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[0:00] Ken Davenport: Hello everyone. This is Ken Davenport and welcome to the Producer's Perspective Podcast, episode number four. On the first three episodes of the podcast, we sat down with three folks who sit on the administrative side of Broadway. For today's podcast, we're sitting down with someone on the opposite side of the table, the creative side, to get his perspective on all things Broadway. I'm honored that the table I'm sitting at, literally, is actually the table of none other than multiple Tony Award winner, Emmy Award winner, Drama Desk Award winner, Theater Hall of Famer, Terrence McNally. Welcome Terrence. Terrence is the writer of such plays and musicals as Frankie and Johnny and the Clair de Lune, Lips Together, Teeth Apart, Love, Valor, Compassion, Masterclass, Mothers and Sons, Kiss of the Spider Woman, A Full Monty, and of course, this year's biggest hit, which I am fortunate enough to be a producer on, it's only a play.

And it was just announced that the long gestating The Visit, which Terrence has wrote the book for, will make its debut on Broadway this spring at the Lyceum Theater. Terrence has also written operas, screenplays, teleplays, and a whole lot more. So, Terrence, my first question to you is, you have to be one of the most prolific playwrights around. Can you tell me a little bit about your process? How long does it go for you to get an idea to do something to have a completed script?

[1:26] Terrence McNally: Well, very often it's a long time from an idea, like, oh, there's a play here, to me actually sitting down at the keyboard and beginning to write it. So, and it's been a different experience with every single play I've written. Basically, I like deadlines. You know, a musical, you have collaborators, and you have meetings weekly, and so you have to have a certain amount done by Monday at four when you're going to meet with Lynn Ahrens and Stephen Flaherty who are working on the project. When you're on your own, you're your own boss, and as I said, you get an idea, and you say, there's a play here, and maybe a year later, two years later, I got the idea for Frankie and Johnny, took a trip to India, and came back and wrote two or three plays before I wrote Frankie and Johnny, and then I wrote A Perfect Ganesh, which is a play about going to India five years after that, so there's no real cause and effect.

I'm just grateful when they come, and when they come, they, I think what I've learned is not to turn on the computer until I'm ready to begin writing. I don't enjoy staring at a blank screen, so I wait until it's really time to go, and it's trying to figure out where to begin the play is part of the challenge. Before you start to write a play, you know the general story you want to tell, but where do you begin? That's a really important decision to make, when to start.

[3:03] Ken Davenport: Yeah, I've heard some writers say, oh, I know how this is going to end, or I have the final scene in mind, but so for you, it's more of the beginning?

[3:13] Terrence McNally: It's more the beginning of the situation. Masterclass is a play I knew I was going to begin and end, but I had no idea what would be in the middle. I always knew the first line would be no applause. The day I got the idea for writing a play about Maria Callas, teaching a masterclass for Zoe Caldwell, in a second I got no applause, and the last line of the play, well, that's that. Then I had to write the play. And there was a playwriting festival in Big Fork, Montana, and he said, do you have something? And I said, yeah, I have something. And so they gave me a date, so that's why I said deadlines work well too. So I had to have something done by March 15th of that year, because I told them in October, say, that I would have a play for them.

So I don't just sit at an empty keyboard and think, oh, what should I write about? No, no. New York is a very stimulating city. I've never been at a loss for ideas. It's more finding time, you know, having a play in production and in rehearsal. It's pretty hard to do something else. You get very focused on that. And so I'm now beginning to get back to some other projects that were put aside because of it's only a play. Happily, because that's been a great experience, but I won't pretend I go to rehearsals if it's only a play and come home and work on a new play. No, that's all I do.

[4:44] Ken Davenport: So tell me a little bit about how you got your start, why you decided to be a playwright and what was the early process like of you getting into this business?

[4:50] Terrence McNally: I always wanted to be a writer. I figured I'd probably be a journalist. I came to New York at 17 and went to Columbia. I went to the theater a lot. I'd seen a couple of shows as a young child and they made big impressions on me. So I love theater. From the time I was five or six years old, I didn't see very much of it growing up in Corpus Christi, Texas. But I knew New York, Broadway, that's a good reason to go to Columbia. And the first night I was in New York, I went right to Times Square and found my way to the Mark Hellinger Theater and asked to see My Fair Lady. And they looked at me like I was crazy. And they said, it's totally sold out for the next six months. I said, oh, what do you do if you want to see it sooner than that?

They said, well, there's a line, standees, a dollar. There's like 18 standing room places. They go on sale at 10 a.m. So if you want one of them, you better be in line by midnight because the line is totally, there's 18 people in line by midnight. And that's the only way you'll get in. So I wandered a few blocks south and there at the 46th Street Theater was a big marquee. It said Gwen Verdon and Damn Yankees. So I saw that my first night in New York. I went back to the Mark Hellinger Theater. There was about three people there already. And we were sitting, we were sitting on the sidewalk actually when My Fair Lady ended because shows began at 840 in 1956. And My Fair Lady is a fairly lengthy show.

So it was like 1115, 1130. And people were coming out and they say, you guys are going to sit there all night to get standing room for this show? We said, yeah. They acted like we were crazy. And of course I thought, oh, they're just rich. They're so lucky they can afford to buy a seat. And I met several people. It was fun talking. That was my first night in New York having seen Gwen Verdon sitting outside the Mark Hellinger Theater. The box office opened promptly at 10 and those 18 places were gone by 10:01. It cost a dollar. So the guy just gave him a dollar bill. Happened really fast. The line was gone. And I slept my way through my first freshman week in Columbia. But I did see My Fair Lady my second night in New York.

And then during the run of the play before the original cast left, I saw it 11 more times. So I guess I was stage struck. I still don't think I was going to be a writer. That was seeing a musical. And I heard the album in Corpus Christi and it was a glorious show. I mean, pretty hard to describe how amazing the original My Fair Lady was. It was the first time I think people saw turntables and elaborate costumes. It was so extravagant. And I just started going to the theater and the opera a lot. And I always thought I'd go to Columbia School of Journalism across the campus after four years. And while I was at Columbia, I read that they didn't have anyone to write The Varsity Show. And I thought, well, I could write and try it.

And I wrote that with Ed Kleban, who wrote the music and lyrics. He was in my class. And I sort of enjoyed that. Then when I graduated from Columbia, I got a prize to go off and be creative. It seemed like a lot of money at the time. I think it was about $5,000. And I went to Mexico and I was going to write a great novel. And while I was there, I just started writing a play. And I sent it to the Actors Studio in New York, the Playwrights Unit. And Molly Kazan, who ran it, she was the wife of Elia Kazan, wrote me this letter. I was living in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, when it was a really unknown little spot with two flights a week that landed in the cornfield. She said, if you get back to New York, I'd love to talk to you.

You don't seem to have a lot of stage experience from some of your stage directions. You should hang out with actors and directors and see how plays are really put together. And I thought, sounds good. So I got nowhere with the novel. I maybe wrote 60 pages of it. And while I was there, as I said, I wrote this, I'd written this play and I continued working on that. Got back to New York, worked as the stage manager at Actors Studio. So I was in the presence of great directors, great actors, great playwrights. And the Playwrights Unit was in its halcyon days then. And they did my play one afternoon and someone there from the Rockefeller Foundation saw it. And they were commissioning new plays to be done at the Guthrie Theater.

And my first play got done at the Guthrie. People saw it and then it went to Broadway. I mean, this kind of story does not happen anymore. No one's first play they ever wrote gets done on Broadway. Now the first play I ever wrote gets done on Broadway was a big fat flop. And it took me maybe 20 years to have a sense of humor about that. And right, it's only a play. And that took, it's taken another 20 years to get that play on to Broadway where it probably always belonged. And happily, it's very successful now. But that's sort of, I sort of fell into it. I never had a vocational epiphany like, I want to be a playwright. It was more, oh, I guess I'm earning a living as a playwright. But I've always earned a living as a writer.

[10:37] Ken Davenport: And while you were coming up and around that company of actors and directors, which I love, I give a lot of people the same advice. You should surround yourself with other artists, your contemporaries, your peers. So my first play was a big flop, as I said. I went back to journalism and was working as an editor for a magazine, finding it very hard at the end of the day to come back to my apartment and write my own work, a play. And I'd become friends with a character actor named James Coco. And he said, I'll never be a star. And I thought he was a wonderfully comic, great actor. I said, well, I said, no one writes leading roles for fat character actors, you know. I get to come in in the second act and have a scene, or maybe have a short scene in the first scene and a better scene in the second act, but I don't really have plays written about me.

So I said, I'll write a play for you. And I wrote this play called Next. And he said, great, I love it, but who's going to want to do a play with me? No one knows who James Coco is. So it dissolved to less than a year later. He's up in Summerstock at a Berkshire Theatre Festival. I'm still at this magazine. And then the next play, he was in a play by Elaine May. And the play that was going to follow them at the Berkshire Theatre Festival got cancelled. So suddenly they needed a play overnight. Jimmy said, I have a play. And they read it and liked it. He gave it to Elaine. She read it and said, I want to direct it. Jimmy calls me. Within a day, I'm on a bus going to Stockbridge, Massachusetts.

And we did Next. And I've earned a living as a playwright ever since. And that was about 1965 or so. So I've been very lucky. And so, you know, there is talent, sure. There is luck. But you got to be prepared when the moment happens. I mean, if he said, can you write a play for me tonight, overnight? I'll give it to Elaine in the morning. I probably could not have written the play overnight, but it was ready to go. And it was a great experience working with Elaine. But that's the basic story of my career. And suddenly I was like earning a living writing plays. And I loved it.

[13:01] Ken Davenport: Any advice from people around at the time as you burst on the scene? Any mentors that you worked with?

[13:08] Terrence McNally: Oh, advice? From anyone that said, this is how you're going to... My advice I would give people is what I did. Hang out with really talented people. You know, I think standing outside the stage door, hoping Nathan Lane is going to want to do your play and you slip him a copy, probably won't even take it from you. Or he may not even go out the stage door and make one of his phantom exits from the basement. But when I, when Nathan Lane did the Lisbon Traviata, I had seen him in many things and thought he was the most amazing young comic actor, frankly, since Jimmy Coco. And Nathan Lane was not Nathan Lane when he did the Lisbon Traviata. So I'd be realistic. And there are so many good young theater companies in New York.

And that's where you should hang out and not... Most off-Broadway theater companies now, not-for-profits, are not entry-level theaters anymore. Manhattan Theater Club, Playwrights Horizon, they kind of have their writers. And it takes a while to get to their attention. It's changed. It was relatively easy to get a play done off-Broadway in the 60s. I mean, it really felt as if we finished them on Friday, cast them on Monday, and went into rehearsal the following Friday. It just was bang, bang, bang. Now I know production costs have risen.

[14:29] Terrence McNally: But there's just been a slowing down of the process. There are fewer off-Broadways pretty much died. There were so many small theatres and everyone seemed to be able to earn a living at a 99-seat theatre, a 199-seat theatre. Next ran at a theatre that's long gone on 13th Street and the big flaw in that theatre was you couldn't play on Friday night because it served a purpose as a synagogue. So, you know, a lot of commercial people would say, what can you do with that Friday night? So, we had four show weekends. But everyone seemed to be able to make that work and now it's, if you're not done by the public or Manhattan Theatre Club or Playwrights Horizon, it's kind of hard. Atlantic, there are a few groups.

But there are all these newer groups which are almost all off-Broadway that are welcoming to new writers, directors and actors. My advice is hang out with your peers. Hang out with your peers. The odds of your first play going to Broadway in this day and age are pretty remote. Yes, anything can happen. But you should be with your peers anyway and learn from one another. And the other bit of advice is always try to work with people who are smarter and more talented than you so you learn something. If you're the smartest person in the room, you tend not to learn anything. So, challenge yourself.

[15:55] Ken Davenport: It's fantastic advice about not being the smartest person in the room. There seems to be, look, you've always been very active obviously, but there seems to be a lot of activity with both revivals of some of your earlier works and new stuff as well. In the last year, Mothers and Sons, Away We Go, only a play just the last 12 months. Now here comes The Visit again. And I'm hearing rumblings about some more revivals and I'm sure you mentioned at the beginning of this, you're working on something new. There seems to be a lot of McNally activity or heat around you. Why? Do you think there's a reason why all of a sudden there's even more?

[16:32] Terrence McNally: No, I mean, I don't know why. You'll take it. I'll take it. But I do think a lot of things that happen in life are beyond our control. I think the older I get, the more I've learned to let go. And things happen when they're meant to happen. I always believed in The Visit. The Visit is almost 15 years from its world premiere in Chicago. And then about seven or eight years after that, there was a second production at the Signature Theater outside of DC in Arlington. And then this production from Williamstown. And I always had faith this show would eventually come to New York. I think it's a wonderful show. And it just, the time wasn't right, I guess. I didn't drive myself crazy. I can't make a show happen.

A lot of things have to align and they just aligned this time. And you know, it's a wonderful role for Cheetah. And we used to joke 15 years ago, age is on our side. The older you are for this part, the better. Now we joke, no, that's not true anymore. So she's ready to do it. And it's just going to be glorious. But we didn't drive ourselves crazy. There was a trust. I think good work eventually gets done. You have to have advocates for it. In a play, if it just languishes in a drawer, no one's going to do it. But that show had enough exposure. People had seen it and believed in it. I think it's the last score John and Fred wrote, Kander and Ebb, and I think it's really one of their best scores.

It's so unlike their other shows that I think it's going to surprise people there's numbers in it. And if you didn't know who wrote the words and music, I don't think you'd say, oh, that's a Kander-Ebb number. And we found the right director for it and choreographer, John Doyle and Graciela Daniel have just that kind of seamless thing. I used to read about that, I guess, Josh Logan had with Agnes de Mills, say, or just seamless. It's got one person directed and choreographed it. It's just wonderful. It's very, there's a lot of movement in the piece. There's not number numbers, but it's very choreographed too, very stylized. It was just their collaboration was a beautiful thing to watch. And Cheetah and Roger Reiss together are very special.

And I don't know whose name it was, who it was at a table at lunch saying, who can we get to play opposite Cheetah who came up with Rogers? And he's a revelation on the part. And I can't take credit for that. And that's what's exciting about the theater. There's always the unexpected thing happens. That is also the source of a lot of the frustration about theater because it's not a good industry, or way of life for a control freak. And yet there are a lot of control freaks who end up in the theater, but I think they're usually broken pretty thoroughly and soon. But you know, I mean, you could say, what's the biggest control freak of all to be a playwright? You're dictating, she lives, she dies, he gets married, he falls down the stairs, he inherits a million dollars.

But I've learned, you know, to let go. And I just, I think you do acquire a certain wisdom about theater the older you get. But it's, I love the impatience of young people. And I still have my youthful impatience. I want it to happen now. I want it to be good. They did it so right Friday. Why does the Saturday matinee suck? You know, it's, why can't you bottle a lightning? But then there's nights the show, you say, I'll never see a better performance of The Visit than that. This is the one that should be filmed for the history books. Then you go three nights later and it's even better. Magically, the actors find even greater heights to rise to. So it's, it's exhilarating. I mean, I often say having a life in the theater, such as I've had, is its own reward.

I know we all have to eat and have a roof over our heads. But other than that, if you can do theater and not starve to death and not shiver in a cold night because you're sleeping in the park, I think you've got to consider yourself well paid because it's, it's an amazing life. And there were times I lived in apartments. My mother would literally burst into tears. I don't know how you can live like this. And I thought, I'm so lucky to be living in Manhattan because these were still the days when you could live in Manhattan. Now, all the young people, they all live in Brooklyn, Queens, Staten Island, even the Bronx. I mean, there is no real estate for young people. That's had a huge impact on the arts in this city that it's so difficult for young people to come here and be artists.

[22:06] Ken Davenport: When you talk about The Visit a little bit and your excitement about that, tell me a little bit about the difference between writing a play and writing a book for a musical.

[22:16] Terrence McNally: For me, the biggest difference is that a musical, I am a collaborator and the musical should seem as if one person, one mind, one sensibility wrote the book, the music and the lyrics. So there's not a big disconnect from the dialogue to the music or the words. The lyrics don't remotely sound like the character we listen to speaking. So it's finding the right collaborators and it's being willing to really say your main job is to provide the structure for the show. And if you write a really good scene and the actors and your composer, lyricist, collaborators come up with a really good song that accomplishes exactly what that scene did, you have to be glad for them and let your scene go. If you've got a big, needy ego, you're not going to be happy writing a book for a musical.

I think it's more like some of the plays in line on a football team. You know, the quarterbacks get all the glory and the running ends, the running backs. And that's the composer and lyricist. But you have to take pride in your work and that you've done a good job. But you're not the star of the evening. I'm the star of my plays. I'm not the star of my musicals. And I love musicals enough because that's what probably got me, that's what drew me to the theater as a child, certainly. Chekhov or Beck, Samuel Beckett didn't. It was musicals. And I think a lot of my friends who have taken, playwright friends who have taken a crack at writing the book, they treat it a little bit like playwright light and it's not.

It's very hard work. You have to give it the same attention to detail and craft that you do to a play of your own. But it's just your ego is going to be a little battered when your favorite line or two gets swallowed up by a song. And there may be, there's whole sentences of mine that are in some of my collaborators' lyrics. And I'm honored. Listen, it's a bad book. If you've written a five-page scene for two characters, three characters, and your collaborators read it and say, we don't see a song in what you've given us, then you've failed as a book writer. And as far as my own writing, I probably tend to overwrite the first draft of a musical a bit to give them a lot of ideas of what I think they can musicalize or ideas for lyrics, images that maybe the lyricists won't respond to.

But I've been really lucky with who I've worked with on musicals for the most part. I would say your choice of collaborators on a musical is as important as choosing a life partner, a spouse, because you're with these people a lot. You have to completely trust them. You have to really look out for one another. And it's tough love a lot, but I really have worked with wonderful, wonderful people. And I think some people have been unhappy working on musicals because it hasn't been the right people in the room. And unless you have the right people in the room, you're kind of doomed. And I've been involved in projects like that too. We're all sitting here because we've all won some awards and we have a bit of a high profile, but do we really see eye to eye on this project?

No. And those projects usually go nowhere. So choose well. If you're going to do a musical, and it's got to be the right... I think one of the problems with musicals today is people are choosing material that isn't strong enough to sustain two and a half hours of song. And at the end of the first act, there's not enough plot and stuff going. And musicals, most of the ones I've done that have been successful have been big emotional stories like Ragtime or Kiss of the Spider Woman. And even The Full Monty, there's a lot of meat in The Full Monty. I've seen shows where they kind of run out of gas very quickly because of stories that the situation isn't strong enough. And listen, when I told people I was doing Ragtime or Spider Woman, people said, that's the worst idea I've ever heard for a musical.

If someone said, I'm making a musical of Pygmalion, I would have said, that's the worst idea I've ever heard. So you find people who see... You all agree, yeah, let's make a musical out of Krapp's Last Tape, and you'll probably make a good one if you all passionately want to make that musical and see eye to eye on it and believe in it.

[27:34] Ken Davenport: Obviously the industry, some things about the industry have changed a lot over your, what I now know is 50 years on Broadway you're celebrating now, which is amazing. You talk about ticket prices from a dollar when you saw My Fair Lady to now, obviously. Some things haven't changed. There are still people coming to New York waiting in line for tickets for the hottest show. Tell me, how do you think producers have changed over the last 50 years, or have they changed? Is there any difference you see in the people that work with that option your shows now?

[28:04] Terrence McNally: Yeah, the biggest change I've seen, when I first came to New York, producing was very much a mom and pop kind of thing. You would say David Merrick presents, Robert Whitehead presents, Kermit Bloomgarden presents, Roger L. Stevens. Now there's anywhere from 10 to 30 to 40 names above the title present. So it was one man, and I remember people would say, oh I'll see any show Robert Whitehead produces or Kermit Bloomgarden, because they only do classy plays. So if he thinks this is a good new American play or a play worth bringing from one to another. They were like stars, the producers. You went to see a David Merrick promised showmanship, and more likely you're going to see a big commercial hit. But they were as big a star as the stars they were presenting. Their names were everywhere.

[41:59] Terrence McNally: I think we'd all love those ticket prices to come down. And I think every one of us who got into this business for the right reasons would be happy to take some money out of our pockets in order to get more people to experience what we experience every day.

[42:13] Ken Davenport: I want to thank Terrence for taking the time out of his very busy day. In fact, listeners, I will tell you, he literally said, I'm on deadline for tomorrow morning. I'll squeeze you in on Sunday night when we're doing this. So I want to thank him for offering his perspective. And just to say on the record, literally, on this recording, to say how thankful all of us are for your dedication to Broadway and the theater. Broadway and the world, frankly, is just a better place because of you and your plays.

[42:40] Terrence McNally: Thank you. It's very generous.

[42:42] Ken Davenport: So that's it for Episode 4 of the Producer's Perspective Podcast. Make sure you subscribe so that you don't miss our next episode, which will feature none other than Broadway advertising and marketing guru, Drew Hodges, the founder of Spotco Advertising. I'll be sure to find out what he thinks about market research and whether he agrees with Terrence. He'll talk about the secrets to selling a show. So tune in next Monday. Until then, I'm Ken Davenport, and this is the Producer's Perspective Podcast. I'm gonna be a producer. Look out, Broadway, here I come!