This transcript was automatically generated and might contain errors.

[0:00] Alan Seales: Welcome to The Theatre Podcast. Intimate, personal conversations with the industry's biggest names. Our guest today is Julia Murney. She's currently starring in an amazing ensemble cast of a completely rewritten production of Baby, which is an early 80s Tony-nominated play about three couples and their journey to have children and parenthood and whatnot. But she's explaining in the episode that there's a lot of outdated tropes that they have currently rewritten and are completely redoing it. It sounds so amazing. And of course, we get into her history as an Elphaba, one of the early Elphabas. And she said, every witch loses her mind. We talked about the pressure of being an Elphaba and of course, what that entails.

And I'm just going to give you a spoiler. Her good friend and composer of The Wild Party, Andrew Lippa crashes our interview. I texted him and let him know that I was interviewing Julia and of course, he just loved the idea of crashing and saying hi. So we have a little bit of a three-way conversation about halfway through the episode and to finish it out. You know the normal stuff. Leave a rating and a review. Find me on social media at theatre_podcast. And now everybody, please enjoy this episode with Julia Murney and special guest Andrew Lippa.

[1:37] Alan Seales: Today's guest is someone I've admired from afar for a long time and now I am very honored to be able to interview. She originated the role of Queenie in Andrew Lippa's Wild Party, which earned her her first Drama Desk Award nomination and became one of the most well-known Elphabas in both the national tour of Wicked and then on Broadway after making her Broadway debut in the show Lennon in 2005. She was nominated for her second Drama Desk Award for Falling and has an incredibly diverse resume outside of the stage as well, which includes Sex and the City, NYPD Blue, 30 Rock, Elementary, Madam Secretary, and Succession, among many others. She can currently be seen in the Out of the Box Theatrics production of the Tony-nominated musical Baby, which just opened on November 14th. Julia Murney, welcome to The Theatre Podcast.

[2:28] Julia Murney: Thank you.

[2:29] Alan Seales: Well, thank you for being here. I know time is short. This is so much fun. I'm so honored to be talking to you now. So I wanted to dive right in. And obviously, we're coming back out. We're coming out of COVID. Everything is starting to return. I want to just make an asterisk here that saying, you know, Broadway, people say Broadway is back. Broadway is back. And I want to say Broadway is safe. That is something we need everybody to know because there's the demographic of people that normally come to see shows just because they're on Broadway that are still not, they don't feel safe yet. So in your experience now, you're opening this new show, or you're opening this revival of the show. So tell us about Baby and tell us about what's been going on coming out of COVID for you.

[3:25] Julia Murney: Well, I would certainly call this more of a revisal than a revival. Because the book is, I mean, to a great extent, entirely rewritten.

[3:38] Alan Seales: Really?

[3:39] Julia Murney: Yeah. The score is the same. The score is the same delight that everybody knows from many, many years. But if you've noticed, it's likely that in the last, I'm going to say 20 years, you probably haven't seen a production of Baby. It's not done a lot. And the reason is, it's incredibly dated. It's incredibly time capsule-y. Time capsule-y, that's an official language.

[4:08] Alan Seales: Add that to the dictionary.

[4:09] Julia Murney: Thank you. To 1983, basically, to when it was on when it opened originally on Broadway. And everything has changed. Everything has changed from what was once upon a time a typical or stereotypical demographic on Broadway in terms of casting, as well as what it's like to have a baby, frankly. Now, I mean, yes, the basic, you know, the basic when you leave it is the same biology. But for example, it's three couples for anyone who doesn't know, it's about three couples who find themselves pregnant or are trying to get pregnant, and they're at different stages of life. And the older couple, we, myself and Robert Fowler, who plays my husband, we are just about 10 years, more or less older than the characters were originally written.

And part of the reason that had to change is that in the 80s, a woman who was 40 discovering that she's pregnant was definitely a, ooh, what are you going to do? Now, a woman discovering that she's pregnant when she's 40 is like a hand. And so that had to shift because that's what their entire sort of forward motion of that particular pairing is. The middle pairing is now a pair of lesbians, which is amazing, but which means a huge amount of rewriting has to be done because originally it's written as a man and woman who are desperate to get pregnant and can't. And it's kind of negative about him being this virile Italian man who's shooting blanks and all this kind of stuff. And fun fact, that's not how lesbians make babies.

So it's much more about that journey. And the younger couple, their sort of conflict is generally just that they're in college, that they're young. But it also happens to be, so Liz Fleming, who is one of the co-artistic directors of Out of the Box, which is the company that's producing this, she is also, she's legally blind. And Richard, so when they did this, I think maybe over just about two years ago, over two years, and well, it must be over two years ago now with what just happened, co-vitically.

[6:50] Alan Seales: Co-vitically. That's another word I'm adding to the dictionary.

[6:52] Julia Murney: I have a lot of made-up words.

[6:54] Alan Seales: I really like co-vitically though.

[6:56] Julia Murney: But I will spell them as if you will find them in the dictionary. I didn't see it. I wasn't a part of it. But that time, I think they had the notion to want to do this, but they didn't have the permission to do rewrites. And then I think finally in the middle of their short run, they got Richard Maltby to attend, who wrote, he didn't write the book, but he wrote the lyrics and he directed it originally. And Richard came. And so now Richard has rewritten the book. But it wasn't, whoever saw it two years ago, the very few people who got to see it because it was done in a loft apartment somewhere that could seat, I think, 18 people. I mean, our space only seats 60. It's not like it's the Hippodrome. But it's totally different because now it's been, everything's being addressed or trying to be addressed. It's a great experiment. It's like, we'll see if it works.

[8:04] Julia Murney: I really love that idea because you go back, the metaphorical you goes to, you hear all the time, like, if you can see it, you can be it, right? And to see two same-sex couples and to see interracial couples and to see all of this necessary representation finally on stage, it's so refreshing and it's so unbelievably necessary.

[8:30] Julia Murney: It's very much what, I'm probably going to mangle this, but the out-of-the-box, their mission statement, I guess, is to really push to cast and write and present with underexposed, that's not the right word, representation, underrepresented. And so, yeah, I mean, this is a very diverse cast. And that was certainly, I didn't know them or anything nor did I know almost anyone involved. And so that was actually the first question I asked when I got the offer was, I mean, I had a few questions, but one of them was, what's the racial makeup of this cast and this creative staff? Because frankly, I know Richard Maltby. I've worked with Richard Maltby and I love Richard Maltby. And Richard Maltby is a mature white cis gentleman.

[9:34] Alan Seales: Yes.

[9:36] Julia Murney: And this is a show about not mostly mature white cis gentlemen. But I've been so impressed with how open he has been and the amount, I mean, he is still a heterosexual white cis man. That has not changed. But the amount of, like, sort of dramaturgy that he's gotten from the folk who are properly, squarely in the characters that are being presented. And he's really open. And he'll kill me for saying this. He just turned 84.

[10:20] Alan Seales: Whoa.

[10:20] Julia Murney: Yeah. Now, if you think of like, I don't know, you're 84 for your grandpa or something. And if you were like, hey, I'm going to tell you all the things that you can no longer do from the thing that you wrote that has been your love for 30 plus years. Your grandpa might be like, what? And he is not doing that. I mean, every day, something comes up and he rolls with it. And someone's like, either I wouldn't say that, a woman wouldn't say that, a black woman wouldn't say that, a whatever. Whatever it is. And he's just completely open.

[10:57] Alan Seales: That is so cool.

[10:59] Julia Murney: It's incredibly impressive to me. It really it's impressive to me on a daily basis, because I have not once seen him get defensive.

[11:42] Julia Murney: Literally in the script, a pulse-o-matic passed her pulse. I mean, it's so, we're like, okay, that's all got to go. And, but, and he was like, oh, here we go. I'm going to get dragged because I don't know. And we're like, yep. But he's, he's so good-natured about it.

[11:59] Andrew Lippa: So was the script already, had it already started to be adapted when it came to you? Because you were saying that you just gave an example of where it came up live in, in during rehearsal, I guess. And you're like, it has to change?

[12:13] Julia Murney: No, I mean, it came up when they did it two, two plus years ago. The script was very much already in flux. When I came into it, I think what was discovered, what they had just started to discover, and I put a full court press on it, was the part where, I think because the middle couple's trajectory is so different, they've had to pay so much attention to that. Oh, and I'm, forgive me, I'm going to go backwards for a second. So the younger, the younger couple that's in college, Liz, in real life is legally blind. And Johnny, who is playing Danny, is partially deaf. Now here's, here's, this is like a sad thing that I don't know the answer to. And when I get to rehearsal today, I'm going to ask, I promise, so I can have the proper answer.

I know that with Liz, Richard Maltby was very much like, because Liz's condition is genetic, her father is blind, like, what does that mean in terms of passing on genes? And he was like, well, we need to address it. I don't know if they went and then tried to find someone who was deaf. Or if he, I'm not sure, I'm not sure what the, the math was there. He can hear somewhat when he, he uses a hearing aid, but we have an interpreter there every day, a sunlight, ASL interpreter. And, and he's awesome. I mean, and you wouldn't necessarily know, but it is very addressed. Isn't there, there's an ASL interpreter for every performance, right? I don't know if there's one for every performance, but I know that there are very specific ones.

We have one just the other night. And yeah, I mean, it's, it's really, it's really cool sounds. I don't mean that that sounds debasing and I don't mean it that way. It's, it's wonderful. It's refreshing. It's refreshing to see this. And, and yeah, so the show runs through December 12th at Theater Lab at 357 West 36th street, third floor here in New York City. Oh, and that's, that's what I was going to say to you is that they hadn't paid a lot of attention to the older couple. Cause they were kind of like, we'll just make them 10 years older. And I got in there and I was like, Richard, the way that couple was written said, unless you are making them simple in the head or evangelical Christians, we're going to have to do some rewrites because they were incredibly square.

And, and if this is taking place in today, which is the whole point, there was, I'm Steph, I'm like, is she a moron? What are you saying? They can be people who have been over, she could be a woman who's been overwhelmed by having, we even had to do things like in the original, they have three daughters who have the youngest to whom has just graduated and left the house. And I did the math and I was like, Richard, we have to have four daughters. Cause the whole idea is that she hasn't had any time to be like an adult without children. But if, when I did the math, it was squarely that if we only had three, there was time for her to, but if you have four, so we, so we've got four now.

[15:39] Alan Seales: Wow. Well, I love that your career trajectory, I obviously was researching you for the episode here and you've got voiceover work, you've got video game work, which is also a bit of voiceover in TV and commercial and film and all sorts of things. And it's interesting to me to see your trajectory and have it all come kind of to this moment now, because I think it sort of, I guess, I was gonna say it parallels a little bit of your career to end up where you are now, but I want to go back to where you started because I know you went to LaGuardia High School. So did you grow up in New York City?

[16:25] Julia Murney: I did. I did. I grew up about five-ish blocks from where I live now.

[16:32] Alan Seales: Oh, really?

[16:36] Julia Murney: Oh yeah. It's really, you could call it a lot of things. Sometimes I call it sad, but sometimes it's great. I don't know.

[16:40] Alan Seales: Well, so when did you know that you wanted to get into performing and when was the singing, where did this fall into place?

[16:45] Julia Murney: Well, my dad's an actor, so I was always around it, but I was not a child performer at all. I mean, I made up shows in my bedroom, like kids do, just to have fun. And there were certain cast albums that I knew. I mean, the first cast album that I ever knew was Jacques Brel is Alive and Well and Living in Paris. I've done that show. My parents had it. Children don't listen to Jacques Brel, but I just liked the song Carousel because I would run around in circles. And then the really, the big one was Annie. I mean, it didn't matter if you knew theater or not. If you were a little girl in the 70s, you knew Annie, period, stop. And when I went to junior high, around the corner from where I lived, sort of, a bunch of my friends were like, we're going to do choir.

And I was like, okay. I had no... I just followed them because that's what they were going to do. And this remarkable woman, Josephine Morris, was the chorus director. And we would do... I mean, it was a serious chorus in that we would go and do competitions. We went to Atlanta and Philadelphia and Great Adventure. And there would be these competitions from all over the country. Choirs would come. And that was the beginning of me falling in love with singing. I was never particularly confident about it, but I liked the notion of the singing. And I think it makes sense to me now knowing who I am and how I am that my first love of singing came from singing as a group. There's safety in numbers and a nice feeling of camaraderie when... And you're not exposed.

And you're not... But she was the one who really instilled that love of music. And then she was very clever because she figured out a great trick for any of us who wanted to audition for what at the time was music and art and then became LaGuardia. My junior year, we moved into the building that is now LaGuardia. But anyway, where most of the kids who would audition would audition with a pop song or a Broadway tune. She set all of us up for our auditions. We sang from this book called 24 Italian Songs and Arias, which is like one of the Bibles at LaGuardia. That's the books that everybody uses when they're a voice major there. So I auditioned for high school singing Vittoria Miocore. Was I good?

I don't know. But I guess I had enough. They're not looking for... It's not a... It's a public school. You do have to audition but... So she was clever in so many ways. And that's when I started... But even my favorite things... The one... My favorite things to do in high school also were all choir because there were so many electives that were choir at that school. And including a gospel choir, which opened my brain and my heart in so many ways. And gospel music is something... That kind of Baptist... I had not been exposed to that. And it was... I was like, oh, this is God. Okay. Okay. It's just so moving to me. And we would go on the weekends. We'd go into students to their churches in Brooklyn or wherever.

And it was a very different church than the church I was brought up in. And it was thrilling. And the only musical we did my whole four years there was my senior year. We did a very appropriate kind of high school musical that everybody does. We did Follies, which is about old people. And high school does it. Everybody does it. And I played Carlotta. I sang I'm Still Here. I was 17. Yeah, it was amazing.

[21:13] Alan Seales: Well, I want to go back to something you said, that you found safety in numbers, and that is knowing who you are. I want to dig into who you are. And I guess, explain that a little bit more to us. Because it sounds like, and some people are just like, I need to be at the front of the line. I need to be in the spotlight. Everybody else can stand behind me. And some people are like, I want to be in the back. So I guess, which one are you? It sounds like you were more like, wanted to be in the middle of a big group.

[21:52] Julia Murney: I guess, to be honest, it depends on what it is. But I also, I think that the part I like the most is true. One of the things I like about getting to be one of the ones in the front is that you also sometimes have the freedom to raise your hand and say, wait a minute. And not everyone should be afforded that. But traditionally, not everyone is. Traditionally, principals tend to get more of a say, if you will, than ensemble. And of course, in certain situations, that comes down to just time. If you're doing summer stock, you're slapping something up in 10 days, we don't have time to discuss why on earth the third dancer from the left would turn to the right. You just have to do it. And that goes all the way up to even if you're playing the lead.

Sometimes we just don't have to discuss it. Just do it. So I very much like the creating of the things. And so that part, I have discovered over now these many years, that I like to be in a position of being able to do that.

[23:19] Andrew Lippa: Creative power.

[23:20] Julia Murney: Yes, 100%. But I...

[23:26] Julia Murney: I've never wanted to do... At one point, I was asked to... Someone was writing... Nothing ever came to pass, but there was talk about me doing a one-person show. Not like a concert that's just me, but it was like a... And I just kept thinking, that sounds so lonely. Part of what's fun is the community that gets... The chosen family. Yeah. And not every show becomes your chosen family. And I have absolutely learned that. There are shows that I've done where I don't really see anybody from that show. But I can't think of a show that I've done, honestly, where if I were to run into one of those people today on the street, that I would be like, Oh my gosh, hi! But they're not part of my core of... But there are other shows that I've done where there are people I speak to every single day.

[24:21] Alan Seales: We're going to take a short break. Stay tuned for more of the episode.

[24:36] Julia Murney: So like an Elphaba, right? Let's take one of the biggest roles ever in the world at this point that gets the most attention. And I go back and I talk about this a lot on the podcast that Patty Murin and I talked about her having full-on panic attacks and Desi Oakley having panic attacks while in the middle of her solos for Waitress and whatnot. And the anxiety that people have, I guess the pressure they feel, even in the middle of a show, to carry it and to be what people are expecting. Did you feel that pulling that into Elphaba?

[25:20] Julia Murney: Yes. I'm going to tell you this. Every single witch loses her mind.

[25:24] Alan Seales: Really?

[25:25] Julia Murney: Every single one. The way that manifests is different with every person. But every one of them. I don't know what it is about that role. I don't know why that feels baked in. Because if you want to talk... I think it is what you just said. There's an expectation layer going on, on the level that it's at, and all that sort of stuff. When I did Wild Party, I did not lose my mind. And I sang more in the Wild Party. But that was A, written on me. B, Off-Broadway. C, my first big anything. No one expected anything of me. No one knew who I was. They're like, who? So it's just different. And it definitely is. And also, I will say, when I did Wild Party, chat boards did not exist.

[26:20] Alan Seales: Yes.

[26:22] Julia Murney: When I did Wicked, social media was barely in play. That's how long ago I did Wicked. It was 06, I want to say. Right? 06?

[26:30] Alan Seales: 06, 07.

[26:31] Julia Murney: A six tour, probably 07. Yeah. But it's very different for the women who do it now, who are or are not, choose or choose not to be a real presence on social media. Before we started, we were talking about Jessica Vosk, who we both saw at Carnegie Hall last night.

[26:53] Alan Seales: Amazing.

[26:53] Julia Murney: Thank you very much. Amazing. Unreal. She sold it out.

[26:57] Alan Seales: Haha. But Jessica, even before she was Elphaba, she has an amazing grasp on a certain presentation to social media. And now understand the Jessica that I know is much more and many more faceted than the person that she presents on social media. But that is her. It's not like you would meet her and be like, whoa, wait a minute. That's not... But she is comfortable with that. And she had found a way to do it where it feels... There's a comfort level for her. And I didn't have to navigate that when I was doing Wicked, because it wasn't a thing yet.

[27:43] Julia Murney: Mm-hmm. But it is definitely... Look, there's something... Of course, there is something... You cannot replicate it in any other way. And it's so extraordinary to have this natural high of being on that cherry picker and finishing the end of Act One with a giant broom in the air. And as you're frozen and the curtain starts to come down, to be on the receiving end of the wave of roaring that comes from the audience is really special and really freaking cool.

[28:29] Alan Seales: Mm-hmm.

[28:29] Julia Murney: And you can't deny that it is. But I did have to catch myself. I remember because as soon as the curtain's down is when they start to bring the cherry picker down. And there's a whole system that happens where as soon as the curtain's down, I hand my broom down and someone's there and they just take it from the floor because I'm still in the air. And I have my broom down and I unpin my hat and I have my hat down. Things just happen. And I very distinctly remember one night starting the thing, handing down the broom and blah, blah. And people were still applauding on the other side of the curtain. And I was like, you need to stop and soak that in because you were part, not all, but part of why they're still doing that.

And if you just start to ignore it, then it becomes... It is a job and that is the part that's tricky and that you cannot teach. And that I think people who are new to especially anything that's a long run of something, get really sideswiped by. And it becomes a job. And that's tricky. But sometimes I think I had to be like, it's also really cool. Oh, look, you got to be in the center of the thing. And people went, yay. So that feels nice.

[29:48] Alan Seales: Do you feel the pressure to, I guess, be the Idina version of Elphaba? Or is it like, I'm okay being the Julia version? I'm okay. Because there is no way on earth that I could be the Idina version. Because she is the Idina version. And regardless, we could put aside the fact that I know her. I knew her then. I saw her opening night in Wicked because she's my girl. Not even that though. It's just... If you lined up now, the 800,000 women who played Elphaba. But even back then, I was number five, I think, on Broadway. And if you lined even the five of us up, what's that? Idina... I can do it. Wait. Idina, Shoshana, Eden, Anna, and me. Okay. So that was the first five. We are very, very different women.

[30:43] Alan Seales: Absolutely.

[30:44] Julia Murney: The only thing the five of us have in common is that we all played that part.

[30:50] Alan Seales: True.

[30:51] Julia Murney: You know what I mean? We are different humans, obviously. But we are also very different vocalists. We are very different actresses. And everybody got to do it and got to nail it and make it be great.

[31:07] Alan Seales: Well, I want to compare this then to Wild Party. And got a little surprise. Just to bring in... I want to bring in Mr. Andrew Lippa here.

[31:15] Andrew Lippa: Oh, my God. What?

[31:22] Julia Murney: Because Andrew...

[31:24] Andrew Lippa: Hi, Gorgeous.

[31:27] Julia Murney: We can't hear you, babe.

[31:28] Andrew Lippa: Your mic. Where's your mic?

[31:30] Andrew Lippa: Oh, sorry.

[31:33] Andrew Lippa: Can you hear me now?

[31:34] Julia Murney: Yes, there you are.

[31:35] Andrew Lippa: Yeah. Okay. How's Baby going?

[31:39] Julia Murney: It's good. I mean, we have our fourth show tonight. I have rehearsal in a little bit. And we're doing changes and...

[31:46] Andrew Lippa: Changes? Nobody puts Baby in a corner.

[31:48] Julia Murney: Oh, yes. Well, when... I don't know if you've seen it, but the... God bless them. The... What's the word for it? The billing that I did not know was coming. Julia Murney is Baby.

[32:03] Andrew Lippa: Julia Murney in Baby.

[32:05] Julia Murney: Yes. Yes. But I was like, oh, my God, nobody's in Baby. It's an ensemble piece. Oh, no. Oh, no. Clearly, no. Not anymore. Not when... Not when Julia Murney does a show. It's no longer... Julia Murney in a chorus line.

[32:20] Andrew Lippa: My favorite is that...

[32:21] Julia Murney: Let's see what else would be fun. Sorry, carry on. Your favorite is what?

[32:24] Andrew Lippa: The theater. I mean, it's a theater. It's a white room with chairs in it. But the place where we're doing it is just a random building on 36th Street. You would not know it was in there unless that was where you were going. And so they put up just pieces of paper on the door for you to know that's where to go in. So there are these pieces that say Julia Murney in Baby and blah, blah, blah. And a friend of mine came the other night. He was like, I love the marquee.

[32:49] Julia Murney: Yeah, it's fantastic.

[32:51] Andrew Lippa: Oh, my gosh. It's reminiscent of our... Redolent of our youths.

[32:57] Julia Murney: Indeed.

[32:58] Andrew Lippa: Julia, we were just discussing Wicked and the pressure that Julia felt being Elphaba and whatnot. And she had just said previously that she felt no pressure doing Wild Party.

[33:10] Julia Murney: It was one of the easiest gigs she ever had.

[33:13] Andrew Lippa: Well, I did not say that. Wait, wait, wait. Let's be very clear.

[33:17] Julia Murney: See how politics works.

[33:19] Andrew Lippa: I'm going to be clear. What I said was I didn't lose my mind.

[33:25] Julia Murney: I don't know.

[33:26] Andrew Lippa: I'm giving Andrew shit.

[33:28] Julia Murney: The sun comes up.

[33:31] Andrew Lippa: But I did not lose my mind the way Wicked makes you lose your mind.

[33:34] Alan Seales: So, but Andrew, the two of you...

[33:38] Andrew Lippa: I can't comment on that.

[33:41] Julia Murney: There's nothing to comment. It's just the truth.

[33:44] Andrew Lippa: I'm a guest on the show. I'm supposed to have comments.

[33:47] Alan Seales: Yeah.

[33:48] Andrew Lippa: Alan, get to your... What is it?

[33:50] Alan Seales: Sorry. Alan's part of this conversation, I realized. I'm trying to be. I love it when people who know each other for so long just get reunited like this. And I'm trying to find in my notes when it was that you met... Let's see. Oh, so 1996. It was an audition for Snapshots.

[34:06] Andrew Lippa: Oh, that was a very good... You tell that story better than I do.

[34:12] Julia Murney: I mean, I can tee it up, but...

[34:15] Andrew Lippa: I can tell that story, but I was never sure of exactly what year it was.

[34:18] Julia Murney: So is that right?

[34:19] Andrew Lippa: It was 1996. Yes, I'm absolutely certain it was 1996.

[34:24] Julia Murney: Well, you're very good with your years.

[34:25] Andrew Lippa: I was the music director and a vocal arranger of a production of this musical called Snapshots that is a Stephen Schwartz compendium show, but it's written with a book and a full story written by David Stern, who I actually co-wrote an original movie musical that's going into production, God willing, next spring with. And David Stern and I've been friends for over 30 years, not much longer than Julia and I. And Julia, we were auditioning for one of the roles in that show and Julia Murney came into the room. And what happened, Julia?

[35:03] Julia Murney: And I went into the room and I was so excited because Stephen Schwartz was in the room.

[35:09] Andrew Lippa: And Stephen Schwartz wrote Godspell, and I got my equity card doing Godspell, as did the top of Humanity. I sang my song, and Stephen Schwartz himself said, do you know Meadowlark?

[35:35] Julia Murney: And I was like, yes, but I don't have it. Nobody thinks Meadowlark.

[35:48] Andrew Lippa: And he turned to Andrew, who, is this right, Lippa? Had you played second keyboards for Patti LuPone on Broadway? Is that right?

[35:56] Andrew Lippa: I played second keyboard. I was the associate music director to the great L.A. Dick Gallagher, and that was my first Broadway gig.

[36:02] Andrew Lippa: So, Patti LuPone had just, stop playing, it's Zoom, you can't do this.

[36:03] Julia Murney: I don't want to do it.

[36:04] Andrew Lippa: Until he's done. I have a hard out in 10 minutes, Lippa.

[36:05] Julia Murney: I don't want to do this.

[36:06] Andrew Lippa: Sing it.

[36:07] Julia Murney: Later. But so, he got up without any sheet music, and he went and played the living hell out of that song.

[36:26] Andrew Lippa: I think you're missing one thing. I looked at you and said, do you do it in D major or E major? And Julia said, E major. Because, of course, then she gets to belt that very, very high note.

[36:40] Julia Murney: Well, I'm going to protest that, because I have no idea what key I do it in. I don't even know what the high note is in Defying Gravity.

[36:49] Andrew Lippa: I must have then said, you're going to do it in E major.

[36:52] Julia Murney: You made it, yes. That would make more sense.

[36:54] Andrew Lippa: That is hilarious. And then, then what did we do? We did, we always described this. So, I finished the song, and he was amazing. And it was, as he has said in the past, it was like we had sex that day. And I finished, and Lippa pointed at me and went, who are you? And I went, who are you? This is in the middle of my audition. We had suddenly started ignoring everyone else.

[37:16] Julia Murney: Yeah, we had left the room, as it were.

[37:18] Andrew Lippa: You ignored Stephen Schwartz at this point.

[37:20] Julia Murney: We kind of did, unfortunately.

[37:21] Andrew Lippa: But he seemed to be okay with it, in the end.

[37:23] Julia Murney: You know, we've described like, you know how egrets turn their heads sideways and look at each other, you know, as they're thinking about mating or whatever they, egretting.

[37:34] Andrew Lippa: And Julia and I did that. Like, we literally kind of turned our heads sideways and looked at each other from different angles. And it was like, what, what, how did you, I feel like you're me. You're me, but you just look different, and you sing different, but you're me. Are you me? And it was a very strange experience to feel like, for me, like I had met someone who sang music the way she sang Meadowlark. Now, I didn't write Meadowlark, of course, but in how I play it, and how I think of that song, and the way I approach performing, Julia and I had an unspoken series of agreements as we were doing this with no rehearsal, and yet we synced up perfectly.

[38:12] Andrew Lippa: And you can play for many people you don't know, and you can play for many people you don't know, and you've not ever done that song together, and you can have the same outward experience that the audience might see, or any witness would see, oh, they just did that together, and it sounded amazing. But the two artists know if they connected on the, you know, the 30-second note level, and the, the, all of the commas, and all of the breaths, and all of the expression, and that what's more important when, and how you, how you make those decisions, you know, milliseconds of decision, you know, of moments, all throughout a song like Meadowlark, any song that you do, you're making all these decisions.

[39:06] Julia Murney: But I think it's also, it's, it's too, and this, this felt magical, because this was not without, like you just said, there was no rehearsal, there's, we not even met, really, but that it's two storytellers get right on the same page.

[39:17] Andrew Lippa: Right, that's the better way to say it.

[39:18] Julia Murney: Because I always think when I'm teaching, unless you were standing by yourself on a bare stage, acapella, you are never doing a solo. At the very least, you are doing a duet between yourself and a piano player, and then as you add every other instrument, or lighting people, or whatever, those people are, and the audience, everybody's part of it. And so the, I mean, I'm sitting here thinking, I don't know that I've ever had that kind of an alchemy moment with anybody else in it. Yes, it was a heightened moment, because it was an audition and all that kind of stuff. But there was something even for the years that we've then proceeded to work on Wild Party, and Andrew kept writing it and rewriting it and all this kind of stuff, that it just all sort of was easy to absorb into my bone marrow in a certain way. And it's just, it's a very lucky thing to ever get to have.

[40:19] Andrew Lippa: If it is, and I've worked with a lot of different people, as Julia has, and I think perhaps maybe a couple times in your life, you encounter somebody who, or I should say, I have encountered somebody perhaps two times in my life, who I feel that I'm the composer and lyricist they don't know how to be, and they're the singer I don't know how to be. And somehow that we complete each other when we connect together. And Julia and I discovered that that day doing Meadowlark, and that was a really special experience. Because we've never, I don't think we've ever in rehearsing anything we've done together, we never really talk about, do it this way, do it that way, we just do it. We just go through it and we make decisions together, but we never have, there's no like, oh, I wish she would do it this way, or I've got to reluctantly follow her in this way, she slows down at the wrong time. That never happens for either of us, I think.

[41:15] Julia Murney: Yeah, I think the only other one I can think of, in terms of the way they write, is Kander. Something about both John and Fred's music and lyrics just go, they like, lock and load in my body.

[41:29] Andrew Lippa: And have you worked, you've worked with John in the room, yeah? That's what a thrill, what a thrill that is, right? To have our mentors, like Stephen Schwartz, and I've been recently on an email chain with Stephen Sondheim about a project that he's included in that I'm curating for the San Francisco Gay Men's Chorus, and we go back and forth in emails about all kinds of silly, wonderful things, and he's been telling me stories about West Side Story in relation to my getting married, a very funny story he shared with me the other day, and I just pinched myself that we, you know, we've been fortunate enough to meet and sometimes become friends with, like, Stephen Schwartz is very much a friend, as a result of that show, actually.

[42:12] Julia Murney: I mean, I have to say, I, like, when I was in college, I dreamed of things like, maybe I can be Fantine. Like, that was, that was what I thought about. Never ever did it occur to me to think, maybe I'll work with the men who wrote New York, New York. Maybe I'll get to work with the gentleman who wrote the show in which I got my equity card. And like, to know that I could pick up a phone right now, and I could call Stephen Schwartz or John Kander, and they would take my call, they know who I am, blows my mind. And I didn't know, and so for me, Lippa is special, because we kind of came up together, if you will, a little bit. And so, he was unknown to me, I was unknown to him. And it's just a, yeah.

[43:09] Andrew Lippa: And Julia, sorry, go ahead.

[43:12] Julia Murney: I was gonna say, some of the best moments I've found that I've heard are, recently, I was interviewing all the guys from Freestyle Love Supreme, and just like, Chris Jackson and James Monroe Iglehart, and you know, even Lynn and Anthony Veneziale, and all these guys knew each other before they were ever famous, before they have ever had any credits. And now because of that, they've been through the beginning, and now they're in the middle of the height of their careers. And I still love each other just as much as when they were struggling to make ends meet. I love, I love, love, love these stories.

[43:43] Julia Murney: James Monroe Iglehart lived in the Bay Area, and worked at TheaterWorks Silicon Valley early in his career, and I was developed, that's like my home base theater on the West Coast. And I've developed a number of titles at that theater, and James and I got to know each other very early on, and we developed several of my titles out there. And then, he decided to make the leap and come to New York City, and boy, was that the right decision for him career-wise.

[44:11] Andrew Lippa: Wow.

[44:12] Julia Murney: And great for all the rest of us who get to see him in everything. So that's quite a wonderful part of his story.

[44:20] Alan Seales: Well, Julia, I know we are coming up on your hard stop, so I wanna quickly get to my three closing questions I ask everybody. Andrew, feel free to hang around and listen. So the first one, just very simply, is what motivates you?

[44:32] Julia Murney: Oh, integrity.

[44:34] Alan Seales: Oh, I like that. All right. So the second one is, what advice would you give to your younger self and younger people listening now starting out down a similar path?

[44:42] Julia Murney: Well, I guess to that end, to answer number one would be, it's okay to follow what your gut says and to decide as best you can to work with people who you feel are honest and open and not sketchy and backsliding. And understanding that the further you get into show business, the more you learn, oh, sometimes a job needs to be taken because you need money or you need health insurance or whatever. Those are valid reasons to take a job. Know why you're taking the job so that when you get in there, you're not miserable and making everyone else miserable because you don't really wanna be there. Be straight while you're there. And it's gonna make life a lot easier.

[45:36] Alan Seales: I love that. Okay, last question, hard one. If you can only see one show for the rest of your life, but you can see it as many times as you want, what would you see?

[45:43] Julia Murney: Oh, son of a...

[45:48] Alan Seales: You might need to say Wild Party, but I don't wanna...

[45:52] Julia Murney: But that's only if I can see hours. And then I'd have to watch myself and that'll be awkward. So that's a no. Sweeney Todd. I'm gonna say that the original, I saw the original on Broadway. There's just so much to see, I guess. But that's a rough question because sometimes you're not in a Sweeney Todd mood. Sometimes you're in a Tina Turner mood. Those are different moods.

[46:21] Alan Seales: I love it. All right. Well, everybody, please go see Julia Murney in Baby. Check the show notes for tickets. And Julia, thank you so much for the conversation. Lippa, thank you for stream crashing. This has been so much fun. I've enjoyed it.

[46:39] Julia Murney: Thank you.

[46:40] Andrew Lippa: Thank you, Alan.