for those who—Mark just got in a fight.

[2:57] David Rigano: It was a scheduled thing, meet behind the bleachers.

[3:00] Mark-Eugene Garcia: So you were fighting that night, so he brought a friend and we were chatting, and I thought, "Oh, are you guys doing the merch for this?"

[3:07] Mark-Eugene Garcia: And he goes, "Yeah, do you want a Mr. Dickface hat?"

[3:09] David Rigano: And I was like, "Is that real? If that's real, then yes."

[3:14] Mark-Eugene Garcia: He's like, "Yeah, we are."

[3:15] Mark-Eugene Garcia: I hadn't stopped at the merch.

[3:16] Mark-Eugene Garcia: I like the theater merch isn't usually my thing, so I don't usually stop and look at what's in the—has to be like really specific, hence the Mudfuck hat.

[3:23] David Rigano: Yeah.

[3:23] Mark-Eugene Garcia: And I really should at least look, even if I'm not gonna buy anything, like people get creative.

[3:30] Mark-Eugene Garcia: So I should—I really should spend half a second going to the last time I think I can remember actively going to the merch was for Merrily We Roll Along.

[3:39] David Rigano: Because I was like, this is—it's like big.

[3:41] Mark-Eugene Garcia: And I bought a Franklin Shepherd, Inc. mug.

[3:44] David Rigano: That makes sense.

[3:46] Mark-Eugene Garcia: And truthfully, the last time before that that I can remember buying merch at a show was buying also a mug because that's what I use.

[3:54] David Rigano: I drink a million cups of tea a day at Carrie.

[3:57] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Okay.

[4:00] Mark-Eugene Garcia: I bought a—she's not the original, yes, in 1988.

[4:00] Mark-Eugene Garcia: I bought a—she's not like other girls mug at the Lucille Lortel for the Carrie revival.

[4:06] David Rigano: But yeah, so I never—I don't even look, so I hadn't even seen, and I was like, there's no way that's a real thing.

[4:12] Mark-Eugene Garcia: You're not really selling—he's like, "Yeah, we're selling hats that say Mr. Dickface."

[4:14] David Rigano: I was like, "Yes, I want one. That's very much me."

[4:19] Mark-Eugene Garcia: It's a really fun show.

[4:20] David Rigano: That's what I've heard of.

[4:21] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Yeah, yeah, you'll have a really good time.

[4:22] Mark-Eugene Garcia: And it's the only new show that's out right now.

[4:24] Mark-Eugene Garcia: It's in the lead for the Tonys, which is exciting.

[4:26] David Rigano: But speaking of shows that won Tonys—

[4:30] Mark-Eugene Garcia: One Tonys, yeah.

[4:31] David Rigano: Yes.

[4:32] Mark-Eugene Garcia: This show, I—okay.

[4:32] Mark-Eugene Garcia: I am notorious for—I don't know if it's because I'm in my 40s, but it does not take much for me to fall asleep at a show.

[4:39] David Rigano: I was—I'm talking to my doctor about that.

[4:41] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Yeah, it could be so exciting, and I will knock out.

[4:44] David Rigano: This is getting intimate.

[4:45] Mark-Eugene Garcia: But I'm going into a sleep study.

[4:47] David Rigano: Oh, yeah.

[4:47] Mark-Eugene Garcia: And one of the things that they talk about, I'm like, when I'm talking about feeling fatigued during the day, when the doctors say, like, "How does this affect your life?"

[4:55] Mark-Eugene Garcia: I'm like, "I'll be at the theater, and as soon as the lights go out, I will want to."

[4:59] David Rigano: And it is not a reflection on the show.

[5:01] Mark-Eugene Garcia: No, not at all.

[5:02] Mark-Eugene Garcia: And I hate fighting to stay awake.

[5:07] Mark-Eugene Garcia: When I saw A Soldier's Play directed by Kenny Leon, and luckily I got to see it twice, and I was comped both times because I have wonderful friends.

[5:15] David Rigano: And I don't know that we've talked about it really on the podcast, but most people here at the store know my absolute adoration for Kenny Leon.

[5:22] Mark-Eugene Garcia: He's one of my favorite directors working right now, and I loved what he did in this show.

[5:28] David Rigano: But—and it's not a long show, but I felt myself falling asleep.

[5:32] Mark-Eugene Garcia: No.

[5:32] David Rigano: And it's a murder mystery.

[5:34] Mark-Eugene Garcia: And I love—so I'm like, I'm not sure.

[5:35] David Rigano: That's your favorite thing.

[5:36] Mark-Eugene Garcia: It's my—and I'm like, the details are so important.

[5:39] David Rigano: I'm like, I can't miss anything.

[5:40] Mark-Eugene Garcia: So at intermission, I went to the concessions.

[5:46] Mark-Eugene Garcia: I was like, "I need—I need a glass of Coke."

[5:49] David Rigano: And not a line, just a cup.

[5:52] Mark-Eugene Garcia: And they were like, "Are you gonna bring it to your seat?"

[5:54] Mark-Eugene Garcia: "Because if so, then we need to give you the souvenir cup."

[5:58] David Rigano: And I was like, "Yes, I'm bringing it to my seat," because I'm like, I need this caffeine to keep me up during act two.

[6:03] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Because I, again, not a comment on the quality because I want to pay attention so bad, I'm loving it.

[6:10] David Rigano: So I was so good.

[6:11] Mark-Eugene Garcia: And it was a ten dollar cup of Coca-Cola.

[6:17] David Rigano: But—and I've been told that this is girl math—it was a free ticket.

[6:21] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Okay.

[6:22] David Rigano: So what I decided was that I saw a Broadway show for ten dollars and they threw in a free cup of Coke.

[6:28] Mark-Eugene Garcia: There you go.

[6:28] Mark-Eugene Garcia: There you go.

[6:29] David Rigano: With your oddly sexist math.

[6:31] Mark-Eugene Garcia: I was—I'm notorious for doing that.

[6:33] David Rigano: And so I was scared that a show that's three hours, I wasn't gonna make it through.

[6:36] Mark-Eugene Garcia: But my husband really wanted to see this show, as did I, but he really wanted to.

[6:40] David Rigano: So I bought it for him as a Christmas gift.

[6:43] Mark-Eugene Garcia: And I prepped by buying a lot of gum.

[6:46] David Rigano: I've learned that if I chew gum, I stay awake.

[6:49] Mark-Eugene Garcia: I never even opened it.

[6:51] David Rigano: I was so focused on this show and like sitting forward and just into it.

[6:55] Mark-Eugene Garcia: You know which one recently was that for me?

[6:58] David Rigano: Purpose.

[6:59] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Oh yeah.

[7:00] David Rigano: I was—I did not feel that, and I don't think that was like one of those like insanely long ones.

[7:07] Mark-Eugene Garcia: But it was long, but I didn't feel the length.

[7:10] David Rigano: I was at all.

[7:11] David Rigano: I was new.

[7:12] Mark-Eugene Garcia: And Hills of California was three hours long.

[7:15] David Rigano: But it had me—it had me hooked.

[7:18] Mark-Eugene Garcia: But that just goes to show that good writing will—it doesn't matter how long the show is, it's all necessary.

[7:23] David Rigano: There wasn't one part of the show that I—and I'm notorious for cutting.

[7:26] Mark-Eugene Garcia: I love to cut things.

[7:27] David Rigano: And so I was—and I'll see something in my—in that I'm watching it in my head.

[7:29] David Rigano: I'm like, "Ah, you probably could have cut this one."

[7:32] Mark-Eugene Garcia: No, it was so good.

[7:34] David Rigano: And I enjoyed every second and contemplated going back, but it was the last week that it was on that we saw it, so I couldn't, but just one of the things.

[7:41] Mark-Eugene Garcia: That was actually the same for me with Purpose.

[7:44] David Rigano: Yeah.

[7:44] David Rigano: I went with my mom because my dad had just had a baseball injury at 70 years old, did a pickup game, slid into first base, and then immediately got up and said, "I need to go to the hospital."

[7:59] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Obviously the cows had to win.

[8:00] David Rigano: Yes.

[8:01] Mark-Eugene Garcia: So he was recovering very well.

[8:03] David Rigano: He's fine.

[8:03] Mark-Eugene Garcia: But at the time he was—because of how his hamstrings were recovering, he was like, "I can't sit for that long."

[8:10] David Rigano: So my mom took me to see it.

[8:12] Mark-Eugene Garcia: And as soon as the lights came up at the end of the show, and it was within the last week.

[8:19] David Rigano: That—so that's why she was like, "I have to see Purpose before it closes. I have to see this before it closes."

[8:22] Mark-Eugene Garcia: John Proctor was another one that we went to.

[8:26] David Rigano: And she turned to me as soon as the lights came up, and she was like, "We've got a problem."

[8:31] Mark-Eugene Garcia: And I was like, "What?"

[8:32] David Rigano: She was like, "I need to see this again."

[8:35] Mark-Eugene Garcia: And I don't think she ever made it to see it again, unfortunately.

[8:39] David Rigano: She did, she talked to my dad.

[8:41] David Rigano: She was like, "What if we can get you like the accessible seat? What if we can get you like the wheelchair spot and see if they'll put a chair there and then you can move around, you can stretch your legs out."

[8:52] Mark-Eugene Garcia: And I think they were looking into the possibilities.

[8:55] David Rigano: And it was the last week, and they just never—hopefully the script will come out and he will find his purpose.

[9:01] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Yes.

[9:02] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Let's delve into some stereotypes.

[9:05] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Really excited because this was such a good interview and let's let it begin.

[9:09] David Rigano: Yeah.

[9:10] kenneth lonergan: Thanks for coming and thanks David for being here.

[9:12] kenneth lonergan: I guess you can all hear me, right? Yes, is the mic okay? Okay, so we're just gonna talk to David for a while and see what he has to say.

[9:20] kenneth lonergan: We were just talking about the awards that we haven't won. It's a longer conversation than you might think.

[9:28] kenneth lonergan: So David, upstairs we were—I was just wanted to ask you a little bit about your background because we were talking about it very briefly upstairs.

[9:35] kenneth lonergan: You are from a Syrian Jewish New York family, is that correct?

[9:35] DAVID ADJMI: So yeah, they call it Syrian Jew.

[9:43] kenneth lonergan: That's okay.

[9:44] DAVID ADJMI: So we're—I'm a Syrian Sephardic Jew, but then I'm not exactly only Syrian because it's—I'm a mutt because I'm Syrian and also Turkish and also Lebanese and maybe other stuff.

[9:54] DAVID ADJMI: But we're all Sephardic Jews, so we're from Spain and then Queen Isabella made us leave.

[10:00] kenneth lonergan: Yes, I remember, yeah.

[10:01] kenneth lonergan: And so what generation are your parents?

[10:00] DAVID ADJMI: They're first generation, so they're the first—so that—what time? But you were born here?

[10:00] DAVID ADJMI: And I was born—how old were they when they came? Did they meet here or no?

[10:00] DAVID ADJMI: They were born here also, sorry, so who came here for who?

[10:00] DAVID ADJMI: My grandparents on both sides.

[10:19] kenneth lonergan: What's first generation mean? You're—that I thought first generation means that they were born here.

[10:24] DAVID ADJMI: That's it, they were generated, so they're the first generation, and then your—so your grandparents, yeah, they moved here.

[10:24] kenneth lonergan: And what I'm just curious because I'm curious about where people come from and what artists and where their internal life and external life comes from.

[10:41] kenneth lonergan: Just what's it like growing up? What was it like at home? Do you have brothers and sisters? Were your family—parents, what did they do? What was it like in your home? Was it a very arts-oriented home?

[10:50] kenneth lonergan: Or can you describe it without not getting too personal or going down any horrible roads you don't want to go down?

[10:56] DAVID ADJMI: Once we open this Pandora's box, there's no end to it.

[10:59] DAVID ADJMI: I'm happy to share, but it's your—but it's your interview.

[11:03] DAVID ADJMI: I was very fortunate. My family was living in Nashville before I was born.

[11:08] DAVID ADJMI: So my parents met, my mom married my dad.

[11:11] DAVID ADJMI: My mom was 16 years old.

[11:13] DAVID ADJMI: She came from a quite impoverished background.

[11:16] DAVID ADJMI: And so there was just no room in the house.

[11:18] DAVID ADJMI: She was encouraged to get married quite young.

[11:21] DAVID ADJMI: And then my dad had an opportunity to run this kind of like Kmart, proto-Kmart thing in Nashville across from the Grand Ole Opry.

[11:30] DAVID ADJMI: And so that's where they moved.

[11:32] DAVID ADJMI: He did very well.

[11:34] DAVID ADJMI: They had three kids.

[11:36] DAVID ADJMI: And then the kids became marriageable age.

[11:38] DAVID ADJMI: And so then they were like, "Oh, they have to marry Jewish people, so let's get them back to Brooklyn where they belong."

[11:44] DAVID ADJMI: And they then schlepped back to New York.

[11:48] DAVID ADJMI: And then they were like, "Okay, that's—we'll get them married."

[11:51] DAVID ADJMI: And then my mother, I guess, accidentally became pregnant with me.

[11:55] DAVID ADJMI: So I was born into this, not feeling entirely welcome.

[11:59] DAVID ADJMI: And sensing like I was a little bit of an outlier.

[12:02] DAVID ADJMI: And it wasn't really a family of artists.

[12:04] DAVID ADJMI: My dad was really—he was in the schmata business and he sold—I don't know, everything.

[12:10] DAVID ADJMI: I remember I just was remembering today 'cause I passed this shop that had those signs, everywhere clearance sale, and it was like fire engine red and black and white.

[12:18] DAVID ADJMI: And he used to paint those signs.

[12:21] DAVID ADJMI: I remember him doing that, painting signs in the house for the shop that he worked at.

[12:25] DAVID ADJMI: Maybe he—we sold electronics or linens.

[12:27] DAVID ADJMI: He was always selling stuff.

[12:29] DAVID ADJMI: And he was a hustler.

[12:30] DAVID ADJMI: And yeah, it wasn't a very artistically nourishing environment.

[12:33] DAVID ADJMI: But my mom really wanted me to have some kind of cultured life.

[12:39] DAVID ADJMI: And she had this idea for me, like, "Okay, we—these other kids didn't do have all this."

[12:45] DAVID ADJMI: They were like ran around in Nashville and they had a very sort of nature-y life.

[12:51] DAVID ADJMI: I want this kid to have culture.

[12:53] DAVID ADJMI: And so she would take me to museums and she would take me to theater, and that's like where she taught—took me to see my first plays.

[13:00] DAVID ADJMI: My first play that I ever saw was like Scarily in the Trump Village. I just remember that. It was like a production of Pippi Longstockings in Trump that Trump Village in Brooklyn. That's what they had. I don't know why I remember it, but it left an impression on me, like, oh, this is fantastic. And then she took me to see these other plays. So she created this, she siloed this thing for me. And it wasn't like my mother was a high school dropout. It wasn't like she knew when we went to go look at Caravaggio paintings what was happening, but she knew there was something in it and something beautiful and gnomic and mysterious, and she wanted to expose me to that. Did she did you ever talk to her about those days? And did she have an artistic journey? Hate this phrase, but it popped in my head. Because only tropes pop in my head. But was it a discovery for her too that she ever spoke about? Or do you think she was just showing you around?

[13:52] DAVID ADJMI: And I think it was like for I think she felt intimidated and awed. It's almost like sometimes how I feel like when I see a Richard Serra sculpture, this is too big for me. This is so monumental. I'm in a temple. I don't understand these mysteries before me, but I bow before them. When isn't this great? And it was almost like and I remember also going to these restaurants with her. Like she took me to like Quilted Giraffe and like Sign of the Dove, these like kind of fancy New York places, but we didn't really have any money to go. So we would split an appetizer and then leave. But it was when we were there, it was like, ooh, look at us. And we were like, it was very like we're out on the town, and wow, we could have these experiences, and wow, we're in New York and it's so cosmopolitan. And I think the cosmopolitanism and the art and all of that kind of blended into a sort of like a blurred thing for her.

[14:47] kenneth lonergan: Where did you go to school?

[14:51] DAVID ADJMI: Kids' school and high school. I'm from Midwood in Brooklyn. It was a bit provincial. Midwood is like where Jesse Jackson called it Heimat. That didn't do his political career any fairly. It didn't help him that much. Yeah, they really had they had, but I went to this Jewish yeshiva. They had the bulletin board about it. Jesse Jackson said I mean that was for the whole city.

[15:14] kenneth lonergan: No, it just was for Brooklyn, like where all the Jewish people.

[15:16] DAVID ADJMI: So it was a lot of Hasidic Jews. It was like this very Jewishy eerie, but it's also like Italian and whatever. It was I felt like it was like off the map a little bit because no one knew where it was and no one understood where it was and it was very suburban feeling. It had these like mansions and strange buildings, and it's it was a very I was like, what how can I where am I? Because it didn't when I saw films about New York or whatever, it didn't represent this weird place that I lived in. And anyway, and I had to go to this Jewish yeshiva. My parents they weren't fully religious, but they really wanted me to be religious to deputize the family into religion, which they picked the wrong person because I wasn't really into it.

[15:57] DAVID ADJMI: Yeah, but so I was indoctrinated, and I wasn't indoctrinated because I never fully got into any of it. I just pretended, but I was closeted in very multiple ways because I knew I was gay from a young age, and then I knew I didn't really buy into this religious stuff. And everyone was had all these expectations of me, and they were looking at me with a certain kind of assumption about who I was, and it was like I'm but I'll do my best. That's how I lived the early part of my life.

[16:23] kenneth lonergan: What about high school?

[16:25] DAVID ADJMI: I had to go to that yeshiva. Well, like then I had a meltdown in the yeshiva. We had that there was a bit of an impasse that I had, and in my sophomore year, I just they were just it was a very Republican yeshiva, and I wasn't I didn't understand that at the time. I just thought Jewish people were really mean. And I and so no offense to Republicans and our audience, but I it was just a very I just do anti-Semitic debate. I'm not anti-Semitic and I'm not But I it was just a very conservative environment, and it was a very procrustean, if I can use that word, environment. It was just not very permissive or encouraging of any kind of anything outside of a very narrow box. It was really not for me.

[17:12] DAVID ADJMI: And I really I just one day looked around and thought I don't want to do this. And I quit school. I just walked out of the school. And I told my dad I need to be at a public school, and if you can he didn't want me to go to public school because he didn't want me to marry a non-Jewish girl, he said. That was the that was if only he knew.

[17:33] kenneth lonergan: Yeah.

[17:34] DAVID ADJMI: Only he knew. And but he wouldn't let me. So there was like a detente where I just said, okay, then I guess I'm just gonna sit in my room, and which I did for like weeks and weeks. He wouldn't give in. And I just wanted to go to Midwood or More Road, one of these schools near me. He wouldn't let me. And then eventually he found this like prep school that I could go to, which was much more louche, I think, than Murro. But I went there and it was called York Prep.

[17:59] kenneth lonergan: And they took me in the middle of my junior year.

[18:02] DAVID ADJMI: And uh and then I ended up and they actually had a college preparatory sort of program and at the yeshiva, they didn't wouldn't talk to us about that. So that's when I learned about college and stuff like that.

[18:13] kenneth lonergan: And where did the theater start to come into your life?

[18:16] DAVID ADJMI: My mom used to take me when I was about five or six. I saw my first show, which was The Wiz.

[18:20] kenneth lonergan: Oh, I see.

[18:23] DAVID ADJMI: It was amazing. I was in nine I was little, I was little mackerel. That was a I just remember going, we drove into the city and there was a hurricane there. And we drove in and we parked on that right next to the Majestic Theater. There was a parking lot. Then we went and then we went, and then we walk in and we were a little late, so the show was started, and they were dancing around with these ribbons. They all these women had ribbons and they were dancing and running around the stage with these ribbons flowing, and I thought, what the hell is this? And my mother looked in the program and she said, Oh, that's called the tornado dance. It was called the Tornado Dance, and I was like, Oh, we've just come from a hurricane, and this is a tornado, but as a dance. And I started to understand, I think, metaphor.

[19:06] kenneth lonergan: Yeah.

[19:06] DAVID ADJMI: In that moment, I was like, Oh, you could represent a tornado with ribbon. Oh, how fantastic. Oh, yeah. If you haven't you don't know this whiz, the original Broadway production, highly recommend getting the streaming it or even getting a even downloading it. It's really great. And Stephanie Mills who played Dorothy. She was a teenager. It's just great. Really, really great.

[19:28] kenneth lonergan: Oh wow.

[19:29] DAVID ADJMI: Yeah, that kind of theatricality is very it's interesting. Just think of Stereophonic. How incredibly visually elaborate and developed it is and how important that is to the to the show. But we'll get to Stereophonic in a bit. What about your what about your first glimmers that it was something you felt you wanted to do or you could do or you might explore it as a writer or is that did you come straight into writing or did you perform in high school at all or did you when did you become a when did you start to think you might want to be have a life?

[19:43] DAVID ADJMI: I knew when I saw these plays that I loved what I loved was the feeling of electricity and that's what I'm still attracted to. It's a sort of ecstatic feeling of aliveness that I didn't have in my life. It was so concentrated it was like a tincture of life on stage but heightened the way it felt in my mind. But I had no expression for it in life. So it was like doing something it was almost like annexing something in my psyche that I didn't act I couldn't activate. And especially all they had a lot of tap dancing musicals when I was little. So they had Tommy Tune. It wasn't just tap dancing it was like all of Bob Fosse and a chorus line and all of this lots of very dramatic dancing and and it was just very electrifying.

And I wanted to do that. I was like I want to dance I want to tap dance especially because I thought wow, this is so incredible. It's like music and dance at the same time because it was so syncopated. I just love that. I thought it was so virtuosic. And so that's what I thought I wanted to do when I was little. And then I thought then that I wasn't interested.

[21:14] DAVID ADJMI: Then I became I went through puberty and I was like, look, I don't want any of that. I'm gonna listen to Depeche Mode. And then and then I thought I was gonna do film. And I went to USC for college in the film school, and I thought this is sterile for me and so business like, and there's so many people and the grips, and I I don't even know who I am, I don't even know what I'm doing artistically. I need to make myself an artist some. And so that's when I thought, what about theater? That's great. And I transferred out of USC and I went to Sarah Lawrence, and then that's when I saw John Guare's play Six Degrees of Separation.

[21:52] kenneth lonergan: Was that the Stockard Channing one?

[21:54] DAVID ADJMI: Yeah, I saw that.

[21:55] kenneth lonergan: Yeah, see great too.

[21:57] DAVID ADJMI: I loved it a lot, and I don't think it's in the published version, but I just remember at the end of that play, the one that I saw, the painting turns. But this two-sided painting just revolving and revolving. I don't think it's in the published script because I looked at it. And but that there was something about the way John Guare dramatized duality in that play, just tonally, and just in terms of what the play was about. There was so much heartbreak in that play. Even now I get emotional thinking about that play. There's something about that play, it really affected me. And I thought, oh my god, I want to do that. And that was the turning point for me.

[22:49] DAVID ADJMI: And then I think right around that point, Angels in America had come out, and I thought, oh my god, I want to do that. And so I wanted to do all these things. Then I and then I started getting interested in more avant-garde theater and Susan Laurie Parks, and I interned for Richard Foreman. And I was really just like trying to understand like what is the spectrum of what is possible in this medium. And it happened around that period during the mid-90s.

[23:15] kenneth lonergan: What do you remember the first time you tried to write something for the stage or wrote something for the stage? Did you s did just describe that if you can remember that's embarrassing?

[23:24] DAVID ADJMI: Sure. That's why I asked you. I want to say it was a really bad Angels in America copy.

[23:32] kenneth lonergan: Yeah.

[23:33] DAVID ADJMI: But like with the with a Christopher Durang comedy in it. It was like all of my things. It was this unsynthesized, and then it had bits and parts of my own problems in it. I have this issue, and I have this mental problem, and I'm gonna dramatize it, and if it's that I think a lot of people start out with a pastiche of somebody else's something they read. What else are we gonna do?

[23:54] kenneth lonergan: Yeah, it's totally I my I can't remember exactly my my first play I tried to write was a ripoff of one it was like it was a one Jack Nicholson's character from One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest barely disguised with another character, and one of them thought they were in the Vietnam War, and one of them thought they were in an insane asylum. That was about six pages long.

[24:20] DAVID ADJMI: Oh, that's very economical.

[24:24] kenneth lonergan: And maybe it was maybe ten pages long. And the first one act play that I wrote was a was this straight up rip-off of Network.

[24:31] DAVID ADJMI: Oh, except it was a stand-up comedian and not a newsman.

[24:35] kenneth lonergan: So I think it's I love Network too. We like a lot of the same things.

[24:40] DAVID ADJMI: Yeah, yeah.

[24:41] kenneth lonergan: That angel was also amazing.

[24:44] DAVID ADJMI: God.

[24:45] kenneth lonergan: So I want to ask you, I have some written down. I they were actually interesting when I wrote them down. So we'll see if they're still interesting now or interesting to me. Did you oh yes, did you have a was there somebody like a teacher or a mentor or a group that was your Virgil to Dante and Inferno or someone who took you through or was helpful, encouraging, inspiring, any of that.

[25:10] DAVID ADJMI: I actually try I had a high school teacher who was fantastically good theater teacher, and then I had a close friend who's a friend of my my my best friend's mother who was immensely helpful just as a writing teacher, even though I didn't know she was a writing we were just friends and she read everything I wrote and helped me a lot. So did you have anyone like that in your life? Did you just have to do it all on your own?

[25:27] kenneth lonergan: I had the opposite of that.

[25:29] DAVID ADJMI: Oh, you'd bet.

[25:32] kenneth lonergan: I had people who almost caused me to melt down.

[25:35] DAVID ADJMI: Yeah.

[25:36] kenneth lonergan: I had a lot of difficult teachers. I had some nice teachers. I don't know if I had a Virgil.

[25:40] DAVID ADJMI: Yeah.

[25:41] kenneth lonergan: I wanted a Virgil.

[25:42] DAVID ADJMI: Yeah.

[25:42] kenneth lonergan: But then on the other hand, I think it was maybe right that I didn't. I think it was the me battling and having to do everything and finding my own way. I think feels part of my I it felt like if you believe in destiny, it's like part of the my destiny. It's interesting because people def I think people often define themselves not just with the people who influence them positively, but also in opposition of people who they don't who are not who are getting a negative something to react against.

[26:11] DAVID ADJMI: Yeah, and I don't think any of it is negative in the end.

[26:14] kenneth lonergan: Yeah, but uh oppositional in any case.

[26:16] DAVID ADJMI: Yeah, oppositional.

[26:17] kenneth lonergan: Yeah.

[26:17] DAVID ADJMI: Some people, some of my teachers wanted to negate me in various ways that were maybe not constructively helpful.

[26:25] kenneth lonergan: Yeah.

[26:26] DAVID ADJMI: But I think all of those teachers activated something in me that already lived there that was like my own bad self-esteem or some negative idea that I had about myself that I was fighting with, and then it just became an externalization of this buried inner conflict.

[26:44] kenneth lonergan: And so in the end, I was very great, so cliché. But I was grateful for these sort of semi-obliterating experiences with these teachers.

[26:54] DAVID ADJMI: Because in the process of confronting them and working through it in my own mind, I just learned something. I helped myself.

[27:09] kenneth lonergan: I had both. I had teachers who I really—most of the teachers who taught playwriting I found to be not helpful.

[27:15] DAVID ADJMI: And I don't know if that's still the same, because it was a fairly new idea when I was in my twenties that teach playwriting at all, I think.

[27:23] kenneth lonergan: And I found all the formalities and all the formal structures that you can be written down, which is the equivalent of a screenwriting manual, which I always think are not helpful.

[27:36] DAVID ADJMI: But that sounds terrible.

[27:37] kenneth lonergan: No, not so good.

[27:39] DAVID ADJMI: And then I found them to be—I don't know if I found it helpful myself. I found it to be a bit confusing, but I had really good advice that I was following.

[27:47] kenneth lonergan: And I also—but it must have been interesting to be out there on your own in a way, but maybe it was a familiar feeling to you since just describing sketching out what like for you at home, just with your interest and what you described before, not to get too personal, but that sounds interesting.

[28:05] DAVID ADJMI: Have you spoken to my shrink?

[28:06] kenneth lonergan: No, no, but my parents were both shrinks and amateurishly trained.

[28:11] DAVID ADJMI: No, but I don't mean that in a psychological.

[28:13] kenneth lonergan: No, but I think that this is absolutely true. I think we bring these ghosts with us to everything and to the page as well.

[28:21] DAVID ADJMI: And I think—I don't know why I feel like I summoned these people to me, like phantoms and these people that I just had to deal with head-on. And so some of these mentors that I had who were just very destructive, they weren't all. I had a couple of teachers at Iowa. I went to Iowa for graduate writing, and I actually liked it because they didn't give us the manual and say—it was very delicate and interesting and empowering and really wonderful. I really feel like I learned so much about writing there.

[28:55] kenneth lonergan: But I do believe, yeah, I do think, yes, I felt like when I had these experiences, like I had one teacher who just really every single time I brought in even a page, it was just like a humiliating experience. And I was like, oh my God, I don't know what to do. I can't even bring in a page, and I had to bring in a page.

[29:18] DAVID ADJMI: What was the orientation of the shoddy criticism?

[29:22] kenneth lonergan: It was different every time, but I was at that moment writing quite stylized work. I was trying to—I consider myself an expressionist writer, and I like the idea of torquing reality and pushing it.

[29:35] DAVID ADJMI: Yeah.

[29:35] kenneth lonergan: And seeing what I could do. I also had a suspicion this teacher was not gonna like this kind of writing. And so early on, I brought in the most crazy one that I could think of because I thought if she will be nice to me in this crazy one, then I can calm down and make more nuanced work. But I had to know—I tested, and the test was not successful.

[29:56] DAVID ADJMI: And then that began the descent into hell.

[29:59] kenneth lonergan: Yeah.

[29:59] DAVID ADJMI: Yeah.

[30:01] kenneth lonergan: And so you went to Iowa and came back to New York City.

[30:06] DAVID ADJMI: And then I temped quite a lot. I don't know if they have temping anymore, but I had to do it. I lived at home.

[30:13] kenneth lonergan: She's nodding.

[30:14] DAVID ADJMI: I'm sorry. It's terrible. I had to do it. I know all the temp people. Maybe they're all dead now at this point. I don't know. But I worked at law firms and I did this and that, and was at Morgan Stanley for a while. And then I applied to graduate schools, and I got into Iowa, and I thought, oh my God, this is like a godsend. And it was because it was such a grind having to do the—I don't think people realize how terrible this is. You have to try to write plays, and it takes me a long time to write.

[30:45] kenneth lonergan: So I qu—and I need the psychic space to do it.

[30:48] DAVID ADJMI: Yeah.

[30:48] kenneth lonergan: Some writers are good. They like Wallace Stevens sold insurance, and then he did that. I need all day sometimes when I'm in it. I don't know how you are, but that's how I am.

[30:56] DAVID ADJMI: Yeah, I need a lot of time usually. Sometimes the pressure helps.

[31:00] kenneth lonergan: Yeah.

[31:00] DAVID ADJMI: External pressure, but generally, like to—and sometimes it's just you're not writing the whole time, but it's hard to describe. You're building up a sort of emotional psychic landscape, and it takes all day.

[31:14] kenneth lonergan: No, I think that's true. Did you—so did you find—I wanted to ask you both a now then and now question, which is just in terms of—I don't know if this is your experience, but in terms of what you think you're writing and it turns out what you find out you're writing later on, either while you're writing it or later on after you see it performed, or even years later when you look back on it. Do you have a—is there—did you have—what was that if you share that experience, which I met last I helped you to—what was that like for you in the beginning as opposed to how it is for you now?

[31:51] DAVID ADJMI: You're really asking about the unconscious.

[31:54] kenneth lonergan: And well, it is, but it's—and then when it peeps up, what you do with it, and how do you—I feel very excited when I meet myself when I meet my naked face in the mirror of my play. But I'm never expecting—I always think I'm doing something about some other thing, but deep down I know I need to know that I have exposed myself and my unconscious because I think that's—for me, that's the work is to tell the absolute truth and to do it in such a way that you're vulnerable when you're writing that you can allow your unconscious to reveal something that you don't consciously want to reveal, and it's almost like some sort of fetus that just reveals itself, a cardiograph. You just—there it is, it's alive, it's real, it's part of me. I can't manufacture this. This is the work I do. So I always feel very—I usually get the chills when I see it because I'm not expecting it, and I'm really shocked by it.

[33:04] DAVID ADJMI: How does it describe just how it manifests itself? If you're a scene that comes that suddenly appears or a character and how it was with Stereophonic, I didn't know I was writing so much about my family, and there are details in there that are—it's like a Freudian Rebus. It's just—it's my family, and it's things about my—and I was like, oh, I'm writing about my family. And then my brother's in there in a very profound way. My brother wanted to be an engineer and never pursued that dream. My brother used to play the guitar in his room. He was a DJ. He DJ'd things like the Red Parrot Club and stuff when I was a little boy, because they're much—and so I noticed it. I started realizing I saw—I didn't understand it, and then I'm like, oh my gosh.

And then there's all this stuff about people calling each other brother in the play, and I went, oh my God, I'm writing about my brother. There's it—and so I would start picking up, I guess I would start psychoanalyzing the play once it was done, and I would go, that's interesting.

[34:13] kenneth lonergan: Once you're done or during while you're writing it?

[34:13] DAVID ADJMI: Sometimes it's while I'm writing. If it's something that's—usually when I'm writing, if it's something that'll usually be this jarring recognition, like the kind that I have when I'm in therapy where if my shrink looks at me, raises an eyebrow if I say something, and suddenly I'll just burst into tears because I'm like, oh my God. I just revealed something that I wasn't aware I was revealing because it's so persistent and it's so deep in me that it's like a molar, and I can't get away from it. And I'll have those moments.

[34:46] kenneth lonergan: Sure.

[34:47] DAVID ADJMI: And you're writing about made-up people who are—you know, the circumstances are so different. So how do you do—you tr—I guess do you—is it something you keep hovering? You see what you're doing, which you didn't realize you were doing, and then you have the rest of the play to write, and what do you—because what's so interesting—one of the things I find so interesting about writing just from a writer point of view and also as an audience is the—that the manifestation is fictional, the material is extremely personal. It's why everybody else can write those too. When you tell people your dreams, they don't follow it; they just start telling you their dreams instead because your dreams—only your associations with your own dreams are just for you. Whereas in a play or any work of art, one—the associations get equidistant between yourself and the audience.

[34:52] kenneth lonergan: Right.

[34:52] DAVID ADJMI: So how do you consciously pursue the thread that it's about your brother, for instance, or do you try to stick with the fiction and hope that the spring be fed by the spring that you've just discovered, or how do you make that balance? That's such a difficult and amazing question.

[35:54] kenneth lonergan: Uh, and it is so complicated. I tend to not know what I'm doing when I'm working, or like I tend to kind of do this, like I kind of lobotomize myself when I'm working because I don't want to know what the characters are. I don't want to think. I don't want to premeditate anything.

[36:09] DAVID ADJMI: Yeah.

[36:09] kenneth lonergan: But then I think I'm writing from a split frequency, where part of it I'm crafting things and I'm living with these characters with characteristics that I'm starting to identify and hone a little bit as I'm working. And then part of it is streaming from someplace that I don't—that has to be me. I don't know. It all has to be—who else would it be?

[36:35] DAVID ADJMI: Well, who else could it be?

[36:36] kenneth lonergan: But it's also funny because it's also people you know.

[36:44] DAVID ADJMI: But it's the whole world.

[36:45] kenneth lonergan: It's the whole thing.

[36:47] DAVID ADJMI: And then back out again.

[36:48] kenneth lonergan: That's absolutely correct. And it's a very mysterious—what can I say?

[36:54] DAVID ADJMI: It is very mysterious, but I think once you lose yourself in—that's where miraculous things can happen. But you have to practice so that your reflexes are sharpened. I talk about it a little bit like Fred Astaire started out doing shuffle ball change. But then he didn't have to do shuffle ball change. And once you don't have to do shuffle ball change, you can get lost in what you're doing, and it's gonna still have shape and finesse. So that's—I feel like now after writing plays for so many years, I feel like I have that facility.

[37:26] kenneth lonergan: How do you feel? How do you approach just the shape of the story or the structure of the story?

[37:31] DAVID ADJMI: I don't—a bad version of the word structure, but the architecture, the gap holding, just the what happens, what happens, how far you go in or out of the connoisseur. Obviously, all in the studio. It seems like it was conceived that way. But when you lose your way and your instinct fails you, what do you do to try to find it?

[37:51] kenneth lonergan: I just—I love talking to you so much. I just had to say that. What do I do? Someone said to me, I was in London doing a reading with Simon Stevens, and someone said the end of the first half—the end of the first half ends on this joyful moment. Isn't it supposed to be like some crisis that happens and then the curtain goes down? And I thought, oh yeah, maybe I should have done that. But I don't know why I like to do three-act structure if I can. I like to be conventional because I'm so all over the place, and my instincts—and I'm so maximalist with everything that I think I have to find ways of—I have to find a syntax that I can communicate with people that they'll like if I can.

[38:35] DAVID ADJMI: Yeah, yeah.

[38:36] kenneth lonergan: And if I can't, I won't. I'll try to do three-act structure. I remember reading that book, Screenplay by Sid Field. I read it, and I thought—and that's one of those things you won't like because it says do this, do that, and put this in. And I also didn't like it. But then sometimes I'm like, oh, I could do this. I could do a little twist here and a little thing there. And sometimes it opens up the play for me if I have these structural things.

[38:58] DAVID ADJMI: But I think like with Stereophonic, it was such a strange. I think the apparatus of the music studio was demanding in terms of structure and what I did with. That was my big question. Okay, what am I gonna do with these people in this unit set? You know what I mean? Yeah. And so I was just it was all very intuitively made, and I just followed my intuition, and that was all I did. And I like that feels good to me, that feels good to me. I like this kind of accretion. But I don't know, it took me so long to write, and I don't totally remember how I did it. Do you remember if you knew where you were headed with it, like where just where the story would end? For instance, you have that amazing jump late in the play where they come back to do redubs.

Incredible to see how they're not getting along after all that time and that really how amazing scene where the microphone and barking at each other and then they start seeing harmony, and then they go back there again. Did you that's a bold just jump ahead six months? It's a few months anyway. Yeah, because everything was so contained in the first and it worked perfectly well. There's no it's great. If you know you were do that and make you nervous thinking you might do that, did you feel like oh no, breaking out of my can my positively confined structure? Worry about things like that I didn't feel nervous about it. I didn't know I was gonna do it. When I first started it, I thought it was gonna be a 70-minute play because I didn't even want to write a new play because I was having so many bad experiences in the theater and I was getting so little money, and I was like, I'll never get drawers this show will never give me a good review.

And I should just make some money. And so uh that's what I thought I was gonna do at that point. But then I got a grant and they said write a new play, and or else you can't have all this money. And I thought, well, I need that money. So I'm like gonna work the system. I'm gonna work the system and you know what? Okay, I'll do your little play, and it'll be 70 minutes in and out and here, and then I'm off to go write for Hollywood and make all my money. And then of course I got obsessed with it because I'm obsessive. And then I started learning about the recording process, which became fascinating. I didn't know what overdubs were. I didn't understand mixing and how they did the harmonies and when they do the drum tracks and all these different things.

So I just got very anthropological and I just really became obsessed with this music, the recording process, which I had no information about this, but prior to writing the play. I didn't know about it. So then I thought, oh, this could be a module, that could be a module. And I started and then it just kinda happened. And that last act I wrote in one sitting. That whole final section, I wrote it in I was we were having a workshop coming up and we did the plays, we structured it so that every six months or something, I would come in with 20 new pages and then we'd do a workshop and we'd hear it. And that's how I would goaded myself to do it.

[41:57] kenneth lonergan: Yeah, talk about that a little bit. So how long did it take you to write the play and how did it how talk about the workshop process? I'm curious. I've never done that in, but I think I ought to. I've done I had I've had things read out loud as I went along, just in very much more casually. But do you use the same actors? Just talking about and did you had you done that before? And also when the actual music comes in and when you've committed to having so much music and real musicians. I know most of the cast all mostly learned their instruments and didn't play them. That's also rather bold thing to do. One thing I love about this play is what incredible gambit of its own and how immensely successful and popular it is. Deserve most of those things times those two things. But anyway, that aside, can you just talk about the workshop process and the process of building the play? Where the other and how much you let them in and how all that worked.

[42:55] DAVID ADJMI: Yeah, again, so I got in this grant after I had agreed to quit writing for the theater. And then I said, okay. And then I have a friend of mine, Jenny Schwartz, who is an amazing writer, said to me, I also don't like writing plays anymore, but I make myself do it by creating these little workshops, and I get actors to come in, and then I get a director, and they just and it gives me the impetus to do something. And then we'll do it here and there, and slowly over time I'll build my play that way. And I thought, I'm gonna try this because I'm already so burned out from the American theater. Why not try something new? And the way I decided to do this, and I just had bad self-esteem at the time, and I was I don't know, I was traumatized a little bit from everything.

And so I just thought I'm gonna ask a whole group of people to be involved with this from the get-go. So I asked Daniel Lkin to direct it because we would we had wanted to work together, and I had a feeling he would be the person for this. And then I didn't know Will Butler from Arcade Fire at the time, but a friend of our friend introduced us, and then he said he would do it. I don't understand how any of this happened. And then in retrospect, I'm like, this whole thing is nuts because nobody really Will never knew didn't know who I was. He'd never read one of my plays. He just said, okay. And then David's in, I wanted to work with him, and he said he'll do it. And we just got like a team, everyone, the creative team.

And they said, we'll just come to the workshops and we'll support, be supportive, and we'll cheer you on, which is what I needed, because I had bad self-esteem, as I said. We did that for about, I would say it started in I came up with the idea in 2013. We started doing it in 2014, and then in 2019, we were gonna put it, we were getting ready to put it on. It was gonna come go on in a co-production between Second Stage on Broadway at The Haze and CTG. And then COVID happened. But it was, but I would say it was done. Now, in terms of the music, Will Butler, I would just send him little things saying, I'm doing it. And he was like, I'm on tour with Arcade Fire going around the world. And then I'd email him again a year later, I'm doing it.

And then he'd be like, I'm again on another tour. I we did another album in the meantime. And so this is how it went for several years. It was crazy. And then eventually I said, Okay, I have a draft. And then we got together, me, Will, Daniel, the music director, Justin Craig, and Ryan Rummery, the sound of, and we read it together. We all did read the parts, and then I said, Okay, I think this is the structure. And I would I came up with like song A. I wouldn't write the song. She said, and sometimes I put dummy lyrics, blah, blah, blah, whatever. And then, okay, song B here. This is written, the song is written by this character, and it has this feeling. Song A comes back again. Now song C is introduced in that scene.

Now we get song A again, but they're singing the harmonies. So this is what we did. And I said, okay, this is the task, Will. You have to write these songs. They have to accomplish these tonal feeling things and these dramatic things, because they'd be fighting about different things in the songs, which I had to figure out what they were because the song exists. And I didn't know anything about music. And oh, and we also enlisted John Kilgore, who was a very wonderful sound designer who used to work for Philip Glass and won lots of Grammys in the 70s. And he went through the script page by page and would say, No, that's not right. No. And so I said, Okay, tell me what to do. And he would tell me things. So this was like the forensic process of making it.

[46:24] kenneth lonergan: And how did you where did it so that's it's how much how many why didn't you have the actors read your draft? What do you mean? You said you just read the four of you read them when you had a full draft. You had your workshop actors. Yeah, but we had different people. We had we weren't sure we were casting, and so we would have different actors all the time for each workshop, which in the end I wouldn't do. It was crazy, and I think it was not nice, probably to put actors in that position because they I didn't realize that everyone was gonna like it so much. I that then they wanted to be in it, and I felt badly. That's what I'm saying. We couldn't do that either. Yeah. Will Brill was the only person I knew for sure that I was going to cast was Andrew Butler, who played Charlie.

So when as soon as I came up with Charlie, which was I think three years in, I just said, You're doing this. And I wrote him an email and I said, No matter what happens, you're in this because I couldn't think of anyone else like him. But everyone else, I was like, I'm not sure. And Will Brill was in an early version, but then he couldn't play the bass, and I was like, Daniel said, We can't cast him, we need a bass player. So we stopped using him. But then you ended up casting a musician. We did. That was largely wouldn't say large. I think we all agreed, like this is how we have to do it because it's such a hard play to act. And if they can't act it, then it was bull it was all important. If they couldn't play the music, you then you're done. And if you can't act it, you're really done. But we made the decision to just have faith in them that they could be musicians.

[47:56] DAVID ADJMI: Did you was there anything changed? Was there could you put your finger on say turning point or revelation or anything? But is there anything just you thought was going to be in the play that wasn't or any most significant change in the story for not from when you're just fishing around what's in your head all along the way, and then you then it ends up not, then it turns into something else you discard it. And if you do remember anything like that, could you describe why what happened and why you I can think of a few things off the top of my head. There were thousands of pages of like scenes that I was auditioning, but then there were things when I was getting closer, I was like, oh, this is gonna be in it.

The second half of the play at one started with this kind of I had this idea to make this sort of virtuoso I used so someone had the demo for Steely Dan's Black Cow. And so they bring the tape in and then they play it, and it becomes this sort of backdrop for this scene of people going in and out and having these weird, and I just loved it. And it had nothing to do with anything. It really it didn't advance anything, it was so static and not good. And yet I adored it and I didn't want to let go of it. This and I just love the idea of the Steely Dan everyone's walking in and looking where's my Chinese food? Did you see my fried rice? I don't know, just stupid things like that got cut and it got replaced with this scene where Diana, the one of the main characters is trying to hit a note and can't hit it.

So it's it actually got replaced with the opposite tonal thing of something very tense. That was their I have a couple of other things but I'm shy to say what they are. I'm still so embarrassed. I think we have time for some questions if anybody has any questions or I could just keep asking questions. Um back there with the nice in the middle question the tape.

[50:13] kenneth lonergan: So is it true that somewhere during the process you were writing so much that someone had to tell you to stop and then you stopped the question. People were always telling me stop. I think what happened was actually in 2019 we did a workshop and I my nature is just to keep trying to get it better, better, better so I think at that point it was like six years in and there was a character played by Juliana Canfield in the Broadway production that I just I was very frustrated writing that character because I just felt like I wanted to give her more, and I was like why and I kept writing for her, and like the character really I I've never experienced this. She was just so reticent with me and didn't want to give me anything.

And so I was trying to like make her talk. And so for this workshop, I was like, You're gonna talk and you're gonna make have more dramatic things happen to you. And I did do this scene, and it was awful. It was just so phony baloney and terrible writing. And I heard it in a workshop, and it and I thought that's I'm not that's it. She's not that was so that was the one thing I was like, that arc is frustrating me, and I want more out of her, and why won't she talk? And so I just thought, you know what? I'm just stopping because I could feel it get every time I tried to do it, it would just get worse and worse. That's really when I stop. When I feel it getting worse. Okay, this is that because I'm actually really good at rewriting because I can just get closer and closer to what I want.

So my it's like chiseling marble for me. It's like getting more sharp. And then there's a point where it's oh, it's so sharp, this is gonna break off. Like I have to stop myself. So that's when I stopped.

[52:07] kenneth lonergan: How did you know that I dictated it? Can I repeat the question? Can you talk about how you dictated some of the scenes, some writing to one of the actresses, and how did that change the process or not?

[52:19] DAVID ADJMI: I'm very shocked that you know this, but okay, I maybe I talked about it in an interview. I don't remember talking about this. I had an assistant to I so I work with assistants quite a lot, and my assistants are not like getting coffee for me. They're sitting in a room with me and trying to help me, like what with what I do. And in this particular process, we had David Zinn build us a model of the set because I was getting so confused about who was in which room when, because it is a little bit like farce. Everyone's moving around, and they're in the sound room, then they go to the control room, then they leave the studio, then they come back. So we had these little cardboard figures for each of the characters on this like little model that David Zinn created.

And so that was part of what we were doing. And then there were scenes where I was like, something's not right here. And so I would just dictate. And then I'd pace around and beat all the characters. Hey, what are you doing? Leave me alone. No. I mean, and I would whatever came into my head, I would just say it. Like I would just let it be whatever came into my head, even if it was terrible. I was just write all this down. Julia was her name. And she was fabulous. And so then I'd say, okay, what did I just do? I did it. So she'd go, Hey, leave me alone, blah blah blah. And I'd be like, okay, cut, move, leave me alone and put it under that. Now read it again. Hey, blah, blah, blah, leave me alone.

Okay, great. Now add an interruption there. Now put him in the control room. Oh, sorry. Put him in the control. So I would start like doing that. Okay, read it again. Then I would read it with her. Then I'd read it and she'd listen to me. So I would start to craft it and shape it in that way. And it's really, you know, it was fun, actually. I love doing it. One of the reasons I did this too was because I was working on a memoir while I was writing Stereophonic, and I was so lonely making the memoir. Because it was so depressing writing a memoir, because you really have to face your demons. And I was just like, oh, why did I agree to do this? And I don't want to face my demons all day. Then I'd write Stereophonic, which is like more demons. When I was like, uh this, I need someone to sit with me at least. I just need a companion. And so that's one of the reasons why I did that.

[54:34] kenneth lonergan: What inspired you, David, to write Marie Antoinette?

[54:37] DAVID ADJMI: I really wasn't inspired to write it. It's odd. I don't have normal, like I know writers have these stories like, oh, I'm so inspired. I love Marie Antoinette. And I was as a child, I used to read. I never really was interested in music production. And I never was interested in Marie Antoinette ever. And so when I was at an artist's colony in 2006, I was meant to write another play for this program that I was in at Soho Rappa Theater downtown, a wonderful theater. And I couldn't do what I said I wanted. I had come up with a crazy idea that was it was involving taking Henry James language and putting it all over my walls and do it. It was like a beautiful mind. It was insane. And I couldn't do it.

I'd made a problem that I couldn't solve and I couldn't figure out how to write it. And then I thought, you know what? I'm not gonna write this play, and I'm gonna tell them sorry, I couldn't do the assignment and don't do the reading. So that's it. I just gave myself permission to give up. And then once I had given up, I was reading a book in the library, just like I'm gonna live a life of leisure, reading my little book. And somewhere in the book it said Versailles. It was Mary Gateskill's Veronica, is what I was reading. And it said she mentions Versailles, and something about that word, I just my eye just zoomed in on Versailles, and I thought, I'm gonna write a play about Marie Antoinette.

And I just went to the library in Peterborough, New Hampshire, and got children's books about Marie Antoinette, because I knew I didn't want it to be an actual history play. And I just I researched it very quickly, and then I just wrote it in four days, and that was the end of that.

[56:21] kenneth lonergan: How did you feel about it in the end of the four days?

[56:26] DAVID ADJMI: I liked it. No, but it's very I love the play, but it's not you can feel the min, it's like very minimal and very spare, and that was the style I chose, and there's like a velocity to it and a kind of I consider it an etude. It was an experiment, and I was like, good for me. And it's like my most produced play. I was like, okay. People really like that play, but it was very quick.

[56:51] kenneth lonergan: Time for one more question. If anyone has one.

[56:54] Audience Member: Yes, sir. Talking about Julianne Canfield's character, and there's a scene in the third act where Holly sings, what is it? She talked about it. Talks about don't talk. I'm sorry. Don't look now. Yes. And can you and it's a wonderful moment about that. Is that about right? Didn't mean to butcher your question. I was much more the questioner was far more eloquent. It was a beautiful question.

[57:38] kenneth lonergan: But you didn't take it. You did a good job.

[57:39] Audience Member: No, you did a good job.

[57:42] DAVID ADJMI: That scene I wrote, that was one of these scenes where I was like, I don't know what I'm doing. So I just wrote that whole scene from just in one sitting, and I didn't know what was happening. And I was like, why I don't know why she's talking about this. I have no idea what's going on. Probably gonna cut this scene. And it was just I just felt so I don't know what the word is, like it was just a peremptory scene. It was insisting upon being written in the moment, and it felt very mysterious to me and encoded with something that I couldn't understand. And it vibrated with something very gnomic and strange, and that I was like very and I thought this is Holly. This is my character. She won't say it. But there's she's not gonna ever say what's going on, really, what she really wants to say. This is a very roundabout way of talking about something that she cannot speak about, and I'm gonna honor that and keep it the way it is. So I kept it in the play.

[58:49] kenneth lonergan: Interesting in light of your what you're saying about Holly earlier, because she doesn't say much compared to what you might have expected or wanted her to say when you weren't respecting her autonomy as a character. You know, in that way. That's and then that's quite interesting. It's funny how it must have been nice to find that out along the way.

[59:13] DAVID ADJMI: I was so happy that she said one anything. No. I was like But it's the characters Juli Jul Julianne is such a great actress, but it wouldn't even so like you she's got a full inner life that you provided for the actress to tap into it. And it's just it's her quietness and her reticence and her sort of not it's a very volatile group, and they're all they all have a lot to say, and they're all very they're very few of them are very shy about saying it, but she's always a little bit she's on the back foot in some way. Yeah that's just quite interesting that to when you describe that about in relation to what you're saying or it's interesting because and I want to so uh two questions one is strictly sort of professional question is did you have a lot of pressure about the length of the play and if you did how did you how do you cope with that does it bot does it affect how do you it's hard uh people are always telling other people how long their work is and how it doesn't I don't know what to cut but it seems long it doesn't feel long but it but I know it is long but the time on the clock sometimes I I never want anything to be too long and but obviously when everyone says well if it plays it doesn't matter how long it is as long as I sailed through your butt I'd much rather watch your play for three hours than a short play that that I don't care for discuss.

But when you're writing it and it's your work do you feel are you affected by that did you get any of that pressure and are you affected by it if you do and how do you maintain your own judgment about about the about what the work ought to be just in order to have it be its best self on one of the first previews someone came up to me and said and I've heard it a few times since people think they're being very clever. They say wow it's so ironic that everyone's talking about Diana Cutting when she doesn't want to cut her song down and you won't cut your play down. Because you're too stubborn. And you're just being an egotistical and the truth is I also I want people to enjoy my work. I don't like to be boring ever.

I want to be economical. I don't want to be indulgent. I don't see myself as an indulgent person. And it's very confusing because there are so many people who have said, Oh gosh, I've seen your play and it was saying it like you just said, or I wish I could say I wish I could start all over again. And then there are people who literally walk out after 10 minutes because they're like, this is terrible and interminable. And I'm like, but which is it? Let I I wanna what's okay. What am I doing? How can I rewrite it? But it's so interesting how time works in the theater and just in uh the dur how what duration means in the theater and how people experience it and what how things signify to the percipient in when they're experiencing a work of art.

And and this and it's all about that, how it signifies and how you register. If you think Simon, there's a scene where this guy is just tuning his drum and you're watching mechanics and you don't understand what's actually happening in the scene because it's all buried in subtext, that is boring. So if there's no tension for you there, then it becomes quite boring. And so I and I think there are people who experience the play that way. If they're I'm not the kind of writer who puts big rubrics of this scene is about this and this is the plot line and duh. It's in there, but I to maybe it's my dry Jewish way, but I like to bury everything. I just worry when but it's a very long play, and it's I think it's I don't be too long.

It's that doesn't I my feeling about pace and duration of theater is that it's of no meaning whatsoever. It's everything is if it's interesting and it's engaging, it's engaging and it's alive. And if it isn't, then you start then I start to get bored. But yeah, so if the play is alive for half an hour for three hours or even for four hours, then I have nothing to complain about. I'm thrilled. Plus, it's such a full meal, as my wife might say. You really feel like you've seen something. And but I struggle with it myself because I somet I don't want anyone to be bored either, and then I worry, I think it feels okay, but I'm I don't think you're writing the adult at all. But do you doubt yourself?

Talk a lot about how you doubt yourself. Do you doubt yourself about that while you're in production? Or also before it's well rehearsed and well realized, things are wonky, and you're never sure if it's you or the cast or the direction or just where the production is famously the last there are certain weeks in rehearsal where you're everyone is just ready to kill themselves because it's such a total disaster. No matter what the play is. And now at age 62, I the last time I did a show last year, and I finally was just like ready to jump out the window, and I said, Oh, this is week five or whatever week it was. And I was like, it's always this hard. Always and it's gonna be fine in three days.

And then five three days later it was fine. It's um but how do you how's your own confidence in your judgment when you're really in the thick of it and people are saying putting pressure on you, which is feels what you can't tell whether it's conventional pressure? I would say anyone who walks out on the show is either just simply organically not connected to or is expecting something else and keep looking for something they're not getting, they think they're getting nothing. They're not finding the play where it lives, which is fine, but not it's not the play's fault. It doesn't mean the play is wrong. So how do you know how do you weather those moments of not being sure whether comments are coming from a conventional stale place uh that you're not interested in or not trying to satisfy, or whether it's uh an organic issue that might be something that you want to address.

[1:05:00] DAVID ADJMI: It's such a great question. And early in my career too, it was like it was harder to know. It was harder to know is this my ego? Am I just being stubborn? Or is this a legitimate con? I can't tell. What should I be listening? I want to grow, I want to get better, I don't want to be an ego maniac, but I also have to respect my writing, and I have to respect my instincts, and I have to respect my own taste, which is something I really struggled with very early on is respecting myself, respecting my own desire as an artist. Like, I like it. Like people would say to me, but why does this have to be there? And it was really hard for me to finally say, because I like it and I want I love it. That's why.

And maybe you don't love it, and that's okay. But so with this play in particular, I was very lucky because Adam Greenfield, who runs Playwrights Horizons, is a really an amazing human being. And he literally gave me not a single note. And one time, very like in like early on in previews, he just sent me, he said, I just sent you something, and don't look at it if you don't want to. But there's two small cuts that I think you could maybe make, but I'm not even sure. And he's like, But don't look at it if you don't want to. And I just didn't look because I just thought I remember, and I read through it so many times. I worked on it for so long for so many years, and I would go through it with a fine tooth comb, literally with okay, that I love this.

I like this. There's things I don't love. There are things I'll never love, but mainly when I finished reading it, I was like, oh, I really like this. I like it. I'm proud of this. And I didn't know what to cut. I was like, what do I cut without sacrificing something that feels imperative to the world that I'm making? So I just I didn't, and even though I am insecure and I do have self-doubts, and I am I lack self-confidence in many ways. There is a part of me that's like very confident. It's a really weird do you don't you I think playwrights all have this. Like we're we don't have confidence, and we have combustion. But you know what you like when you see it in front of you and of your own, and you also know what you're making you unhappy.

And it's really just for writers in the room, younger writers possibly. I think it's a really good thing to I think it's a great model because you don't want to be somebody who has no criticisms of themselves and you don't want your criticisms to be detrimental to moving forward and you want to follow what you're interested in, which what you like. But uh it's tough when you do lose your footing, and I and everyone but if you just note how much more you've looked at the play than anybody else, how much more you've examined it critically and also positively, and how much more you for what about and whether you're on target or off target. That's always true. It's something people really don't remember when they're giving notes to write, because the first trope you'll hear is you don't have any perspective, you're too close to you're paying for it.

How close are you? Exactly or whatever, or just you know that's um whether it's a good note or a bad note, it's just a note anyway, notes are weird. But I'm glad that's not but I think it's such a good instinct to have and to hone and it's wonderful to keep discovering things and not know. I remember I saw Bob Dylan interview fairly recently, older Bob Dylan talking about younger Bob Dylan. He was talking about some of the songs that he wrote when he was young and how he just can't do doesn't do that anymore. And he quoted some great famous song he wrote when he was 24, and he said, Man, that's just something. No one knows what that is. And then someone asked him a question. He said, I don't know.

I thought I was talking about this, and then he's finally said, On the other hand, it just sounds good. Which I really hope to remember because there's probably some reason why it sounds good. Just sounds good is a really good answer. That's a thing. And I think there's something about the lightness of that kind of an answer. There's the having keeping a feeling of lightness around your work and feeling like you have to like your atlas. Oh this has to be so amazing all the time because those kind of plays are ponderous. And I can feel those writers trying to write the every single thing has to be right and perfect. I wanna feel the messy human hand. I don't want it to feel perfect. I like the imperfections.

It's important and it's also so important for especially for any young writers or people who are just starting out listening to this to make your own mistakes. Don't make other people's mistakes. If you take a note, you have to understand what you're doing inside of you. It has to be your note and it has to resonate with something that lives in you. Otherwise, you're just taking orders, and that's not gonna lead to good art, in my opinion.

[1:09:41] kenneth lonergan: I think on that perfectly expressed note. Thank you very much, David. Wonderful so much. I loved it. And we are back. As always, it's so wonderful to hear someone's writing process.

[1:09:52] DAVID ADJMI: Yeah.

[1:09:52] kenneth lonergan: And I love hearing like writers talk to each other.

[1:09:57] DAVID ADJMI: Yes.

[1:09:58] kenneth lonergan: It's something that's which I hope the people listening to our podcast, like do, because I mean that's pretty much all you're getting is writers talking to each other. But yeah, I love hearing two writers who know each other and who know each other's work so well talking about process in that way.

[1:10:15] DAVID ADJMI: Yeah, I was talking to Dylan about that today because he was and yeah, I saw him ask you too, yeah, about our rewriting process processes, and it's foreign to me because I always get it right the first time.

[1:10:25] kenneth lonergan: Yeah, no, it's but everyone's is different. And he was also talking about he bought a book on it and this and that. And I was like, Yeah, I think that I'm I'm at the point that I there's not a lot of writing books that I haven't read already, or unless it's something oddly specific to like if it was a book that was like how to write for the Gen Z audience or something like that, I would be like, Yes, this is exactly something I don't know and I haven't read. But if it's just how like general how to write a play, like I've got that. So I think it's all in a different process. So I was like, definitely read more books as he was looking at books to read. I said, because you're you're here in that place of like where you're still getting that information, that that experience.

[1:11:09] kenneth lonergan: You know, it's also fun because I've been in writers' groups, I've run writers' groups, and it's fun to see people's rewrites come in.

[1:11:18] DAVID ADJMI: Oh, yeah.

[1:11:19] kenneth lonergan: And like I I have a friend who will bring in new pages or like new version of old pages, and there are wholesale, like there are massive chunks that are just gone.

[1:11:35] DAVID ADJMI: Yeah, and not that I never do that, but a lot of what I do is tweaking. Okay, it's very rare that I'm like, I'm gonna completely rethink this whole because again, I usually get at least that right. Oh but yeah, I'm like when he'll bring in a brand new first scene, and it's the play that I know, it's the characters that I know, it's the story that I know from reading earlier drafts, but the entire scene is brand new. I'm like that's wild to me.

[1:12:13] kenneth lonergan: Yeah, it is. I don't know. There's times where I've done that where I've written Shining in Misery, I wrote a whole new opening. Other shows I've written like a whole new thing to start it off. And it's oddly freeing, I think, too. Like when you like when you realize that as a writer, you have the ability to just completely delete something and you're not tied to it is really nice. But I'm one of those, like when it comes to rewrites, like I'll especially if I've seen it from an audience, I'll look and be like, oh, this didn't work. Yeah, this did work. There was, I was telling Dylan which moment. I'm like, there was a moment in with Bated Breath at the last reading where I saw it done a couple times, and I was like, This joke is not landing, and the actor is incredibly talented, and everything he's doing, it's not it's still not landing.

So this is tell me which one you don't have to say it on the other. It was just it was like a cute little moment in my head that made sense. And then when I'm oh yeah. I was like, oh yeah. So I'm happy to do stuff like that. I had I had something in my play eulogies, uh, and it was the line right before a big monologue that actually this monologue is going to be in Meet Me in the Monologue.

[1:13:17] kenneth lonergan: Oh, very good.

[1:13:17] DAVID ADJMI: You got me involved, or by the time this come out, probably will have already been so go to meet me in the monologue. Fast. You don't know. This could be out tomorrow, David.

[1:13:26] kenneth lonergan: And my best friend was playing the part, and I might have talked about this in an event that that you've heard this story on the podcast already. But my best friend was playing the part, and there was a line that I think in my head it was to be blurted out. Right. Like this major secret, and then walked back, and then through the course of the monologue, you understood more. And my best friend was reading that part. Dylan was at that reading. Uh-huh. And she said that she tried so hard to make that line work. Because she's my best friend and she loves me and she believes in my work, and she was trying. And I am sitting there going, Oh, that does not work. Yeah, no, it's not you. And then she tried to find the nicest way to tell me when we were having our discussion afterwards. I was like, already have it down, already already took my note on that. That line is gone.

[1:14:30] kenneth lonergan: Yeah.

[1:14:30] DAVID ADJMI: It's not when an actor comes up and they're like, How can I make this work? And you're like, Don't worry about it. It's not you. It's not you. And we have to do it again. Like that. And I'm so much happier with what I have now. Because I did go back and I put the work in to say, okay, this line isn't working. And so maybe it needs to be a couple of lines. So instead of blurting out a secret, because this character often makes inappropriate jokes, they make a joke now about this various serious thing that the monologue will be about. And then other people are like, don't joke about that. That's not even funny to that's not even funny to say. And then they're like, Oh, you think I was joking. Then it leads into it. And I think it's so much stronger now.

[1:15:13] kenneth lonergan: Yeah, no, I got that. I think me, because I'm such a comedy writer, that it's usually this didn't land a laugh. This didn't like that. Like the one I was talking about was there's a moment where it was Michael Salinas, and who is incredibly talented. Yes. And when he said his line that was like, I'm not some young kid begging for more, I'm Oliver. And it made sense in my head. And it was So you all heard that groan from you before you even got to the end of the line. Because his character's name was Oliver, and then he's I'm not some kid begging for more, I'm Oliver. And it's it was funny to me, but it never landed. And that was never. And in the in the first reading of the first read through at the rehearsal for this reading, you and I made eye contact and lost.

Nobody else did line. And then after the show, after I guess it was the first performance, and my brother was there, and I was like, Hey, did you catch? He was like, What? I was like, he said, I'm not some dumb, some little kid begging for more. I'm and Paul goes, Oliver. And so yeah, even Paul didn't catch it in the moment.

[1:16:21] DAVID ADJMI: It's a funny joke if you think about it, but I can't have too many thinkers in that show.

[1:16:24] kenneth lonergan: Yeah, this show doesn't have time for fast comedy.

[1:16:27] DAVID ADJMI: But speaking of fast comedy, goes in the drawer of jokes that Mark has cut that I am mad about, but no one laughed at them but me, but I'm still mad that they're gone.

[1:16:41] kenneth lonergan: Speaking of comedy and us being a couple of funny guys, the next episode, we are gonna talk about some funny gals.

[1:16:48] DAVID ADJMI: Yes.

[1:16:49] kenneth lonergan: We had Elizabeth Teets come in and bring an array of funny people talking about a history of funny women in movies.

[1:16:57] DAVID ADJMI: Yes. Which isn't she great? And so I'm excited to talk about that in our next episode.

[1:17:02] kenneth lonergan: All right. So remember, follow us on Instagram at Drama book Show podcasts. Please subscribe to the drama bookshop on Eventbrite so that you can be alerted every time we add an event to our calendar. Leave us a comment or a rating, and hey, it can be funny. We'd be happy to have it. It helps us rise in the charts and algorithms. And all of those things that are beyond me because I work in theater.

[1:17:28] DAVID ADJMI: Yep.

[1:17:29] kenneth lonergan: And remember that all the books we talk about can be found here at the drama bookshop. And so can we. And we will see you at the bookshop.