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[0:00] Ken Davenport: I wanna be a producer with a hit show on Broadway. I wanna be a producer. Hey everybody, it's Ken here. Listen, on February 23rd at 7 p.m. Eastern time, I'm going to hold a teleseminar and tell you all the secrets of how I got to be where I am today recording this podcast. It's called How to Succeed in the Arts or in Anything, 7 o'clock the 23rd. Check out my blog for more details. Gonna be a lot of fun. On with the podcast.

[0:33] Ken Davenport: Hey everybody, Ken Davenport here. You are listening to the Producer's Perspective podcast. This is episode 58, believe it or not. But it's okay if this is your first one, you picked a great one to start with because today I am honored to have as my guest Tony Award-winning composer Jeanine Tesori. Welcome, Jeanine.

[0:51] Jeanine Tesori: I'm very happy to be here.

[0:53] Ken Davenport: So little known fact is I first met Jeanine when I was the company manager on Thoroughly Modern Millie. What she did not know when we first met is that I was already obsessed with her score to Violet. I had worn out that CD like crazy. Remember the restraining order?

[1:08] Jeanine Tesori: That's right.

[1:09] Ken Davenport: I would stalk it. Please, please sing it for me. Uh she's also the composer of Shrek, Caroline, or Change, last season's big Tony Award winner for Best Musical Fun Home, uh, and which nabbed her a Tony as well. We're gonna get into that. Um so Jeanine, this is the part of the podcast where I usually would ask you how you got started. But as I read over those credits, what I'm so intrigued by is they're very diverse.

[1:34] Jeanine Tesori: Yes.

[1:34] Ken Davenport: So from Thoroughly Modern Millie and Violet to Caroline, or Change, Fun Home, Shrek, when you're signing up to write the music for a new show, whether it's an idea of yours or someone comes to you, what do you look for to say, like, oh, that story? I want that's a musical. I want to musicalize that.

[1:52] Jeanine Tesori: Uh it's a really good question, and it's hard to answer because it's hard to put into words at this point. Either something sings to me or it doesn't, and it's really evident right away. It's sort of, I guess, in a way, looking at a meal and thinking, uh that's appetizing. If a story is porous and there's almost like pumice stone, and you can see that it can absorb a layer, another, it can music isn't gonna serve it in some way, it's not complete. Uh, if something is already complete, then I'm not sure what my purpose would be, what my work is going to do. And I also have to find myself in it in some way. If it's a style of music that I've always wondered about and wanted to write in that style, or a culture that I want to learn about, um, I just feel like music is a sort of metricard, and you can just put it through and travel so many ways.

I mean, I can't write all styles because no one can, but um I've studied so much music when I was younger, so it was a very eclectic training, and um, so I feel like there I have a foundation which is very unusual, and it allows me to be very open to different cultures.

[3:06] Ken Davenport: So let's talk about that the beginning and the training. So, how did you get your start in music and in the business?

[3:13] Jeanine Tesori: When I was really young, you know, my family believed that everyone should have a musical education. There was always something happening. We had a piano and someone was always playing badly, and someone was playing flute and someone was doing, you know, grandes across the floor. There were one of four girls, and my parents just believed that you had to have a solid training. Um, my grandfather was a conductor and composer in Italy and came here and um couldn't make a living, uh, was pumping gas and died of pneumonia. And I think what I would call the ancestral pull, it was definitely in there. And when I was three, I just wouldn't go away from the piano. I was really drawn to it. And uh my parents started me with lessons when I was five or six, and I really studied intently until I was fourteen and then rebelled because I in the end I'm not a player. I'm I was something else, and I didn't realize that you there was a something else to be other than a piano player or a concert pianist.

[4:16] Ken Davenport: And how did you or why the theater when you're a musician with those kind of skills and innate ability and attraction to it, why choose writing for the theater as opposed to any of the writing for film or writing jingles or whatever it was?

[4:33] Jeanine Tesori: Well, as it turns out, I have a real interest in storytelling, and I didn't choose it, it chose me. Uh I had no designs on being a writer at all when I graduated. I started out studying science at Barnard and then switched to the music major at Columbia when my interest changed, not knowing at all what I was going to do with it. It rekindled my love and a real innate deep love for music, which has never, if anything, it's gotten um deeper. But I had no idea how that would be applied. I hadn't seen enough musical theater. I hadn't seen any musical theater, maybe one show, maybe two musicals, and then I started intently when I was 19 studying them ruthlessly. And the great thing about being a science major is all the way you dissect a frog or a pig.

There's it's a similar way to look at a musical or a piece and think what makes this work in a Da Vinci-like way. What what's underneath this? And how does this what are the mechanics of it? And it was strangely enough, looking back, a great way to start the education. There was no assumption I was gonna go into it. There was an absolutely no assumption you could make a living at it. And I was an overjoyed when I got my first job in 1984, 1985, um, maybe a little bit later as the associate conductor on the tour of Big River. I mean, I the delight when I got that call from Danny True. I mean, I just practically fainted. I was so happy.

[6:11] Ken Davenport: It's a very interesting way to put it about this studying it, dissecting it and learning the intricacies of it as a conductor. In the same way, I'll relate it to my own experience. I never thought I could make a living as a producer either, but I took this job and I was so elated when I first got it. Thoroughly Modern Millie was actually my first Broadway company management gig and was able to dissect the intricacies of the business side of Broadway before applying it to what I do now. Do you remember the first song you ever wrote?

[6:43] Jeanine Tesori: Oh, I do. Actually, the Joey Quenqua, um, who is now a really big mucky mucket at uh a PR, and I love him, and he was I think seven, and I wrote a song that he sang at Stage Door Manor because no one else was there, and we were putting something together for a show for little kids. And I set Dreamkeeper Langston Hughes, and he sang it. He's literally the first person. So funny. Uh I did do the Varsity show one right after I graduated, uh, 84 for Columbia. So there I you know, I was I was just starting to think, well, what is this composing? And I had studied classically my whole life, I still do, and love classical music. So I think I was also bringing that knowledge of how things are constructed. And theatrically, I started in the mail room. Absolutely. I was in the pit and in those rehearsal rooms, much like you. I understand it from the ground up, and it's proven to be so helpful.

[7:48] Ken Davenport: What's your process for writing a song now? Is do you get uh I organize my desk.

[7:56] Jeanine Tesori: Yeah. I Google, you know, baby armadillos. I do everything to procrastin I'm a terrible procrastinator. I can meet a deadline, but I have to have one or I don't write. It's terrible.

[8:07] Ken Davenport: Really?

[8:07] Jeanine Tesori: Yeah.

[8:08] Ken Davenport: So if a bookwriter does a book writer hand you a scene and say, Hey, this is what I want, and or do you get inspired, like I want to write a song about that, but then you just sit on it for a while until someone says it's gotta be done by Thursday?

[8:18] Jeanine Tesori: I mean every show is different. They are like kids, and I've described it before as this one needs braces and this one is fine and doesn't need any attention, just some love. And uh so knowing that every show is different, but my process is I have to know what it is that we're doing, what makes it it? A series of a lot of discussions over a lot of coffee, or what the theatrical metaphor is, even if it changes, why we're writing it, why we're drawn to it, what in our experience is like it, why someone off the street, what's the universal truth, just endless, endless understanding? Because I think in the tech in the sixth year of doing your show, that's when it's all going to, as you know, come out.

What started the central questioning of why am I doing it? Why are they singing? Why should this be musicalized? A series of asking great specific questions, and that hopefully get answered. But you for me, I have to start with all of that. And then the design of okay, we're making this building. Is it gonna look like a Frank Gehry? Is it going to look like falling water? What is this thing that we're making? So we're not just you know throwing darts in the dark. And then it can change. I think that's the hardest thing is you write understanding that you're committing fully to something that may not be there the next day.

[9:50] Ken Davenport: How early do you involve your directors in this process? So it what I also love about, in addition to the diversity of the material that you've written and the shows you've been a part of, you've worked with such a diverse group of people, from Lisa, of course, uh Tony Kushner, and then the directors as well. Michael, George Wolfe, saying it's at Bar Mitzvah, I'm telling you.

[10:10] Jeanine Tesori: I mean, I'd like to be at that bar mitzvah.

[10:10] Ken Davenport: Yes, you're invited. There'd be some very interesting heated conversations.

[10:17] Jeanine Tesori: That's right.

[10:17] Ken Davenport: My 40th birthday party was absolutely great. Lots of people. Um I'm interested in the conversation, I think. I I like learning, especially from playwrights. I like being in the room with people who are smarter, who I can learn something from. I don't want to keep making, not that you would make the same thing, but I think if you know from me, and it's it's very specific, um, I really enjoy the newness of that relationship and not knowing where the other person is going to go. So I know them, and I'm writing another piece with all the playwrights that I've worked with, but I really enjoy their strengths. Their strengths bring out a different strength in me. You know, you watch Serena Williams play with all of these players, and it brings out a certain thing in her in her game.

She's got you know, it's short, short staccato, and she plays like the Italian player who was long and very legato. It brought out something different in her game. She had to respond to it. And I thought, oh, that's exactly what it's like to work with someone different.

[11:30] Ken Davenport: One of the things I was so amazed by watching you all work during Millie was the preview process of that show. I wish we had a camera because Jeanine just shook her head and rolled her eyes like, oh my god. I remember memorizing the carpet in the marquee because we would go, remember, we go upstairs to the war room, and I just look, I'd follow my eyes would follow that crazy carpet and thinking, are we ever going to get out of this hotel a lie?

[11:59] Jeanine Tesori: Yeah, I used to have to make sure you had plenty of food and coffee up in that room every night.

[12:04] Ken Davenport: Um, it was tough, and we had Hal Luftig on and Kristin Caskey both on the podcast, and both of them talked about the first preview and being like, okay, we got some work to do, and you guys going up to that room, um, what's that pressure like during previews?

[12:20] Jeanine Tesori: Well, I like that pressure. I thrive on that. Um, I think that for a career in theater, I think you have to be not just good, I think you have to be good and fast when it matters. It's what when I used to do a lot of recordings in Nashville, it's what they call the red light syndrome. They would say a lot of people can play really well, but when the red light goes on and you're recording, you have to play. And it's hard because there is an awareness, a third eye, you're looking at that light, and you think, and it's the mind game of I have to write well right now. And for some reason it doesn't get to me that much. And I don't know if it's from being a parent that I think, okay, I have two hours to write, I'm gonna write for two hours and come out with something.

It might be terrible, but there will be something at the end of two hours. That's non-negotiable. And I think that's the same thing in previews. It's musicals to me are a great puzzle with a lot of moving pieces, and the understanding of thinking, okay, that's gonna stay the same, but if I change this thing, it's all about context. Maybe that will work and that will shift and that will shift. And then having a great director who will lead you into battle and saying, we're gonna do it this way, and then we're gonna do this and this and this. Because as you know, in previews and a musical are expensive in New York. Everything has to be requeued, and that's not even including the music work. It's all like an upholstered chair.

You just start with a frame and then it just layers and layers. So that work is expensive. And um, I'm now trying to do as much as I can right before so, and we did that with Millie. I just wasn't as skilled, and I've learned a couple of a couple more things to do since then.

[14:08] Ken Davenport: A couple. Uh, what show of yours has changed the most during the preview process?

[14:13] Jeanine Tesori: Well, I think Millie definitely changed a tremendous amount. I would say, you know, the way that I like to develop things now are not I want to be lighter on the feet. So I loved working at the lab at the public because it was piano only. And I could bring something in and we at seven o'clock and we put it in at eight because it's on a piano and there's no orchestration, you don't have to reque it. The light lights basically go on and off. And yet there's a paying audience. The audience is paying $15, but they're paying, and they're not workshop. And I loved that. I've never felt so free. And Sam Gold would wear this funky hat, and he would grab a beer and he would appear before every show and say, Look, you're gonna leave here and you're gonna say that show needs work, and you'll be right, and that's what we're doing.

And so it just liberated everybody from it was a very snark-free zone because we just called it. That's what we're doing. You we're in relationship with our audience to try to make this better. And we wrote and wrote and wrote. So what ended up at the end of the lab at the public versus what we started with was an entirely different show.

[15:27] Ken Davenport: My next question was going to be you've developed shows in nonprofit environments and for commercial producers, and which one do you like the best? I have a feeling what you're gonna say now. So let me ask you this. Do you think there's a way to do that in the for-profit world? Do you think if we were doing a show together, I said, Hey, I've got this crazy idea. Let's rent New World Stages for one of the theaters for the summer or some theater downtown, and we'll charge people 15 bucks and we'll do a three-week run of the show, and we'll see what happens.

[15:56] Jeanine Tesori: You know, I guess the thing I've learned more and more is that I don't know what I don't know. And there's always a new way to do something. There's always room to do something that you haven't done before. And then it either, like a character on stage, you're victorious or you go away in defeat. I need a lot of time to work because it itself is a puzzle. And then you light it in either the round of the proscenium and it changes completely. You know, I've seen things work in a room, and you think, oh my god, that's a huge hit. And then you light it and you put it under an arch and it doesn't work. There's something about the metaphor or the concept or the something at its core. And sometimes it's just a mystery.

How could that not work? So if something is reviewed here in New York City too quickly, there's almost a oh well, that's too bad aspect of it. And I really admire producers who say, yes, let's, but that's not the end for us. So I guess I would love to do that. It just as long as people let us work and don't review a half-finished piece, then I would love to do that. I think that's a great idea.

[17:08] Ken Davenport: You've also worked with a number of different producers from independents to corporations. What do you look for in that relationship? What kind of support or what's the ideal producer that you would want to work with?

[17:22] Jeanine Tesori: For me, I need a um, I love, you know, I've just never had a really bad experience with a producer. Uh, I think that I learned very early on to debate and to um try to do it with less and less aggression. I used to use a lot of that Sicilian would come out and I would come ranting and raving, and then I just made people miserable. And I thought I probably had something to say that was smart, but all people were reacting to was the I was such a cow while I was delivering it. I'm not gonna do that anymore. I'm just gonna offer it up, not apologize, but just say, Here are my thoughts. Can we, you know, just put them into the middle, ante them up in the poker game. So I what I appreciate about a producer is one who will really hold me to the fire and say, this is we're doing a workshop or we're doing a lab on this date.

Because I absolutely need that. And also one will who will let us have process. And that as long, you know, it comes in all different forms. I've worked in every different arena. And I had a wonderful time working with Bill Dimashki and um at DreamWorks. Bill was our closest uh partner there, but Jeffrey was really on it and gave us some great notes. And I think it's because he didn't get too close to the material. He would come in flying from Bangladesh wherever he was, and he would say zip, zip, zip, zip, zoop. And um that was a great combination. Bill was on it a lot, Jeffrey would come in. Uh, and so uh in the producer's group, it's really helpful for me to have one person who gathers all of the notes or whatever, and I always want to hear it.

Let me hear all of it, let me hear all of it. I always ask the dressers, stage hands, because they really know. Those dressers are, in my experience, the smartest, greatest people because they hear it. They hear the rhythm of the show, they don't always watch it, and you know, there's an understanding. I remember asking someone one of the TDs about a show, and he said it's not gonna work. Too much scenery. He could tell by the load-in that it was not going to work.

[19:41] Ken Davenport: What show?

[19:41] Jeanine Tesori: I can't I'm not gonna say.

[19:43] Ken Davenport: Well, we turn it off. We'll catch it in a minute.

[19:46] Jeanine Tesori: Wow, that's fascinating. I've never heard anyone say they they because of the dressers just listening and not seeing.

[19:53] Ken Davenport: Well, most of them, if not all of them, are they were performers, are still are performers. Um, a lot of them went to I don't know, they are trained beautifully. Um, they're so they have all they have great opinions. And there's particularly one, Jeffrey at Fun Home, who I talk to him all the time during previews. He was just a wonderful, smart you know, and he would he would deliver his opinion very clearly.

[20:20] Jeanine Tesori: Jeffrey Polishek. I'm gonna say this that he would love me talking about. So Jeffrey was the star dresser at Showboat on my first Broadway gig as the assistant, and you're a hundred percent right. He knows a ton about musicals, and he knows how to iron a shirt.

[20:34] Ken Davenport: He sure does. He taught me how to iron a shirt the right way.

[20:37] Jeanine Tesori: So thank you. He knows how to iron a musical. Get all those creases out.

[20:41] Ken Davenport: Oh boy, he's gonna love this when he hears it. Uh, so one of the things that I love uh about the success of Fun Home, both artistically and definitely commercially, which I blog about, um, is that in me included so many people I think when they hear the pitch of Fun Home or what it's about, because they're like that can't be a musical. Um we talked a little bit about generally what you're attracted to, but what's specifically about that show? Like when you heard that or were the subject matter, did you go, Oh yeah, this sings to me?

[21:13] Jeanine Tesori: Oh, for sure, 100%. I read it. Um, it was brought to me, it wasn't my idea, it was a great idea, it wasn't mine. And you know, the thing that I think people fall short on is they don't distinguish plot from story. The plot of Fun Home is challenging. The story is not. So if you lead with the elevator pitch of what happens, people go, huh? Five, six, seven, eight. But if you lead with the story as Mark Harris, who's one of my favorite writers, he said, you should only go to Fun Home if you're a parent or a child. You know, and and it it's exactly right. If you know the pull of looking for your parents in any way, shape, or form, or the pull of being a parent, those two things. And that is the story is to be seen by those who you are uh in a deep and primal relationship with as a family unit.

And it never goes away. I don't know one person who isn't pulled in some way by the people who cr made them. But the plot, it seems like how can that possibly sing? And I think it was Mike Nichols with the greatest definition of plot and story. The plot is the king dies, the queen dies, but the story is the king dies, the queen dies of a broken heart. And it's such a great and quick definition of the difference. And the story is the one that is that that sings. I'm not gonna sing about the tragedy of it. People are gonna get that. What I'm gonna sing about are the consequences and the stakes of loving someone and the need to be recognized as a daughter or a father in society, and what happens when it doesn't happen. And then it's that's why we try to work with the party pain ratio really carefully so that it wasn't constant heartbreak, you just get some relief from it.

[23:09] Ken Davenport: So here comes question uh James Lipton question number one for you, which is if the Smithsonian called tomorrow and said, Jeanine, what a body of work you have. We got room for one song in the institute. What song would you want preserved forever?

[23:26] Jeanine Tesori: Oh Lord. It's a fancy way of asking you what's your favorite song, but uh God, it really is like saying, Who's your favorite kid? Um, you have only one daughter, so that's very easy, right? You know, I guess when it all comes down to it, gimme gimme. And I and one of the reasons is we wrote it for Sutton. It was so theatrical what happened with with her going into the show. Dick and I wrote it based on a real a really strong poll that I had that it shouldn't be a reprise of Jimmy at that point.

[24:02] Jeanine Tesori: He went with it, which I was so grateful. You know, our rules were whoever has the strong idea we go with. We played it for everybody in right before we tech'd it. The stage manager clocked it, and as soon as we finished, literally everybody ran in and started to tech it. And I remember looking at him, and we said to each other, "Well, look, it will just be in there for now, and we can always rewrite it." We thought it was just a big flopperoo of a song, and then that night they checked it, and Michael Rafter jumped over the railing to play it on piano. And the response to the song by the audience was one just I will never forget. And it was a great lesson of you just don't know. You have to hang on, as my friend would say, live long enough.

And that was before there were any brass or any of that bells and whistles, and everything else was orchestrated. So I think it's inextricably tied to the experience and the song, and Sutton, who I love so she's so dear to me, and as is Dick.

[25:09] Ken Davenport: So Lynn Ahrens was on the podcast a few episodes ago, and she took me a little bit to task in the nicest way possible that only Lynn can do, and was just saying, "Ken, you gotta have more women writers on the podcast." And we have, and we've actually I looked at my ratio, and I had more men on the podcast than women, and I was like, "Oh my god, I gotta do something about this." What's it like being a woman writer in this industry? Do you feel is it different? Is it not different? Are there benefits?

[25:40] Jeanine Tesori: You know, it's a complicated, great question, and I really appreciate your looking at the count. The guild led by Lisa Crohn, led or made the count, Marcia Norman, and to make people put some lenses in and say, "How are we looking at the world? Do we have parity?" And it's the only way to learn. So I really appreciate that. Your response was to ask more women. I, you know, going through the world as a woman is different than going through it as a man, which is different than going through again, going through. So sure, yes, at the end of the day, I've really found that there are certain things that if you're allowed, as Lynn would say, in the room where it happens, it's gender fluid. It doesn't matter, the idea matters, the presentation of the idea matters, the life force behind it matters, the way that you take a stand for someone else matters.

But being allowed in the room is so key. It's one of the reasons why I'm just trying to do everything I can to usher in young women and to learn the science. What I understand the science of writing is the science of collaboration. Because you have to be in the room. You have to be invited in. And Lisa made an observation once that she felt that men were rewarded for promise and women were rewarded for product. And I thought that is really true. You see these men advancing, they've made one indie, and then suddenly they're directing a hundred million dollar movie. And you just don't see that with women. So it means that people have to look at their decision-making process and say, "Well, it's a risk either way, but I've seen that woman lead a crew when there is no money."

It is really hard to lead a crew when there's no money. And I think it's easier in a way. It's like having a giant group of strings. It sounds good no matter what to have 60 first violins. You can write one line and it's gonna sound good. It's harder when you have a little chamber group and one violin is responsible for that line. It's just harder to play. So I think that's really backing up, backing up to make sure that we do what you did. We look at what we've done and we look at it with different eyes and say, "Is it fair what I've done? Do I need to bring different voices and different experiences into the office so that it can go out into the world?" Yes. And then you take action. So that's the key to all of it.

[28:11] Ken Davenport: When you got your start, you said you studied musicals intensely. Do you have a favorite musical Broadway period decade? Is there a golden age for you? Like, ugh, the 60s, the 70s, the 80s?

[28:21] Jeanine Tesori: No. I don't have it, I don't think that way, but Sunday in the Park was the big, it's everything for me. I love it. I think that he's, I mean, I love what he writes. I love the things he writes about. I love the way that he, I love him equally as a composer and a lyricist. He is a great designer. He understands the architecture. You can feel Milton Babbitt's teaching in the way that he looks at music. And I just, I feel like he understands more than anyone tension and release. Like he can really build up something harmonically, you can see it in Pacific Overtures, in Sweeney. And he's just a fantastic, fantastic composer. And the pain of the choice of making something and the people you have to leave out of your life when you're always writing in your head.

You know, and as a parent, I know there have been so many times I just, you're with your kid, and your mind is absolutely on making something, and it's a sacrifice for you, for them. And I'd never gotten it until he wrote about it. I'd never heard it so beautifully and authentically stated.

[29:44] Ken Davenport: I'll ask you one of the questions that he was famously asked. Favorite song of yours that you have not written?

[29:55] Jeanine Tesori: Hmm. I guess it would have to be "Finishing the Hat." I think so. I think that would be it.

[30:04] Ken Davenport: Do you think it's easier for writers today to get started in this business or harder?

[30:09] Jeanine Tesori: I think it's both. It's both, right? Because there's so many ways to be seen, which makes it harder and easier. Because everybody is, um, what one of my great sadnesses about what's happened is the lack of giant recording spaces. I was the pianist, this is for the trivia. I was one of the two pianists on the Beauty and the Beast movie. And that's me playing with Angela Lansbury, you know, beads of sweat coming down, um, tale as old as time, sweat plop. And that they're big, giant, wonderful places to record, and they are gone. Almost all of them are gone, gone, gone. And that that's what's difficult about that is that's how you play music. You don't do it in sections and then overdub. You play all together and it shows up in how the music that you create.

So now you can do things separately, a la carte, all over. I can do a session right now and email it to you. So the communication possibilities are so great, but the communication is not as good. I feel like it's not as effective. It's the great irony. And there's so much product out there. I mean, my daughter has posted beautiful recordings of herself and songs, and so I think it's easier to be seen, but I think it's also harder because so many people are seen at the same time. And you know, the also the beauty of that is you really get to understand what other people in the world, what they're writing. You don't wait for it, you don't have to be present for it, which I really believe in. It's one of the reasons that I feel like I'm a theatrical animal. I really like being present. I think it makes a huge difference.

[32:00] Ken Davenport: Tips for a new writer looking to start today. What would you tell them? Like the one thing to do.

[32:03] Jeanine Tesori: Don't wait. That's the key. Do not wait. No, you have to. There is a great John Cassavetti's quote, I won't get it right, but you could look it up about make work all the time. Don't wait. Don't wait for the phone call or for the right singer, or for the room to be open, or to get the right studio, or this or that. Make the work, study other people's work, be kind, but time is the only thing we run out of. And I think because we all lost so many friends in the late 80s and 90s, you know, these so many men were not allowed to have the careers that they deserved and should have had. And so I think we all learned painfully so that you run out of time. So you have to use it not in a crazy way, but in a way that's filled with intention.

[32:57] Ken Davenport: Okay, last question. This is the other lifted like question. I call it my genie question. I want you to imagine that the genie from Aladdin shows up at your door and wants to thank you for all your incredible contribution to the theater for pushing the boundaries with musicals like Caroline, or Change and Fun Home and says, "I'm gonna grant you one wish, one wish." What's the one thing that drives you so crazy about Broadway? That makes you mad, you can't sleep at night, that gets the Sicilian in you out again and gets you so angry.

[33:27] Jeanine Tesori: It's too expensive. It should be available for all people. It should be absolutely available. And I'm not exactly, I know that the pie chart would explain that to me, but it is a conundrum. I liked the template that Joe Papp set down at the public. He brought theater out to people, and it made generations of theater goers, the way that Bernstein brought classical music. He brought it to children and explained it to them in a way. From what I understand, it was really affordable, it was really affable, it was incredibly scholarly, it was really witty. He dramatized that event. I think Joe Papp and these Pathfinders did the same thing. And that's accessibility. You know, it's not just about the programs themselves, it's about saying we as a culture really have to subsidize art.

You know, we have to treat it that way because we define, I define a culture by it, and so it makes me upset that it's not, it's available based on a lot of what you make. I think there have been great inroads. A lot of people are working really hard to create a tier system, which I appreciate, but it still is expensive for a family to come in.

[34:53] Ken Davenport: A great answer, and thank you so much for joining us today. And I'm not a genie, but thank you for your incredible contributions to the work. It so excites me to think about what's next when you look at what's already happened. So I can't wait to, and I know everyone can't wait to see what you're working on next.

[35:08] Jeanine Tesori: Well, after City Center. One more summer at City Center and then back to full-time writing.

[35:13] Ken Davenport: Awesome. Awesome. Thank you so much for joining us, everybody. Next up, oh, a first for us, an orchestrator, Michael Staravan, is going to join us. Speaking of Sunday in the Park with George. I love Michael Staravan. He's fantastic. And he's going to explain that whole process to us and tell us some juicy Sunday stories as well. Thanks so much. We'll see you next time. Don't forget to check out the blog, February 23rd, 7 p.m. How to succeed in the arts or in anything. A tele seminar with yours truly. We'll see you then.