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[0:14] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Hello and welcome to The Drama Book Show.

[0:16] David Rigano: My name is David Rigano.

[0:18] Mark-Eugene Garcia: David, I'm so happy to have you here.

[0:21] David Rigano: Yeah, it's been, uh, it's been a minute.

[0:23] Mark-Eugene Garcia: It's been a minute.

[0:24] David Rigano: I've been very busy.

[0:25] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Yes, because you have something this weekend.

[0:26] David Rigano: I do have something this weekend.

[0:28] Mark-Eugene Garcia: When is this coming out?

[0:29] David Rigano: Oh, soon.

[0:30] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Okay.

[0:31] David Rigano: So it's very possible that when you listen to this, you can still buy tickets to the 12th annual Ides of March extravaganza, which is Friday the 13th.

[0:39] Mark-Eugene Garcia: It's tomorrow from when we're recording.

[0:41] David Rigano: So you'll probably have missed it by now.

[0:43] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Okay.

[0:44] David Rigano: So possibly not. There'll be clips and you can follow at Regano Songbook on YouTube and TikTok and we'll be posting stuff.

[0:50] Mark-Eugene Garcia: And that's also why my voice sounds like this, because I've been playing three instruments, singing a bunch of songs, and getting over a cold.

[1:00] David Rigano: Yeah, that's a lot. A lot on your plate.

[1:03] Mark-Eugene Garcia: I have decided that Friday the 13th came early for us, and then tomorrow's gonna go smooth.

[1:11] David Rigano: I think so too.

[1:12] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Yeah, it is.

[1:13] David Rigano: I, as someone who was born on a Friday the 13th and loves Friday the 13th in general, I am wishing all of my good Friday the 13th luck towards all get hit by a car tomorrow.

[1:23] Mark-Eugene Garcia: But you will have good luck.

[1:25] David Rigano: But hopefully on your way from my event to the event.

[1:29] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Yeah.

[1:30] David Rigano: Because we need the butts in seats.

[1:32] Mark-Eugene Garcia: It sounds like it's gonna be exciting.

[1:33] David Rigano: Yeah, we had our tech today and we're at Caveat down on Clinton Street, which I can't, this is our second year there, and I hope that we stay there forever and always.

[1:44] Mark-Eugene Garcia: I really love working with them and I love working in that space.

[1:48] David Rigano: And yeah, it's the last time we scheduled a Friday the 13th show.

[1:54] Mark-Eugene Garcia: It was March 13th, 2020, which was obviously the day after Broadway shut down.

[1:59] David Rigano: We did not do a show. We canceled our performance and then we booked a studio space and invited about a quarter of the audience who had bought tickets to come to this studio and watch an invited rehearsal, basically.

[2:14] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Nice.

[2:15] David Rigano: So that was the way that we did, and of course, Ides 2020 never officially happened. Ultimately, everyone recorded their songs in the very early days of what that would become, just recorded their songs at home in their living rooms, in their bedrooms or whatever.

[2:30] Mark-Eugene Garcia: And then we posted them, we kind of rolled them out on YouTube, and that was our Ides 2020.

[2:35] David Rigano: I have some experience in doing that with you during that pandemic.

[2:38] Mark-Eugene Garcia: You did also one of my, and I also think right in March, we were like, we have to do this.

[2:43] David Rigano: And those were individual songs.

[2:45] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Those are your solo songs, and you go, and I think there were a couple of duets, and we figured out how to meld them together.

[2:50] David Rigano: But then we had this competition, and Paul and I just said, if we get the most possible people in, then that'll be the most people sharing it, and that'll get the most views and we'll win.

[3:02] Mark-Eugene Garcia: We got 42 other people joining us, singers and musicians, and you were one of the singles and animals, yes.

[3:10] David Rigano: And we, and so all of those videos that you watched over COVID where it was multiple people in their little boxes, yeah, and they made the boxes dance around, but everyone was at home.

[3:23] Mark-Eugene Garcia: I really like to think that we were at least the very first wave of that.

[3:27] David Rigano: Yeah, and also, April 12th was the deadline.

[3:30] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Right.

[3:30] David Rigano: So we were really on the cusp.

[3:32] Mark-Eugene Garcia: And it was a cool song. I still will hum it.

[3:35] David Rigano: Screen to screen.

[3:36] Mark-Eugene Garcia: It's still up there on YouTube.

[3:37] David Rigano: And Mark, myself, and 42 other wack-a-doos.

[3:41] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Yeah, and there's not much about the pandemic I'm nostalgic about.

[3:44] David Rigano: I don't think there's anything.

[3:46] Mark-Eugene Garcia: But that video specifically.

[3:48] David Rigano: Um, it was the early days.

[3:50] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Yeah.

[3:51] David Rigano: Something of like a beam of light.

[3:52] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Yeah, and none of us knew how long it was gonna go or what it was gonna be.

[3:57] David Rigano: So, and we were all just so recently out of anything to do.

[4:01] Mark-Eugene Garcia: So why not hop on your computer and sing a little song?

[4:04] David Rigano: And I don't think any of y'all realized quite how epic it was going to be.

[4:10] Mark-Eugene Garcia: No, not that when we get side, I was just like, oh my gosh.

[4:13] David Rigano: It was exciting.

[4:14] Mark-Eugene Garcia: And to think that you're bringing that type of magic into a live production.

[4:20] David Rigano: Yeah, we've got, we have eight performers.

[4:22] Mark-Eugene Garcia: We have four core performers who are singing company numbers and who have little solos and doing little scenes.

[4:29] David Rigano: It's very vaudevillian.

[4:31] Mark-Eugene Garcia: And then we have four special guest performers, and possibly an additional.

[4:35] David Rigano: If you check out our Instagram, we're teasing stuff.

[4:38] Mark-Eugene Garcia: We're, yeah, you had little surprise guests.

[4:41] David Rigano: Yes, our surprise guest last year was a ghost.

[4:43] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Yes.

[4:44] David Rigano: So you never know.

[4:45] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Prior to that, you had another one.

[4:46] David Rigano: Oh, James Monroe Iglehart, yes.

[4:48] Mark-Eugene Garcia: A big fan of Regano Songbook, James Monroe Iglehart was made a feature in our 10th annual.

[4:54] David Rigano: Yes, that was a hoot and a half.

[4:57] Mark-Eugene Garcia: I happened to get backstage at Spamalot through a friend who was in that year's show, and she mentioned to him that she was gonna be doing my show, and I said, and would you mind contributing a video greeting?

[5:10] David Rigano: And I told him what the joke we wanted him to make was, and he laughed out loud and said, let's do it right now because he is just the cool.

[5:17] Mark-Eugene Garcia: I've met him a couple times, and he's just the coolest and the nicest.

[5:21] David Rigano: And yeah, yeah, we've, we always try to get some fun little special surprises into the various Ides shows.

[5:30] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Speaking of cool, special fun surprises, we had a very cool special fun guest.

[5:34] David Rigano: Yes.

[5:35] Mark-Eugene Garcia: It was a beautiful day in the store.

[5:38] David Rigano: And talk about someone who, like everyone I know, did scenes and monologues in college.

[5:46] Mark-Eugene Garcia: From, it's one of those, I don't remember actually buying Reasons to Be Pretty, but I have it.

[5:53] David Rigano: Like it was, it's just on my, it was, or I don't know that I've ever seen it, but I know that I've seen it because I've seen enough people do plays.

[6:00] Mark-Eugene Garcia: All of his plays are that kind of, they're just so zeitgeist.

[6:04] David Rigano: And I think especially when I was in college in the early 2000s, it was very, I don't want to say edgy, but that, but I think a lot of his, he was right on the cusp at that point, and everyone was doing all of his plays.

[6:20] Mark-Eugene Garcia: So then when you were like, you're gonna interview him, I was like, I'm gonna interview Neil Labute.

[6:25] David Rigano: And it's not just that, because I think it's timeless in a way that it still is being done.

[6:31] Mark-Eugene Garcia: And yeah, I'm still seeing his plays going across the counter for so many people, including a lot of college students who are getting their monologues together and getting the seasons.

[6:41] David Rigano: And I think he's also someone who when you, like when you're in college and you're ready to do like stuff that feels more like grown-up stuff.

[6:51] Mark-Eugene Garcia: He, I mean, he's a very divisive writer. He writes about some difficult issues.

[6:58] David Rigano: He writes a lot about body image and the importance that we put on body image and how that affects relationships.

[7:08] Mark-Eugene Garcia: And there are certainly a lot of people who don't take kindly to some of the things that, but I have always felt that he is commenting on these issues.

[7:19] David Rigano: Yeah.

[7:20] Mark-Eugene Garcia: And I'm a firm believer in there's a place for all of our stories in this store.

[7:24] David Rigano: And there's definitely a shelf for him.

[7:26] Mark-Eugene Garcia: And he has quite, quite in the library here.

[7:29] David Rigano: I, there's a lot in Reasons to Be Pretty in particular when you're, it's not an easy conversation to have.

[7:38] Mark-Eugene Garcia: No, and that's theater.

[7:42] David Rigano: The idea of like loving someone with, does loving someone make them more attractive to you?

[7:47] Mark-Eugene Garcia: And can you love someone who you don't find attractive?

[7:51] David Rigano: And what does it mean to that other person that if the person you love finds out that you don't find them attractive, but you still love them?

[7:58] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Do I love you because you're beautiful or are you beautiful because I love you?

[8:01] David Rigano: Yeah, sure.

[8:02] Mark-Eugene Garcia: If Oscar Hammerstein could say that back in 1950, whatever.

[8:06] David Rigano: You think they'd collaborate?

[8:08] Mark-Eugene Garcia: I would love to see Neil Labute write the book for Crazy for You, but with Rogers and Hammerstein songs.

[8:15] David Rigano: Oh, yeah, I'm in.

[8:16] Mark-Eugene Garcia: I'm here for that.

[8:17] David Rigano: Let's, it would be a good idea.

[8:21] Mark-Eugene Garcia: But this event in particular is for a book of one acts that was published that come from the LaBute One Act Festival.

[8:30] David Rigano: This is the first book from that festival.

[8:33] Mark-Eugene Garcia: We'll let them talk a little bit more about what the future plans are, but that hopefully for future books they will figure out how to like just the legality of getting other writers.

[8:45] David Rigano: But for the very first one, they just said we have all these plays that Neil wrote as part of this festival that had other writers included.

[8:52] Mark-Eugene Garcia: So let's publish Neil's plays from this festival, and then we'll see what the next step is.

[8:57] David Rigano: Without any further ado, let's listen to Neil Labute.

[9:00] Neil Labute: Hello, everybody.

[9:01] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Hi, so hello.

[9:02] David Rigano: Hi.

[9:05] Neil Labute: Hey guys.

[9:07] Neil Labute: Hello, and thank you for being here tonight.

[9:11] Mark-Eugene Garcia: So friendly case.

[9:14] Neil Labute: Yeah, go on.

[9:17] Mark-Eugene Garcia: We should just give him a book and let him go.

[9:18] Neil Labute: Yeah.

[9:20] Mark-Eugene Garcia: What do we ask if they don't know already?

[9:23] Neil Labute: All right. But for the handful of people who haven't yet met you.

[9:27] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Wait one quick.

[9:28] Neil Labute: I think it might be that dude's birthday tomorrow.

[9:30] Mark-Eugene Garcia: What?

[9:31] Neil Labute: Is it your birthday tomorrow?

[9:33] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Can we just do a quick birthday?

[9:34] Neil Labute: Let's just do it.

[9:34] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Yeah.

[9:35] Neil Labute: So Mark said that dude would be cool, but if you wish, either sing happy birthday, dear Mark, or happy birthday dear that dude.

[9:44] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Okay, shall we all ready?

[9:46] Neil Labute: I'm gonna decide when I get there.

[9:47] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Okay, cool.

[9:48] Neil Labute: Here's a good place to start.

[9:49] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Everyone's talking to you.

[9:51] Neil Labute: Set around here, right?

[9:53] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Happy birthday to you.

[9:57] All: Happy birthday, dear baby.

[10:03] All: Happy birthday to you.

[10:15] Neil Labute: Just trying to ingratiate myself into it.

[10:18] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Yes.

[10:19] Neil Labute: It's all about who you know.

[10:23] Mark-Eugene Garcia: That's, yeah, all right, good night, everyone.

[10:26] Neil Labute: So where did this book come from?

[10:28] Neil Labute: What was the genesis of this book?

[10:30] Neil Labute: Funny you should ask. This is a collection of 10 plays.

[10:33] Neil Labute: We're on our 10th year of this festival that William from St. Louis, the guy you heard about a moment ago.

[10:40] Neil Labute: Huge in St. Louis.

[10:41] Neil Labute: Have this brain show.

[10:43] Neil Labute: We've done at least one or two plays together.

[10:47] Neil Labute: About our fourth season, we're our 17th season at St. Louis Actors’ Studio.

[10:50] Neil Labute: We were doing The Shape of Things.

[10:52] Neil Labute: And another theater company's like Exton's Throw Away.

[10:56] Neil Labute: What's also doing is just Shape of Things.

[10:57] Neil Labute: And I'm serious lesson primary with the same opening night.

[11:02] Neil Labute: So I called the rights people, and I was like, I knew we had any exclusive rights, but I'm just like, what's the deal?

[11:07] Neil Labute: And they're like, yeah, we're sorry, we shouldn't have done that. What do you want to do about it?

[11:10] Neil Labute: I'm like, Neil Labute, come to my opening so I can draw a bigger crowd.

[11:15] Neil Labute: Send us a letter before we do it.

[11:17] Neil Labute: So I did.

[11:18] Neil Labute: That was that.

[11:19] Neil Labute: We went on.

[11:20] Neil Labute: I get text.

[11:21] Neil Labute: I went to the other show, actually.

[11:27] Neil Labute: Hey Sneal, I heard about your situation.

[11:29] Neil Labute: I'll come.

[11:30] Neil Labute: Believe it or not, wearing like final dresses.

[11:33] Neil Labute: I'm like, I think this is not working.

[11:35] Neil Labute: And then this is my first chance to meet Neil.

[11:39] Neil Labute: This is not going to be it.

[11:40] Neil Labute: So I sent him a text, and I'm just like, hey, I can't believe I'm even writing this, but I don't want you to come.

[11:45] Neil Labute: I don't love the production.

[11:46] Neil Labute: I don't want you this to be our first exposure, St. Louis Actors’ Studio.

[11:49] Neil Labute: He's that's fine because I had to go to Marcel and whatever.

[11:52] Neil Labute: On his way to somewhere else to direct something else somewhere else.

[11:57] Neil Labute: And he goes, how about if I send you some small stuff of mine?

[12:00] Neil Labute: You can do an evening of it, and I'll write one for you.

[12:04] Neil Labute: So we did the final next season.

[12:06] Neil Labute: We did an evening of his one acts, and he wrote a new one for us.

[12:10] Neil Labute: And I've always loved one acts, but it's always been you go to university and you do them because they're easy and they're fast, and a bunch of students can do different things.

[12:17] Neil Labute: Don't really took them seriously, it didn't seem to be.

[12:19] Neil Labute: And they're like great for especially as an actor and producer.

[12:22] Neil Labute: It's like you're trying to get a younger audience in, and it's like changing the remote light, it's a different thing.

[12:27] Neil Labute: It's happening every 20 minutes.

[12:28] Neil Labute: Sometimes 10 minutes.

[12:29] Neil Labute: We get a whole hardware story.

[12:30] Neil Labute: Long story short, I call them up on the stuff.

[12:32] Neil Labute: Hey, it's a great idea.

[12:34] Neil Labute: How about if we do one festival?

[12:35] Neil Labute: We'll ask if they write a set of scripts, and you can write one if you want, but no pressure.

[12:40] Neil Labute: And you can come in, just come in the first year, and then we'll have this thing dignitaries after that.

[12:44] Neil Labute: So it doesn't wrong each other.

[12:46] Neil Labute: So that's what we did.

[12:47] Neil Labute: Our first year, I think we got about 500 submissions from every state, although Canada around the world, and it's now in its dead season.

[12:54] Neil Labute: So now that we've done 10 years, and it is our tenth one, we decided to produce a book.

[12:59] Neil Labute: Well, the books you got of this book happens to be the 10 plays that I wrote for, not all of them took place in St. Louis.

[13:07] Neil Labute: Some of them here in New York.

[13:09] Neil Labute: We've done a couple of runs here.

[13:11] Neil Labute: In fact, the piece that Gia's gonna read from, she did on the cover.

[13:15] Neil Labute: I had a choice between him and usually what are you gonna do? But this is the piece she did here at theater. I believe it's in Chipotle's now. But they still do theater, obviously. Um William is doing with me, I'm gonna read with him, much to your chagrin. Believe me, the few moments he did it in St. Louis. So we'll read them in the order that they happened. But that's where the 10 came from. We saw this first book, we'll use the 10 that I wrote for a long way in this last decade. And it's not quite all because we did three here, and but it's mostly everything that happened for the last 10 years. Yeah. And part of that thing is when you hear brought it here in New York, and we keep talking about the real love, the real, in case you happen to have an extra million dollars, as you do occasionally, is the idea of a like it's really a brick and mortar one-act play theater.

There's none that I know of actually in the States, or really in the world that I can find, completely devoted to one, but and it's a form that I love seeing, love writing, reading, and I don't know that it gets its fair shake. There's so many great plays back to breaks, certainly throughout history. Men, women, all new writers who've been around forever. The festival has a high school component, too. So high school kids senders in that we do a reading on Saturday, we should when he's in town, so speaking that's right. High school kids as well. And just so the idea would be one day have a place where one acts could call call it home, and we could do it as a name and as a business plan. Evening of and all that, you really sound like that would I would love to just love the form, as I say, and I think it's great for a writer, just like short stories, and just like they're so contained, that kind of unified effect that Edward and Poe talked about.

Give a writer 10 pages. Now there's 10 minute festivals. Those pages go fast. When I've had students, I'm like, only put on those pages what you are so in love with because nothing else should matter. You're gonna run out of room real fast. And so that's always been my thing to write precisely and interestingly, and then not be too precious about it, be willing to change it. So these are some of the plays that that's that have come out of this, and we hope to do more. We've got one for the 10th season now as well. And so that'll happen in July in St. Notes. So the first one we're gonna read is called Here We Go Around the Mulberry Bush.

[15:38] William Roth: And do you want us to pull this over here so we're both on you know, I don't care if I'm just on mic, but if we really should both be on mic, then we'll see if that gets both of us in.

[15:50] Neil Labute: I'll speak about speaking loud. Yeah, you've got that theater voice. That St. Louis Theater voice.

[15:58] William Roth: No, no stage breaks. We're just gonna jump in. If you don't get it in ten pages, I'm sure it's me, but you kind of suck.

[16:10] Neil Labute: Beautiful day, huh?

[16:12] William Roth: Gorgeous.

[16:13] Neil Labute: Yeah, I know. Terrible winter we had, so thank God.

[16:16] William Roth: Uh-huh. So cold.

[16:18] Neil Labute: Yeah. That was the thing. People saying it was one of the worst on record and all that, but to me it just seemed cold. The snow stuck around because that not like just kept coming, piling up or anything, but really cold. So it stayed.

[16:31] William Roth: That's true. Anyways, spring now feels great. Last few weeks, month, it's been fantastic.

[16:37] Neil Labute: I agree. Baseball's bath March Madness.

[16:41] William Roth: Oh, yeah.

[16:41] Neil Labute: And Mr. Softy.

[16:43] William Roth: Ah, yeah, absolutely. I love that.

[16:44] Neil Labute: Me too. That's when it's official as far as I'm concerned. See those trucks. It was pretty much clear stamina from there on it. Right around the corner.

[16:51] William Roth: That's true. Love that. Beautiful day and ice cream. Whatever you call it on the sprinkles on there. Come over here and you sit in the park. Lovely.

[17:05] Neil Labute: Yeah, sounds great. Trust me. It's perfect.

[17:07] William Roth: Yeah. Right. This is such a nice spot. Really? A day like this? Wonderful. Sit here for hours when I'm not working. Taking in the sun.

[17:18] Neil Labute: Oh bet. Quite more so than the rest of the park. Down by the ball fields, other places like that, and gorgeously a bit more secluded.

[17:27] William Roth: Yeah, I can see that. You can read or have your lunch sandwich.

[17:32] Neil Labute: Yeah. Tucked back in here away, off the path. That's nice.

[17:37] William Roth: Yeah. Listen to those kids. Get out. So happy to be out of the house. We can smile to hear them out there laughing and playing, doesn't it?

[17:45] Neil Labute: Yeah. Sounds like they're having fun?

[17:47] William Roth: Totally. That doesn't bother you.

[17:51] Neil Labute: Excuse me.

[17:52] William Roth: No. You're saying it stays quieter over here, this end of the park. So that doesn't bug you, the kids, if you're reading your paper or whatever, your egg salad there?

[18:01] Neil Labute: No, not at all. That's good. They're fine. Are we down? They're down by the uh pretty far away.

[18:06] William Roth: Oh, yeah. Some probably come up this way though. Right? A few go back. Sometimes, don't you awful?

[18:14] Neil Labute: No.

[18:15] William Roth: Huh.

[18:16] Neil Labute: No. They're not much of a bother. They just like to explore and that sort of thing. Bring their dogs up here.

[18:23] William Roth: Nice. You got any?

[18:25] Neil Labute: Animals? No, no, the other guy. Kids, do you have any children?

[18:31] William Roth: Oh. Sorry, no. I don't, no, not on my own.

[18:35] Neil Labute: Got it. Wasn't lucky enough for that to happen in my life.

[18:38] William Roth: Huh. But you'd like something. Or one. I mean if you could.

[18:43] Neil Labute: You don't have to answer that. Sorry.

[18:46] William Roth: None of my business really.

[18:47] Neil Labute: Not none. But you don't have to say anything if you don't want it.

[18:52] William Roth: What's that?

[18:54] Neil Labute: I don't follow you.

[18:56] William Roth: You said something, I missed that part. Did you say that it was or was not your business?

[19:01] Neil Labute: My having children. Sorry. Neither. I said it was somewhere in between, I guess. My brain I've lost.

[19:11] William Roth: What?

[19:12] Neil Labute: In between. What does that mean?

[19:14] William Roth: Yes, you're right. It's not really my business if you have a kid or not. That's not what I'm but I have a kid. And you know him. And that is my business. That part. They won't be telling me there, by the way, my wife, my kid. Today it's just gonna be us. You and me. So you can which I need to watch.

[19:39] Neil Labute: That made you quiet?

[19:41] William Roth: No. Not at all. I just don't. But you know what say, or which one I'm talking about? Which kid.

[19:48] Neil Labute: I don't I'm not sure I like your tone, Mr. Sims.

[19:50] William Roth: My name's Kip Sims, yours.

[19:53] Neil Labute: Bill.

[19:54] William Roth: My name's Bill.

[19:55] Neil Labute: Oh.

[19:57] William Roth: Bill what?

[19:58] Neil Labute: Bill Jensen.

[19:59] William Roth: Bill Jensen. Yeah, you're him. I got the right guy. I suppose there's always the chance that I could have sat down next to somebody else, a different guy who accidentally sat, where you usually do in the afternoons.

[20:10] Neil Labute: That is possible.

[20:12] William Roth: But Mr. Sims, I'm not sure.

[20:13] Neil Labute: Kip really is fine. You don't have to call me anything other than Kip. I prefer Kip.

[20:17] William Roth: Fine, Kip. No need to get formal or anything. Not yet anyway. You don't know me. You haven't seen me before or anything.

[20:25] Neil Labute: It's not that. No, it doesn't matter how long you look at me or search your memory, you've never met me before. This never once. I only look like six blocks away, but what's this about?

[20:36] William Roth: Honestly.

[20:37] Neil Labute: About you?

[20:38] William Roth: Me?

[20:38] Neil Labute: Yeah. About you and my son. That's what I'm hearing about.

[20:42] William Roth: I'm sorry, I'm by the way. Lunch is almost over, and I need to go. This is I have to.

[20:45] Neil Labute: You should probably take a long lunch.

[20:49] William Roth: That's advice, not a threat.

[20:51] Neil Labute: Yes, but why would I?

[20:52] William Roth: Because you just should. Look. Because I have some things to say to you, and you need to hear him, or I'm gonna tell somebody else. Other people you would probably not at all like you talking to. Does that make sense, Bill?

[21:05] Neil Labute: Yes. Yeah. Yes. It does. You know what? He talks about me. My kid does. Isn't that funny? He talks about you at home when I get back from work in the evening after dinner. Sometimes before, but mostly after. When I got time to sit around and play with him at night. He talks about you. My son talks about the nice man at the park. Which is you, Bill. He's talking about you.

[21:36] William Roth: Is he right, do you think?

[21:38] Neil Labute: Sorry. Is he right?

[21:41] William Roth: Oh. Are you a nice man?

[21:44] Neil Labute: That's Bill Jensen.

[21:46] William Roth: What? Are you nice? Is my son right about you or not?

[21:51] Neil Labute: Yes. Are you nice?

[21:54] William Roth: Okay. Yeah. Fine. I'm a good person. Let's not get carried away there, Bill. All I asked was the nice part.

[22:02] Neil Labute: Good. That's a whole different thing.

[22:08] William Roth: So that's Lillian did that part. In St. Louis. It came here as well. We got a Friday over here, I guess. Yeah, not much, not much after that. It was at um back when there was a thing called Summer Shorts. It played there as well. And then it was made into a film. Actually, a short film that you can find on your local, what is it called? New Yorker website. The New Yorker. They have some films on their website, and uh the cast who were doing it here, they we made a film out of it and uh ended up on that site of theirs, which is a nice thing. Because then we have a history of it. And that that then from there came from actually from Summer Shorts, which was a great program of doing shorts in the summer.

The title really. They didn't went on to do a thing, what was it called? Stage the screen where they had started shooting short plays and making them into films. They've done a half dozen of those as well. So it's really a college industry, including people with well, just get that seed money for there with uh person as well. Oh the one acts that we do and or first write reviews from them and then developing the content for streaming services, but really a thought right that's not a few.

[23:28] Neil Labute: Yeah, please afterwards see him. It's not me. I streaming services just okay. Like that. Do you have any experience in the streaming service?

[23:37] William Roth: Not really, not a good one.

[23:39] Neil Labute: So anyway, that was that that particular piece. And uh jumped forward a couple of years, and we decided to do a kind of the benefit really for this idea, even back then in 2019, for the idea of doing a theater, and we came to New York and did three plays. One open first in St. Louis, that was Forthright. That happened there. You heard me right, Fourth Reich. It kind of sticks in the throat, but right. Eric Dean White faced a New York audience. He brought that here too. Yeah. The audience was up on. He's written it two ways. There's a there's an opening where you can openly take questions for the audience as you talk to them if you've got the character. I don't think he got that part. People were talking to him before he even focused with like it's a hit.

Okay, so Hitler lost, let's be honest. But and right around butt. We'll start with I got a bone depict with you, fella, like for 30 minutes. Yeah. So he went out and opened the house. And then we there was great Negro Works of Art. This one has a great story. So he sends me prior to coming to New York, he's hey, we'll do the and he says, Hey, I've got this idea. Two seconds. And then you say that it then has to be a really good story. No, no, it is. Okay. So he sends me this great Negro Works of Art. And it's a story about a gallery owner and an African-American artist. That's all I'll tell you about. So we come to New York just and we have to do things fast here, right? So we have a rehearsal that we put up.

So we come here on a Sunday, we start rehearsing Friday, then over the weekend it's up one day of tech, and it's off to the races. And so we're sitting there at the first read through of Brandon Works of Art. And we have to the end of it, Neil's very right. The actors, the actors have had those script for a while, so they memorized our life. No, is that you really like this? The actor meeting was like the producer of me was like, yes, I like it. We opened it. Right. And so he's like it was a friend of mine who's in it, and two friends of mine. There's a really great actor sitting behind you. And this fellow right back here. His daughter, Brenda Meanie, was in the play. That's her husband, Henry, right there.

They're here supporting. By the way. But so Brenda was in it, and she was nervously saying, I've started learning this text. And Keelan, who's done a couple of things with me, probably. Keelan wrote rose. He was, he was he's game and was like, okay. I said, you know what? Let me go home. And I went. He goes, keep rehearsing. And then if you don't hear from me by, I think this was like 10. He goes, if you don't hear from me by noon one, then this is what we'll do and just keep on going. And by noon or one, he had written a brand new play. Same name thing, same characters, completely different story, and that's the show that he put up here.

[26:29] William Roth: That's so good. Yeah, and it was ultimately it was really a better play. So it was I'm glad we did it. I know it was a little nerve-wracking, but it was a thing to do. And um, and then the third play was Gia's play, Unlikely Japan, in which it was her first time doing a solo play. Now I know you did a play this past summer with Brenda, and there was a lot of text, right? At least there was another person out there on the stage with you. The solo play where you're by yourself and there's no blocking. This is just one of those she sits on a cushion.

[27:05] Neil Labute: A full light play.

[27:07] William Roth: Yeah, personally. Oh, sure. No, I'm just saying that this is a really hard thing for people to do. The one act play, the full play, where there's no blocking or another person to get you back on track. If your mind blanks, you just you're there and you have to save yourself. Our first preview, she was ready to go. We walked through Central Park running the lines a million times. And you got on stage and what what happened?

[27:30] Gia Crovatin: I blacked out.

[27:31] William Roth: That's the point where you like fell over, but I blacked. I mean, I remember white out essentially. I just remember coming to three quarters of the way through and seeing audience and being like, What how did I get here? And then it's stopping and taking a moment. It is scary. It is the craziest fucking thing I've ever done in my life.

[27:51] Gia Crovatin: I've done a few of them I love that.

[27:52] William Roth: Childbirth was better.

[27:53] Gia Crovatin: Yeah.

[27:56] William Roth: Yeah, really.

[27:57] Gia Crovatin: You've done childbirth.

[28:00] William Roth: How often do you hear that? That's amazing. Take the drugs.

[28:05] Gia Crovatin: Nope.

[28:06] William Roth: Nope for everyone. But yeah, that's such a fun form and uh beautiful to work on and to see it done well. And I did one a bunch of years ago called Bash, where the same thing happened. I didn't Ron Eldar. He did a one-person show. Calista Flockhart did a one-person show, and then she and Paul run did a two-hander, which was essentially two monologues because they're not listening to each other really. But one night Ron Eldar just said, just went up.

[28:32] Gia Crovatin: And Ron's so funny that he talks with kind of wonderful energy.

[28:40] William Roth: And there was, and then there's nothing.

[28:42] Gia Crovatin: Yeah.

[28:44] William Roth: And he just sat there with a glass in his hand. And just smiled. And just was thinking, like trying to run the whole play in his head to get back to that place. And then he like reached over and did something with his shoe and smiled a little bit more. And then something was like anyway. So I was right back into the play. Finally floated back into his head. But it's just a yeah, it's a danger zone out there.

[29:06] Neil Labute: That's Kenny Wallace. But when it works, it's great. And Unlikely Japan was a one-person show for Gia. And that we did first here at the Davenport as well, like the second play. And we're gonna do a piece from that.

[29:23] Gia Crovatin: Yeah.

[29:23] Neil Labute: Yeah, you Unlikely Japan is from a Wilco song. I steal a lot of titles from music. I don't know why I felt the need to tell you that.

[29:37] Gia Crovatin: Okay, here we go.

[29:40] Neil Labute: Really?

[29:40] Gia Crovatin: Yeah.

[29:40] Neil Labute: Yeah, but this time you have this thing.

[29:42] Gia Crovatin: But I'm not blacking out. I promise I won't black out this time. Here we go.

[29:48] Gia Crovatin: So this was a while ago.

[29:51] Gia Crovatin: Okay? Not that long, but a while, a month or two, maybe something like that. Pretty recently. On the weekend, I think, because I had the news on TV, which I never do on a weekday because I'm not at home. I'm working. I manage a bank downtown, a branch. It's not important, but just so you know, I do. And I'm off on Saturdays and Sundays. So it had to be on a weekend.

[30:13] Gia Crovatin: Maybe dinner time. Like when you're sitting at the table by yourself or with your family, and it's not your usual TV time, but the news is okay, just in the background. It feels good to have the voices back there talking about world events or the weather, things like that. Local, national doesn't really even matter. It's just the sound of the voices.

[30:32] Gia Crovatin: Especially if you're someone who lives alone. Sometimes it's nice to hear the sound of another person in the house. That's what I mean. It's like that. Anyway, this was after that big thing that happened over in the yeah, that shooting with all the people and the man that was up in the it was then, just after that, on the news.

[30:55] Gia Crovatin: I was sitting at home, not really thinking about anything much, just having a salad, an early dinner that I had put together. Not myself, but I went to one of those places where it's like a big salad bar, but somebody else fixes it for you. You point out what you want, but they do all the actual making it up and adding the dressing and everything. You can get it on the side, of course, but otherwise they do it for you. The dressing on the side, that's what I'm saying.

[31:19] Gia Crovatin: Anyway, yeah. I was just eating away, staring off into space, and I hear this name. Tim Friedman. I hear that, and I look up really quickly while the picture is still there on the screen, just to see if maybe it's not a common name or anything, but it's not crazy weird, like one that there would only ever be one of, like Benedict Cumberbatch. It's not like that either. You know what I'm saying? You know what I mean? There could be others with a name like that.

[31:48] Gia Crovatin: There could be. But uh no. It's him. The guy they show, this man, he's a man now, because it's been quite a few years since I last saw him, but yeah, it's Tim Friedman. Supposedly he was at that thing, not supposedly because he was definitely there, he was in the crowd when it happened, and he uh he got shot and killed.

[32:12] Gia Crovatin: There weren't many details at the time, so I didn't know exactly how he died or how many times the gunmen. Actually, a few people were killed because they were trampled to death as the crowd gradually started to realize what was happening. They began to move like a giant wave. Several people, a child or two, even sell, and got run over. But he wasn't one of those casualties. Tim wasn't.

[32:36] Gia Crovatin: I later learned that he was shot and killed by the gunman from his vantage point in the tower, the hotel tower, where he sprayed bullets down into the crowd, and that's how Tim died. I didn't know it at first when I saw the news. I saw that in the story in Time magazine, that one that I bought, or people, one of those things, one of those in-depth features that comes out a week or so later when they've got more information about things, like with the pictures and illustrations and all that stuff.

[33:06] Gia Crovatin: It's weird that they do that though, don't you think? The map thingies. Why would I want to see the exact room in that hotel where the gunman was staying? Why would that matter to me? And with the little figures as well, showing the route he took upstairs from the casino or where the body stalled, when he did that, opened fire, ew. I'm not some true crime person, so that stuff is just lost on me.

[33:31] Gia Crovatin: Anyway, I saw it in there. The fact that Tim was one of the like 40 or 50 people that this man killed with his rifle that day. I might be wrong about that, I'm not even sure how many, but a lot of concert goers died. And so yeah, Tim was there. Not supposedly, but he was really there. He was there and he died. And like I said, I'm sitting with my salad and just watching this.

[33:55] Gia Crovatin: And I'm not sad, really. I don't think that's what I feel because it's been so long, and we've both done so many things and gone so many places since then with my work and I don't know, school and the people that we've both probably been with by this time. I don't know his story at all. We never stayed in touch, so I'm not sure, but I'm guessing he must have had like a normal amount of relationships because I certainly have been with a few guys since then.

[34:21] Gia Crovatin: I'm saying, but I do feel bad. Don't get me wrong, I do feel that, obviously. I feel bad because this person has died. Someone that I know, or at least have known. I have known him in the past, and now he is dead. Shot dead. Yeah. I don't feel good. I'm not happy about it. I feel bad, but that's different than sad. Do you see what I mean?

[34:52] Gia Crovatin: It's a very different emotion, I think, and that's actually what I'm sad about. The fact that I'm not sad, and that Tim and I have drifted so far apart from where we once were. I'm not sad that he's gone. I just I feel bad if I'd heard that my sister's friend had died, or some forgotten cousin or aunt or whomever. I feel like that. And it happens every day in this country. People are getting shot and killed every single day.

[35:20] Gia Crovatin: And I don't even notice anymore. Certainly don't feel bad about it until it's somebody I know. That's how shitty things have gotten here in America. And when that hits me, that sobering little factoid, that's when the tears start to come.

[36:00] Neil Labute: That's really good writing.

[36:10] Gia Crovatin: Thanks.

[36:10] Neil Labute: So I'm wondering, given the two plays that we just heard, when this is one of those kind of chicken or the egg that might be different with everything, but when you get an idea for a play, do you first go, okay, am I does this want to be a full evening, or does this want to be 10 minutes, 15 minutes? Or alternatively, when you sit down and you know you're going to be writing for a 10 10 minute, 15-minute form, how do you approach that differently than if you know you're gonna sit down to write an evening's worth of story?

[36:47] Neil Labute: This is it's that knowing that fact, if you do know it, then you're writing for something. Much easier, I find personally to write for something. Not necessarily making the work better or anything like that, but knowing that I have 10 pages or I have 30 minutes or that kind of thing. Or I'm adapting something for someone and they're expecting this kind of thing from it, as opposed to just me myself, two people sitting at a table, invariably is the beginning of every play.

[37:15] Neil Labute: And then if they get up and leave, then it turns into a movie, and if they stay, it's a flag. It's as simple as that. And uh or you write yourself into a corner, like page 70, you're like surely something should happen by now. They can't just keep fucking talking, can they? And of course, yes, they can, because I can do that. But I get into page 100, don't you worry. The damn thing happening.

[37:39] Neil Labute: But they should, as I say, they really should get up at some point, stretch and get a snack at least. But uh, in general, that does help to go, oh, yeah, and not physically even just put out 10 pages and write them on this. Often when I've taught people, I I've done some variation of an exercise that is you have this much space. This is your real estate, this is how precious it is.

[37:59] Neil Labute: Hand out postcards to students and let them fall in love with one and then go, okay, everybody got one they left. Okay, now change it with your neighbor so you crush their hopes because they had a story, and then now write a monologue on the back of that, and that's all you got. If you write big, you're screwed. If you write small, you might have something. But that's every inch of paper you've got. You you learn to conserve.

[38:21] Neil Labute: And if it's a red Corvette that really matters, write that down. By all means, if it's a car and it doesn't really matter what car, don't fucking waste your time. The actors will what you ultimately hope that you present is a beautiful little blueprint that the actors then go, cool. Now let me take out my colored pencils, and I'm gonna I might draw aside the lines, I might, but they help bring the thing to life in the way that at least for me, it's amazing how every character sounds extraordinarily like myself.

[38:49] Neil Labute: You know, when you write them and you read them and you're like, yeah, we all sound the same. But to that fact, one time I had I read a great David Hare story who was when they were doing a plenty, I think, and they were doing it. Where were they doing it? Maybe at the public or somewhere in London, and uh I think it was Kate. What was her name? She's so good. Kate's that she was in I of the needle, Kate. Come on, somebody jump in with me.

[39:11] Gia Crovatin: We're not a very good pub team here.

[39:12] Neil Labute: Okay. Thank you. God, Canadian actress. Really good. She did plenty for him, and she and I think they even were like in a relationship together. But at the table, of course, out loud, they read the play, beautiful play, plenty, if you've ever read it or seen it. One of my favorite lines ever at the end of the play. But anyway, so she says, Dan, why doesn't everyone sound exactly the same? And he looked at her and said, It's a little thing called style.

[39:40] Neil Labute: Yeah. For that right there. Usually you don't usually think about that at lunch. After she called me out like that. But he had it. He was waiting for that one. He knew that was coming somewhere in his career, and so he was ready. Uh-huh. But yeah, it does help to have a little bit of structure. Like any most of the things I do love to just go right. Just I still have that love of just let's write some shit. But not knowing that anybody's ever gonna produce it or make it. Do you think about what the story is going to be in a different way? Do you like not always that, or even what the form will be? Uh-huh. It might end up being a solo piece or two people or whatever. I might steal the zoo story one night, I might steal something else.

You never know. So, how do you pretend to find that? By writing from someone like that terrifies me. I'm so structural, or like I there's stuff like I'm like, okay, I need to know the structure of what I'm doing before I can with the festival. We've got other kind of playwrights that are. That's all right. Right on I'll call them and say, hey, here's the other plays, because we've got to minimize the number of actors, and we got a big place. We can't be eight hours long, and so we gotta minimize them right. We've got five actors, and here's the ages, and here's the genders, and how could a partner among where I'm like, all right, so let me give you a three act fair so you bet to what else we're doing based on you and he.

But sometimes he's given us plays great one act plays where we've done we've switched genders every day. So it's been two men, two women, men in the woman, same play, and it's great. So most of the time, not only can he fit it into whatever it is, it makes it so much easier because it's not always gender-specific because everyone has the potential to do everything. I love gender-neutral characters. Yeah, it's yeah, fun to write. Yeah. And great exercises for people, great for actors to see what they bring to the table. I've done a few of those exercises myself that are just like reminding them because they spend so much time hearing no and this and that and all that shit, that oh yeah, you're special, there's nobody else like you.

Remember that. And this is what you would bring to Miss Julie, and then this is what you would bring to Miss Julie, and then you would actually suck as Miss Julie. But it would be interesting, and then why not? Why would we just have to suck every so often? Find out. Well, we are good, bad. I've written some of the like the thing I worked the most on in my life, I still feel like I never got it quite right. But can't say I didn't try, didn't put in all that effort, but it just didn't quite maybe crack the code. And you don't even know that until you've seen it in front of an audience. And they are the ones who very happily tell you. You didn't quite get that one, did you? Nope. And then go comment.

It wasn't enough to tell me. And I gotta go tell the world so much for that. But yeah, you just sometimes don't know. But this this thing is not really real until it gets on its feet. I had I sat in a reading with like grabbed a bunch of friends, and my best friend was in there, and she had a line that as she was saying it, I'm taking enough off. That doesn't work. You can go five performances in a row and nobody laughs at that one joke, and you're like, no, I'm not taking it out yet. I believe it. Did you hear that? There's another fucking human being. You other androids. Did you hear that? That was funny. And then you still might cut it. But whatever. It's like you can't just ditch this immediately.

But you also cannot like just hold on to shit. Writers are we're all we're better editors than we were. Mark cut a joke because I was the only one who liked it. Mark cut a joke for the show. Not to call you out. He did what he had to do for his show. But I loved that joke. And it sometimes happened. I was the only one. When writers are too precious. It's not scripture. It's script. You gotta have some flexibility there and see what people bring to the table, what that works, doesn't work. Only the best bits survive as far as I'm concerned. And sometimes I've cut almost nothing, and other times I've ripped pages out. Just ripped them. 30 or more. I didn't just I'm gonna stuff this with bad shit so that when we get to the good stuff, they'll they're gonna love it.

Or like with the MPAA with a movie or something, I'm gonna put all the blood in, and they're gonna hate that, and then I'll cut off the horror. I was really not gonna show anyway, and then I'm down to what I want to show. There's that kind of trick. But it's no, it's just uh it is a process, it's like collaboration. We should take questions, right?

[44:00] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Yeah, but why don't anyone here have any questions for our esteemed guests? Unless there aren't any, and then yeah, we'll be great.

[44:09] William Roth: I think for William. John Yarbrough?

[44:14] William Roth: Yeah, actually, that's a great lead-in because you said Jan is here, right? Brian Adams here. Those three are all been finalists, or these those two are finalists this year, so their plays are being produced by us in July. And John was a finalist two years ago. Uh we're gonna change the guys for thank Jason McClay and Rob with your such honored this family. I thought it's part of the family when I was here and since then, we just could perform Melbourne and other places.

[44:47] Neil Labute: Where?

[44:47] William Roth: Melbourne?

[44:48] Neil Labute: Melbourne, yeah.

[44:49] William Roth: Fantastic. Uh just safe. Did you go?

[44:51] Neil Labute: No.

[44:53] William Roth: I wish I had to be able to do it.

[44:54] Neil Labute: You made it smart to it.

[44:57] William Roth: Not even with going to the Australian Open, it's too far away. So I just want you stay forever, that's fine. But they just try to say nice things about me. I just want to say it's a wonderful experience, and I'm glad you used this. And why was it wonderful? Because because one of the things we didn't talk about here is that the plays that do get selected, they get a full production. You can hear readings and all that stuff. You really gotta see these things on their feet in front of an audience. You learn so much, and it's it everything's good. I'm happy with readings too. But for a playwright to see somebody get up there and become those characters, it helps you so much. And an audience. We sacrifice workshopping for just getting it up and scripts come in.

We're usually, because we get a lot of submissions, we're usually running out of time anyway. So we just are like you can see it in someone's feet, it's completely blocked and off book and go production, and then you can take it from there and see it. So yeah, but I think that's the real highlight of the thing is that people get to see their work on stage, which is hugely important.

[46:03] Neil Labute: Yes. To still, I want to say thank you so much for giving me this opportunity this year, and I'm thrilled and honored and exactly what you said to see at stage.

[46:14] William Roth: Yes. I can't want to say I didn't realize you were coming, but thank you.

[46:19] Neil Labute: You're welcome.

[46:19] William Roth: I knew that.

[46:20] Neil Labute: Yeah, you are the actual I call all the playwrights and tell them a stadium or something.

[46:24] William Roth: Why was it Gillette State?

[46:26] Neil Labute: Yeah, dancing and just begs the question. What were you doing?

[46:31] William Roth: Uh not cheerleading, clearly, but I was doing an event thing.

[46:36] Neil Labute: Okay.

[46:37] William Roth: Oh I can't be professional.

[46:39] Neil Labute: I was like, good for you.

[46:43] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Nice. Okay, that was a question.

[46:45] William Roth: Yes.

[46:46] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Ready?

[46:47] William Roth: Yeah, sure.

[46:48] Mark-Eugene Garcia: For Neil, your some of your most popular works are really known for your savage.

[46:56] William Roth: Oh no!

[46:57] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Some of your best work is behind you.

[47:00] William Roth: It's not, it's in front of you. It's right there on the literally. Uh but you're known for such a savage by all artists want to dig for the truth and tell the truth and offer transparency and speak to power. But here's yeah, yeah, and yet you stand alone in this distinct way. And I wonder if you think about is there a central question that you're trying to figure out through all the different things, or something that you're sure curious about, or is it just human nature?

[47:31] Neil Labute: Yeah, of course, human nature and couples, men, women, men, all those things have interested me. Power dynamics, I think, have flowed through. I'm thinking mostly of theater now. I've done as a director, I've gone off and directed a bunch of different stuff. It was I had to make a decision at one point in my career where it was like, I'm only gonna write and direct my own, or I'm gonna direct other stuff too. And I ultimately said that that seems more fun. And so I did that. But theater wise, yeah, I've been pretty constant in terms of the kind of thing that I write, even in the stuff that I've adapted, Miss Julie and Uncle Banya, and stuff like that. There's a certain quality to those that that's I hope my work just trying to chase after.

But yeah, I think power, I think betrayal is a fascinating. It's a great play, in fact. One of my top bunch. So yeah, those things I think what drive people to do good or bad things has certainly been something that interests me. Why? Just a regular person, not like that forthright Hitler thing. We all know he should have been chushed earlier in his childhood, or we're shut too often. One or the other, nothing fucking went wrong there. But the regular person who goes, I can just slide a little further down that trail or go the other way. What brings me grace? Why did I do something I normally would not have done in the instant that I didn't have time to think about? Those things are interesting.

But not to completely lowest cover having spent 13 years seeing a small works for these one X. He writes about everything. He writes about everything in every word. Is that sweet? Some things that are just sweet and darn. And art so menacing, and then you'll get one that you're like funny sometimes. Yeah, that was the point. That's a tough one. I think I see it over there. And Gia was in it. It's called the money. That's tough. Comedy. That's the only time I ever actually had the guts to write a comedy by a nightmare. Trying to be trying to be funny. It's one thing to laugh at your friends, and you should be like, I'm everything about this. From the title on down is meant to be funny, fun, that kind of thing.

It's a science. It's crazy. On the page, on the stage, the degree to which like that word is not as funny as this word. Or if you wait one more beat, it'll be even funnier. And you watch that over and over with an audience. Crazy. It literally is like it's the absolute opposite of art. It's like science. It's like math. And it was exhausting, frankly. I was like, by the end, I was like, fucking hell. This is like a lot of work. Glorious to hear people laugh. Like to be like, oh. And I tried to use humor throughout stuff because it's a great way to soften people up before you kick them in the face, frankly. But it's you use it in a certain way, and there's still what is is mostly a drama or whatever.

But to say from beginning to end this thing's gonna be a wrong. That was comedy writers and folks like that who that is a tough gig, I think. Really tough one. So you didn't ask, but in case you were wondering, comedy, tough.

[50:37] William Roth: And then I'm over here. I sat down to write a bad thriller, and every line was like I was like, that's too funny. I don't know what I'm doing over here. I'm trying to write funny things. That's what I'm leaning into before.

[50:48] Neil Labute: Yeah. Try not to think of a good one, but that's Grace. We then we have a great hi Grace.

[50:53] William Roth: Hi everyone.

[50:54] Neil Labute: Hi Lily I depend on. I don't know what this guy's going to saying. Um that's my daughter's saying she race. That's just being pictures in it.

[51:06] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Okay, great. I wondered a question for William and Neil together, a joint answer if you will, but clearly with the amount of years you both worked together in the partnership you've developed there's something that's working and the taste that you both have developed together and a vision. I just wanted to know like what it is in each other that you see that helps you be an artist.

[51:34] William Roth: I will say weirdly we both have a sort of like midwestern sensibility. I was born in Detroit and spent a lot of time in the Midwest. And uh and I think where are you from?

[51:47] Neil Labute: Belbour Chicago another great old like Rust Belt city I love that kind of city. I grew up in I was born in Detroit but then grew up in Spokane Washington which you know in the northwest but still a great city and great for it to love that kind of city.

[52:04] William Roth: But I think we both have a work ethic I grew up in a very blue collar family worked on a farm didn't own the farm worked on it but my father was a truck driver who then also ran a farm and he was tough he was a whole bunch of stuff but what a hard worker and got I got that and I think a lot of what writers do roll up their sleeves and write. A lot of people talk about sitting Starbucks and writing screenplay. Or they actually sit down and pile up those pages and have a thing for you to read. And that's what I was like apply that that early push of you gonna you want to eat, you gotta work. This is the way this family works. And so I roll up my sleeves and I work. So that's why I can actually sit down and write a play pretty quickly once I know what I'm doing.

[52:53] William Roth: And I think he's the same kind of hard worker and whatever. But overall. Yeah, and I like that. We have a lot of the same kind of sensibilities that we're like George Harrison. I started out as a I mean, I'm a big LaBute fan, and I always have been. So where it started prior to meeting him was reading LaBute scripts at my house and looking at all of these one acts and all these amazing people that come here with me and thinking, oh man, someday it'll be great to be able to do this. And then you stop them essentially. Not really. I thought it was a sweet story, and that turned out to be like single white female. So now I know my eyes are off. What is uh coming up next for the planet?

[53:46] William Roth: Yeah, where's the vision? We got the July festival, and then we've been bouncing this Phantom is the name of the one act theater company, by the way. We have a logo, we have everything we've been working on. He's an amazing designer, right? For not being one. He's playing though. I have OC kind of. And so that's the thing. So we've worked on lots of programs and book covers, and anyway. So Bantam Theater Company, we've been talking about it for years, so it's this year, right? We're not doing a fall play on our main stage, and so I'm kind of developing now until we do long day's journey after the first of the year to trying to get this one act bigger company going. So here in New York.

[54:27] Gia Crovatin: So that's a one act, right?

[54:29] William Roth: Yes.

[54:32] William Roth: No. So that's where it's going hopefully. And we have a question because we were talking about. I have two, but I'll go with one.

[54:42] Gia Crovatin: Oh, we know you.

[54:44] William Roth: I'm gonna save one. So question two is next time. I'm gonna save that for my thing. But Gia, do you want to talk a little bit about your process of preparing for something that's like a one act or something that's shorter as opposed to like doing a longer play, like what the differences are, or just like anything you want to talk about, just those two things.

[55:06] Gia Crovatin: Thank you so much. Neil said something earlier. He said it's a script, it's not scripture, but for an actor it is scripture. It begins and ends there. And I don't know, I think acting is the same across all mediums. I've been doing a lot more film and TV lately, but theater is where my heart is and always will be because of Neil's plays when I read The Shape of Things when I was 15 years old, was just like, what is this? This is how my mind talks and my heart speaks, and it's insane. How did this old man get into my soul?

[55:46] Gia Crovatin: Oh, it was going well. It's not a project. Okay, sorry. Where do we meet by the way? We're not at the drama bookshop.

[56:02] William Roth: The old one.

[56:03] Gia Crovatin: We did. How many years ago? Like four years. November 3rd, 2010.

[56:08] William Roth: Yeah.

[56:08] Gia Crovatin: He kept the drama book shop. At a reading, in fact.

[56:12] William Roth: At a reading.

[56:13] Gia Crovatin: That's a bit of a full circle. Anyway, yeah.

[56:15] William Roth: So finish that's a good one.

[56:16] Gia Crovatin: Oh, we'll finish the question.

[56:17] William Roth: Yeah.

[56:18] Gia Crovatin: So I don't know. You just have to. I've already directed. I'm not gonna live that down. Yeah, just reading it over and over again. And then hopefully you have really wonderful collaborators and a director who believes in you as trusts to you and listens to you when you're like, yeah, I've got this. Somebody had said, I think it was like Stanley Kubrick, like the first time you read a script, write down your impulses immediately because you'll never have that first read ever again. And so I always try to do that on the first read and make little notes and be like, oh, there's an idea there, and bring those to the table and rehearsal, and then just rehearsal to me is maybe the best part of the whole thing. I love being in front of an audience, but when you can really be with people who love doing what you do in a rehearsal room and the privacy and the safety, and it's just the best job in the whole world.

[57:04] Gia Crovatin: They learn their lines. And when people learn their lines, yeah, it's but yeah, doing your a one person thing is its own beast because so much of it is a mental game. It is like the Olympics. You have to be an athlete. I would run the show, I think two or three times a day. I would run it before I would go on stage just to make sure every size show, not just this full-length, shorter piece.

[57:32] William Roth: She loves to run.

[57:33] Gia Crovatin: But just as like almost like peanuts noise to me, and I know that it's there, and then you can go do whatever you're gonna do. And you live your life for eight o'clock and you eat for eight o'clock. And now that I can't imagine I haven't done a play since I'd had a child, so I wouldn't what happened?

[57:48] William Roth: What happens if let's say like you like to run the show beforehand with your no, it's done with a co-star, and then they don't want to run it one night. What might then happen?

[57:57] Gia Crovatin: They might go up on a line. But it's okay. It makes it look like I made a mistake, but it's that's why we've done because it's never never hurts, not fitter or anything. It's just like such an easy, simple thing. It's like the text should just really be in your bones. It all goes back to the text for me.

[58:21] William Roth: Yeah, I want to uh double tailor this way. That's a tough script that you've just read as a piece of that's really hard to learn.

[58:31] Gia Crovatin: I'm sure it's hard to learn, but also I would find it very difficult, I think. I'd be afraid to drop into that fully. I'm wondering how you found your way there, like when you were preparing that because that's such a harrowing story, and you're a kind soul, and it's a lot of it's a lot of work. Do you just get the words in your bones and then just trust that the pair should open when you jump? Or are you looking for spots where you know you're with the text that's okay, that'll be a place that I can connect with it now?

[59:00] William Roth: That'll be public thought because it's just so many words.

[59:03] Gia Crovatin: It's so many words. It just has to be about the audience at that point.

[59:06] William Roth: Oh, I think.

[59:07] Gia Crovatin: I think you start saying words and you're seeing like who am I playing with tonight? When it's a solo piece, right? Who am I dealing with tonight? What kind of an audience is this? Are they on my team? Do I win them over? And then I know because you were breaking the fourth wall, right?

[59:20] William Roth: Oh yes.

[59:20] Gia Crovatin: So in this particular piece, I was speaking direct address to people. Yeah, as it we had a whole construct, like I was doing a documentary, and I was talking about things, but it was breaking the fourth wall. And but even when I just think stuff like that, it your audience is your other character that you're acting with, and you're just trying to feel like what are what do they want tonight? Are they funny? Because they can be really funny, and then that just juices you, and then you like lean into the comedy stuff, or it can be super somber.

[59:52] William Roth: Oh, we're over.

[59:52] Gia Crovatin: Okay. We're right there.

[59:54] William Roth: Okay.

[59:54] Gia Crovatin: Yeah, yeah, red speech.

[59:56] William Roth: Yeah.

[59:57] Gia Crovatin: I just do think that breaking the fourth wall is such an interesting thing. Whether it's the the audience, the whole audience is your who you're speaking with, or just there's only meant to be a couple of people there or a single person. That's all so different.

[1:00:09] William Roth: Yeah.

[1:00:09] Gia Crovatin: But it's also it's the play, like the shooting, the mass shooting aspect is just at the beginning, and then it goes into these two people's history. And so it's this love story that never really got to happen, and the longing, which is my favorite thing to play with as an actor, longing based up. So yeah, so the shooting part isn't even that much part of the play. Read it, it's really good. But yeah, I think they have to, they all have to buy a book on the way.

[1:00:35] William Roth: Oh, that's right, great.

[1:00:36] Gia Crovatin: Have fun tonight. Enjoy.

[1:00:38] William Roth: Enjoy.

[1:00:38] Gia Crovatin: I was just gonna say one because of that, the idea of fourth one, how much I love audiences, and but I love to work with the audience as well, because I think the audience finds themselves in such a safe space for the most part, in the sense that they're in the dark and together collectively, and not being judgy, but judging the play, they come hopefully wanting it to go well, except for those few who want you to fuck up. Sometimes they don't, and there's a safety there that I love to break when you can break the fourth wall, when you can show them that you can come close to them physically, when you can make them feel like you're not that safe, really.

[1:01:13] William Roth: We can come out there if we wanted to, we're just not wanting to at the moment, but I can't talk to you. I can't tell you something that I didn't even tell my wife.

[1:01:21] Gia Crovatin: I'm gonna tell you tonight. I'm gonna tell you about this, what happened. But you can make these connections with people, which are fascinating. You can look at everybody in the audience for. I did a play in this play Bash that I mentioned. I the one time I had to direct it, I did it in in Ireland, in Dublin, the gate. And uh work with Irish actor, three Irish actors, and then Jason Patrick, who has a I've worked before and had uh an Irish background. But he went there and he did this solo piece, if it should be the Ron El same one that Ron Elbard fucked up. No, didn't great job.

[1:01:49] William Roth: But Jason in the play, he talks to one person, this character does.

[1:01:53] Gia Crovatin: And so Jason's modus was every night I'm gonna pick one person. Could be any of you, but I'm gonna stick with you. And if I'm gonna tell you the story, I'm gonna tell you. He's open to the rest of the audience, but I'm gonna tell you the entire story. And you could see the audience either they would lean forward and be with him, or they'd be like, oh, why is he looking at me? And you can see them like this.

[1:02:17] William Roth: And then shrinking in their seat, and he would just be like, you're just giving me fuel. I'm just staying with you until you look back. I'm just gonna talk to you a whole night. And it was amazing when they suddenly felt, oh my god, I'm not I'm naked, I'm not clothed in darkness here. It was a fascinating thing.

[1:02:33] William Roth: So there's so many great things you can do on stage. Short play along with whatever it is, and so you should use all your tools.

[1:02:39] Gia Crovatin: And that was that was an amazing thing to watch every night. That's the kind of moment when you remember you're not in your living room, you're not watching TV at all. Suddenly, some dude is who I've seen on from the movies is suddenly staring at me and talking, telling me this horrible story. And uh some people really man stuck with it, and it looks kind of beautiful.

[1:02:57] William Roth: Anyway, shut up.

[1:02:57] Gia Crovatin: Only in the theater.

[1:02:58] William Roth: I know, I'm gonna say thank you.

[1:03:00] Gia Crovatin: Thank you all for being here so much.

[1:03:11] Neil Labute: And we are back.

[1:03:16] William Roth: Neilabute.

[1:03:16] Neil Labute: What was the next part that you did?

[1:03:18] William Roth: Something, but the reasons are pretty and the words are cute.

[1:03:21] Neil Labute: I don't know.

[1:03:21] William Roth: Something like that.

[1:03:24] Neil Labute: His reasons to be pretty are astute.

[1:03:26] William Roth: Yeah.

[1:03:26] Neil Labute: It's and real for Neil. We've been saying that.

[1:03:29] William Roth: I have been singing the Neil Labute song since we met him, and this is like two years ago.

[1:03:34] Neil Labute: Yeah.

[1:03:34] William Roth: Yeah. It was great. He's always also just been a joy every time he comes in and signs plays and just chit-chats.

[1:03:41] Neil Labute: And we've just talked playwriting before.

[1:03:43] William Roth: Yeah.

[1:03:43] Neil Labute: And it's just it's nice.

[1:03:45] William Roth: I had such a good time chatting with him.

[1:03:48] Neil Labute: Again, when there's someone that divisive, you almost like you go, I'm gonna have a conversation, and you like people have all of these opinions, and I don't know what he's and I loved the way that he talked about writing and about approaching difficult topics.

[1:04:02] William Roth: Yeah, he and I had a whole talk about comedy once, and I just it's nice to have that.

[1:04:05] Neil Labute: And I ended up buying the money shot, which I still have to read.

[1:04:08] William Roth: But I do have it on my shelf.

[1:04:10] Neil Labute: So yeah, that was it was a great event and just a really good conversation.

[1:04:15] William Roth: And to jump from that into our next episode, yeah.

[1:04:19] Neil Labute: I had I heard a rumor that you had to talk about some dirty books.

[1:04:22] William Roth: I had to talk about some dirty books, going from Neil Labute to some dirty books.

[1:04:25] Neil Labute: Yeah.

[1:04:25] William Roth: Um I had a talk with not too far a leap, and I think he'd agree.

[1:04:30] William Roth: I had to talk with Mara Lieberman from the Baited Breath Theater Company.

[1:04:34] Neil Labute: Not to be confused with Bated Breath, my play.

[1:04:36] William Roth: Which is your play.

[1:04:37] Neil Labute: Yes.

[1:04:37] William Roth: But it would be so much fun if the Baited Breath Theatre Company put on a production of With Bated Breath.

[1:04:44] Neil Labute: No, they have a very specific brand that they do that is really intriguing.

[1:04:48] William Roth: And we're gonna go into that in great the next episode.

[1:04:52] Neil Labute: But I will tease the question how do you feel about immersive theater?

[1:04:57] William Roth: Oh, who me?

[1:04:59] Neil Labute: We'll jump into that.

[1:05:00] William Roth: Who me, the person who is in tech for an immersive vaudevillean cabaret right now.

[1:05:05] Neil Labute: Oh it's coming for all of us.

[1:05:08] David Rigano: All right.

[1:05:10] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Hallelujah.

[1:05:11] David Rigano: So remember, follow us on Instagram at Drama Book Show Podcast.

[1:05:14] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Subscribe to the Drama Bookshop on Eventbrite so that you can be alerted whenever we add in-person events to our calendar.

[1:05:21] David Rigano: And give us some likes and some follows and some comments.

[1:05:23] Mark-Eugene Garcia: I see some stars.

[1:05:25] David Rigano: And they're so much fun.

[1:05:26] Mark-Eugene Garcia: I love seeing stars.

[1:05:27] David Rigano: I love seeing stars too.

[1:05:28] Mark-Eugene Garcia: You should be in my fighting class.

[1:05:29] David Rigano: You'll see stars a lot.

[1:05:31] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Or just be at the bookshop.

[1:05:32] David Rigano: You never know who's going to watch the show.

[1:05:33] Mark-Eugene Garcia: That is true.

[1:05:34] David Rigano: That is true.

[1:05:35] Mark-Eugene Garcia: So remember, all of the books we talk about can be found here at the Drama Bookshop.

[1:05:39] David Rigano: And so can we.

[1:05:40] Mark-Eugene Garcia: And we will see you at the bookshop.

[1:05:43] Neil Labute: Neil a boot.

[1:05:45] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Neil a boot.