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[0:00] Robert Bannon: Are you ready? It's The Roundtable with me, Robert Bannon.

[0:11] Robert Bannon: Well, welcome to The Roundtable, everybody. My name is Robert Bannon, and you're listening to us on Broadway World, the Broadway Podcast Network, iHeart, Spotify, wherever artists talk about art. And many years ago, I think I told this story last year, I went to see The 24 Hour Plays, and I was a kid, and I waited at the stage door, and I was looking for, it was the year Jennifer Aniston was there. Oh, my God, there was craziness outside that stage door. There were paparazzi and chases and running and all the things. And I'm lying, I wasn't really, I wish I was that young. I was probably in my 20s. Okay, don't judge me. So I was waiting outside, and I had the best time. And when I had started this show, it was such a great experience and wonderful to learn how this all happens with Mark.

So Mark Armstrong is back, and he has brought along a friend. Jonathan Marc Sherman is here. They have an incredible lineup. Some people have been on this show. Some people we wish were on the show. Some people we adore and love. There's an incredible list of incredible actors that you can go see, and in a way that you see new work, and they have 24 hours to get it right. So it's The 24 Hour Plays, and it's for a good cause, and we're going to tell you all about it. Welcome to The Roundtable.

[1:09] Mark Armstrong: Thanks, Robert. Very thrilled to be back.

[1:16] Robert Bannon: I'm excited that you're back. Last time, I think you were doing this in Brooklyn.

[1:20] Mark Armstrong: Yeah, we went over the bridge last year, and now we are back at our ancestral home. The 24 Hour Plays on Broadway are at what's now called the Todd Haymes Theater, which had been closed for renovations. It was the former American Airlines Theater, and now it's open for business under its new name with a new swanky look. And when I did the walkthrough after the renovations, I got tears in my eyes, not just because they did a beautiful job with the renovations, but also because it's our home, and we have so many memories there that much like being away from home for a little while makes you really appreciate home more. I had that feeling when I was walking through the Todd Haymes Theater. We sat down with the crew there.

It's going to be great, and I can't wait just to welcome people back to that space. The 24 Hour Plays on Broadway, the 25th annual anniversary of our Celebrity Gala, stars from Broadway, television, and film, six new plays, 24 hours, and we are honoring Thomas Kail, longtime friend of The 24 Hour Plays, director of Hamilton, director of Sweeney Todd, director of Grease Live, live action Moana, and just a dear friend of the organization, and his friends and family and colleagues will all be there. It's going to be an incredible evening.

[2:47] Jonathan Marc Sherman: Too bad he's never had a hit show.

[2:52] Mark Armstrong: No time. No time. Plenty of time. He's a semi-young man.

[2:56] Jonathan Marc Sherman: Jonathan, it says in it, in the press release that I got, that you are a 24 Hour Play veteran. What does that mean? What do you do? How long have you been doing this?

[3:02] Jonathan Marc Sherman: Longer than 24 hours. I like to say that we are the world's premier presenter of new plays by Jonathan Marc Sherman. That is, I believe, true. Because, yeah, if I can say yes, I do say yes, because how many events, do you know, it starts here, it ends here, and it is always enjoyable. It's always terrifying. I have met some people who I've gone on to collaborate with on things that are longer than 24 hours, some people I've never seen again, but they pop up in something, and you say, oh, wait a second, we made a musical on nothing but coffee and desperation once together, and sort of everything in between. I like to think for the other 364, 365 days in a leap year, days of the year, it is a great reminder when you're going, oh, God, how are we going to do this, of what can get done in 24 hours or less.

[4:29] Jonathan Marc Sherman: Yeah, I've seen miracles occur. I love that. Coffee and desperation is also how I run this show on a daily basis as well. Always looking for new taglines, and I think that's a good one. You know, running on coffee and desperation since 1995. Jonathan, I think that's a play. Jonathan is from Jersey, like me, everybody.

[4:50] Robert Bannon: Oh, where in Jersey?

[4:50] Jonathan Marc Sherman: I'm from Fort Lee, New Jersey. Jonathan is from Morristown, right by the Mayo Center for the Performing Arts, with all the cute little restaurants and beautiful little, you can go to the Short Hills Mall and see all the fancy-danciness of the New Jersey life. You're an actor and a writer, so how do you distinguish who, what, when, where, which hat do you put on when?

[5:11] Jonathan Marc Sherman: Oh, for the 24-hour plays, I have only acted, I believe, once. They tricked me into it to remind me to never say yes to acting again in the 24-hour plays, because it is the next level of terror. It was amazing, Robert. Sherm played a man who was going to jump off a building until Michael Shannon convinced him not to.

[5:37] Robert Bannon: Well, if you're going to act and jump off a building, why not do it with Michael Shannon? That's amazing.

[5:42] Jonathan Marc Sherman: Oh, no, it was also fantastic because, of course, Michael Shannon had a few lines of dialogue to memorize. Elizabeth Rodriguez had a few lines of dialogue to memorize. I somehow, someway, ended up being the sort of lead with soliloquies and things like that, and I mean, it was amazing, and I wouldn't trade it for anything, but again, I am really happy to be the terrified, desperate, caffeinated writer in the situation, because the actor is, that is, that is next level impressive. And by the way, I was born in Morristown, but I grew up in Livingston, so with Short Hills Mall, I remember when the Short Hills Mall opened and turned the Livingston Mall into, not the greatest mall in the, in town. But Livingston's a cute, go up the little 280 and off the turnpike and go up to Livingston and go to the Turtle Bag Zoo and all of that fun.

[6:38] Mark Armstrong: If you're not from New Jersey, I'm sorry, you don't get it. You have to, goodbye.

[6:44] Jonathan Marc Sherman: I was just at NJ Pack on Friday night. I saw Patti Smith.

[6:48] Mark Armstrong: That is my, I teach musical theater there. See, Mark, now you know. So you, you, you pass the test. So Mark, this show this year is November 2nd at seven o'clock. Everybody can get tickets. Go to 24, like the number, 24hourplays.org. Justin Bartha, like hangovers, Justin Bartha, like movie star, TV star, Justin Bartha, David Berka, David Cross, Hugh Dancy. I'm just trying to go through some of, Daphne Ruben Vega, Amberly Tamblyn, Nia Vardalos. I'm missing people. Who am I missing?

[7:18] Mark Armstrong: More people. Well, you're missing some people who haven't announced yet. You know, Mickey Stumner will be back. I think I can announce officially on the Roundtable podcast that Busy Phillips is going to be with us. You know, first time. We've been trying to get her for years. That's going to be thrilling. And in addition to Jonathan Marc Sherman, the writers are David Lindsay-Abaire, Eboni Booth, Sarah Burgess, Julia Jordan, Stephen Levenson. So completely all-star lineup of writers. And the thing that I'm, as a director that especially excited about is Tommy Kail said, Hey, obviously I could, you know, suggest a lot of, you know, I know a lot of other directors, but a lot of the assistant directors who you guys hooked me up with back in the day for the 24 Hour Plays on Broadway later went on to become his assistants on Hamilton and on other projects.

And he said, I know what it meant to me as a young director to be asked to direct for the 24 Hour Plays on Broadway. So if it's okay for you, I thought all the six directors could be my assistants and associates. So, which I, you know, as a, as a, as a person who also knew what it meant as a young director, you know, to be asked to be part of the 24 Hour Plays, like that was a fastball right down the middle for me. I think it's one of the things about the event that I'm the most excited about. There are so few opportunities for directors to sort of show what they can do on a big stage. And these people are ringers. They are like the pros that nobody yet knows. And, you know, now the world's going to know their name.

I am very excited for people to check it out. Incredible list of directors, incredible list of writers, and incredible cast. And you're going to get to be there. Jonathan, what's it like for you? What, tell us, can you give us a hint about the show you wrote this year that's going to be a part of it?

[9:04] Jonathan Marc Sherman: I could give you a hint that I haven't written it yet, because it's, you come in blind, you come in.

[9:10] Mark Armstrong: Yeah. He doesn't even know who the actors are.

[9:17] Jonathan Marc Sherman: No. And, and the thing that they always say that I, it took me, I think, a couple of years to believe, but the best, the best sort of way to come in truly is not knowing, you know, with no preconceived ideas, nothing, because you'll come in and someone will bring a prop or say something they've always wanted to do on stage, or, you know, just say something in their introduction to the group, and that will spark something off. And that,

[9:49] Jonathan Marc Sherman: Being the spine of your play. I mean, actually, Tommy and I, what solidified our friendship was a 24-hour play we worked on together that was inspired by an actor coming in and saying, in a play that, in a 24-hour play that Sam Rockwell was involved in, that someone said their special skill was doing a great Sam Rockwell impersonation. And that became our play. And, by the way, one of the most satisfying creative experiences I've ever had. It being realized under the direction of Tommy Kail and the cast being in addition to Sam Rockwell himself, Billy Crudup, Justin Long, and somebody named Olivia Wilde. I don't know what happened to her. We don't know. But we need to reach out to her because we should find out.

She was so nice. She had promise. She had so much promise. You know, I did, I have to say, like, because Tommy asked, you know, also to reach out to anybody who had worked on the 24-hour plays with him. That was job number one. And Hamilton original cast was job number two. But he wanted anybody who he had done the 24-hour plays with. But, you know, Olivia Wilde wasn't available, you know, so like, I'm not sure what she's up to. But like, she's out there somewhere and she wasn't able to do it.

[11:14] Mark Armstrong: So Mark, my question to you is, and I've asked this before, because it's the part I find fascinating. How do you get them to say yes? How do you get these people? You know, it is surprisingly easy, because to be real about it, people have the kinds of experiences that Sherm is talking about right now of meeting and connecting with people. And then people out in the world will say, hey, how do you people know each other? They're like, oh, we met through the 24-hour plays. And now we're doing this other thing. And people have heard, for the most part, from their friends and colleagues that this is a fun and good thing to do. Sometimes agents who are savvy think, oh, you know, if they're playing the long game, they think, oh, my client is going to go here and they're going to meet different people.

And who knows what kind of creative projects will emerge from that. So I always tell people that my career started going much better when my last name became from the 24-hour plays. So I just say, it's Mark from the 24-hour plays. And all of a sudden, you know, even people who I don't know are like, oh, my God, it's so good to hear from you. Because people associate this with something that feels at once like the first day of rehearsal, opening night and closing night, all in this compacted span, you know, like the experience of meeting with the cast for the first rehearsal and the first performance and the last performance. And you skip everything else in between where it gets difficult. You just kind of hit all the good parts about what it is to be in a play.

And I think that people who have done it before, it's not for everybody. You know, sometimes people I think, you know, we'll give it a try and we never hear from them again. And some, you know, a couple of people have said, that sounds like so much fun. I know everyone loves it. That would be too stressful for me. But for a certain kind of person who is always, Larry Owens talked about this, always trying to finish the hat, you know, like if you're always sort of trying to kind of, you know, touch that sort of like joy of making something and finishing a piece of art, the chance to do that with the kind of people who show up for something like this, because if you're a person who is maybe slow to trust other people or suspicious, or what we do doesn't sound like fun, and there's no money in it. So like, it's kind of a self-selecting process for people who are kind of here to make friends.

[13:41] Jonathan Marc Sherman: I love it. I also did a very terrible production of The Music Man with Larry Owens in Sharon, Connecticut. But that's another story for another time. Please tell me you have to have Larry on the podcast to talk about that.

[13:52] Mark Armstrong: We did. I think me and Larry went on some, I co-hosted someone else's podcast and Larry came on. And we didn't talk about it because he was talking about something but we did allude to the fact that we did a modernized Music Man without permission from the August Wilson, from Meredith Wilson, August Wilson, and the August Wilson Music Man. The Meredith Wilson Music Man. Larry Owens is a fellow Stage Door Manor alum as well. So.

[14:19] Jonathan Marc Sherman: If you've ever seen him dance to a Disco Shapoopy with a karaoke machine without permission to change the orchestrations and then get shut down. Amazing. Stage Door Manor alums, I'm going to be dining out for years on the fact that I saw Larry Owens and Natalie Walker do cabaret together, like at a little theater in like Astoria. Amazing. See, you get to see these people, and now they're big old superstars, and they still come back to do 24-hour plays. And you can see Jonathan Mark Sherman's words, and he, before they become, maybe this show he's going to write is going to become a phenom that's going to be done in theaters around the world. You don't know what's going to happen. And Mark, the money goes to good things. Tell me.

[14:59] Mark Armstrong: We do the 24-hour plays everywhere, 365 days a year. People who know us from the celebrity events look forward to it every fall. We have a free professional intensive over the summer that's for early career artists. We bring together on both coasts now in New York and Los Angeles, early career actors, directors, writers for a week-long professional intensive that introduces them to the industry, master classes, and finally their own sort of professional production of the 24-hour plays at an off-Broadway theater. And in addition to that, we go to the International Thespian Festival every year. We do this with high school students. We bring the 24-hour plays to communities everywhere. In the last year, I've been to Sacramento and Indiana and Denver, some of my colleagues have gone to Savannah.

We hope to be back in New Hampshire. I went to Dublin for the first time. And it is, we provide both a sort of process and production support and a way for creative communities to be together. And this event that we do on Broadway both creates all of the necessary funds for us to continue to do that for students, emerging artists, and theater communities everywhere. But it also I think stands as sort of the flagship exemplar of what's possible when creative people come together just for a little bit of time and agree to trust each other and take a leap together. So by modeling this on a big stage in the fall, we sort of create both the sort of enthusiasm and the financial fuel to bring this to communities everywhere throughout the year.

[16:36] Jonathan Marc Sherman: Incredible. So Jonathan, for people out here who love theater, who are looking for a fun night out, maybe they're tired of where they've seen or nothing interests them on TDF, or they don't want to mortgage their house to come see a Broadway show. Why should they come to this? What will they get out of it at the end of the evening? Besides helping the children and this event everywhere, for them themselves, what are they going to get? What is a night? What is it like when they leave the theater?

[16:59] Jonathan Marc Sherman: Well, first of all, to be an audience member of the 24-hour plays, that's the most joyful position because you don't have to deal with any of the desperation and you get all of the benefits of the joy. So it's like 24 hours. Well, the artists, 24 hours of desperation, a lifetime of joy, but you get the evening is just all joy. I mean, and it's the joy of live theater. I like to often say that, when you go to the show and something goes wrong and someone says, Oh God, you were there the night the glass broke. And I said, I'm never forgetting the rest of my life. I'm never going to forget that. That was the greatest, I knew I was live. I once saw a 24-hour musical where Bridget Everett forgot the first word she was supposed to say and pretty much every word after that.

And it was one of the greatest performances I have ever seen in a theater, more laughter, more people were crying. It was fantastic. It's live theater without a net. And you're never, ever sorry that you've experienced it. And you can only, if you don't show up that night, you're never going to see it again. Those people are the only people who will know what it feels like to be in that room at that moment. I've started to talk about it as being radically present. We are all there. And we know that whether we're on stage or whether we're off stage and it is through the, I give a curtain speech at the beginning and then I go sit in the audience and I'm the happiest person because now I get to sort of, I'm sort of the last audience member who gets to enjoy that radical presence and being the only people who will ever know what it was like to see those people be together in that way.

[18:48] Jonathan Marc Sherman: I'm excited. November 2nd, get your tickets, everybody. Do not miss a donate. If you can't be there, if you can be there, get a ticket and be there honoring the one and only Tommy Kail. It's November 2nd at seven o'clock at the Todd Haymes Theater and one night only. It's the only chance you're going to see right there on 42nd street. Do not miss a second. Mark, I look forward to seeing you again next year or the next event you have because you're welcome here anytime. And Jonathan, I will meet you right there at a diner in Livingston, New Jersey. I'm looking forward to it. We can do bigger than that. Bacon, egg, and cheese on me or whatever. My friends, let's never let this end. Ever, never, never. Thank you all so much for being here. Congratulations.

[19:35] Mark Armstrong: Thank you, Robert. Thank you so much. See you there.