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[0:00] Christine Toy Johnson: Welcome to the fourth season of the Dramatist Guild Presents Talk Back.

[0:05] Christine Toy Johnson: I'm your host, Christine Toy Johnson.

[0:08] Christine Toy Johnson: We've shifted our focus this year to talk about craft and inspiration.

[0:12] Christine Toy Johnson: Our guests this season are my colleagues and friends from the Council of the Dramatists Guild of America.

[0:18] Christine Toy Johnson: Our guests will give us a unique look into how they write, what makes a good story, and what drives them to keep working on the DG Council.

[0:26] Christine Toy Johnson: Stay with us.

[0:30] Christine Toy Johnson: Welcome back to Talk Back.

[0:32] Christine Toy Johnson: Amanda Green made headlines in 2021 when she became the first female president of the Dramatists Guild of America in its over 100-year history.

[0:42] Christine Toy Johnson: Amanda sits down and shares details of collaborating with Billy Crystal in her Tony-nominated musical, Mr. Saturday Night, the inspiration she received from sitting under her father's piano, and how the guild continues to motivate her.

[0:58] Christine Toy Johnson: Madam President, will you please introduce yourself to our listeners?

[1:03] Amanda Green: Of course, thank you. My name is Amanda Green. I'm a biochemist.

[1:08] Christine Toy Johnson: I never knew that.

[1:10] Amanda Green: See, this podcast is amazing. I learn all kinds of things.

[1:14] Amanda Green: Yes. No, I am a lyricist, a composer, librettist, proud member of the Dramatists Guild, and truly happy to be here.

[1:23] Christine Toy Johnson: Thank you so much. I'm so happy to talk to you. There are so many things that we could talk about. This season is all about inspiration and craft. I have some questions that I'd love to get started with.

[1:35] Christine Toy Johnson: I know that you grew up with the theater all around you, and you've had such an incredible breadth of experience. What inspired you to start acting and writing?

[1:45] Amanda Green: My parents, absolutely. My dad was Adolf Green of the writing duo Comden and Green, and my mom was the actress and writer Phyllis Newman. And I grew up surrounded by them and the work that they were doing and their friends who were like Leonard Bernstein and Sondheim and Julie Stein and Lauren Bacall. I mean, they're just incredible, you know, the great artists of the 20th century. But I mostly it wasn't anything more high-faluting than I just loved what they were doing. I saw how much fun they were having. It was so exciting, glamorous at times. I remember as a little kid seeing my mom perform at the Persian Room at the Plaza. So I never didn't want to do what they were doing, ever. That's what inspired me. And we would leave each other notes and things and make jokes, and I was writing song parodies from the time I was like eight years old. So it just sort of started organically.

[2:46] Christine Toy Johnson: I know you've told stories about your family's guests coming in for dinner and for social activities, like you've already mentioned some of the greats, Leonard Bernstein and Julie Stein. What was that like for you to get that kind of inside view into the theater at such a young age?

[3:01] Amanda Green: It was incredibly exciting. I mean, I didn't know the outside, you know. But I have memories of sitting under the piano, my brother and I sitting under the piano and watching the feet of Julie Stein and when Leonard Bernstein, you know, thinking of seeing a glass and a cigarette and everybody performing and word games, and those were the most exciting times.

[3:29] Christine Toy Johnson: Did you always know that you would act and write, or did you have a leaning towards one before the other?

[3:36] Amanda Green: I grew up in the 60s and 70s, and my mom was the pretty actress, and my dad was the writer, even though Betty Comden was around. So I was like, I'm gonna be an actress like my mother, and my brother's gonna be a writer like my father. So it didn't occur to me until I was later. I was like, I could write too. You know, it seemed like it's something that came to me in my teens and early 20s, that it was something I wanted to do.

[4:00] Christine Toy Johnson: And then did you learn from your dad formally or informally, or did you soak it in just by being around him? Or how did your writing education begin?

[4:13] Amanda Green: I had a flair for humor. I mean, I was always funny. My family is a very funny family, and I started writing songs, and he was very loving and proud of me. I do remember playing him a song and going, it's not much, and he was like, Yeah, no, it really isn't. But mostly he was a proud papa, but no, I felt it incumbent upon myself to be educated because I didn't feel like it sprung from me. You know, I went to acting school and I went to a pop writing workshop for several years and then BMI musical theater for several years, and that really helped me. Gave me confidence in what I was doing and some skills.

[4:54] Christine Toy Johnson: Yeah, I would say. So, speaking of which, I'm sure your parents are so proud of you, especially with all of your Tony nominations this year. You had a wonderful new musical on Broadway, Mr. Saturday Night starring Billy Crystal. And so, first of all, congratulations on your Tony nomination for that job.

[5:16] Amanda Green: Oh, thank you. That was exciting. I wanted to ask you how that collaboration came about. Had you worked with Jason Robert Brown before? Had you worked with Billy Crystal before? How did that collaboration begin?

[5:29] Amanda Green: You know, no two shows are alike, I find the longer I work at it. It began with Mark Shaman coming to me with this project. He and I had talked to each other about possibly writing something together for several years, and he was like, this might be it. And he, of course, is great friends with Billy Crystal. And he was attached to the show, and he introduced me to Billy Crystal. And then he was like, write him an email, write him an email. And I was like, oh my God, I don't know what to say. I knew it was about Mr. Saturday Night. So I watched the movie and I was like, oh, I know this world. So I sent him a picture of me that I had as a nine-year-old sitting on Milton Perl's lap. Because it was a show about comics.

So I sent him that and wrote him a thing. And then I flew out to Los Angeles and met him and met the other two writers, Lowell Gance and Babalu Mandel, and we sat around and talked about the show. And then they said, okay, you're in. And then I was like, oh my God, a musical with Billy Crystal. So Mark was going to work on it. And then six months into it, the guys were doing work on the book, and Mark was really getting busy. And I started, I would just work on my own on lyrics because I was like, I gotta do something. And then he was inundated with several projects that were all happening at the same time. And he had to withdraw. And I was like, oh no. And so then we were looking around for other composers.

And I was looking around because I was like, I'm not definite here. You know what I mean? I was like, I gotta, I didn't know if I had job security, you know. But so I thought of Jason because I think he's absolutely brilliant, which he is, and he understands Jewish humor and this world, and I just thought he and Billy would get along great, and he would be fantastic for the project. He always writes his own lyrics. I told him about the project and asked him, and I think he was attracted to the idea. So he luckily said yes. It was nobody I'd ever worked with before, although I'd known Jason and long been a fan. So it really was learning how to work with each other. First of all, Jason and I learning how to work together, learning how to work with Billy Crystal, a big star, and these two hilarious seasoned pros who had written A League of Their Own and Parenthood and Analyze That and City Slickers, you know, legends.

But they'd never written a musical. So there were a lot of moving parts, and we wanted it to be different than the movie, and not just the movie put on stage, and there was a lot to figure out, but it all coalesced. I mean, it took a long time. We worked on it, we started working on it, I think in 2017, 2018. But we found our rhythm, you know. Jason and I found our way of working together, and it was a wonderful collaboration.

[8:21] Christine Toy Johnson: It's such a great show, so funny, so full of heart. I absolutely love it.

[8:25] Amanda Green: Oh, thank you. You mentioned these are all new collaborators for you when you first start out with the project. And do you have advice for people who are also embarking on a situation where they have a brand new collaboration?

[8:42] Amanda Green: There's so many variables. I think it is a bit of knowing what your voice is, seeing how people work, seeing what they bring to the table, how you speak with one another, what is effective in the room, what inspires the other person, what makes them freeze up. Working with Jason, I soon realized that I could not be in the same room with him and write a lyric. I couldn't, like not a word would come out of my pen or what do you think that is? I have no idea. As long as there was a door between us, even if I was right on the other side of the guitar, it was hilarious. And he found out that he couldn't write unless I was in the room. So it was funny. I learned how to talk, you know, to Billy Crystal.

He's a big star. You know, you learn like, okay, how do you do this? And the gentleman, I call them the gentlemen. I just adore them, Lowell and Babalu. You know, you find out what everybody's personalities are, what the strengths and weaknesses. I think you all have to like and believe in each other's abilities and have a certain amount of trust. And then you build more trust as you go along. We had more of a shorthand, certainly as we went along, and you could learn what would bring out the best in your collaborators.

[10:00] Christine Toy Johnson: Yes.

[10:01] Amanda Green: In what circumstances I could deliver my best as well.

[10:04] Christine Toy Johnson: Oh, yes, yes. I wonder what it was like for you to make Billy Crystal laugh. That must have been amazing.

[10:13] Amanda Green: That was so good. I love making Billy Crystal laugh whenever I'm able to. It is a very good day.

[10:21] Christine Toy Johnson: That's funny. I know that you're also working on several other projects, and some of them, at least one of them with a long-time collaborator. Do you want to talk about that?

[10:31] Amanda Green: Yes, Female Troubles, which is a musical I've been working on again for five years, six years. You know, the pandemic stole two years from all of us in various ways, big and small. But something that I came up with, the composer Curtis Moore, and he and I met each other at the BMI workshop. Oh, this was actually our fourth musical together.

[10:53] Amanda Green: Wow.

[10:54] Amanda Green: Yeah. We hadn't worked together in years, and we just were like, hey, let's do something. And I was like, okay, well, here's the worst idea I ever had, which is abortion, the musical. And he was very smart about it. He's like, okay, well, let's look at that, but maybe we can do it at a different time period. And then we both love Jane Austen. And somehow we came up with the outlines of a plot of this show, Female Troubles, which is a musical comedy about abortion. Takes place in 19th century England in Jane Austen's England. And a young lady is engaged to a man and she has one night, one night indiscretion with him, and then he goes off on a sea voyage for a year, and six weeks later she finds out she's pregnant. And she finds out about this midwife who advertises cures for women with female troubles, hence the title.

[11:53] Amanda Green: They've written for Veep, Seinfeld. They have a show out now on Fox, an animated show starring Lisa Kudrow called Housebroken. They're amazing. But we work together, and along the way, we asked Scott Ellis to direct, and now we have a producer.

[12:11] Amanda Green: And knock on wood, I do believe we will be a year from now premiering the regional at the Beachville Theater.

[12:17] Christine Toy Johnson: As you mentioned, the pandemic has taken its toll on all of us in many different ways. And I know that you've been writing all through this time, not only on Female Troubles, but also Mr. Saturday Night and probably 40 other things because I know you're very prolific. So how do you keep inspired to keep going? The regular challenges of show business, but then there are the extraordinary challenges that we've all been going through the past couple of years. How do you manage to keep inspired?

[12:47] Amanda Green: I would love to tell you how prolific I was during the pandemic, but I wasn't extraordinarily prolific. I did keep my sanity writing, you know, comedy songs. And that really keeps me going. At the moment, I'm at the beginning of a couple of projects, but doing research and learning something new about a couple of the things I'm working on, I just wow I love like having to read something to find out about this area. That keeps me going.

[13:16] Christine Toy Johnson: Yeah.

[13:17] Amanda Green: When I'm in a time, and there have been several times in my career when I don't know what I'm writing next, and I'm trying to figure it out, that is hellish. It's fun reading. I mean, for a while I was like, wallpaper, the musical, chair, musical. Everything I see is that could be a musical. Right. That could be a musical. And no, it shouldn't. I've gone down some foolish roads in my fervent desire to have a musical to work on or something to work on.

[13:45] Christine Toy Johnson: When you're looking around, like a reading or you're just taking in what's around you to hopefully spark an idea. What is the first sign that there's something in wallpaper, the musical or something like that that could turn into something?

[14:01] Amanda Green: It's always different. And a first sign is if there's a character that turns me on, or certainly as I said, like Female Troubles. Honestly, my answer to you would be talking to somebody else about it. Because I've had ideas that I think, as I said, I was joking about abortion, the musical, but I was stuck on like how do you do it? And then talking to a collaborator, we're like, oh, okay, oh, that's a way forward. I think so sometimes I think I don't even know if the idea is a good idea until I'm talking to somebody else, and then I get sparked to it. But of course, if there's a, as I said, if there's a character that turns me on or a turn of phrase, like High Fidelity, the first Broadway musical I wrote, I just I love Nick Hornby's writing.

I just would underline all these passages and go, oh my God, that's such a great lyric. That's such a great situation, and I love the world. If I love the world, the people in it, if I feel the characters are left of center, need something, are diluted, are hopeless. I like characters who have poor characters. Almost the hardest thing for me to write is she's a heroine. He's a hero, and I'm like, I don't know what to do with that. Right. Archetype, right? If someone's messed up or I love writing for them.

[15:20] Christine Toy Johnson: Do you have any favorite experiences in the theater that come right to mind?

[15:26] Amanda Green: Oh. Yeah. Oh gosh. I've had so many. Walking into the theater for the first time, if you have a production, is just something that you feel like you're just the luckiest person in the world. Being a the first day of a reading of a show, and even just people looking at a script and starting to sing something you've written as willing. A moment when um I remember Doug Wright and I and in a you know cabin uh in the woods, working on Hands on a Hard Body and feeling like we'd hit on, you know, just a moment that was like, oh my God, this could really work. Lots of great moments.

[16:05] Christine Toy Johnson: Yeah. When you speak about walking into the theater for the first time and then also spending the ensuing weeks or months as you're preparing the production, how is it to do rewrites as the show is on its feet already?

[16:23] Amanda Green: We did a lot for Mr. Saturday Night, and I found it really interesting. I love doing it because I say that like being a writer in a show once people are performing it is like trying to fly a plane from economy. You know, you're just you have no control whatsoever. So I loved being there and being part of the process and finding solutions. Of course, when you don't find solutions, then it could be really tough. There's something that there was one moment that we rewrote and rewrote, and then finally we're like, we're gonna cut it. They inspire me. And then there were moments of inspiration where Jason turned to me and said, We have the wrong song for Billy at this moment. We gotta write a whole new song.

I was like, now? And he's like, yeah, now. And we did it in a day. Dilly loved it and he learned it. We were in rehearsals. It was actually the night before we went to the theater. So it was like, you know, very dramatic. And Billy has an 11 o'clock number, and there was just a few lines that were like, yeah, they're kind of bullshit, you know. And I was trying to find solutions for it. And all of a sudden going, I, you know, working and working, and all of a sudden going, oh, it's these two lines. I know it. That's it, you know, and telling them to him. And he's like, Yeah, I'm gonna do them tonight. And that was in the middle of previews. And he wow. He messed them up because he wasn't used to them. But you know, so moments like that are are thrilling.

[17:52] Christine Toy Johnson: That's so exciting. I and I also can just picture you now when you and Jason decided to write a new song, go into your separate rooms and we're writing it together.

[18:01] Amanda Green: Well, he's so fast. He's so fast that, like by the time I got home that night, he sent me an email with melody, and I was like, how do you do that so fast? And then I just spent 24 hours in my pajamas, you know, writing the lyrics.

[18:16] Christine Toy Johnson: I want to shift our conversation a little bit to your service at the Dramatists Guild, which we're also grateful for. You're the guild's first female president, and that's awesome. How has it been for you?

[18:30] Amanda Green: First of all, thank you. You served the guild. You're an inspiration to be Christine. You know, my first week, I started out being terrified. And I think it was well, it was like we have to make a statement about so and so. And I was like, oh my God, and learning how to navigate that. Honestly, one of the highlights at is working with the officers, which is you and Brandon Jacobs Jenkins and Chris Diaz. I just love the having the four of us to bounce ideas off each other. That's so fantastic. Everybody's so smart and all different ways. And so I just think that the four of us together make a good president. No, truly, I truly. And I really like being in moments when there's a potential for something to change for the better. It's really exciting to be part of that.

[19:22] Christine Toy Johnson: I mean, what a great group to be part of. The more I know about the guild and the more experience I have, the more I'm the more enamored of it I am. Because someone said to me the other day, I have an agent and I have a lawyer. So what do I need the guild for? They're gonna do my contracts. And the answer is good for you, you have an agent, it's great you have a lawyer, and those are wonderful things. But they will look out for you in this situation, but we're looking out for each other as an industry and for each other and for the health of everybody. Yes. Writing for the theater of the state of writing in the theater, of protecting our copyrights because you might get a great contract, but that contract could be harmful to another writer, the next writer who comes along because it doesn't provide them with the protections that a guild certified contract.

We are a collective, we're not a union because we own our copyrights. We are a collective of people, it's all different kinds of writers from all over the country. We don't even have to like each other, but we all want the same thing, which is the health of the theater and the ability to make a livelihood and to have our work protected. And so we're all bound together with that. I'm really proud to serve the guild as president because we're looking out for each other. And like the ones who came before us fought for the rights we have today. And I'm proud that my dad was one of those people. He was a council member, and we have to protect and fight for our rights and for the make writing for the theater a more equitable and tenable place for those who are coming up and coming after us. So I feel like it's uh it's something worth being part of and fighting for, for sure.

[21:02] Christine Toy Johnson: What did inspire you to first run for the council? I'm so interested to know what motivates all of us to serve.

[21:10] Amanda Green: I was asked to put my name in, and I was so thrilled to be asked. It had never occurred to me that I could run. And honestly, I was at one of those times at which I didn't know what I was going to write next. I didn't know if I would ever find something to write next or if I would ever get anything produced again. So I was really in a low point in my career. And just having the guild reach out to me and I was like, oh, somebody wants me for something. It was great to be a part of the community and to ask to be part of the community. And that's really why I ran. And then when I went and I got elected, and I, as other people have said, you're sitting around a table of your heroes and you have to pinch yourself.

So I didn't know what I was doing when I first started out and had to get my sea legs. But I think the first committee I joined was the publications committee, now the dramatist committee. And it's joining a committee, you really sort of start to be able to find your place.

[22:06] Christine Toy Johnson: So we became officers together in the middle of the shutdown in early 2021. And I know that time was full of many challenges. I wonder what did you see as the guild's biggest challenge and triumphs during that time and how we've been able to move forward as we're still in the pandemic, but moving into a different phase of it.

[22:29] Amanda Green: I still think we don't even know what we just went through. Yeah. I mean, we reacted in the moment. Um, you and I and Joy Stocks, I know we kept uh was it weekly? We did, I believe 12 or 13 episodes of the Dramatist Live, which was so great, and I loved it. And I think real really you could listen to those episodes still on the Dramatists Guild website. It does really capture the time that we were in when we didn't know how long we would be shut down, and we didn't know anything. We still don't know a lot, but we really didn't know a lot back then. And I think we began in April of 2020.

[23:09] Christine Toy Johnson: That's right.

[23:10] Amanda Green: And it was terrific that Joey fought it up and that and certainly gave us some place to be once a week, at least. And to talk to theater writers and artists around the country was a terrific thing to do. I think what the guild did really well was never stop. Even though everyone was in their homes, everybody immediately in the staff pivoted to working by Zoom, making opportunities, having programs. I think that the fact of Zoom all of a sudden opened up worlds that we couldn't have imagined in terms of access. We heard from so many people from around the country that, like all of a sudden, I get to go to a lecture that I could never have gone to because I live in Ottawa or I live in whatever.

And streaming plays and streaming monologues, and there were all sorts of opportunities in the theater world to watch Zoom performances, and you could tune in from anywhere. And that was incredible opportunity that came out of COVID, which is still with us. It used to be you had to be able to come to a meeting in New York City, and now that is no longer the case at all to be a member of a committee. You really do not have to physically be in New York City, which has opened our world a lot.

[24:27] Christine Toy Johnson: Yeah, yeah, definitely. What's gotten you most fired up about what's ahead for the guild and what we're working on?

[24:34] Amanda Green: I'm excited about the energy that I feel in the guild and the staff. I feel like such a renewed energy. I think Emmanuel is a large part of that. Like I get that newsletter, and I'm like, we got a lot of stuff going on.

[24:49] Christine Toy Johnson: Yes, we do.

[24:49] Amanda Green: And Amy Von Mesik, you are also very instrumental. And I really love the way that we are responding to what's happening now and addressing it from live streaming, which is definitely a thing now, to offering really solid, uh helpful nuts and bolts career questions about copyright, about how to protect your work, about best practices. I just feel like we are honing who we are and what's important to us and what we do best. And I feel, I can't speak for everybody's experience, but I feel that we are becoming less the New York elite and more countrywide and more talking about the state of the arts around our country and rather than just New York City. Personally, I'm excited about this process, which we're going undergoing a long process to really do inventory on ourselves and see what are we doing well, what do we need to do better?

How are we serving people? How are we not serving our members and focusing on defining what we do best and how we can help people the most? The possibility of the PRO Act gets me all tingly and excited, being of the fact that we may, if we can get it past, be able to collectively bargain would be a life changer for theater writers.

[26:10] Christine Toy Johnson: Can you talk about that a little bit for those who don't know what that is, the PRO Act?

[26:16] Amanda Green: It's not something that's being voted on yet, but it's an act that I think it was started for gig workers like Uber drivers who want to be able to collectively bargain. And we are, in a sense, Uber drivers of the theater. We are gig workers. We would benefit by that by being independent contractors, which is what we are, being able to collectively bargain, which is something we are not legally allowed to do at the moment. But that would be a total game changer.

[26:45] Christine Toy Johnson: Great, great. That's fantastic. If you want more information on the PRO Act, it's on the DG website, so just go to dramatistsguild.com and search for the PRO Act. And if it's something that means as much to you as it does to me, you can contact your local representatives and ask them to get it to a vote.

[27:05] Amanda Green: Thank you to Amanda. This is our last episode of the season. To hear the rest of our season four or to catch up on seasons one through three, you can find us on the Broadway Podcast Network or Apple Podcasts. Please be sure to rate us and leave a review. Learn more about our guests from all our episodes by visiting www.dramatistsguild.com.

[27:28] Christine Toy Johnson: This episode was produced by Amy Von Mesik and me, Christine Toy Johnson. Music was composed by Andrea Daly. Special thanks to Dick and Rogers Sound Studio in Vancouver, British Columbia. Talkback is a production of the Dramatists Guild of America and is distributed by the Broadway Podcast Network. Join the conversation online by using hashtag DG TalkBack. As always, to be continued.