This transcript was automatically generated and might contain errors.

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

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

[0:23] Mark-Eugene Garcia: And tonight is a very fun night because we are talking about justin borak.

[0:27] David Rigano: Yep.

[0:28] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Good friend of the bookshop.

[0:29] David Rigano: Good friend of the bookshop, multiple plays on the shelf.

[0:31] Mark-Eugene Garcia: He has Community Garden and he has Cabin Chronicles, which is like a horror and you know me and horror shows.

[0:38] David Rigano: Do you love them?

[0:39] Mark-Eugene Garcia: And you know me in cabins.

[0:40] David Rigano: Yeah.

[0:41] Mark-Eugene Garcia: I'll get back to that. I promise. That'll make sense at some point.

[0:46] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Just like my comment in the last episode about how it's gotten us the podcast has gotten us all jobs.

[0:50] David Rigano: It all comes back to it.

[0:51] Mark-Eugene Garcia: I'll address that now. David worked with Melissa Erika since your episode.

[0:56] David Rigano: We I met Melissa here, and then I was just with her.

[1:00] David Rigano: I'm gonna say this past weekend. It might be a couple weeks from when the episode actually gets released.

[1:05] David Rigano: But yeah, we were just doing a half an hour version of the show that we did last year to sell it to some people, and I think some people want to buy it.

[1:13] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Yeah.

[1:13] David Rigano: And that happened because of our episode.

[1:15] Mark-Eugene Garcia: I am working on a piece with Josefina Lopez that also happened because of our episode about Women and a Half Curves.

[1:21] David Rigano: Yes, that we just now.

[1:23] Mark-Eugene Garcia: And now I'm working on it. And then we have our moderator for this episode, Aaron Burstein, who got to work with Joe Iconis.

[1:32] David Rigano: And it's just been Christmas spectacular.

[1:35] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Twice now.

[1:36] David Rigano: Yeah.

[1:36] Mark-Eugene Garcia: And so it's just the podcast is a gift that keeps on giving, so keep listening.

[1:42] David Rigano: Yeah.

[1:42] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Who knows what you'll get.

[1:45] David Rigano: Or who knows what we'll get.

[1:46] Mark-Eugene Garcia: We need you to listen to the job.

[1:48] David Rigano: Yeah, please listen so we can keep getting jobs.

[1:50] Mark-Eugene Garcia: And you're right. Who knows where we'll be when this episode comes out? Because I might be in London.

[1:55] David Rigano: Right.

[1:56] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Yeah, or I might be back. Who knows? I might, these might be very quickly to get quick to come out.

[2:00] Mark-Eugene Garcia: But yeah, you've got to be. I'm leaving in a few days. I'm going to London for the very first time.

[2:04] David Rigano: Um really.

[2:05] Mark-Eugene Garcia: I've never been.

[2:06] David Rigano: No, ever.

[2:08] Mark-Eugene Garcia: No, I've never crossed the pond. I'm very excited for that.

[2:11] Mark-Eugene Garcia: I'm also excited that my first time there is because I have a show.

[2:14] David Rigano: Yeah.

[2:15] Mark-Eugene Garcia: That's like volume.

[2:17] David Rigano: You and I did not get to go to London when we both had a show there.

[2:20] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Truly.

[2:20] David Rigano: Yeah.

[2:21] Mark-Eugene Garcia: No, we didn't. It was like a quick one night thing.

[2:23] David Rigano: People keep asking, they're like, is this your first show in London? And I was like, technically, no.

[2:29] Mark-Eugene Garcia: We're West End songwriters, Mark.

[2:31] David Rigano: I know, I know.

[2:32] Mark-Eugene Garcia: It was just so fast. It was such a blur.

[2:35] David Rigano: But it was in a West End theater.

[2:36] Mark-Eugene Garcia: We are West End songwriters.

[2:38] David Rigano: Yeah, it's true.

[2:39] Mark-Eugene Garcia: But this time I get to go see it and be part of it to be there through the rehearsal process.

[2:43] Mark-Eugene Garcia: We have a freaking killer cast.

[2:45] Mark-Eugene Garcia: And the show is Shining in Misery, a Stephen King size parody.

[2:51] David Rigano: We have recently added the Steven.

[2:53] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Okay.

[2:55] David Rigano: Were people I don't mean to sound pejorative, but were people not getting that?

[3:00] Mark-Eugene Garcia: I don't think they weren't, but there was a discussion about that.

[3:06] Mark-Eugene Garcia: And so just to keep it like extra clear.

[3:09] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Make it make sure.

[3:10] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Yeah. And because also it's like we have a limited amount of time. This is a festival production at the MT Fest UK at the other palace.

[3:18] Mark-Eugene Garcia: And so we gotta do what we can.

[3:21] Mark-Eugene Garcia: There are some tickets available. Last time we talked about this, I think the concert was over.

[3:25] David Rigano: Oh, for 54 Below.

[3:27] Mark-Eugene Garcia: We talked about it after the 54 Below concert.

[3:29] David Rigano: Oh, it's okay.

[3:29] Mark-Eugene Garcia: It was sold out. You couldn't get tickets anyway.

[3:31] Mark-Eugene Garcia: You can have any listeners in London. Definitely.

[3:35] Mark-Eugene Garcia: The fastest way to do it is go to my website, MarkeugeneGarcia.com and hit tickets on the corner because there's tickets for both Goat Blood in San Francisco and Shining in Misery, a Stephen King side parody.

[3:47] Mark-Eugene Garcia: In London in the world, you can possibly see one of my shows.

[3:51] Mark-Eugene Garcia: There will be tickets to a couple of New York shows on there too.

[3:55] Mark-Eugene Garcia: If you're in Paris, you're close to Shining in Misery.

[3:59] Mark-Eugene Garcia: If you're in Poland, you're close to Shining in Misery.

[4:02] Mark-Eugene Garcia: If you're in Hawaii or the Philippines, you're close to Goat Blood, but I'm just saying, where you are in the world.

[4:09] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Yeah, I am I am internationally tolerated.

[4:12] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Um and there'll be some New York ones, and we'll possibly talk about that a little today too, because what's connecting all of that is our moderator, Aaron Burstein.

[4:22] David Rigano: Aaron Clark Burstein, yes, who is so many things.

[4:26] Mark-Eugene Garcia: He is a moderator, he is a producer, he is an actor, he is a singer, a performer, a writer.

[4:32] Mark-Eugene Garcia: He is multi-hyphenate of all multi-hyphenates.

[4:35] David Rigano: Yeah, truly.

[4:36] Mark-Eugene Garcia: And he works as a licensing agent.

[4:39] David Rigano: Yeah, exactly.

[4:40] Mark-Eugene Garcia: I don't know anything he can't do, except maybe be on work at work on time.

[4:44] David Rigano: I'm just kidding, Aaron. We love you.

[4:46] Mark-Eugene Garcia: No, Aaron is absolutely wonderful, and he is also friends with Justin.

[4:50] Mark-Eugene Garcia: And so when the opportunity came for Justin to have an event, Aaron was excited to jump in to be the moderator.

[4:56] Mark-Eugene Garcia: And it's one of those similar to yours and mine, and to any of the multi-year relationships that people have had, Negazi and Chichi, and so on, that it's such a natural rapport.

[5:11] Mark-Eugene Garcia: I was re-listening to this episode because I was doing the edits for it, and I was just like, just hearing them back and forth.

[5:17] Mark-Eugene Garcia: It was so much fun. It's two besties.

[5:20] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Just in a convo. And so it was a great little jump into Justin's work.

[5:26] Mark-Eugene Garcia: So let's let them do it.

[5:28] David Rigano: I'll get to here.

[5:28] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Yeah. Welcome, buddy.

[5:29] Aaron Burstein: How are you?

[5:30] justin borak: I'm doing good. How are you?

[5:32] Aaron Burstein: I'm good. I'm stoked. I've been working these events for a while, and this is my first time getting to moderate one. So very stoked.

[5:37] justin borak: Good job.

[5:41] Aaron Burstein: Stop it.

[5:42] justin borak: No. That's exciting.

[5:43] Aaron Burstein: Aaron and I just spent the whole day together. We worked next to each other.

[5:46] justin borak: Yeah.

[5:46] Aaron Burstein: It's literally like a few.

[5:48] justin borak: We've been practicing.

[5:49] Aaron Burstein: That's right. We've been practicing. We've been rehearsing all day for this.

[5:52] justin borak: But yeah, I'm super stoked. Thanks for being here.

[5:53] Aaron Burstein: Thank you for having me. So we're gonna talk just like about your career and what you've got going on and what has led you to this moment in your life right now, this specific moment.

[5:54] justin borak: This specific moment.

[6:03] Aaron Burstein: But to start, I have to ask one deeply important question: who are you wearing?

[6:09] justin borak: I'm wearing a bunch of very cool, I'm wearing cool sneakers and a very cool crew neck, but thank you for saying that.

[6:14] Aaron Burstein: Of course. We absolutely don't work at Broadway licensing and dramatist and stuff. And I'm not unveiling the new dramatist play services merch.

[6:25] justin borak: Which is fucking oh, I can curse.

[6:27] Aaron Burstein: You can curse.

[6:28] justin borak: Oh, sweet, okay. Dramatist is coming out with merch, which is super sick. It's dropping off on February 20th on merch.dramatist.com. I was given all of my talking points by Leah. And yeah, I'm like, I love it so much. Very cool little blue cap corduroy hat and their t-shirts and a very dope tote bag that I was gonna bring out here, but then I was like, Wow, I bring a tote bag to this spot.

[6:49] Aaron Burstein: But they're very sweet, and it was a creative goods who did the tissue boxes, that's her notebook.

[6:54] justin borak: They did.

[6:55] justin borak: Which is like my favorite piece of merch in Broadway history. Literally the best bit of merch and the most useful, I think.

[7:01] Aaron Burstein: I know, but yeah, thank you. I never thought I would be a part of an infomercial like this early in my life, so I'm deeply grateful I got.

[7:06] justin borak: Everything I do is branded content. So I'll find it. We'll get into that a little later.

[7:09] Aaron Burstein: Yeah. So to start out, I just want to talk about like how you got your start in theater. Was there a I always love to hear theater artists like big aha moment where they realized that they wanted to do this for the rest of their lives.

[7:24] justin borak: Yeah. Was there a specific moment that you can think of that really did that for you?

[7:28] justin borak: Yeah. I am when I was like a little kid in Ohio. My family didn't have a bunch of money, and my parents were looking for they were looking for the free like after school camp because they both worked.

[7:38] justin borak: And my parents heard of this thing where it was like a bunch of these kids were auditioning for this like theater camp they thought it was, and like they paid the kids.

[7:47] justin borak: And my parents were like, oh my god, that's perfect. So I went and auditioned, and me and my sister booked it. And we went and we like we had all these rehearsals after school, and they were like, oh, it's just camp and everything. Then like three months in, they called my parents. They're like, cool, like we're taking your kids on tour for four months. And then it realized that they had an audition for a national tour of a new musical called Where's Rudolph.

[8:07] Aaron Burstein: Yeah.

[8:07] justin borak: Like the reindeer?

[8:08] Aaron Burstein: Yeah, like the reindeer.

[8:10] justin borak: And I played SWAT elf number three, and I was on tour for four months. And it was the craziest time ever, but it was fully an accident. Like they were just like, we can't afford to put you in the after school camp. We're gonna put you in this like theater camp that pays us.

[8:23] justin borak: That pays us the equity minimum for some reason. I don't even know what that means. But parents need to get into like talent management.

[8:28] Aaron Burstein: I know, it's sweet, it was really dope. But yeah, I did that, and then I moved to like upstate New York and started like doing a lot more like stand up and like improv and sketch, or a lot more stand up, but yeah, then I went to school for theater.

[8:41] justin borak: And yeah, that was my start in like theater itself. I did a lot of stuff at like Center Stage, the Jewish theater here in New York, which was great. I did like Bad Jews at them and like Dark Clouds R Suburb, which was rad. I did like West Side Story of the Kodak Theater and stuff, and that was all like in high school. So that was like my start in like the theater world.

[9:02] Aaron Burstein: So you got your start primarily as an actor. Was there anything that like made you realize what was the moment that got you into playwriting?

[9:09] justin borak: I am the first I've only been like playwriting in a like professional sense, like regularly consistently for four years.

[9:17] justin borak: Wow. Because before that I was doing TV writing and comedy in Chicago. And I did write a play in a very probably illegal out of I adapted The Odd Couple, but it was like not allowed. I was like 17, and it was called Stoner and Slick. And it wasn't good. But I wrote that and it didn't go well and it was scary, so that I stopped doing it for a long time.

[9:40] justin borak: And I started writing TV. I wrote for some stuff on Adult Swim and like Cards Against Humanity I wrote for, and like The Onion and stuff. So I like focused on like comedy writing. And then when COVID hit, I went to grad school, and I the school I went to had a like a new work grant that you could win, and that for like a new work like program, I guess. And I got it, and I wrote this play called Writer's Room. And after I read that, so we're representing this from Bromley Licensing, which is where we now work, we're like, hey, do you want to write for the playerships catalog? And I was like, sure. And Community Garden was born like six months later, and then it's just kind of been rolling ever since.

[10:16] Aaron Burstein: That's insane.

[10:16] justin borak: Yeah.

[10:17] Aaron Burstein: Wow. I really deeply respect how you've I don't know, you've got arms in a lot of different concentrations just within the arts in general. And that a lot of people are multi-hyphenates, but like that's another level.

[10:27] justin borak: I like being busy. I don't like not doing stuff.

[10:30] Aaron Burstein: I definitely get that.

[10:30] justin borak: Yeah, yeah.

[10:31] Aaron Burstein: The rocks. Was there I'm wondering, was there a specific thing that like because you moved to New York relatively recently, right?

[10:38] justin borak: Yeah, in the last I think eight months ago.

[10:40] Aaron Burstein: Eight or nine months ago?

[10:41] justin borak: That's wild.

[10:42] Aaron Burstein: Yeah, okay. What spurred that?

[10:44] justin borak: When you graduate grad school for theater, I feel like you either move to New York or you start teaching, or you like finally accept like the job your dad's been trying to give you. So those are like my only like three options, I feel like.

[10:54] justin borak: And I'm scared of teaching still. So I don't want to do that. And my dad works at like a uniform company.

[11:01] Aaron Burstein: Nice.

[11:01] justin borak: And I don't think it really fit my like vibe.

[11:03] Aaron Burstein: So I was like, you could make uniforms.

[11:06] justin borak: I could see it.

[11:06] Aaron Burstein: Yeah.

[11:07] justin borak: You're right. Maybe I'll leave New York. No, I don't think that's a good one. But no, but I did like four years in Chicago, and I always wanted to spend some time in New York. And so yeah, it's kind of worked out.

[11:15] Aaron Burstein: Love that.

[11:16] justin borak: Yeah, and also I like started working at BL and Yeah.

[11:20] Aaron Burstein: Yeah.

[11:20] justin borak: Yeah.

[11:21] Aaron Burstein: Rips.

[11:22] justin borak: Yeah. So beyond the playwriting and the comedy writing and the acting, you are also like pretty big on TikTok, I have to say.

[11:31] Aaron Burstein: It's a crazy way to say that.

[11:32] justin borak: That was the weirdest way to phrase that.

[11:34] Aaron Burstein: But legitimately do a lot of really cool social media content creation for like I said, Swept Away, Shark is Broken.

[11:40] justin borak: Yes.

[11:40] Aaron Burstein: Nuts.

[11:41] justin borak: Yeah, it was cool.

[11:42] Aaron Burstein: It's very cool. How did how'd you get into that?

[11:44] justin borak: I co-COVID all I feel like every comedian in Chicago during COVID either got a dog, had a baby, moved it or moved to LA. And I wasn't like mentally prepared to do like any of those things. Just like stayed in my little apartment in uptown Chicago, and I just started making TikToks.

[12:01] justin borak: And the thing that made me go viral first was I was like working like part time. I was working time at a Starbucks.

[12:08] Aaron Burstein: Uh huh.

[12:08] justin borak: And they gave you free like coffee beans. And I saw this video of someone doing like a backflip a day until they got a million followers. And I thought it was like a funny it was like a funny concept to me to like do something every day that's like impressive, but like you do it every day, so it's not like hard for you until you reach like this number that seems like in not reachable, like insurmountable.

[12:28] Aaron Burstein: Sure.

[12:29] justin borak: So I made a satirical video stitching that being like day one of eating a coffee meet until I have 50 million followers and they got 25 million views and I got like 1000 followers a day so I was like whoa and you're still eating those beans I did it for I'm not kidding I did it for a year and a half I think I got to 500 days and I stopped that's incredible.

[12:50] justin borak: But that's where if people who like follow because now I do theater content and I talk about like new plays and I like give like monologue recommendations and stuff that's like a lot of what my like wall is at the drama bookshop today. But like I've had people who like who like follow my account to find plays to read and they scroll deep enough that they like come and they're like what the fuck are these videos?

[13:13] Aaron Burstein: You're like just eating coffee beans and not making any sense.

[13:17] justin borak: And I was like yeah there's a hard shift yeah from one in 20 TikTok Justin and like 2022 TikTok Justin.

[13:22] Aaron Burstein: We love to see but yeah that's how I started that's incredible eating coffee beans. But now I started somewhere I started making theater content because that was my job in grad school when you like go to get your MFA in acting you like either teach or one of your cohort members will be like the person who runs the Instagram that's like how they say that that's like how that's like your job.

[13:42] justin borak: So like I was a social media person at W at West Virginia University and I started making TikTok about theater and they were like doing well. I was like oh I'll start doing it on my account too and they started doing well. Then I started doing theater stuff and West Virginia's like really close to like Pittsburgh and like DC and Baltimore. So I'm really big into like contemporary new works. Like me and like my partner Liz also does like cool theater content. We uh we got him at we get them into like Wolly Mammoth and like Arena Stage and stuff like that is where all the collaborations started. I was like already published with play scripts, so I got to like work with like BLG when Broadway book club first started. I was like one of the first people who got one of those and did stuff like that.

[14:17] justin borak: Yeah, I like did the like unboxing of it. My friend Sarah who like set it all up, sent me a video the other, sent me a video the other day that like she still has it in her phone of like the original video I sent her like three years ago of it. It's funny. But uh but yeah, so then I just started working in like the theater content space, and there's a lot of like people in that space that are like performers and do a bunch of 54 Below concerts and like super dope, not my thing.

[14:39] justin borak: But there's also like a lot of people who are very cool who just either see plays or read very cool plays like Andrew Creech or like Grace Walker. There's a lot of very dope content creators that are like talking about new works and getting sent. So I get sent out to like I got sent out to like under the radar a lot, which was awesome. Yeah, like Players Horizons is very sweet, and they invite me to all their stuff. And sometimes I was with my friend Maggie Hill, who's a big theater content creator, and she got like a box center. I don't know if I'm allowed to say I can't, it doesn't matter because it wasn't me. She got sent in a box by Cab from Cabaret, uh huh. And I was so mad because she got like a little bottle of champagne, and she got like a fancy like little like neck handkerchief thing.

It was so cool. And uh, I was like, man, I just get invited to plays that make me cry, like all the time. That's the only thing that I get. But like I but I love it. It's very fun. So I found like this niche of weird plays.

[15:32] justin borak: Yeah. And like every the coolest my favorite thing about it is every one of my favorite playwrights in the world follows me. That's the coolest thing ever. Collecting them like Affinity Stones. Dude, like when I put out my top shows of 2024, which number one, Bad Creole, Dominic Moore's show, and then number two, Yuriki Day, Draft Inspector. Both of them like responded to it within like 45 minutes. And like we are like buddies now. It's really cool. That's insane. Because I treat playwrights as like people at the stage door of good night and good luck will treat George Clooney. Like I like I get scared. I get so scared when I like do an episode of a scene, like my podcast where I interview playwrights.

There have been people that I've like, when I had to meet Lauren Gunderson for the first time, I was I sweated to three shirts before I saw her. And it was over Zoom. It like wasn't like in person. But yeah, so that's yeah, that's what I do kind of social media wise and stuff.

[16:23] Aaron Burstein: That's awesome.

[16:24] justin borak: Yeah. Like I feel like the world of theater talk is so huge and encompasses a lot of different like concentrations. There's a lot of people going to Broadway shows and talking about super mainstream things. But I feel like what's cool about what you do is you expose people to shows that people don't really know as much about.

[16:42] justin borak: Oh my god, can I talk about one?

[16:43] Aaron Burstein: Please.

[16:44] justin borak: Oh, dude, okay. I went to with my best friend Erica Coomb. We went to go see Dead as a Dodo, the new Waka show by Under the Rubber. Oh my god, it was so good. It was the best show I've ever seen in my life. It's it's just puppet show about this humanoid, like bone guy. It's like this like dead man and this like dead dodo bird, and they're in like the world of the bones, and the man wakes up one day and he's like slowly like disappearing, like he's losing, like he's like fully dying. And you would think the dodo bird is also, but the morning he wakes up and he's dying, the dodo bird wakes up and he sprouted a couple feathers. So the show follows this friendship of these like two people who like are trying to get the Dodo Bird back to the realm of the living, all while like the human knows that he's like going away forever.

And it's like this, oh my god, it made me cry so much. I don't cry a lot in theater. I cry I cry a lot in theater, but I like cried like four times in there's like 80 minute puppet channel. It was it was so good. It was so good. So I didn't mean to do that. That's why that's like my whole thing. Yeah, I do that a lot.

[17:41] Aaron Burstein: But as you should.

[17:44] justin borak: That was it was so good. You can't see it anymore. Especially by the time people listen to this podcast, it's closed for sure. But maybe by the time the podcast goes out, like it will have opened like somewhere else. Somewhere else. I hope so. I don't know if they do that. If it exists right now, wherever you're listening, go see Dead as a Dodo. Or is licensed. But if it is, I would drive miles to see. They did something called like the immortal jellyfish girl or something.

[18:08] Aaron Burstein: I've heard of that, yeah.

[18:09] justin borak: Yeah. And apparently, like when we went to go see Dead as a Dodo, there were people sitting in front of us, and they were like hardcore fans. Like they were like, yo, were you here when they did made in China? That shit was crazy. And I was like, this is so cool that you guys are like diehard. They go to every show like multiple times.

[18:25] Aaron Burstein: Yeah, exactly.

[18:26] justin borak: But they made it sound as though they put up this company like puts up a show and it's brilliant, and then they just disappear in the shadows for three years, and then they come back and do something else that makes you lose your mind. But yeah, so I need to. I'm on their email list right now, just because I don't want to miss anything. That rip. I love that. But that's the kind of that specific this specific moment is the kind of stuff that you do constantly through your content creation.

[18:46] justin borak: Also during the day. Like all like just randomly when we were sitting there.

[18:52] Aaron Burstein: Yeah.

[18:53] justin borak: I feel like that's primarily my all I talk about.

[18:56] Aaron Burstein: As you should.

[18:56] justin borak: Yeah. I love that. Yeah. That rocks. You mentioned the scene podcast.

[19:00] Aaron Burstein: Yeah.

[19:01] justin borak: Can you talk a little bit about what that is and how that came about and how that kind of maybe opened some doors for you now?

[19:08] justin borak: Oh my god. Too many cool people. Again, and I look at them like they're way more they're incredibly important, famous celebrities to me. But when they like walk into like because that way we record a person, when they like walk into the office and they like Leah, who's our producer, and KJ, who's also a producer and the editor, they have to like calm me down. Keep me around the corner for a second, so I don'm not like make a fool of myself. But yeah, it's okay. I uh when I first started writing when I wrote Community Garden, people at BL were like, people at BLG were like, oh, they saw my stuff and they liked it, and then I think it started like selling well because of like my TikTok, because I don't think there's a lot of playwrights in the play scripts catalog that are like doing stuff on TikTok really.

So but there's a huge like a lot of the viewership on TikTok is like 14 to 18 year olds, or like 14 to like 23. So like a lot of the people watching my videos are either like currently doing like Don Zelinda shows or Tracy Wells shows, Jonathan Dorf, like that kind of stuff, or they're in college and they were just doing that. So there's not a lot of play scripts authors on TikTok, but a ton of the people who know their names, who like yeah, like everyone knows Don Zelitas on TikTok. So my stuff started like selling pretty well, which I was like super pumped about.

[20:19] Aaron Burstein: For sure.

[20:19] justin borak: And uh I got called in by some of the marketing people at BLG and we chatted for a while, and I did like the Broadway book club and some like collaborations and stuff, and it was super fun. And then I had a I have a podcast called Play to Z with my friend Erica, and we talk about plays in alphabetical order. It's wonderful. Right. But they were listening to that, and they were like, hey, would you want to do a podcast with us? I was like, Yeah, let's talk about it. And I came to New York for a day, it was when I was still in West Virginia, we had a meeting and we talked about like the scene, which is like this newsletter that Zap Dooley founded, and it's like over 300,000 readers every week.

It's crazy, it's insane. But they wanted to do a podcast spin-off kind of thing. And like now he's one of my best buds, but I didn't know KJ at all at the time. But Zach set up a meeting with like me and KJ. Hi, KJ. And uh we me and KJ and we like talked about like what we wanted to do, and we spent like a few months like figuring out what the scene podcast would look like, and it was like shows you should know, and like me doing stuff for my TikTok and talking, like being goofy and stuff. We thought we were missing something, and then Leah came in and uh VP of pubs at Broadway Licensing and has all the wonderful connections to brilliant playwrights that make me cry and I've nerded out about for years.

And she's like, let's talk to them. And I was like, that's crazy. And we did. And that's when we started kicking up a lot of steam. We've talked to some of the coolest people who have become like friends of mine, and it's been a really wonderful opportunity. But it's Sandy Rustin, the cottage, I mean Clue. You and I built in the clue, because it's all we do at work.

[21:44] Aaron Burstein: Yep.

[21:44] justin borak: It's like the most 50% of our jobs.

[21:46] Aaron Burstein: Yeah, it's 50% of our job is just telling people if they can and cannot do clue.

[21:50] justin borak: Yep. But yeah, Sandy Rusting, Douglas Lyons, who's like a buddy now, Lauren Gunderson, who's just one of the most brilliant people. Jacob Richmond, Brooke Maxwell of Ride the Cyclone fame. John Kariani.

[21:58] Aaron Burstein: John Kari.

[21:59] justin borak: Oh, yeah, we used to, and then was now that I'm here in New York, we're doing season two and we're doing it in person. So we have had I gotten to meet in person and chat with them for a while. Like Anna Ziegler, John Kariani, and Gozyanyawoo. We have Abe Kugler coming on. We have Keenan Scott the second. We have a bunch of like very dope people that I'm getting to spend time with and meet in person. It's great. John Kariani brought us Nutella Brioche.

[22:21] Aaron Burstein: She did.

[22:22] justin borak: It was the greatest, it was one of the greatest days of my life. I was like so nice. I was so scared to meet him, and then he was like, I brought you Brioche. And I was like, that's very nice of you. And then we talked about the Celtics for 45 minutes, and it was a really great time. He's the sweetest little guy.

[22:33] Aaron Burstein: Yeah.

[22:34] justin borak: I also I think that it ever it's been the same every time. Every time I've talked to anyone on Zoom or in person, I start with a big bio and like I try to nardwar them, you know, Nard Bar.

[22:44] Aaron Burstein: Yeah, yeah.

[22:45] justin borak: For people who don't know Nar, he's like this like guy who interviews like rappers and actors. Human survient. Yeah. And he gets like super deep into like their lore. I try to do it like a bit. Like Douglas and I, Doug and I weren't like buddies when we first did an interview. And I think he expected, and honestly, I bet Liam, Zach and HJ also expected me to talk primarily about Chicken the Biscuits, which is a play I was on Broadway, and he's brilliant. I talked for like 80% about Fraggle Rock. Like his, like, he's a writer on the Fragger Rock on Apple TV. Yeah. I did that. He did not expect me, I think, to bring it up. But it's all I talked about. But yeah, so like I like to find like little hidden things.

Like we just had a oh my gosh. Oh my gosh, we just had Kate Douglas on. Who wrote the Apeary, one of the greatest plays, I think written in the last couple years. So good. And again, like we just published it at BLG. And I think, again, Kate probably expected to talk primarily about that, but yeah, okay. Kate wrote this thing, created this thing. I'm looking at Late because Leah knows exactly what I'm gonna talk about for 30 minutes. Kate put together this TYA immersive theater experience called Middlemist Red, which is a thing that you would set in like a botanical garden, and it's like an immersive theatrical piece about you like it's like a teacher brings their kids to this botanical garden to do like a tour of the garden, and then halfway through the botanical expert is is like we we've lost realize that they've lost this really extinct famous plant that they have the last one of called Middlemist Red, and the kids have to put together these like immersed they have to do these like bot botanical and garden-based escape room puzzles to figure out what happened to the plant.

And it's the coolest thing I think I've ever heard of. I like I talked about it for so long. It's banana. I could talk about it forever, but it's you know what? We're tossing out the rest of these questions. Dude, get rid of them. I'm not kidding. I would I like would talk, I think like she left, and I texted Kate like 30 minutes after she left, and I was like, I want you to know I'm still thinking about Middlemist Red. It's all I can think about.

[24:39] Aaron Burstein: That's incredible.

[24:40] justin borak: I forgot what I was talking about. I started talking about Kate Douglas and Middleton's Red at the moment. He obviously, has opened up a lot of like really cool doors.

[24:46] Aaron Burstein: Yeah.

[24:46] justin borak: Yeah. We had Jacqueline Bacchus on, and then she's kind of become a mentor of mine. I got to do her winter. She invited me to do her writer's boot camp this past winter, which is awesome.

[24:54] Aaron Burstein: That's sick.

[24:55] justin borak: And I got to develop a new work there. But yeah, it's opened a ton of doors. And it's given me the opportunity to meet people that I think are maybe the most important people on the planet and are like telling stories that I think are like unheard of. Just like brilliant stories. There's a couple that K J and Lee are pushing for me to be like into having on the show, and I'm too scared to, but one day.

[25:19] justin borak: Yeah, I don't think I'll I don't think I can talk to Annie Baker without crying.

[25:23] Aaron Burstein: See, no, yeah.

[25:24] justin borak: Yeah. She's like, I don't think I'd be able to do it. And Lynn Nodage scares me because she wrote, I think Sweat is one of the greatest plays ever written. Rajiv Joseph is the coolest dude in the world. And also, but he's also like a calves, he's a Cavs fan. He wrote King James, and that's my whole thing. So I'd be nervous that I would just talk to him. Like when I had John on, like we John Kariana, like, we talked about basketball way too much. Like he's a player, he's one of the most he's one of the most produced playwrights in the world. And I talked to him about the Celtics for 30 minutes. How many people do you think like exclusively talk to him about his plays all the time? And then a guy comes along and he expects just to chat about plays and you get to talk to him about favorite subject.

We had Candris Jones on, and I talked way too much about I talked about the WNBA for 10 minutes. And I was nervous that it was like it seemed like I didn't care about Flex and like her work. But I think she appreciated it. We talked a lot about basketball, about like Flex and like the play itself, which is also a brilliant play. Which is going up in Kentucky, and my friend Rachel's going to see it. I'm looking at Rachel right now. I learned today that she's gonna see Flex before I do. I didn't get I've never seen it before. I've read it like 10 times. It's so good. But I've never seen it. I missed it at Lincoln Center. Which makes me so sad. I will just talk about plays until we stop.

[26:37] Aaron Burstein: So I'm down.

[26:37] justin borak: Yeah, I'm cool with that. But yeah, so that's the scene. It's great. We have really dope people coming on. We're in season three right now. I don't know. But we like KJ Leah and I are like talk about the weird season breaks with the scene because this was like a six episode season one, and then we didn't know what to do. And Cajun and I were like, we don't know. Then Leah saved us, and then we did like 12 episodes season two, and then I came here. And now we're like season three, but there's no kind of ending in sight. So it might just be like a six episode season one, a ten episode season two, and then like a 300 episode season three that just never ends. But uh yeah, it's a blast.

[27:09] Aaron Burstein: I love that.

[27:09] justin borak: Yeah, it's very cool.

[27:10] Aaron Burstein: That's awesome. Yeah I wanna pivot to as we said, like you are a multi-hyphenate, you do a lot of stuff. You also act a little, yeah.

[27:16] justin borak: Recently, I a bunch of us got to see you in the tank at the premiere of the it was the premiere, right?

[27:22] justin borak: Yeah, it was the uh the full production premiere of it.

[27:25] justin borak: Yeah, of the laundry play by Sarah Grasstrap.

[27:27] Aaron Burstein: Yeah, that rocked.

[27:29] justin borak: It was so good. She's amazing. Sarah Grassra wrote a play that I think is one of my favorite plays I saw. I say every play is one of my favorite plays I saw, but uh truly like one of my favorite plays I saw with also with my friend Erica called The Hand That Feeds You last year. The f was the Forager Theatre Company. It was about a sentient pile of meat. It was great, it was really good. I won't explain it anymore. Okay. Go read it, go buy-in. It's a great play. But Sarah Grascher also started this like small like publishing company called 1319 Crass, which is really cool.

[27:54] Aaron Burstein: Oh, that's yeah, yeah.

[27:55] justin borak: Yeah, that's Sarah. So she uh has done really cool stuff. She's like a ton of my friends who are like small indie playwrights who haven't found their footing in publishing yet, all are getting published by her now, and she's putting up like these really great cool, and there's no licensing behind it. Like it's it's more of a I don't know what you call it, a like trade edition kind of thing. Yeah, but uh but yeah, but it's that's how I met Sarah because we were working on a project together for that. And then I uh when you saw the Hannah Peace and it was amazing, and we've gotten a couple drinks since, and then I saw that she's doing the laundry play, which is a wonderful two-hander that I did with my friend Maylon, and uh it's about just a couple figuring out therapy and figuring out their relationship and like mental health and stuff.

And it was great, it was super dope. It was the second thing I did in New York as a performer. But I primarily do like small stuff. I did like that, I did a play called Swives, which is about the Snape Wives cult in 2007, which is a great, which was insane. Dude, in 2007, 50-year-old, 50-year-old white women would go on to like Tumblr and talk to each other about project to the astral plane and go on dates with Severus Snape. And they were some people were so into it, earnestly, some people were so into it they started a forum on Reddit and they all referred to themselves as Snake Wives. They would like use their husbands as conduits to conjure Snape.

[29:08] justin borak: They would like This is 100% real. This is no, I'm not kidding, dude. The playwright was Mangangen, oh my god, brilliant, and M Housman, who I'm working with on a new project next week, by the time this comes out months ago. But wrote this brilliant play that was about these four women and two of their husbands who lock themselves in a cabin in the woods and decide to write the Bible for Snake, like the Bible for the Snake Wives. Oh my god. And yeah, by the end, like all the relationships are like fucked and everything is like super, it's just it's it's such a great look into parasocial relationships and like relationships that do not exist, but being so upset with pop culture that it changes your life.

[29:44] Aaron Burstein: Yeah.

[29:45] justin borak: We talked a lot about I'm trying to think, it's still going to be like the Taylor Swift fandom, and not that, or like the or like my obsession with Annie Baker personally. Like things like that where like people get so oh yeah, it's literally like people that get obsessed with these people to a point where it's like unhealthy.

[29:59] Aaron Burstein: Yes.

[29:59] justin borak: But also, I'm absolutely I just pulling with a thousand like playwrights and celebrities. I love it. But this was like a whole other level. But yeah, it was super fun. That rocks. Would you say you were method acting during that?

[30:11] justin borak: Yeah. The last 15 minutes I was wearing a Snape wig, and I was doing a dude. I was doing the worst. Oh my god, what's his name? Alan Rickman.

[30:21] Aaron Burstein: Alan Rickman.

[30:21] justin borak: Can you give us a little taste of it?

[30:23] justin borak: No. Like I tried to do a few. You kind of dangled out in front of us. It was like uh Potter. No. It was bad. I couldn't do it. And it ended up being a choice at the direct. It was like one of those phones where M, the director was like, you know what? I think the choice is that he's doing a bad Alan Rickman. Which I think was furry of getting around continuing to work on my Alan Rickman. But honestly, I agree. It was a good choice. It was a bad Alan Rickman. But it was very fun. And it was. Those are the projects. And so the next thing I'm doing is I'm doing a play called Oh God, it's a Walrus or My God, it's a Walrus or something. But it's written by Max Berry, who's another brilliant playwright about an atheist podcaster in this world.

And God. And they go viral on like Twitter or something. And they go viral on Twitter. And they interview each other, and he finds out that this is actually a walrus and it's actually God, and they end up like having sex and like falling in love. And it's very confusing where and then like the walrus's like dinosaur ex-boyfriend comes out of Hibernation to come and talk and it's and break them up. It's coming in the devil comes at some point. It's crazy. It's dope. But it's really weird and fun.

[31:30] Aaron Burstein: Where is this one happening by the tank?

[31:33] justin borak: Okay. Next week at 9:30. I'm saying next week as a first time. For the people in the room. Next week at 9. But it's very I've met some really cool, like Indie. I like working at Broadway licensing because I get to hear about what's happening in the theater industry in this really massive way. And I get to learn about our industry and what we do at an expedited rate than I think I should have because I'm very new to this world. But then I love leaving and then going to go to someone who works at like daycare facility and being surrounded by pictures of children, but because it's the only space we could afford to do rehearsal, and then like putting up a reading about the Snakewats called. It's very it's fun and it's it keeps like the joy of kind of all of it in it for me.

[32:10] Aaron Burstein: That's the New York theater baby.

[32:12] justin borak: Yeah, dude. Yeah. But yeah, yeah, to your original question. I was gonna play called Laundry Play, and it was very funny.

[32:17] Aaron Burstein: Yeah.

[32:17] justin borak: That rocks. I'm glad that you've already had like this much experience like acting and in such out-of-the-box, truly fascinating and interesting shows.

[32:27] Aaron Burstein: Yeah.

[32:27] justin borak: Yeah. That's a good idea. It's been sick. Yeah, it's been good. I love that. Yeah. To that end, I wanna talk about your plays that we actually have here at the drama bookshop are published with the play scripts catalog.

[32:37] Aaron Burstein: Yeah.

[32:37] justin borak: You got two so far.

[32:39] Aaron Burstein: Yeah.

[32:42] justin borak: Talk to me about those. What are the what's the what's their deal? I they I so I wrote Writer's Room for the Broadway licensing new works grant, and then I got brought in by Ken Nicholson, who's in who's the head of acquisitions or whatever. And he handed me a bunch of play scripts titles, which I never read because when I was in high school, we like played the crucible four times. So like when uh so I never did any like Don Zelitus or anything like that. So he handed me like a bunch of like Ian McGweffy, Carrie McCross, and Don Zelinus titles, and then almost main. And he gave me like a stack, and he was like, Look, we like the way you write, but you're brand new and no one knows you who you are. So why don't you try your hand at writing like some work for the play scripts catalog and basically just trying to write without curse words? Trying to write something that like high schools can do.

[33:25] Aaron Burstein: How difficult was that specific thing?

[33:27] justin borak: It was hard when I was writing community garden because I was so used to my job before that was like writer's name is really inappropriate. But then I was writing for like Cards Against Humanity. Yeah. And I was like writing for like Second City. I wrote for a show called Mr. Pickles on Adult Swim, which is like a about a demonic dog that murders people. It's a great show. It's not a good show. I was I wrote for it and I don't like it was a fine show, but it was insane. It was the most in so Will Carcolo who was a showrunner gave me my first ever job in my life. And now is the creative director of Liquid Death. Yeah, which is why I do something but but yeah so up until writing community garden I just wrote the most gruesome fucked up shit I could think of. Like one of my claims of fame is I was in the room when the famous white card in Cards Against Humanity gang banged by the blue man group was written. I'm very proudly in I was in that room when it was written.

[34:14] Aaron Burstein: You witnessed history history happening.

[34:17] justin borak: Yeah dude I hope you have that framed I think you should have that card framed.

[34:20] justin borak: I should I really should my friend who wrote it I think has it framed or has it like still in her purse that she keeps on her at all times. It's good. But it's a great story. But uh but no but then I was like they were like random play for high schoolers and I was like I don't know how to do that. I wrote community garden I was like in Chicago during COVID and I was sad and I was like scared and I was alone and I found a and I lived at Uptown my whole time there. And my last year there I found this garden right behind my favorite pizza place. It's like little community garden. And I would go there and I wouldn't I'm not a good planter I'm not a good gardener. But I would go there and I would like try to grow a sunflower and it wouldn't work because it was winter or something.

But I would organize the shovels or stuff like that. But it was great because like I would walk around with my mask on and it felt so I was alone, but then I would go into the garden and no one was there, so I could take my mask off, and I was alone in this big space, and it was like the best air I had breathed like for like months. So it like became like very it became like a very like spiritual thing for me. Like a very like sweet and like heartfelt thing for me. So yeah, I read all these vignette plays. I read almost Maine. I had done almost main at that time. I feel like if you hadn't done almost man, I don't know if you're an actor. But it's God, it's so good and everyone does it. But uh but yeah, I like read almost main.

I read some like Don Zelita stuff, and I like got into this like vignette vibe. And I wrote Community Garden, which is a vignette place set in a community garden in uptown Chicago. Um behind a pizza place called behind a pizza place called Gigi's, the pizza, the real place pizza place called GGOs. Ah I think very creative. But I was like homage. But I wrote it's actually in their store. I went back to Chicago and I gave them the because I ordered pizza there every single day. As I should. And I showed them it, and I showed them the woman, Marcita, who her family ran it, started crying, and they put it up on a I was like sad because like they have a bunch of photos of celebrities who went in, and I had I thought she was gonna like take a photo with me and put it up on the wall, but she took the script and she framed the script and put it on the wall, which I was like fine with. My name is on the wall, which is cool. But I was like disappointed. I'm next to David, I'm next to David Letterman, which is sick.

[36:19] Aaron Burstein: That's sick.

[36:19] justin borak: But it would have been way cooler if it was like me next to David Letterman.

[36:23] Aaron Burstein: Well, you need to go back and demand that you take a polar group.

[36:25] justin borak: Oh god. No, I can't. I'll get no. I'm happy. I'm super. But yeah, so I wrote that and it did really well, and then I have a really big horror fans thing. I wrote like this like three act horror play called Cabin Chronicles about these three boys who try to outscare each other around a campfire in front of their cabin, and then they each act is a different of the scary stories. Because I try I want to write stuff that's accessible for high schools. So they uh and then I wrote a cum compendium compendi cum dum did-da dum. The thing that you put in the back of the script where you like it's yeah, I'm looking at like you like a thousand of them. But and like Leon who's written who's yeah, uh yeah, that's my bad.

But it's the thing in the back of the script that lets you like cut it down. So you can do like one of the stories so they can be like made for UAL or a competition or yeah, but yeah, I just did a bunch of like horror parodies. There's like a slasher parody and like a walking dead parody and a sci-fi parody in there, and it's really fun. And I'm a big horror fan, so like when I didn't want to write, I would just sit and watch horror movies and pretend I was like doing research or whatever. It was awesome. It wasn't pretend, but yeah, actually researching that.

[37:30] Aaron Burstein: Yeah, that rocks, yeah.

[37:32] justin borak: Well, nice. Uh how has the response been from like high schoolers or just even just anyone that's insane?

[37:38] justin borak: It's been so cool. I was talking to Ian McGuathy about it recently because we interviewed him and Carrie McRoss and his wife and another wonderful playwright for season three of the scene, and I was like messaging Ian, and after I went to Texas Thespians, because I went to Texas Thespians the week after Community Garden won some like big award in Texas for like high schoolers, because a couple of the high schoolers like were there, like their school wasn't there, but they were there and they came up to me and freaked out. It was really cool. But it's it's just like high school theater is a whole is a huge part of this industry that so many people don't think about. No one thinks about it, and it's way bigger than there's so many more high schools than there are professional theaters or like broadway theaters.

So it's cool to feel like I'm walking around New York and be like sometimes I look at myself and I'm like, I'm not a player, I'm just a guy. But like when I go when I like look in my TikTok DMs, and there's like a bunch of like high school kids or college kids who are like, we just did community garden. I loved playing Cape. I was like, this is the coolest thing in the world. So it's been really dope.

[38:37] Aaron Burstein: Yeah, I love that.

[38:38] justin borak: Yeah, it's been super super cool. And then I got guy was okay to announce this. My third play is getting published with play scripts. I wrote it with my friend Erica Kuhn. It's called Thank You for Shopping. It's a vignette play set in a grocery store about these two girls, Harper and Maeve, who are trying to like sort they were like best friends in high school and they separated and they come back on the day of Harper's Maze, one of their father's funerals in this grocery store. And it's a scene set in all the aisles. But it's cool. Like we I we I think I and Erica with this one, like we I enjoy creating like theatrical devices that help high school do it. So like for this one, we like wrote it where it's a vignette play.

You cut it up however you want, but we wrote so many scenes that we created this thing called the stock room, which is like another hundred pages of the first note we got from Kent was like, hey, this is way too long. So if we made it like a condenda dungeon, and it was a uh it's like a hundred pages of like extra scenes. So like if a high school wants to do a two and a half hour vignette play and give everybody five roles, they could do it. But then if high school wants to do it for UIL, it's easy to cut to UIL time, or if they want to do like just an hour and a half, they can do the original cut that we have.

[39:43] Aaron Burstein: That's huge.

[39:43] justin borak: But yeah, that's so I I think that's super important to make these plays as accessible as you're doing. Yeah, I think that's the reason why stuff like Almost Main gets done as often as they do, because these playwrights are going into it with the intention of making it as accessible to these kids as possible.

[39:59] Aaron Burstein: That rips.

[40:00] justin borak: There's some great scenes in it. There's one called Missed Connections that Erica wrote that's about this person who like met someone in the Misters at the produce section, and put like something in the newspaper to be like, come meet me here, or put it somewhere.

[40:13] Aaron Burstein: Yeah.

[40:14] justin borak: And it never happened. Like they run it's really great, it's very cute. There's like one that I we mean and Eric have very different ways of writing. She's a really wonderful, like dark comedy, or like very little or like drama. Like, she's very smart, like writing that way, and I write very stupid comedy. So like she wrote that, and then I wrote a scene about a kid. I'm like looking at Erica, is it a comedy now? I already seen about a kid who like mom goes to get her like car because it's getting code, and he has to pick what cereal he wants, and all the serial mascots come alive and start just going hard. They start like freaking out, and they're like pick me. And it's like the bachelorette, but with a seven-year-old kid and like Captain Crunch. It's sick. It made me laugh really hard. But uh that one got put in the stock room because I think we thought it was a little too chaotic for the original script. I want to play that's just that.

[41:00] Aaron Burstein: I love that.

[41:01] justin borak: Cool. Then just do the yeah. I'll realize you can license thank you for shopping. I'm gonna make that happen. I'll make sure it happens.

[41:06] Aaron Burstein: Yeah.

[41:07] justin borak: Do we have a timeline? Like, when is that? I mean, by end of 2024. I have no idea how those things work.

[41:11] Aaron Burstein: That's fair.

[41:11] justin borak: Or 2025. It's 2025 now. It is oh god, I can't say my 2024. Um probably soon. Maybe we'll look out for thank you for shopping.

[41:20] Aaron Burstein: Yeah, which will be sweet.

[41:21] justin borak: But yeah, it's huge. Yeah. We have a copy of Community Garden here.

[41:25] Aaron Burstein: Whoa, crazy.

[41:26] justin borak: I know. I was wondering, would you mind doing a little bit of a reading?

[41:30] justin borak: Yeah, I uh you asked me to do like a reading of a scene, and I didn't want to. So really, and then I did I also try to get I was like, I can get actors to do it, but I didn't really want to do that either. But I read an essay at the front of Community Garden called More Good Air. It's beautiful, which is something that's really nice, so yeah. I can read that.

[41:46] Aaron Burstein: Please.

[41:47] justin borak: Is that okay? Okay, sweet. All right, cool. All right. This is an essay called More Good Air.

[41:52] justin borak: I never understood how much air meant to me until I was trapped in my stuffy Chicago apartment for over a year. Being a Chicagoan is a wonderful experience. I recommend it to anyone who gets the chance, but you never really think about what living in a city means. It means you immediately become part of a larger carbon footprint in a place where you struggle to find a recycling bin. For a long time, I let that drift to the back of my mind, like most 22, 23 year olds trying to be comedians, but after being afraid to leave my apartment for the better part of 2020, I began to find joy in the smallest things. I lost my city, but gained the direct community contained within my life-saving 30-minute walks.

The community of Uptown Chicago. On these walks, I developed more of a appreciation for the neighborhood and found things that I never knew existed, like GGS Pizza. That's not true. I'd known about them forever. But Kenny Max Barbershop, Great Barbershop, Uptown Bikes. First time I ever bought a bike was at Uptown Bikes. They changed from places I'd been like only once or twice to like hubs of like human connection. The pinnacle of each of those walks was the 10 minutes I spent reading in Winthrop Community Gardens every single day. The garden had been down the street from me for four years, but I never spent any time in it. I walked by the little community garden every week with my groceries from Target, but I never thought to walk in.

I finally did. I walked in, and inside I breathed in the best air I had ever experienced in Chicago. Good air during a time when the world was nervous about breathing. I felt blessed by something, and after that, all I wanted was to build more good air. Think about your community or think about who your community is. That might be the cheesiest sentence I've ever written, but try it. Is it your family, your neighborhood? And afterward, have a conversation with them about what the earth, the world, the air mean to you, and try to help build more good air. You won't regret it.

[43:36] Aaron Burstein: Ah.

[43:37] justin borak: Yeah.

[43:37] Aaron Burstein: Love that.

[43:38] justin borak: Yeah. That's the best introduction to the play.

[43:42] justin borak: Because it like deeply is so much about just the community that you build with random strangers and people that you've known in your whole life and what something like a community garden can do for people. There's also this is my first play that got published. I didn't understand how much like how important like front matter was and how like when people read it, they like do have to do it. Like I didn't know how much like power playwrights have in those personal pages before dialogue starts. So I wrote something in there. Dude, so I wrote something in there, and I was like, hey, I don't care what you do this play, do whatever you want. But if you do the show, you have to do something that helps the environment in some way. So I will proudly say there are like three justin borak gardens like across the US.

[44:24] Aaron Burstein: No way.

[44:24] justin borak: Yeah, it would just sick. It was like it's the coolest thing. It's so dumb, but it's the coolest thing in the world. You Mish did a production of our show, and they made the entire set out of the repurposed set of Pippin that I closed like a month before. LSU did the show, and they wrote all of their programs out on like old newspapers and Sharpie. It looked sick. That's so cool. My my alma mater, my undergrad did the show, and they made all there's you need like uptown garden t-shirts in the show, and they made all the t-shirts out of t-shirts from past shows, so they're just like white it out over with paint, and then they like wrote it. It looks sick. It's very cool. But it's been cool to see like a bunch of these high schools and colleges do the show and spend at least a day as a cast as a community and do something like good for the environment and for the world.

That's if I never get another play published again, which isn't happening because thank you for shopping, thank God. But uh but if I didn't, I would be like very happy to know that whenever anyone does community garden, not only do they do my play, but that something else happened. You know what I mean?

[45:22] Aaron Burstein: Yeah, you not only put out good into the world by just writing these words and giving these kids an opportunity to do a good show.

[45:28] justin borak: Put out more good air. You put out more good air. And that's not that's rare uh in general, but also just playwrights don't do that, stuff like that. It's very I'm and I'm glad everyone's done it. So today we can't tell. They aren't forced to do it, but so many productions have done it, and it's very cool. But yeah. That's so cool, man. I love that.

[45:48] Aaron Burstein: Yeah, cool. I got one more question before we open it up to our beautiful audience. What, aside from Take You for Shopping, what's next?

[45:55] justin borak: Yeah. I'm watching rewatching How About Your Mother.

[45:58] Aaron Burstein: Taste.

[45:59] justin borak: Which I'm freaking pumped about. I didn't realize Ted Mosby feels toxic, but he's like, he's growing on me by season two.

[46:04] Aaron Burstein: Yeah.

[46:04] justin borak: I'm also uh I was re-watching New Girl, but I don't like their relationship starting in season four.

[46:09] Aaron Burstein: We don't Liz and I watched it and we stopped after like season three or season four because they're like Nick and Jess?

[46:14] justin borak: Yeah, they like when they start dating and then they break up, I'm like less into the vibe of the show. Have you are you're re-watching it?

[46:20] Aaron Burstein: Like you've seen the whole thing.

[46:20] justin borak: Yeah, I've watched both of those shows fully.

[46:22] Aaron Burstein: Alright, I can't get behind that. Sorry.

[46:24] justin borak: But also what I'm doing as a playwright.

[46:27] Aaron Burstein: Yeah, that was where my question was.

[46:28] justin borak: Okay, cool. I started developing a new play called White Walls in Jackman Box's Writers Bootcamp. It's like a liminal space horror play, like The Back Rooms and Skinema Rink and I Saw the TV Glow, about three strangers who like find themselves in this world of just empty white hallways and white rooms, and uh they and there's a big hole in the middle of the room, and they're slowly forgetting everything about their lives before they know clipped in. And uh it's just about like acceptance of yours of self-mourning, which like hurts, but it's like and it's very scary, but it's something that I think not a lot of people talk about is like your own figure, like losing something yourself and then accepting that within like yourself. So yeah, I'm writing that. I wrote that's like locked in, and some cool stuff is coming down the pike with it, which I'm excited about. And then I am I started writing a play called Kind of Sick.

[47:15] justin borak: I got the Ripple Effect Fellowship this year.

[47:16] Aaron Burstein: Oh, nice.

[47:17] justin borak: Which is sweet. And I started working on this play called Sick about this guy, this like 30-year-old guy in Chicago with bulimia, and he uh and he uh the play takes place in two different places. It's like in a bunch of different restaurants where he's like putting on a face and is like hanging out with his friends or on dates or seeing his dad or whatever. And then he goes to the public bathroom and he's joined by a figment of his imagination that kind of like embodies like uh body standards, and it's embodied by what I personally think is the hottest thing in the world, which is 1993 Mario Lopez.

[47:50] Aaron Burstein: Yes, agreed to be a good thing.

[47:51] justin borak: And uh Mario Lopez forces him to throw up and stuff. It's really gross. I like the play Pussy Sludge, it's like one of my favorite plays ever written. Gracie Gardner is brilliant, and I like also love like Carol Churchill's kind of use of like absurd and stuff. So I wanted to play with a thing that not a lot of people talk about, which is like eating disorders and bulimia within like theater. But then also I wanted to look into the disgusting of it and look in like use it as a device to make the audience get past thinking of something, thinking of it as something that's gross and thinking of it as something that's a reality for a person. But yeah, and also I love Save by the Bell. So I really wanted to write Mario Lopez into a play. I'm really glad you didn't know.

[48:30] Aaron Burstein: I'm so excited.

[48:31] justin borak: Yeah. Nice, dude. Yeah, those are the two things that I'm working on. And then I'm working on a I'm working on like some stuff like working on a really cool pilot that I can't talk about, but I asked and I'm not allowed. But I'm really excited about it. It's gonna be very cool. Look out for that.

[48:43] Aaron Burstein: Where can folks find you?

[48:44] justin borak: Like, now justin borak on Instagram at mediocre jokes on TikTok, because I still hadn't I haven't changed it in three years from when I was doing like comedy stuff.

[48:54] Aaron Burstein: Are you is that related to Ben Schwartz rejected jokes?

[48:57] justin borak: Yeah, I'm a really big man of Schwartz.

[49:00] Aaron Burstein: That you're one of the first people to get that.

[49:00] justin borak: Really?

[49:00] Aaron Burstein: Yeah.

[49:01] justin borak: Wait, wait, was that actually?

[49:01] Aaron Burstein: Yeah, that's why I did mediocre jokes, because of rejected jokes.

[49:03] justin borak: Are we?

[49:04] Aaron Burstein: Yeah, that's crazy, actually. I haven't gotten no one's gotten it in a long time. But um that guy. But yeah, and then you can check out the scene podcast anywhere you listen to podcasts, you can check out Play the Z anywhere you listen to podcasts, and then my website, JustinBorak.com, but you got my new play exchange. Also, I'll say this can't draw my stuff, that's totally fine. But just get new play exchange. I think it's like the thing that I like tell every person in the world. It's like one of the greatest websites on the planet.

[49:30] Aaron Burstein: Yeah.

[49:30] justin borak: It's so good. It's where I discovered Gracie Gardner, one of her new plays, I forget the new name of it, but it used to be called this one, it sat in a spa. And I read that, and it was like it sold me on her so hard. And then like my partner gave me Pussy Sludge, and I read Lathina, and it's just like she's brilliant. But also so many great playwrights like Nicholas Pill, Sarah Graustra, Rachel Green. There's so many people that like we don't know about that are on there and just destroying and killing and have the best stuff for not just like reading pleasures as like a super fucking nerd, but also for college kids and high school kids who are like doing monologues or doing auditions or whatever. I think it's so impressive when someone walks into an audition room and does a monologue that one is perfect for that audition, and two, no one's heard of.

[50:09] Aaron Burstein: Yeah.

[50:10] justin borak: Like it's hard to do.

[50:11] Aaron Burstein: Oh yeah.

[50:12] justin borak: Like it's do whatever monologues you want, whatever you feel comfortable with. But I think it's really cool when people come in with like shit you never heard of. So the best place to find that is just going on new play exchange and reading a bunch of plays. Like literally, my wall, I'm the I'm like the featured playwright or the playwright, the feature playwright if I've ever for the Drama Book Shop, which is the coolest sentence I've ever been able to say. And I got to like curate a wall on the back, which again is the coolest thing I've ever done. Thank you, Mark. But like on my like little blur for contemporary new theater, I like wrote like two sentences and I was like, I'm not gonna get everything I wanted.

So I just I think I named like 35 like contemporary playwrights, and I was just like, just go read these people. And I just like wrote them all out. So like that whole thing is just a list of people that I am obsessed with and love, and it goes all the way from Ingo Zanyawoo and Gracie Gardner and Annie Baker, all the way to like my friend Faith King, who's currently in college right now, but has written a couple really cool plays that I'm like, you should go check her shit out on New Play Exchange.

[51:05] Aaron Burstein: That's awesome.

[51:06] justin borak: Yeah, so go see myself, but they're so go get new play exchange. That's like my biggest plug. Also go buy dramatist merch.

[51:13] Aaron Burstein: Yes.

[51:14] justin borak: At merch.dramatist.com. Coming out on February 20th. I think Billy Mays was just resurrected for sure.

[51:21] Aaron Burstein: Yeah, and that was crazy.

[51:22] justin borak: I don't care. I gotta do my work. I want to keep this hat. So I'm gonna not getting it back, Leo. Sorry. I have to give it back. But it's sweet.

[51:30] Aaron Burstein: That rocks.

[51:30] justin borak: Yeah. But yeah, good. Yeah, check out Justin's shit. You're a super talented guy.

[51:34] Aaron Burstein: And I'm you're a super talented. Congrats on your first interview.

[51:37] justin borak: Yeah.

[51:39] Aaron Burstein: My first time doing it.

[51:41] justin borak: Get out of here. Thank you. I was lovely. We work next to each other, so we're gonna see each other every day. So you have to be nice to each other.

[51:46] Aaron Burstein: That's true.

[51:47] justin borak: Yeah. But I want to be nice to you. And also the audience is half our co-worker.

[51:51] Aaron Burstein: So hell yeah.

[51:53] justin borak: Yeah. That was a big BLG vibe at the Drama Book Shop today.

[51:56] Aaron Burstein: As it should. It's a crossover episode.

[51:57] justin borak: Yeah. Speaking of this beautiful audience, how much time do we have, my man?

[52:01] Aaron Burstein: We're good.

[52:02] justin borak: We want to open it up to you guys. Do you all have any questions for our lovely guest Justin?

[52:07] Audience Member: Hello.

[52:07] justin borak: Hi.

[52:09] Audience Member: I have a question that I literally thought of yesterday.

[52:12] justin borak: Oh my god.

[52:12] Audience Member: Um, because my friend Charlie and I write a lot, and I was like, Charlie, you have to come meet my friend Justin. He's like super cool and amazing ideas. But my question is like, what is your process when starting to write a play? Do you just throw stuff on paper and see what happens? Do you like outline it?

[52:27] justin borak: Yeah. I have like a pretty like specific process. Like, I'm so jealous of the people who like like one of my favorite playwrights, Rachel Lynnette, who's fucking brilliant, wrote this. And it was a friend of mine who wrote this amazing play called Apologies to Lorraine Hansbury to August Wilson. It won the Yale Drama Prize. It's so good. And like to hear them tell the story of how they wrote it. They were like, I was bored. I wrote it in two days. I was bored, and then I won the Yale Drama Prize, and Paula Vogel wrote my fucking foreword. It's crazy. It's the most insane story in the world. But because I come from a TV background and animation you write, you started off in 15 second beats. So the animator can know what's happening every 15 seconds of the scheduling and start doing a workout line.

So the first play I ever wrote, which my friend Erica directed, I wrote it in 15 second beats, which isn't how you write a play. You can't say what an actor does on a 15-second basis. So it was a bad idea. But now it's shifted into what I do, which is I like I write a log line, which is like the play in three sentences, and then I write a summary, which is like a play in three paragraphs. And then I get through that, then I know that there's something. So then I write, I just beat it out. I just like write out a bunch of bullet points and try to like figure out what I want and write out like the A and the B plots and play with it. So I have a blueprint, and then I don't write for a week, so I forget it, and then I just start writing.

Because then like I'll start writing and I'll write like earnestly from my head, but then if I lose myself, I can hold up those beats and kind of see where I'm at on the map, and like it then becomes kind of like a game. I'm trying to figure out how to get back on track, then a continue. So I really like very beat-out things and having an option for it, but also being able to play with like my brain and doing whatever I want. But yeah, if you guys are writers, you can just write from your head. I'm so jealous. That pisses me off, but like good stuff. But uh yeah, that's what I do.

[54:14] justin borak: And I do a lot of readings, right? When I get freaking the best idea I've ever heard in my life, Jacqueline Bacchus, who wrote Men on Boats, You on the Moors Now, one of the greatest playwrights ever alive. Also, she's a friend of mine, so I'm gonna go to the greatest playwright to ever live, Jacqueline Bacchus, who wrote this new play called Heathcliff, and it's so good. But she got this idea, and she did this new thing called a first draft party, where she like invited like 30 of her friends, which I was there, and she got a couple actor friends, and she booked a space, and she got a bunch of samosas and got a bunch of alcohol, and was like, everyone come through, drink, eat, and then watch the reading of this play that have been working on it for three hours.

And she did like the the right when she wrote the end, she stopped working, got people together, and did it. And I was like, that's such a great idea because there's such a big part of me that's afraid to have people read a play. Right when I finish it, I send it to like Liz and Erica and two other like friends of mine, and I'm like, does this suck? And it takes me like months to get people in the room to actually read it out loud. But it's it's such a good idea to just kill that like weird feeling, and then just hear it out loud in a room that you know is gonna be warm. Like, it might it's I never want to create a room that's like a bunch of people that are like that's the best thing I've ever seen, even though Heathcliff was so good, and I was that, and I didn't give good critiques because I was like, Holy shit, this is so funny.

But I do think it's like such a cool thing to like invite people and have this really sweet, wonderful night where she got up and said this really wonderful speech at the beginning. She isn't for to make myself feel good. This isn't like for all of you to tell me that I'm great. This is for you guys to like hear a play and tell me what you think, but also for me to have fun with my people, which I think is like such a great dynamic to start a room. So I want to start. I'm bad at it because I finished White Walls in her workshop like a month ago, and I told myself I was gonna do it and I still haven't done it. But I want to start doing that, and I think it's a really great way to like as a writer hear your work out loud and get really wonderful feedback that doesn't scare you, but it keeps you on track. So, yeah, first first draft parties. I want it to be, I think it's gonna be the hottest anything in New York.

[56:20] Aaron Burstein: New York's hottest club.

[56:21] justin borak: First draft, Jacqueline Box's first draft party. That rips.

[56:24] Aaron Burstein: That's such a good idea.

[56:26] justin borak: It's a great play. Heathcliff is so good. Oh my god.

[56:29] Aaron Burstein: Any other questions from our beautiful audience?

[56:31] Audience Member: Yeah, you talked about your journey from comedy writing into playwright, and you mentioned a lot of like who plays today. Do you can you pinpoint like a play that you were like, this is what I want to do?

[56:42] justin borak: Yeah.

[56:44] justin borak: Yeah. I am thanks, Liz. That's the love of my life, my partner. But uh thank you for the great question. The play that I like saw, and it's like embarrassing because it's like a little too well known. No, it's not embarrassing, because it's a it's well known and it's overdone, not overdone, but it's done a lot because it's a great play. Stupid fucking bird. I was like always scared of Chekhov for so long. It was like one of the scariest things ever. And then I saw stupid I saw my friends do stupid fucking bird, and I was like, oh shit, you can do whatever you want in theater. Like you can do anything. And it like felt so good to be able to like watch people be people, I guess. So that felt really great.

And then when I went into like the comedy scene, I started like reading a lot of like farces and like weird political satires. Like my favorite play last year was Eureka Day, which I think is great. But then I started reading the person who like got me to realize, oh, I want to be a playwright, was Annie Baker, which I talk about constantly. I have a 35 minute video on YouTube of me breaking down my love of Annie Baker. If honestly, if she sees it, I'm gonna get in trouble. It's not true. But um, but I'm obsessed. She's so cool. She's so cool. But uh, but no, but I was like, I was reading the flick, and I was reading John, and then I read, what's the one with Skags? Not Dorama. And I was reading your stuff, and it was just like real people in real situations, and it was funny because the text was so specific, but so earnest that it felt like it was you.

And I think that's what I love about improv is like not creating not going up and just trying to get a laugh, but going up and like trying to create a scene that like people like earnestly feel connected to.

[56:45] Audience Member: I have to bring plays like this just.

[58:16] justin borak: And uh yeah, I don't know. I just I think like when I read Annie Baker's stuff, and when I saw Stupid F***ing Bird, and when I saw like people on the stage being people, it like felt very like safe and sweet to me, but also very funny because it felt like I was there.

[58:32] justin borak: Yeah, those are some of the plays that I also now I just want to say plays that I think are funny.

[58:38] justin borak: Do it. Mick Bitches is one of the best. Sophie McIntosh is f***ing awesome. Mick Bitch is so good. King James is one of my favorite plays ever. Trying to think of like actual, like very funny plays, though. Who are like very funny playwrights? I really love Jen Silverman. Jen Silverman's super funny, which is the play that like the remake was great here all the time for any reason. Yeah, I'm trying to think of any other like very comedic.

[59:02] justin borak: Here's the thing, dude. Sandy Rustin is like the king of farce, the queen of farce, the emperor of article comedy is like Sandy Rustin. The Cottage is great, Suffragettes Murder is Clue is Clue. It's the best. It's it does what it does because it is what it is. Yeah, it's so good. But uh but yeah, yeah, there are so many like very funny, wonderful playwrights. But yeah, shout out Sophie Macintosh and Rachel Green, both of them are very the two like cool young female playwrights that are just f***ing the funniest people on the planet, and the nicest people on the planet.

[59:35] justin borak: But yeah, that was I don't know if I answered that question. Let's talk for a while. Glad you bring up like Annie Baker and The Flick, because that The Flick is my all-time favorite play.

[59:44] Aaron Burstein: It's a great play.

[59:45] justin borak: And reading that in high school was like a moment for me. Yeah. But it like. It's so long, but it's so good. It's so good. Oh my god. I respect how it inspired walkouts at its like original production. And like I think the person the leader of playwrights at the time was like had to issue a statement that was like, hey, just saying if you I know this s***'s long, but if you leave, you will not get your buddy back. Sorry. I don't know. I just I've never seen an Annie Baker play and I got to see Infinite Life.

[1:00:12] justin borak: Same. When he was off Broadway, and it was like one of the coolest experiences in Lightway. But yeah, it doesn't matter how long or how short it is. Annie Baker's the GOAT. The GOAT. She's so she's on my Mount Rushmore for sure. A hundred percent. Four spots. Annie Baker, Chekhov, Annie Baker, Chekhov, Gracie Gardner, and then I would say probably like Lynn Nottage, but Nottage.

[1:00:37] justin borak: That's good. I'm missing so many people that I love very much. But that's just off the dome. Off the dome, that's the four. That's pretty great. I'll tell you. Rajiv Joseph is they're building a very small statue up to the side. But he's there for sure.

[1:00:49] justin borak: Yeah. That rocks. Yeah. Balls of love. Any other questions?

[1:00:58] Audience Member: Oh, yeah, I guess I was curious, like how you first got started the s*** in like the comedy writing world, and then also how you started the writing world.

[1:01:05] justin borak: I did stand up when I was like 15. So I was like, started doing stand-up as a kid, and I lied to my I'm gonna say it because my parents don't listen to the podcast that I do, because I do too many podcasts. I lied to my parents when I told them I was at my friend's house. I lied to my friends, I told them I was at a girl's house. And then I would get picked up on the corner by like a 50-year-old divorced man who was doing stand-up at open mics with me.

[1:01:25] justin borak: Where is this going? I'm not kidding. He would drive me to the Greyhound bus when I was like 15 or 16 years old, and I'd take the Greyhound to New York and I would do three-minute slots at like Gotham or at like little tiny open mics. And I would do it was like it was so dumb. I should have been murdered a bunch of times. But I did that, and then I did a show in Rochester where I was growing up, and Tevin James was there, and he like gave me my first vote of confidence as like a stand-up, and I was like doing stupid like jokes a 15-year-old was doing, like didn't make any sense.

[1:01:55] justin borak: And then I went to school, went to college, and I became the like resident opener at a theater down there. So like whenever big stand-ups came and they didn't have an opener coming with them, I'd get to like open for them, which was fun. And then I wrote a sketch while I was down there called Sleepover, which was about two eighth-grade girls teaching two sixth-grade girls how to be the new like bottom bitches of the middle school. But the two eighth-grade girls were played by Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin, and the sixth-grade girls were Elmo and Trump. There was like a kind of conversation about using like nationalistic rhetoric to promote like racism, and it got a bunch of awards, and then I got a job at Second City.

[1:02:32] justin borak: So that was like how I got into the comedy writing world. A lot of luck, and then one sketch. But um it was super fun. It was like rad. And then when I was in Chicago, I like was writing a lot, and I was on like Improvised Bachelor at Second City there, which is so much fun. I'm a huge Bachelor fan, so I got to meet a bunch of Bachelor people, which was the coolest thing of my life. But yeah, and then The Onion and Carzing Family and stuff like that all came. And then yeah, I started writing theater when I went to grad school because I didn't want to have a baby or a dog or move to LA, so I went to West Virginia, went to grad school. I didn't know what else to do. And then, yeah, and then I was surrounded by plays.

My friend Erica introduced me to a lot of cool playwrights, and I started like realizing as a TV writer, I didn't want to write movies, but there was something about writing for the stage that felt just like earnest and real. And I felt that from Annie Baker and Chekhov and like a lot of those like pieces and those playwrights. So yeah, I started writing for the stage. And here we are. And the rest is history, baby.

[1:03:30] Aaron Burstein: I'm still stuck on the like 50-year-old man car thing. That is probably the most insane lore drop I've ever heard from I have heard a lot of history.

[1:03:38] justin borak: You've heard a bunch of drops in six months.

[1:03:40] Aaron Burstein: Yeah. That's the wildest one.

[1:03:42] justin borak: I just I didn't want to, I didn't I couldn't drive. And I had to get to the and I had to get to the Greyhound.

[1:03:47] Aaron Burstein: Oh, yeah, you're right. Sorry, yeah. And they were all nice. They were just like a bunch of divorced guys who were like doing like stand-up about how much they hate their ex-wife. And I was like a 14-year-old kid who was like, Yeah. Like my big joke was like, my like course teacher really didn't like me. Her name was Miss Nich. So I did a joke calling her Miss Bitch, and her husband came to my show.

[1:04:06] justin borak: Oh, yeah. I got in, I never got cast again. I got blackballed from my high school theater department.

[1:04:13] Aaron Burstein: But look at you now.

[1:04:14] justin borak: At the end of this, it came around at the end of school. She wrote in like my like year at the when I graduated, she wrote my yearbook saying, I always thought you were one of my funniest students, which is very nice.

[1:04:25] Aaron Burstein: That's fair.

[1:04:25] justin borak: And I did Community Garden. Oh, which is cool. It was her last show before she retired.

[1:04:29] Aaron Burstein: Oh, awesome.

[1:04:30] justin borak: Yeah, so wow. It all came around. Shout out to Miss Nich.

[1:04:33] Aaron Burstein: Shout out to Miss Nich. I hope she's listening.

[1:04:35] justin borak: Dude, 100% shout out to God. Yeah. This was f***ing great, man. I really appreciate this.

[1:04:40] Aaron Burstein: Thank you for having me.

[1:04:42] justin borak: Yeah, thank you for being here. Thank you guys for being here. And we are back. There's a show that he talked about that I am so excited about. And I ask him every time I see him, because he mentioned briefly, if you heard, about being excited about liminal spaces.

[1:05:00] Aaron Burstein: Uh-huh.

[1:05:00] justin borak: I love that concept. Love Severance.

[1:05:03] Aaron Burstein: Yeah, exactly. And a lot of one of the things in Severance is based off of I won't say an urban legend, but like just an internet legend called The Back Rooms, which I love. And the back rooms are basically the idea is a clip, like you fall out of our reality. You land in if you Google this, it's so creepy. I don't know anything about this. Go on.

[1:05:23] justin borak: An empty office with really interesting, like 90s style lighting and carpet, and it's just it continues on forever. Uh-huh. And it's there, there's supposedly multiple floors and blah blah blah. But it's just like you would leave a room and there's another room just like it, and just like it, just like it, and you feel like you're not alone, and it's that that awkward, I don't know if you've ever been in an office by yourself for a long period of time.

[1:05:49] Aaron Burstein: Yeah.

[1:05:49] justin borak: Um, and there's just nothing there. It's just carpet, an empty carpet, like no tables, no chairs, or anything. And it's just early in the pandemic. I went to work at Lincoln Center only to find out when I got there that we had all been sent an email to our work emails.

[1:06:03] Aaron Burstein: Uh-huh.

[1:06:03] justin borak: That makes sense. The one that I don't log into until I get to work, yeah. Saying everybody work from home. Yeah, and I wonder maybe if some of that is where that came from, because the world was a little bit of space at that point, depending on where you were. And so just the idea of a possible show in that just has me so excited. So, Justin, tell me more. I'm very excited about your work and about that project.

[1:06:29] justin borak: And Erin, it's so great to work with you. David, what are you working on with Aaron right now?

[1:06:34] David Rigano: Uh I you and I around the same time somehow started working on each of our first horror play.

[1:06:41] justin borak: Yes.

[1:06:42] David Rigano: And mine takes place in a cabin in the woods. Hence Cabin. My love of cabins. It's a play called What's the Buzz. Tell me what's happening. And it's a comedic thriller. My goal was to write a play that's funny until it's very not funny. And Aaron and his production company Midnight Snack is going to be doing a staged reading of it at the end of the month.

[1:07:08] justin borak: That's amazing.

[1:07:09] David Rigano: So you should definitely follow Midnight Snack on the socials because I know that he and I are in all sorts of meetings about getting graphics and everything together for my show and for everything that he's doing. So there's going to be a lot on the socials coming up very soon.

[1:07:27] justin borak: It's a play about three friends on vacation in a rental house in the woods in a mountain for a getaway that's very secluded, only to find that their rental house has a fly infestation.

[1:07:42] Aaron Burstein: Oh, love.

[1:07:44] David Rigano: And they think that when they get to the bottom of it, that will solve their problems and they'll be able to have a good rest of their vacation. And when they find the source of the flies, it only makes things worse.

[1:07:56] justin borak: Ooh, very cool. Very scary. Very spooky, very Lord of the Flies.

[1:08:00] Aaron Burstein: Yeah, a little Lord of the Flies.

[1:08:02] David Rigano: I've really been trying to pull inspiration. So I some Amityville in that too. I got a little yellow wallpaper in there. Yeah. Okay. I wanted to make sure that I had some and then there were none. I needed to make sure that once they got to this house, they would not be able to leave it.

[1:08:21] justin borak: And you have a history with that show.

[1:08:22] David Rigano: I love Agatha Christie. I definitely have more of a history with mystery than with thriller. So this is me stepping outside of my comfort zone. So yeah, we've got some yellow wallpaper, we've got some and then there were none. My best friend Katie Carlyle and I were reading through early drafts that had a lot of holes in them, much like the scenery does by the end of the play. And she said, I think there's room for a little cask of Amontillado in there.

[1:08:51] justin borak: That's my favorite drink.

[1:08:53] David Rigano: And a whole cask. And very recently, thanks to another playwright friend of mine, Russell Jordan Poole, I have thrown in elements of The Watcher. So I've been trying to like draw from a lot of fun, spooky horror thrillers.

[1:09:12] justin borak: Yeah.

[1:09:13] David Rigano: Steal from the best for my first thriller.

[1:09:16] justin borak: No, I love that. I'm excited for that. And this will be the first time that we're it'll be a staged reading, we're putting it on its feet. I've done some some like table reads of it, and now I'm at the point where I think I need to really see obviously no no sets, no costumes, minimal props, but I want to I want to see it walking around.

[1:09:38] justin borak: I love that.

[1:09:39] David Rigano: I'm excited to see it, and I'm excited that Midnight Snacks is doing it. Yeah, and that we know Erin. I also have a project with Midnight Snacks, but we'll delve into that later. But just keep you anticipation. I hope you just have some with bated breath about it. And we will go into that in the future.

[1:09:55] justin borak: As for our next episode, yeah. Some of you might have caught that. Some of our more faithful listeners might be. I caught a because yours is a Next Stage Press as well.

[1:10:04] David Rigano: Oh no, that's a different one. That's so that's another one we have vivid. So inelegantly. Yes, literally right after we do What's the Buzz, My Play, What We Deserve will be published by Next Stage Press. So February 1st, that will be available.

[1:10:19] justin borak: Yeah.

[1:10:19] David Rigano: From their website and then on our shelves, I guess very shortly after, if not that day.

[1:10:25] justin borak: Yeah.

[1:10:26] David Rigano: And Next Stage has I just got what What's the Buzz means. That's really funny. And Next Stage has my show with Faded Breath. And Next Stage also has our next episode's show, Goddess of the Hunt by Doug DeVita.

[1:10:34] justin borak: Doug DeVita.

[1:10:41] David Rigano: Who is another wonderful friend of the store who has I feel like an entire shelf of plays? So much content. But all great. And coming from a great person. And he always brings a fun crowd with him.

[1:10:56] justin borak: Oh, he does.

[1:10:57] David Rigano: Doug's events are wonderful. And I'm glad because we didn't get to record the last one.

[1:11:01] justin borak: The first one.

[1:11:02] David Rigano: The first one, yeah. And I had COVID, so I didn't even get to see it. I watched it through the security camera from my house. Yeah. That was a really fun event. And as was this last one.

[1:11:11] justin borak: Yeah.

[1:11:12] David Rigano: Bit of trivia. Benjamin, who was in the cast of that and did perform from during the event, was one of our original employees.

[1:11:25] justin borak: He was one of our baristas when we first reopened.

[1:11:28] David Rigano: That's funny.

[1:11:29] justin borak: I wasn't there.

[1:11:30] David Rigano: Oh, you were there. When we first reopened, no, no, but I remember him from that. And then he I feel like he got into got in the inheritance in like Boston or something. And then we never saw him again. Like he stayed in contact, but he was like, okay, bye.

[1:11:42] justin borak: So it all goes full circle.

[1:11:44] David Rigano: Yeah. Yeah. The bookstore and the podcast. Just getting people jobs.

[1:11:46] justin borak: Yeah.

[1:11:47] David Rigano: And you should come to the bookstore as well. Faithful listener. Yes. And remember to follow us on Instagram at Drama Book Show Podcast. Please subscribe to the Drama Bookshop on Eventbrite so that you can be alerted whenever we add in-person events to our calendar. It's been a long night, folks. We've been doing this. We've been doing some intro outros for a while. Attention to the man behind the curtain.

[1:12:13] justin borak: Yeah.

[1:12:14] David Rigano: Remember to give us some likes, some comments, some messages, some Instagram love, some podcasts. Remember, 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.