This transcript was automatically generated and might contain errors.

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

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

[0:23] Mark-Eugene Garcia: And this is season two, episode maybe 15.

[0:31] David Rigano: I think we lost count at one point.

[0:34] Mark-Eugene Garcia: I was going over the list and I know we did nine twice.

[0:37] David Rigano: So if you're listening to this, go back and check.

[0:37] Mark-Eugene Garcia: You'll hear we did nine twice and then went to 12 and then 11.

[0:42] David Rigano: We'll figure it out.

[0:42] Mark-Eugene Garcia: We're good at scenes. We're not good at numbers.

[0:44] David Rigano: Unless it's a musical number.

[0:46] Mark-Eugene Garcia: And even then that's a little iffy with me.

[0:49] David Rigano: But I actually have to go through like I realized I had skipped a scene number in my last play.

[0:56] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Oh, don't you hate that?

[0:58] David Rigano: The reason I figured it out was that the Yale drama competition wanted a scene breakdown.

[1:06] Mark-Eugene Garcia: And I was like, the whole play takes place in one room.

[1:10] David Rigano: Yeah.

[1:11] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Like there are multiple scenes, but it all takes place in one room.

[1:13] David Rigano: So I was like, I had to figure out how I was going to like list go through the scenes and be like the next morning, two days later, what I was gonna call them.

[1:21] Mark-Eugene Garcia: I was like, day one, the last day, like things like that.

[1:25] David Rigano: It's one of those where like the last scene is also called day one and things like that.

[1:30] Mark-Eugene Garcia: But going through that's how I figured out that in the script I had skipped a number.

[1:36] David Rigano: I've learned that I don't number my scenes until the end until I'm at a draft where we're gonna read it with people.

[1:46] Mark-Eugene Garcia: That's a good idea.

[1:47] David Rigano: Yeah.

[1:47] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Even then it's sometimes iffy because there's times where we've been like two scene fives or so on.

[1:52] David Rigano: And so now it'll just be like scene and location.

[1:54] Mark-Eugene Garcia: I might, yeah, just because it got too much to constantly have to go back and then like, oh, now I'm gonna add a new scene.

[2:01] David Rigano: I'm like, wait, no, I have to go back and remember all this.

[2:03] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Right, yeah, and you have to renumber everything that comes after it.

[2:05] David Rigano: Yeah, that's smart.

[2:07] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Yeah, so I just I don't number them.

[2:08] David Rigano: And I guess I don't number the episodes either.

[2:12] Mark-Eugene Garcia: But this episode is our event with Alvin Eng and his book Our Laundry, Our Town, My Chinese American Life from Flushing to the Downtown Stage and Beyond.

[2:27] David Rigano: He was at Blood Type Ragu, and that was our last episode.

[2:32] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Yeah.

[2:32] David Rigano: And so one, a neat little coincidence, and two, Blood Type Ragu really delved into bringing one's heritage into their writing and into their performance.

[2:41] Mark-Eugene Garcia: And we do that here too.

[2:42] David Rigano: Yep.

[2:43] Mark-Eugene Garcia: We had Frank talking about his Italian heritage, and now Alvin is here talking about his Chinese heritage and the effect that has on his theater writing.

[2:55] David Rigano: His theater making, theater writing, theater teaching, theater creating, the whole all of that.

[2:59] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Yeah, all how inspirational it is on that, as well as bringing in other inspirations like Chinese opera and as well as Our Town.

[3:08] David Rigano: Of course.

[3:09] Mark-Eugene Garcia: And I think that's something that like Our Town is so universal in its specificity.

[3:16] David Rigano: And obviously, like it feels so Americana in so many ways, but also I never lived in a small New England town.

[3:25] Mark-Eugene Garcia: I grew up just outside of New York City, and yet there's so much to that that's so even being Americana, there are so many ways in which the specifics of that play diverge so much from what my and I can't imagine that growing up in California was anything like growing up in Grover's Corners, New Hampshire.

[3:46] David Rigano: No, but the themes of Our Town are universal.

[3:49] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Yeah.

[3:49] David Rigano: Just covering in covering, do we realize we're living life while it's happening?

[3:54] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Uh-huh.

[3:54] David Rigano: And what is our story? And so it relates to everybody, no matter who you are or where you are.

[4:02] Mark-Eugene Garcia: And the fact that you can take what's universal and apply your specifics to it and see it through so many different cultural lenses.

[4:13] David Rigano: I remember watching a fantastic documentary. I recommend anyone watching it called OT Our Town.

[4:20] Mark-Eugene Garcia: And I think it was in Compton.

[4:24] David Rigano: It was a theater teaching artist in Compton put on Our Town with her students, but they really decided to make all of the characters in some way mimic the like people in those kids' actual lives.

[4:45] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Interesting.

[4:46] David Rigano: And look at the material through the lens, because they were like to a bunch of kids in Compton who are trying to graduate high school, hopefully get and a lot of the kids talk about what they face and what's expected of them.

[5:05] Mark-Eugene Garcia: They're like, what how is this story of these kids growing up in this tiny New Hampshire town supposed to apply to me?

[5:12] David Rigano: And these teachers really put it on in such a way that they made it really, and there were kids in this class, obviously, who had this was an English class putting on a play.

[5:21] Mark-Eugene Garcia: It's such a universal show.

[5:23] David Rigano: And so some of these kids had never seen a play, read a play, nothing to do with theater before.

[5:31] Mark-Eugene Garcia: And there they were with their parents coming to see them.

[5:35] David Rigano: And some of them are playing a mother or a father and trying to not mimic, but oh boy, you'll edit this so I sound smarter.

[5:44] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Do it for me too.

[5:46] David Rigano: Trying to fashion it after their parents.

[5:50] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Yeah.

[5:51] David Rigano: And again, these are not theater kids, and their parents are getting to come and see them in a play where they're representing the good things about their community rather than on the news.

[6:01] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Definitely.

[6:02] David Rigano: Absolutely.

[6:04] Mark-Eugene Garcia: And with this event, you didn't moderate this one.

[6:08] David Rigano: I did not.

[6:09] Mark-Eugene Garcia: No, we had Shoshana Greenberg moderating this event.

[6:14] David Rigano: And she serves on the board of the Thornton Wilder Society, who was also represented there at the bookshop.

[6:20] Mark-Eugene Garcia: I love moderating these events, but it's always wonderful when we get a special guest moderator in who is in some way closer to the material or in some very specific way equipped to interview this particular author.

[6:38] David Rigano: Oh, yeah. There's something really unique about when people bring their own moderator, whether we've had people bring their own sister in, and we get like that sisterly conversation, or we've had people.

[6:50] Mark-Eugene Garcia: At least twice that's happened.

[6:51] David Rigano: Yeah, we've had two.

[6:52] Mark-Eugene Garcia: We've definitely had two sets of sisters on there. One of them was an event called My Sister.

[6:57] David Rigano: But whether it's having besties, having husbands and wife teams, having long time collaborators.

[7:03] Mark-Eugene Garcia: You interviewed me.

[7:04] David Rigano: Like it, there's a certain shorthand that comes from knowing your moderator very well.

[7:10] Mark-Eugene Garcia: And so this is one of those events that really had that because she brought in not only that experience of being a writer and being someone who knows him, but also brought in this experience of being part of the Thornton Wilder Society and knowing not just Our Town but other works to bringing them in to talk about them.

[7:28] David Rigano: But let's let them do that.

[7:29] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Let's let them jump in and talk about Our Laundry, Our Town.

[7:34] Alvin Eng: Happy New Year! Hello, hello. It's the year of the snake, so we're really glad to be here, honored to be here. Then thank you, David, and thank you, Mark, for having us. We've like the citadel of our drama literature, we're honored to be here. Um and the year of the snake, and as my wife and creative and life partner, Wendy Wassel is right here. Wendy Watson, she was a serious observer, this beautiful book sculpture. I've been called the book sculpture. Tonight, maybe this year it'll be what we call the book snake. So it's a curve, Kirby Hindu. The book snake just for one year, we'll call it the book snake, and leaves that up to there. Okay, so I'm gonna read first from Our Laundry, and then we're gonna have our discussion.

[8:15] Alvin Eng: Welcome. As a theater artist, I often ask myself, what happens to theater after the show is over, after the run is over, after the whole production is over? And to me, theater becomes soul, and it lives on in all of us. Anyone who's experienced that theater event, whether as a practitioner, as participant in any way, certainly as an audience member. And so I think it's appropriate in that context that tonight we're celebrating Our Town because the Our Town Revival on Broadway is close. It closed about two weekends ago. And also, I'll be reading from a chapter called Life Dances On that's inspired by a Robert Frank film, and that was also the title of his recent show at Alma that has also closed.

So here we are. But in many ways, in that sense, people often call the theater event like a seos. It's able to really conjure the spirits and souls of people and beings and eras like nothing else. And in many ways, I play Our Town and Thornton Wilder. I think it's one of the most powerful English language and American plays to do that.

[9:27] Alvin Eng: So we're going to try to pay tribute to that. And this is from Chapter 13, Life Dances On, Our Town in China. It's the morning after an improbable theatrical triumph at the City University of Hong Kong. We are celebrating the previous night's performance of Hong Kong Town Capital 2011. Original plays written and performed by the students in response to Thornton Wilder's Our Town. The plays in production were developed in a workshop that Wendy and I created and directed. The students blast We Are the Champions through the sound room, to the classroom sound system. They begin the victory dance circle and invite us to join in. I pay my dues, Freddie Gregory begins to sing along and dance aggression.

We joined the circle hand in hand, arms raised in joyous reverie. We all singing along at the top of our lungs with Queen's Timeless International 1970s Arena Rock anthem. Elevated by the love of the room and the glow in the students' faces, I was also happily surprised that these 21st century college students told a song from my teenage years, way before the biopic Bohemian Rhapsody reintroduced Queen to new generations. When I first heard We Are the Champions back in Flushing, I was a little younger than these students, and my female nails were painted black, just like Freddie Mercury's. As we chanted and danced to Queen with the city of students, I close my eyes and thought back to my first trip to Hong Kong and China.

My late mother, the Empress Mother, she is involved in this book. The Empress Mother spiritually slips into our dance aggression circle between Wendy and me. We each take one of her hands, floating on Brian May's power cords, and transported back 24 years to 1987. I was guiding the Empress Mother by the hand through the hotel lobby of the New Royals Hotel and rode to our taxi to the airport for our trip back to the cities. As I took my parting glances around Hong Kong at the densely populated and ultra vibrant cityscape, I wondered, would I ever come back to Hong Kong? And if I did, whose hand would I be holding? Never in my wildest dreams did I think I would turn a married man, a playwright and with my wife and the spirit of the Empress Mother, holding the hands of some of Hong Kong's brightest young students.

Even further from my mind's eye was that we would be dancing in the celebration of a playwrighting and performance workshop inspired by the Chinese influence on Thornton Wilder's play, Our Town, and then through this workshop that I would have an opportunity to perform a solo play in Guangzhou in English.

[12:09] Alvin Eng: While I was very moved when I first saw Our Town on Broadway in 1988, reading the issue of this work after the passing of the second parent was profound. After the passing of the Empress Mother, I moved from Flushing to Jersey City. As I unpacked my tangible baggage, a hardcover copy of Our Town somehow seemed to gleam as the key to unlock the mystery of finding the means and meaning to continuity in our lives. On a break from unpacking, I took the play over to the Jersey City Public Library on Van Boss Park and reread it. In my newly orphaned state of having recently buried the second of two parents, I was conveying the spirits in the midst around us perhaps even more than the mortals in our midst.

Though I couldn't qualify or even quantify it, there was an even deeper subconscious connection to Our Town. Though no one will ever confuse my hometown of Flushing, Queens with the fictitious Grover's Corners of Our Town, all my parents' Chinese hand laundry with any of that town's mom and pop businesses. These families and my family lived in a world in a home that seemed to belong to another time and place. One day we could feel my neighbor touch. Almost immediately after I finished reading, rereading Our Town, I started writing what would become The Last Emperor of Flushing. And just on Our Town, after both of my parents passed, I wanted to create a theater work that really captured the souls, really brought their souls back all the time. So that became The Last Emperor of Flushing, and that became the piece that I got to perform in China, as far as this residency.

[13:59] Alvin Eng: What is less commonly discussed is that one of the play's primary world theater influences is Chinese opera. I first became aware of the play's Chinese artistic influence while preparing to teach a class in Our Town in 2006. As part of my class preparation, many friends and colleagues pointed to exploring Wilder's relationship with Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas. I tracked down the letters of Thornton Wilder and Gertrude Stein by Edward Van Buren, Uladito, and William Rice. I think many remember William Rice as the great Anatomy theater artist Bill Rice, I'm so suited him. He was great. Immediately, I love that Stein sometimes refers to Wilder as Thorny, as only she can. Dear Thorny. But then the following passage really caught my attention when Maud arrives to sign.

For my next play, I'm stealing all the ideas from the third part of the Making of Americans. And guess who may act the long lacking New England talking stage manager who, as in the Chinese theater, hovered about the action, picking his teeth, handing the actors their properties, and commenting dryly to the audience.

[15:04] Alvin Eng: Sinclair Lewis. With further research, I learned that Dorn Walker lived part of his childhood in Hong Kong and Shanghai when his father was U.S. Council General to those cities in the 1910s. While living there, he was exposed to many different forms of Chinese theater and culture. In the 1930s, Warler saw a Peking opera master, Meylon Bong, on his Broadway debut, just as he was starting to compose Our Town. The minimalist staging and performance aesthetic of Peking opera, as well as many of its supernatural ghost spirit characters, played heavily on Wazler's creation of We Are the Champions. In the corner of my eye, I see that my late dad has entered the dorm room and he's going to join our dance aggression.

But he joins in his own way. He goes to his own beat. He orbits the turtle, dancing in the shadows. He is dressed in the white Chuxio jacket with black slacks, black bow tie, and black comedy button. He will walk to make the rounds of the wedding reception of his number one son, Gene. In our dance operation, as he did for the Chinatown guests of the wedding, Dad holds an open barrel of Johnny War Red in one hand and a batch of cigars in the other. You could smoke in New York City restaurants back in 1970. Thankfully, the city of students cannot access this spirit's open bar. In Chinese opering theater, the spirits and mortals often have a climactic meeting. And a spoiler alert for anyone who may not be familiar with our town.

During the play's legendary Act III, which takes place in the Grove's Council Cemetery, the spirit mortal meeting takes place when the stage manager conjures an opportunity for a newly arrived spirit, that of Emily Webb, to return to our mortal life. Greater this opportunity, Emily exclaims, I'll choose a happy day. To which a fellow sweet warns, no. Choose the least important day of your life. It will be important enough. As we dance and spin in the dance aggression, one day I are seeing, feeling, and reciprocating the swimming's love. My mind's eye enhance, I also see and feel the love in the eyes and smiling face of the Empress Mother. Dad is still shadow orbiting the dance aggression. In my mind's ear, We Are the Champions is now augmented with aggressive, percussion-driven echoes of the indigenous Cantonese opera from the land in which we are dancing.

The Cantonese opera counterpoint turns Queen's classic rock march into an otherworldly dirch for the dancing spirits of Dad and the Empress Mother. Seeing my parents dance in the dance of Gration, albeit separately, with no physical contact, is as close as I'll ever get to seeing them dance together. If this were my book was called in the cemetery moment of our town, I wonder if I would have been warned against taking this dance with these spirits. But now Hong Kong Time Capsule 2011, we are not recreating his memories. On last night's stage and in this morning's dance operation, we are celebrating new histories. Now it's time for the final iconic chorus refrains of We Are the Champions with the City of Students.

The Empress Mother and Dad gracefully exit the circle, bowing and disappearing from our dance operation. Most of us still in the circle were dancing with our eyes closed, grasping each other's hands in gratitude for the journey we had just completed, and in the full knowledge that we may never see each other again. Throughout our last dance, the students sweetly reprise their ritual of giving us a variety of thumbs-ups, peace signs, as well as forming hearts with their hands and an A and a W with their fingers. As the final chords modulated, reprieved, and built, I knew that Dad and the Christmas mother were gone forever again. But the spirit of our Fuji Chin Chinese hand laundry remains, illuminated by the spirit of our town. Souls are the reservoir of stories. Stories are the reservoir of lives, present, past, and evermore. Learning to proudly tell my own stories has made me whole. Thank you.

[19:32] Shoshana Greenberg: Thank you so much. Now we're gonna welcome Soshada to the conversation. Welcome, Shoshone.

[19:37] Alvin Eng: Oh thank you.

[19:39] Shoshana Greenberg: So I'm here because one, I'm on the board of the Thornton Wilder Society. And the Thornton Wilder Society, just to give a brief overview, is a society, an author society of scholars and fans of Thornton Wilder. And we do a journal, an academic journal. And one of the things that I do personally for the society are members get a monthly email with all kinds of Wilder goodies. One of them was an interview with Alvin about a couple years ago about this book. And so there's interviews and fun information and Wilder in the world, all kinds of stuff. And we also do three Zoom readings a year of plays and readings and discussions of the novels as well. So we do three of those. And yeah, and then there's events throughout the year.

We did a lot for the Our Town revival that was just on Broadway. And yeah, so it's a society of, as I said, scholars, but you don't I'm not a uh an academic, I'm purely a fan. And I just got involved because I attended one of their conferences back in 2018 that was in Peterborough, New Hampshire, which is the town that Our Town is mostly based on. It draws from a lot of places, but it's mostly based on that town. The McDowell colony is there where Thornton Wilder spent many residencies working. There's even a house there or a like a hut there. That's where he stayed. And again, I really recommend if anybody has the chance to go to Peterborough, you can go to the cemetery. That's the basis of the third act of Our Town, and it's just incredible to be in that space.

You can see like the names, Gibbs on the graves, and you can see the mountain in the distance that the stage manager refers to. You can hear all the sad chirpings and everything. It really feels like sacred ground. So yeah, definitely recommend that. So I've been involved with the society since going to that conference. And yeah, so that's a little bit about the society. Membership is $50 a year. You can find that information on the website. You'll get the journal, you'll get the monthly emails. You don't have to be a member to attend the Zoom readings. But yeah, so that's the society. The other reason I'm here is because we went also, our both alums as was mentioned of the graduate musical theater writing program, and that's how we knew each other and got connected to do talk about Thornton Wilder and Our Town. And you interviewed me for their newsletter back in 2022.

[22:17] Alvin Eng: Yeah, 2022.

[22:18] Shoshana Greenberg: Yeah. We'll take questions later on, too, some of them that don't know that.

[22:24] Alvin Eng: Yeah, yeah.

[22:24] Shoshana Greenberg: And I also wanted to show the Thornton Wilder Society is there's the Thornton Wilder family and estate, which we're not part of but affiliated with. I just wanted to read this paragraph from their website about Our Town and the most recent revival, and just it's how we think about it today, which I thought was nice. So I'll just read that. As Our Town graces the Broadway stage once more, under the skilled direction of Kenny Leon and featuring the standout talent of Jim Parsons, we're reminded of the timelessness of Thornton Wilder's work. First premiered in 1938, Our Town has not only stood the test of time, but has evolved into a quintessential American play, offering poignant reflections on life, love, and the human condition.

The latest revival was dubbed an Our Town for All of Us by the New York Times. Much like a beloved Broadway musical that brings together a diverse audience, this celebration of Wilder's enduring legacy invites us to pause and appreciate the beauty in the everyday moments that make life truly spectacular. So that's a little bit just from the Thornton Wilder family about the timelessness of this play. And I'm sure those who know it and saw it know how much it still resonates today.

[23:41] Alvin Eng: And all over the world too.

[23:43] Shoshana Greenberg: Yeah. You can talk about also just how many productions it means so many productions everywhere translated into so many languages, and it seems to resonate in every culture, even though we think of it as this American play. I think what I think that what keeps it alive so long, too, is that we talked, we were talking about just in many ways as diverse of all as our worlds all the world, that the world that I write about inhabit and the world that Thornton Wilder is of. I think one of the core questions, certainly of Our Town, is still what does it mean to be an American? And what does it mean to be part of this community?

[24:16] Alvin Eng: Yeah, yeah.

[24:17] Shoshana Greenberg: One of the things that when you hear about Our Town being done in different cultures, just how much it resonates just to different cultures in the same way. Even when they did the there's a trilingual production of Our Town done at Miami New Drama a few years ago, and even there, they're saying, like, oh, we different cultures react to death differently, I think. It's not all and it's not always the same. Some people are it's like a very quiet reaction, and some people it's a very loud, like wailing reaction. So there's all different reactions, I think. But even with that, just there's such a resonance with the third act in Our Town, but I assume people either know it or don't mind being spoiled, where they it takes place in the cemetery, and many of the characters that you've met along the way are or have passed and are spirits there, and yeah, and just people that resonating, and but even just the first act of daily life, I think also resonates with a lot of people and the idea of community. We covered a lot of that in order to you. Want to talk about some of the things we covered too.

[25:23] Alvin Eng: I mean, we can know it's a yeah, yeah.

[25:26] Shoshana Greenberg: So I think one of the things that really strikes me about Our Town is how it is really about like these two ideas of marriage. Marriage is the whole second act, but how marriage is equated with war in a way in the play. War is not talked about as much as maybe like something like Thornton Wilder's The Skin of Our Teeth, which is like very much about war. But the war like really creeps into Our Town in these like subtle ways. And in the first act, you have the character who's delivering the papers. I think his name is Joe Krell, and the stage manager, you see him delivering the papers, and the stage manager says, Oh, he was killed and he was killed in the war, he was taught in his class, went to I think it's the equivalent of MIT, all that education just a waste.

There's even a line, I think, also about the Civil War thing going back, thinking back from where Our Town's taking place, and they say, like, all those people who went and fought and died in the Civil War, they didn't had never even left, been 50 feet from their hometown, and they went to die for the United States. So there are these mentions of war. And then when Emily's Emily's the main character who is getting married, and she is in the second act of that wedding, is there's so many different reactions to it. And the stage manager even says, We're gonna show you everybody's feelings about this. And but Mrs. Webb, her mother, is like there's something so wrong about sending children off to off to I almost said off to war.

Up to marriage like this. It's it's almost like he's and and then Emily dies in childbirth. So it's like equating the two marriage and war in that way, and how one is how men have died, and one is how women have often died, and she dies in childbirth. And so now the key themes with uh with my book Mad was all we talked about like when we were teaching Lower Town in Hong Kong. A lot of them the students were wondering if those are those marriages were also arranged marriages. And I said, Yeah, New England they thought they were. They were. And you talked about maybe the time capsule is very similar. Let's talk about that a little bit too.

[27:40] Alvin Eng: Yeah, that's well with the book and that yes.

[27:42] Shoshana Greenberg: Yeah, I loved your project with the time capsule in the book getting the students that's such an interesting moment in the play in the first act, and the stage manager's talking about they put together a time capsule, like what would go in the time capsule in 1900, early 1900s of New Hampshire this New Hampshire town, and it's like the New York Times. I think it was a copy of the local newspaper, and then it's like a copy of this play. It's just like a whole meta thing of you know what this play is supposed to be, like a record of living and dying in the turn of the century and what life was like for some people.

[28:21] Alvin Eng: Yeah, yeah.

[28:22] Shoshana Greenberg: And then your students also had whole plays created based on that. We had them ask about uh the Hong Kong students, well, what would they put in the Time Council? Imagine this and it was a very teen song in 2011. I believe in the collective consciousness, they were this is just the beginnings of the echoes of a lot of protests in Hong Kong at that time. And that eventually led to the umbrella revolution of 2014. And right and in the in the States at the same time with the seeds of uh what became Occupy Wall Street. So I feel like there were all there's all this unrest there too, and uh very similar, like the about the voting situation. And so they could really they so some of the things they want, they the time capsule became this very aggressive thing.

So these are the things I feel that are being taken away from us. So they said we're gonna put in, well, they said uh they're very they said they're gonna put in air and water, because and also they they were very conscious of what uh they had they'd had a so we we obviously all just lived through an epidemic a few years ago, and uh and at that point the Hong Kong student they had already lived through the SARS epidemic. So they were a change generation, you know, because in some ways too talk about a lot of what uh what it really informs Our Town is uh your war metaphor. In many ways we talk about we talked about near prep in some ways you're inevitably you're educated by people that are at least 20 years old than you.

And when some ways too because of that, you're being like educated, trained for a world that doesn't exist, might not exist at all, but certainly doesn't exist in the same way by the time you get there. And so I think that's a at the heart of what so the this later, I think what's funny is Our Town has come on and take this veneer of being this of this very uh it's very almost like hallmarked play, but it's a vicious play. It is a very it is a very strong play, it's very aggressive play.

[30:00] Alvin Eng: And I think they would, I think because I think the post-war, his post-war observations about institutions like with war and marriage, I think he was saying that these things don't work anymore. So why are we forcing everyone into it? And I think the universality of the Hong Kong students, they picked up on this thing, and they were saying it was clear at that point that they knew that the promise of the one nation, two systems was not going to be honored. So they were all really angry about that. And I think the time class reflected that. So rather than make it this quaint thing, we're gonna remember our neighborhood and everything, they put in things that say, are these things still gonna be there with all the land recognition?

So I think I like that in that time they felt like the world that they were raised to believe in, like Hong Kong was almost like, from some perspective, it was almost like a mile-long Wall Street in some ways. It was always about the business and everything. But these students, like us, lived through the pandemic. They said things are not the same now. And for the first time, the economic crush in Hong Kong, they were saying we might not have it as cushy as the previous generation did. And I think Wilder was feeling that too. That's why his takes on being on war and marriage are like that way. Yeah, so I think that was a very amazing thing about the time capsule. It's because it's a very aggressive thing.

I just, oh, what do we want to remember? What do we want to preserve? Yeah, and it's like also the theme of the play, what Emily says in the third act about do people ever realize life while they're living it? This time capsule is like, what is life? While we're living it, let's try and preserve it, let's try and hold on to it. It's basically what a time capsule is. And yeah, it's just fascinating that Wilder has that in the beginning of the play, and then it becomes a more spiritual experience instead of a more physical experience at the end.

[31:50] Shoshana Greenberg: And what else did you draw though too? They did a great interview with that too between this book and Our Town.

[31:56] Alvin Eng: Yeah, I mean, I love the question of just like what does it mean to be an American and what does it mean to be in a community? I think one of the things that always comes up or seems to come up a lot now is the character of Simon Stimson. And does everyone know who Simon Stimson is? It's hard to, I feel like it's sometimes it's hard if you haven't seen the play or read the play multiple times to remember Simon because he is a minor character, but I feel like now that I've seen it and read it a few times, that he seems to be like the crux of the play in a way. He's the choir director who is an alcoholic, he has some mental illness issues. And in the first act, the people in the town are like, you know, we know that something is going on with him, what should we do?

And the people are just, let's leave it, let's leave it alone. And by the third act, he's in the cemetery with everyone else, and it's revealed that he killed himself, and his attitude is a little more bitter than everybody else who's sitting in that cemetery. But yeah, and I wrote that if only he had moved to New York City. If he left Grover's Corners, New Hampshire, moved to New York, he would be the talk of the town, you know. Yeah, and he may have found more community, and I feel like if we're looking at the play, as this is about a community, that's how we look at those people in our community who are either struggling or may not actually fit into our community in certain ways, and how we react to them is also part of being in a community and being in a town.

And Simon Stimson, I think, also brings up the elephant in the room about Thornton Wilder too, because I believe he's one of the few unmarried characters in Grover's Corners. And people wondering how that really reflected. This is completely projection too. Thornton Wilder was a gay man in that era. And I wonder how that being an outcast felt was reflected in Simon Stimson.

[33:53] Alvin Eng: Yeah, I feel like Wilder was removed from everybody around him in certain ways. He was very social, he had a lot of friends, but he was removed from people in certain ways. It's not been like actually confirmed anywhere, but it's pretty regarded that he was a gay man at that time, but just very private about it. And yeah, and I feel like everything in the play, the idea of marriage itself and his attitude about it being something that, yeah, maybe is not for everybody, and was maybe some, yeah, as you said, is something that we should regard as maybe an institution that we should look at as not just something we all accept and we all do, is a queer idea. And he is one of five children, only two of the children in his family were married of the five.

So his family, his siblings were some got married, some didn't, and it wasn't his family was also very liberal about that. And also we talked about how I think also obviously as you go on and in your own life and you experience more things, that was how it takes on different residences. Like when you work about a painting, you're young means more things he later on does that. So I think it's been incredible that way, then too. And we talked about how the universality of it. When we got off, when we arrived in Hong Kong, totally jet lagged, it takes like 23 hours to fly there too. So we were in the MTR, which is like their MTA, much better than our MTA. And there were these all these advertisements, but all Asian characters.

And the only two English words were Thornton Wilder. I was like, are they advertising our workshop? Could this be? And then just by our stroke of luck, they were doing Skin of Our Teeth in Cantonese in Hong Kong. But the play is quite a handful of mouthful in English or in your own native language. It was bizarre for us to see in that way. So just the universality of it too, how that came about.

[35:46] Shoshana Greenberg: Just to, yeah, no, I would love, I would have loved to have seen that. It sounds really fun and cool.

[35:51] Alvin Eng: Absolutely. So I want to throw it open.

[35:53] Shoshana Greenberg: Well, yeah, so we could, we could, oh thank you, thank you.

[35:56] Alvin Eng: Yeah, yeah. Want to throw it open for some questions too. I hope there's some questions too for anyone.

[36:01] Audience Member: Questions for us, yes.

[36:03] Audience Member: This has very little to do with the book itself, but I'm just curious, how did they translate the title Skin of Our Teeth? And was there a different turn of phrase that they used?

[36:14] Alvin Eng: Oh, I, I don't speak or read Chinese, unfortunately. Yeah, I rebelled, I hope the last generation like people can't believe me. I grew up in Flushing, but we were one of the few Asian families in Flushing at that time. Like when I tell them now in classrooms, some students get whiplashed what they can't believe that we were one of the few Asian families in Flushing at that time.

[36:34] Shoshana Greenberg: Yeah, you talk about that in your book.

[36:36] Alvin Eng: Um, there was the, there was a Jewish population there as well, which I mentioned that to one of my friends, and she was like, Oh, yeah, like the nanny song that she's working. She comes from a bridal shop in Flushing Queens. So I guess if it was that way. But yeah, you don't think of it as much now.

[36:52] Shoshana Greenberg: Right.

[36:52] Alvin Eng: So it was that way. No. So I wish I didn't have to tell that to you, though. So I think, uh, yeah, I think well, we're always there, but it was always not quite belonging. So I think that universality of longing is at the core of Our Town. It really speaks to everyone.

[37:05] Audience Member: Yes.

[37:06] Audience Member: Hi.

[37:10] Audience Member: Hey Alvin.

[37:11] Alvin Eng: Hi, how are you doing?

[37:11] Audience Member: Hey David, how are you doing?

[37:13] Alvin Eng: Uh sorry to come. You mentioned that there was a parallel between a character in Chinese opera and the stage manager in Our Town. And I just thought that was a fascinating little remark and just wondered if you could expand on it.

[37:25] Alvin Eng: Oh no, that changed me. That really breaks a lot. Another thing of being an outsider when I first started in my theater journey back in the 20th century in the 80s, sometimes there was not much representation before David Huang, you know, and thankfully he came home and changed. But looking for ways to really feel even more belonging when I read about that, that is the whole thing, what they call the property manager. And a lot of, it was called Peking opera then. That really inspired the stage manager, the whole idea that, I guess I love that just like in Our Town, I thought that he plays up the idea that he took it from Chinese theater where they're not just a stage manager, but they will perform, they'll bring the props on, they will keep moving along and some that'll do the rhythmic sticks and stuff, but then they become part of the action.

And that really inspired Wilder to create his stage manager character. So the whole idea of the concept of the property manager in taking opera became the inspiration for that. So I thought that was fascinating. It was like, oh my god, so a lot and also Meylan Fong who we saw then, he was like an unofficial diplomat. Like I wish they had it now, he was like an arts diplomat, if you will. And he was, he really, he had a historic conference in Russia where Wilder was there and Brecht was there, and then it somehow reached Charlie Chaplin's. So they took a lot from Meylan Fong. And Wilder talked about that and then it's a great question of letters too between Gertrude Stein and Wilder.

[38:41] Shoshana Greenberg: Oh yeah, I really recommend those letters. They're really fascinating.

[38:44] Alvin Eng: And Gertrude Stein, also a huge influence on Our Town. Thornton Wilder would, as you mentioned, take so much from her work. But also he was showing her scenes from the play, or as it was as he was writing them, they were really good friends. And also it's the letters are really interesting too because he, it's the 30s into World War II when Stein was in Europe to see what happened to their.

[39:32] Alvin Eng: He was there for two periods during his childhood and youth, one as this younger kid, and then he went to boarding school in China as well with his one of his sisters, while his other family was off elsewhere. They were all over the place. So he really had such a big foundation, a solid foundation in Chinese culture. And I also promised at least in my exploring and studying of Thornton Wilder, I do not find a lot of record of the Chinese influence on him, like in my research. Have you found that in Morgan's years?

[40:05] Shoshana Greenberg: People don't, yeah, people don't really reference it, but the just the idea of the ghosts in Our Town and his other plays, he has other shorter plays that also are the same, a lot of the same themes as Our Town, Pulling Car Haya Watra, The Long Christmas Dinner, are all both in his collection of one acts and are done somewhat regularly. And but in the idea of spirits not being like our Western view of spirits where like ghosts haunt you and they like pop out and scare you, but like that the spirits are one are with you and part of you is I guess more of an Eastern view of ghosts.

[40:44] Alvin Eng: Absolutely, and a lot of working in Cantonese opera, the characters really are spirits, they're more spirits. And that's why for an English language American play like Ruben Lane such introducing, I think the first one we say is Editor Webb, he died in 1990. Oh my god, you realize everyone in this play is dead. Everyone in this play is dead. This is a very interesting play. But they, but yet that's a common tenant of a lot of Chinese theater and Chinese opera. I think that also weighed on him too. And also the Hong Kong, they could write with that immediately. They said, okay, we've seen the sort of thing before, so that was interesting with that. But yes, so it's amazing that because of Meylan Fong too.

He really saw a lot of what became like American and Western modernism was really based on a lot of Chinese theater. So it was interesting to read about that. And Wilder was amazing, he also was very big in first getting on Beckett's work done here in America. So he was always very big with that.

[41:35] Shoshana Greenberg: Yeah, yeah.

[41:35] Alvin Eng: But thank you. That's so that really changed me too. And that really opened me up, and then it was this great to really that inspired my piece of The Last Emperor of Flushing. That was my own official title, Last Emperor of Flushing. I tried to get that on my driver's license, but they wouldn't have it. Maybe now that there's no more fact-checking, that there's no good, no there's no more government workers or anything. Maybe now I can get it through. No, no problem there. Sure, whatever you want to put on there.

[42:00] Shoshana Greenberg: So there was that.

[42:00] Alvin Eng: And I think, and again, just something I just love that he wrote in different mediums. I think he was a pol, not that awards are the only measurement of genius, but he's a Pulitzer winner as both a novelist and a playwright. So that's incredible.

[42:13] Shoshana Greenberg: Yeah, still the only person to win Pulitzer for both drama and fiction.

[42:17] Alvin Eng: Right. Amazing feat. We need an acronym for that.

[42:22] Shoshana Greenberg: What about what, what an acronym if you win if you went for literature and you know for fiction and drama?

[42:27] Alvin Eng: A fad.

[42:28] Shoshana Greenberg: We didn't any.

[42:30] Alvin Eng: What do you attribute to the fascination with the dead in Chinese opera?

[42:35] Alvin Eng: I think a lot of some, there's been all sorts of people. Some people even thought they, that some people said that the Chinese could see into the other world and then they called the underworld. And I think that's, I think the spirits have always been there too. And so much of it is the ancestral life. And actually having this around the Lunar New Year too. So I think that's always been there. It's almost like the spirits are always around us. So I think that's always been so prevalent in some true Chinese culture. Just really that we were not alone in that way too. And then, but it is a conceit, but I think to me and then to bring it to the West of like that's why to me, Wilder's interpretation that is brilliant, just bringing into the American theater and just so it's always been that way, just about the spirits. And then just so many of the myths are really all about how like the hand of God is often embodied by a spirit around us too. So there's so much of that always.

[43:27] Audience Member: How old were your students when you were there?

[43:30] Alvin Eng: Writing, creating the time capsule and all right, they were college students, and they were like two nineteen and twenty-one. Yeah, there were a few isn't it well, like I'll talk about Our Town and belonging. There's always communities. At that point, definitely the Hong Kong students had an identity. But there were a few mainland students too, like from the mainland. And you could tell talk about the Our Towns are very, you could talk about the different community and belonging to a community. And I think for a lot of them it became it was very poignant, because again, they felt like at that time their world was being taken from them, and sadly now that'll be you see what all the other things in Hong Kong that has unfortunately come true. So they were that the regular college age then. So it was very interesting to have at that time.

[44:11] Audience Member: Yes.

[44:11] Audience Member: Did the kids have to be censored with one thing broke?

[44:14] Alvin Eng: No, because we were the gatekeepers, but it was, no, it but it was there was nothing about that at all. But they insisted that we teach a class on the Fourth of July. They would not let us take off. They said no, you wouldn't know you have to work that day. So there was no nothing at that point, but I won't, but also it was only done within the school too. So there was not, I won't, I think the hammer's coming down much more now. Like this is back in 2011, and so the world's really changed in two. So it was very different, very different like that.

[45:09] Alvin Eng: Oh, this actually deals with so much more death. And I guess I'm curious like what you feel about this play is what makes it so such a like teachable play. Why is it so present in our schools? It's always talking about what for the what but what was exciting for us to do it in Hong Kong was really talking about I think was it was great for them to see that uh Western drama had a lot of Chinese influence, I mean Eastern influence. They're very surprised about that too. So I think that was one of the main things too. And over the years, I think it's just and you're probably hearing a lot of some people say that they just want to do it because they there's no set needed. Yeah, lots of parts, yeah.

But also, I think uh in some ways a mirror, and then people you could really fill in with what you see in there too. So I think that was the red, and they just love him, just pushing the uh the boundary. Like to me, like he's called the stage manager. To me, that character is a pure trickster. He's always he's narrating everything, but then he's conjuring everything. I believe, like, when they first go for uh when they go for uh uh an after high school afternoon when they go for a malted. I think I always believe that he's pointing he's finding them love potions. I think he is helping them fall in love there too. So those that was most what are they called? There was no straw, that was no strawberry phosphate.

Something much stronger. So I just love that that he pushed the envelope that way, and I just love for for beginning just to just to tell them what the concept of those for beginning theater students, just to tell them what the concept of the stage manager is, though.

[46:35] Shoshana Greenberg: Right. To go off of that, aside from things that your students in Hong Kong would have recognized from Chinese theater being present in this Western drama, were there anything that any of the themes that run deep in the play that they felt spoke directly to their culture or their growing up?

[46:57] Alvin Eng: Right. I want to open this up to you too. Remember about that too. And uh thinking about that. No, the well, I think that they just felt the idea though, I think what spoke strong was the world vanishing. It was really good about the world vanishing how that's not there anymore. They were even wondering about the famous you know, Hong Kong Harbor, the fragrance harbor that was getting smaller and smaller each year because of what we call landfill, they call it land reclamation there, too. Pretty soon it'll just be like, oh short bridge of Walker Gross. Like the uh the other ferry rides getting the star ferry ride is gonna be shorter and shorter every year. So I think just about the how the world we knew is is gone, but also I think like at the very end, I think what everyone learns is that it's just heartbreaking at the end that I get the universe, the universality of how it just goes by so quickly. And do we really see each other? And I think that's something that really comes across.

[47:43] Shoshana Greenberg: Yeah, and I'll say more. Oh, sorry, I also they wanted to bring in relation to what you're saying, things that were beloved by them of what is in Hong Kong. And so different characters resonated with them in different ways for the kind of work they were doing, community people, and they always in their version of it, there was the fishmonger, there was the person doing the street food. They would relate it to this person, that person, and bring in their own characters.

[48:11] Alvin Eng: Yeah, and then along with that, and then I'll uh add something to your question. Wilder in his plays, there's always space to add put in what's happening right there. They the start of our town, and it's this is a Our Town by Thornton Wilder. It's directed by who's the director, whoever the director, there's always space to add what you yourself in the work are doing. So the idea of you can put in your you can put in your fish monger, you can put in your the people in your town into it, and then to add what makes this resonate with students so much. I think one is that the main characters are students in the play. Emily and George are students for most of the play, they then graduate and get married, and I thought, but for the first like act and part of the second, they they're students and they're going to school and they're doing student things.

So I think that resonates a lot with kids and students who are studying it. Also, I think it's just a very simple idea that goes very deep. And I think it's just daily life, marriage, death. That's it. This is our town. But yet, as I was saying to you, like I I just reread it this week, and it's every time I read it, it's just like, how is all this in here? And finding new things like every single time. It's such a complex work, but but I think starting with a simple idea and then it just deepens from there is also what makes it very teachable.

[49:40] Shoshana Greenberg: Along with what you were saying, that introduction when he said the name of this play is Our Town, and it was directed by Kenny Leone or whoever, it's really an effort to cast the audience play. In other words, you're going to be characters also.

[49:53] Alvin Eng: Right. And without saying it, it's implied that they'll be on the stage, and then ultimately they'll be in the cemetery too. Absolutely. In some ways, as you're talking about earlier, in many ways, as I know for the actors in the house, there's there are no minor characters, there are no small characters. So Simon Stimson really he defines things. So the one that does not fit in, that really in some ways that really defines what does fit in. That's why Simon Stimson is such a strong character. And we talked about with the estate how they said that some at least a few years ago, they said that they've gotten the most proposals to do something about the Simon Stimson character than any other individual character. Like we want to adapt our town for different things, but uh of the individual characters, they've gotten so many proposals. I would love to see them. Just it's just to see you see that.

[50:35] Shoshana Greenberg: Yeah, the character really resonates.

[50:35] Alvin Eng: Yeah, even in and even in his other plays, Spin of Arti does the same thing. You can put, they say you can name the actors in the play who are in the play in the in the dialogue. And brings it into the present. All the time. And also that that that happened all the time. Like when I first saw our town, like you talk about bringing the president, I was lucky to see I it believed Swald and Grey as the stage manager. Yeah, and uh some purists would scream. Maybe you've heard about this one in the society. He would be walking around like saying, A nice town, don't you think? And rolling his eyes and go, Oh my god, there's never a stage mark like this. It's a nice town, don't you think? It's like a all the education, but nothing. Like he's like, Oh no, what a way. So you're right, because in some ways the it's like almost like a palm session, you just put your race what came before and put your ear right on it. So that that happened.

[51:20] Shoshana Greenberg: Yes.

[51:20] Alvin Eng: So he put himself into the role. Right, and that was the eighties. That was the that was the what have you done for me lately 80s. And so the Spaulding as a stage moment was perfect. That was that moment. And but then it comes up in some ways too that uh but to have a guy who was very cynical and defined the heart and does somebody that's a real journey. You saw someone who was always hard as in their sleeve from the beginning. Where are you gonna go? So I thought that was very that the so in that way too. Has anyone else seen our town in different years or different areas too?

[51:44] Audience Member: Nineteen fifties.

[51:45] Alvin Eng: Wow.

[51:47] Audience Member: Of all people, Frank Sinatra.

[51:49] Alvin Eng: That's the stage. That's on YouTube.

[51:51] Audience Member: Yeah.

[51:51] Alvin Eng: Frank Sinatra was the stage manager.

[51:53] Audience Member: Frank Sinatra's stage manager.

[51:59] Alvin Eng: The young man.

[52:00] Audience Member: Wow.

[52:00] Alvin Eng: Eva Marie Saint was the young woman.

[52:02] Audience Member: I found that DVD.

[52:04] Alvin Eng: I have it.

[52:05] Audience Member: Wow.

[52:06] Alvin Eng: It was done on television.

[52:07] Audience Member: Wow.

[52:08] Alvin Eng: Yeah.

[52:09] Audience Member: Yeah.

[52:10] Alvin Eng: I think it it is on YouTube. If you want to look it up, it is.

[52:12] Audience Member: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[52:12] Alvin Eng: I ha I have it bookmarked.

[52:14] Alvin Eng: I haven't actually watched it, but I found the DVD in one one of my searches.

[52:18] Audience Member: Yeah, yeah.

[52:19] Alvin Eng: Had to get that one.

[52:20] Audience Member: It wasn't exactly frequently seen.

[52:23] Alvin Eng: I think it's a good thing. And they made money the there's such a timeless like global thing that even though there were specific years mentioned in the play, it never seems to have really have hit me that way, too. And also, do you so do we have any and did any closing statement?

[52:36] Shoshana Greenberg: Oh yeah, I wanted to say, just along the lines of then being in the present with the play, but just uh Thornton Wilder has a, I think it's called Notes on Playwriting. It's a little book. But in there he says, he's comparing writing the writing of plays to the writing of novels. And he says, on the stage it is always now, which I think is like a good way to encapsulate his philosophy on the theater and how he thinks about it, and how we might think about it too.

[53:04] Alvin Eng: Do you want to read a pause?

[53:06] Shoshana Greenberg: Yes, so thank you. So being that off that thank you again from the world. Yes, yes, being mad. So it is the uh year of the snake. I'm just gonna look out. We're gonna leave the wilder world for a moment and just enter the wild world. I guess this is in my memoir. This is actually wrote this as a now we were when I we were in different generations above the NYU program, but this is a study actually from my, I guess my musical was called my my my thesis project was called The Last Hand Laundry in Chinatown. So I was always thinking about the passos. And one of my studies was this lyric that I used to do with the New Yorkans called the Toward the Night Before Chinese New Year's.

[53:48] Alvin Eng: The old man was being hunted down like the other from another planet. His believers at the pagan pagoda knew he was gone, but they hung out all night anyway with hopes that he would return. Twas the night before Chinese New Year, in a dirty kind of quiet, ripped up East Broadway in search of a storm, but found only the old sewing woman taking the moon out for his nightly walk. The birdman of the Bowery left his cages wide open, but the birds would not fly. Well, they knew that the teen was surviving on the inside was much easier than trying to get their wings out there in the sleet and sour sky. But how would that old man survive? Twas the night before Chinese New Year, and the red noise of the new year had not yet begun, but in a sense had already ended.

Nobody could fall asleep, but no one could wake up as visions of the old man dance in and out of the shadows of the broken gun lights above their heads. Twas the night before Chinese New Year, and all throughout Chinatown, all the traffic lights stayed yellow. But all the people saw red. Thank you.

[55:00] Shoshana Greenberg: I loved his vibe. I loved his just everything about the second he walked in the store.

[55:05] Alvin Eng: 100% like we're doing an event tonight.

[55:08] Shoshana Greenberg: Yeah, he's one that he brings you into his storytelling and just owns that, owns the room.

[55:14] Alvin Eng: Yeah.

[55:14] Shoshana Greenberg: But that you can't help but just be so focused on everything he's doing and saying.

[55:19] Alvin Eng: I yeah, no, the album's wonderful.

[55:23] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Let's start looking at what our next episode is gonna be.

[55:27] David Rigano: Yeah, our next episode was very different.

[55:29] Mark-Eugene Garcia: We're moving in a different direction now. We've we've been doing our ethnic culture, and now we are going into, I guess this kind of goes into like my chosen culture.

[55:41] David Rigano: No, a hundred percent, yeah.

[55:43] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Of of being an absolute theater nerd.

[55:48] David Rigano: Totally, and that's something I think that we at the bookstore all choose to be is absolute theater nerds. That's who we are.

[55:57] Mark-Eugene Garcia: I love, and this is a little bit of I guess insight into the store, but also every now and then someone will come up and they'll say, Oh, I need your help to see if you have something in stock. I'm looking for proof, it's by and I go David Auburn.

[56:14] David Rigano: Right.

[56:15] Mark-Eugene Garcia: And it's just it's just a stupid little point of pride.

[56:20] David Rigano: That's so weird because when somebody comes in and tells me they're looking for proof, I always reply, of what?

[56:24] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Yeah, that's right up there with Do you have respect for acting?

[56:27] David Rigano: Truly.

[56:27] Mark-Eugene Garcia: I and the ultimate dad joke that I do that it's hit or miss that because sometimes people just look at me like I'm nuts. Whenever they do buy proof, I always tell them if anyone ever questions you coming here, you can always say you got proof.

[56:40] David Rigano: Oh bad.

[56:44] Mark-Eugene Garcia: And so people look at me like, okay.

[56:47] David Rigano: And others will be like, Oh my god, that's funny.

[56:49] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Have you done that to people before?

[56:50] David Rigano: I'm like, no, it's first time.

[56:51] Mark-Eugene Garcia: I had someone, and I was so glad that he was like, I've been in this business for 75 years, and that was good. He was looking for the full piano vocal score to Oklahoma, not the vocal selections.

[57:04] David Rigano: Yeah.

[57:05] Mark-Eugene Garcia: The full, and we had it. We had one copy. So I was like, let me put you on hold. I'm gonna double check this. I get back to the phone and I picked up and I just said, okay, L-A-H-O-M-A.

[57:16] David Rigano: And I was, and he was like, that was really good. I was like, Oscar Hammerstein wrote it.

[57:21] Mark-Eugene Garcia: It's really my joke.

[57:23] David Rigano: I always told someone that when I used to Toy Soldier at FAO Schwartz, because you can say anything at that job. I met people from Oklahoma, and it was while the revival was playing. And I was like, Oh, are you gonna go see the show? And they're like, Oh, Oklahoma's playing. I'm like, Yeah, it's playing now. It's a revival, they're doing a lot of things differently than what? I'm like, they're setting it in Wyoming.

[57:44] Mark-Eugene Garcia: She was like, Really?

[57:45] David Rigano: I was like, No.

[57:47] Mark-Eugene Garcia: That's like you've said to me, you've been like, David, you can't lie about that because oh, yeah.

[57:52] David Rigano: Like, I used to you'll decide if this can go on the podcast or if you need to cut it out. I used to joke that the that the bookworm, the sculpture that winds like across the ceiling in the store is an artistic representation of Lynn Manuel Miranda's genome, and too many people took that at face value, and you were like, you need to stop doing that.

[58:16] Mark-Eugene Garcia: It's a joke, and I know it's a joke, and other people believe you.

[58:19] David Rigano: It's so funny that's one that people stick to because I have told so many lies about what it is. Eventually I tell the person, but I'll tell people they're always they're held together by theater magic, or the books are held together by good writing.

[58:32] Mark-Eugene Garcia: I love that.

[58:32] David Rigano: I've told people it's CGI.

[58:34] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Actually, yeah, the ceiling starts like a foot above us, it's all CGI up there, and don't try to touch it.

[58:39] David Rigano: Oh, yes, that's true.

[58:41] Mark-Eugene Garcia: But that's that is the kind of theater nerdom, the level of theater nerdom that you can expect at the drama bookshop. So when Peter Felicia came out with a book called Broadway, when Peter Flecia came out with a book called Brain Teasers for Broadway Geniuses, 500 puzzlers to perplex even the biggest fans.

[59:05] David Rigano: Yeah, obviously, obviously, we had to do a night with that.

[59:09] Mark-Eugene Garcia: And it's funny because that's one that I think we all thought, all right.

[59:15] David Rigano: I got this.

[59:18] Mark-Eugene Garcia: We did not, but let's delve into that on our next episode.

[59:22] David Rigano: All right, yeah.

[59:23] Mark-Eugene Garcia: So remember, please follow us on Instagram at drama bookshow podcast. Please follow the drama bookshop on eventbrite. And remember, 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.