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[0:00] Alan Seales: Welcome back to The Theatre Podcast. Intimate, personal conversations with the industry's biggest names. Today we have Jake Bazel, who has an amazing story of creating the Winnie the Pooh theatrical adaptation musical, by the way, with Disney Theatrical. He helped Disney get into the off-Broadway space because, you know, you may or may not have realized this, that all they have ever done are big-budget Broadway productions. And so this is an experiment. This is a great opportunity for them to try to build something that caters to a much more intimate audience and an intimate space. And I've seen the show. I love it. He mentions this at the end, but he does puppeteering and he gets involved with all of this children's work to keep his inner child alive.

And it's something I think that we all need to listen to and do a little bit more of. As always, find me online on Instagram and Twitter. Hit me up on your DMs. Let me know you're listening. Tell a friend, help share the word about the podcast. And now everybody, please enjoy this episode with Jake Bazel.

[1:19] Alan Seales: Our guest today is a puppeteer, voice actor, writer, director and coach with over a decade of experience working in children's media with credits that include various productions of Sesame Street, Apple TV+, NBC and many others. It makes perfect sense that we can now find him off-Broadway starring in his latest project, which is a collaboration with Disney Theatrical, the adaptation of Winnie the Pooh, which he helped create and write. Jake Bazel, welcome to The Theatre Podcast.

[1:46] Jake Bazel: Hey, thank you for having me.

[1:48] Alan Seales: Dude, your credits are kind of insane. And you look like you're about 20, if I may say so.

[1:55] Jake Bazel: That's very kind. I usually get 12, so I will absolutely take 20.

[2:01] Alan Seales: So I want to dive right into the off-Broadway production of Winnie the Pooh. I took my five and a half year old to see it the other day, and he was just enthralled. He loved it. He still wants to go back. And he saved a bunch of the leaves that fell during fall. And we had our picture taken with Tigger. It was amazing. And I didn't know at the time that you were part of the creative process for this whole thing. So talk to me about how this even got started, because doing something with Disney is huge.

[2:37] Jake Bazel: Yeah, it's truly been a unicorn of a project in that this sort of never happens this way. But I had worked with the producer Jonathan Rockefeller, producer, creator, director Jonathan Rockefeller on another show a few years back. And he was the one to take the idea to Disney and pitch it to Disney, essentially saying, you've got all these big, beautiful, brilliant Broadway shows, but a market you haven't explored is the off-Broadway space, is that smaller, more intimate theater space in New York. And you've got this property. You've got Winnie the Pooh that is inherently more intimate, inherently cozier, and wouldn't want to fill a 2,000-seat house, but it could work really, really well in a 200-seat house in town.

So that was sort of the initial pitch. And he brought me into that pitch knowing that I was... Well, A, he needed a puppeteer to be in a mock version of the Pooh puppet for that meeting. But also, he knew I was a huge fan of Winnie the Pooh and knew the books, knew the adaptations, knew sort of everything Disney had done with them. So he brought me in as sort of a resident 100-acre expert for that first meeting.

[3:54] Jake Bazel: And then when we met up together a few months later to start actually working and writing on the show, I took on a bit of a writing consultant, again, being the 100-acre guy in the room as we were building the show, which it's been wild to wear a few different hats on this show. And it all happened organically. And it's been wonderful to then also step over into playing Pooh and continuing to wear that puppet for readings and workshops. And so they sort of happened concurrently. I was switching back and forth as we built the show over four years. It's been a wild ride.

[4:36] Alan Seales: So let's take it, wow, four years. So that's sort of, I mean, it takes multiple years for even for big Broadway shows to make it all the way to Broadway. And that to me seems, I don't know if that's, I was going to say it seems long for off-Broadway, but I don't actually know why did it take so long in this space? Was it because of the just getting the brand right? Like this is such a recognizable brand and a story. Well, I mean, the story is original to your show, but the overall concept of Pooh has been around for decades.

[5:10] Jake Bazel: Yeah. I mean, we were slated and we were sort of ready to go at this time last year. And then of course everything hit and that was it. That was one of the four years right there is the pandemic. But before then, yeah, we really wanted to take our time and get it right. We started in 2018 with sort of a list of things. We wanted the show to feel as fresh as it could, but also quintessentially Winnie the Pooh. So we started just with a list of things that we knew we needed in the show. What are the vignettes? What are the tableaus that people are going to come in expecting? And how can we take those and make those feel fresh, honor those, but also turn them on their head in a way and then make them feel fresh in a new way.

So from there, yeah, it was just writing and rewriting and building out shows. Initially, some of the earlier drafts of the show were way too big. Not that it was trying to be Broadway, but it was trying to be a bigger, more lavish thing. And then we realized it was actually in our favor to really play to the smaller space and pare it back a little bit and not try to be a bigger, splashier show. I think a huge part of the reason why the show works is because it honors sort of the smallness and the simplicity of the original books. I think why people love Winnie the Pooh is because in all of the stories, nothing ever happens, and yet so much gets sort of discussed and talked about. These huge metaphors for humanity, but also at the same time, nothing is ever happening.

So I think getting that tone right just took a while, and we wanted to make sure people really care about these characters and really care about these stories and carry these characters with them very closely. So we wanted to make sure we were getting it right, for sure.

[7:06] Alan Seales: I'm holding up Eeyore. When I left with my son, I said, what do you want to get? What stuffy do you want to get? And he knows the characters, but he just calls this his donkey. He loves sleeping now with his Eeyore, with his donkey. And it's here in my office because he fell asleep in my office last night when I was doing a late recording. But yeah, it's incredible the amount of, I guess, the environment that has gone into it being built up around the outside of the stage and even inside of the stage, because this is something that I've always, I took for granted until I went to other theme parks that shall not be named. I was a Disney kid. I'm a Disney adult. And so part of my experience going to Disney is the lines, the cues.

I love the interactivity and the elaborate set decoration, for lack of a better term, that they do in the cues. And outside the theater, you've got, of course, you've got the merch and you've got the stuffies, but you've got these books. Instead of a program, you have a hardcover book, which I think you had a hand in creating, right?

[8:23] Jake Bazel: Yes, I helped with that synopsis that we retell the plot of the show there in that book. That book is beautiful and wild. And I can't believe they chose to do that, but it's such a great souvenir and they sell like crazy. It feels very West End of us to have the program souvenir that you buy separately. But yeah, people seem to be really loving that book. And I think it's a nice takeaway to remember the show with, especially bringing young kids to the show and then they can have that book forever. And it's a good way to remember having seen it years later.

[8:57] Alan Seales: What I really like about the book, too, is you retell the story and the plot, but it goes into the scenery and the costumes. And there's actually behind the scenes inside the book of how the show is put together, but geared towards that age group, that demographic who would be reading that book in the first place.

[9:15] Jake Bazel: Yeah. I mean, all our designers on the show really, really killed it. I mean, the puppets are gorgeous. The textures on them are gorgeous. Same thing with the set design. It does feel like you are sort of in the Hundred Acre Wood. That attention to detail is certainly very inspiring as an actor. It helps a long way.

[9:36] Alan Seales: So you mentioned at the beginning that you were brought into this because of your puppetry experience. And in the bio, I said that you've got over a decade of experience working in children's media and whatnot. So talk to me about how you got started. Why? As an ex-actor myself, but I guess you never quite leave the stage. You can take the actor off the stage, but you can't take the stage out of the actor.

[10:02] Jake Bazel: That's right. That's right.

[10:04] Alan Seales: So there were children's tours and whatnot. I mean, there is a special type of person that loves being involved with children's theater and children's tours and whatnot. And so just talk me through how you got started in this area.

[10:22] Jake Bazel: Yeah, absolutely. I really got started. So the beginning of the story is I had a family friend who worked at Sesame Street when I was 12. He got a gig as an AD on an on-location shoot for the show where they were shooting down in Tompkins Square Park. And because they were out on location, he could invite me to come watch them work. I was a huge, huge Jim Henson fan, huge Muppets fan, had been building puppets by myself. I've just sort of always been this way. It's always been there.

[10:52] Alan Seales: You built your own Muppets?

[10:54] Jake Bazel: Well, yes. Yeah, yeah. I was definitely doing full productions in my bedroom. That was the kind of kid that I was. Yeah. Not a lot has changed. It's just not in the bedroom anymore. But so yeah, so that day when I got to see them work for the first time, I met a few of the Sesame cast, and they saw a tiny little puppet, Nerd Jake, and took me under their wing very kindly. And then it was John Tartaglia, who really was the one to kind of pull me under his wing and coach me and train me up in the Muppet style, in the TV Muppet style.

[11:30] Jake Bazel: And when I was 18 or 19, they were holding, Sesame Street was holding, Sesame Workshop was holding workshops that were not auditions that were for the show. And it was three days in a room where it was about 25 of us who were working with a few of the cast members who are the puppet captains on the show and putting us through our paces in terms of character and manipulation. And everyone in the room was so remarkably talented that it was really coming down to the details there. And then I went away, did a tour, did a tour that John directed for a year, Jim Henson's Dinosaur Train Live, Buddy's Big Adventure, and came back after that a year later and started to get a couple of days on Sesame.

So really, truly everything I know in terms of puppetry is because of the Sesame cast and to work with those people. I mean, they're all so wickedly talented. It's the level of detail there in their performances and the subtlety in their performances. You think of Muppets, you think of big, broad strokes, but these are subtle actors who can really do beautiful stuff. So learning under them has been such a gift. I've been such a small, small, small part of the Sesame legacy and canon, but it's been such a huge.

[13:02] Jake Bazel: So, in my mind, there's different categories of puppetry. So, there's the Sesame Street style where, I guess, are you on your back? Are you just on your knees below where a camera can see? Then you've got your hands up above your heads, holding what are they called? The rods that control the hands, right? And then there's Avenue Q style, where you're basically the same type of puppets, but you're just at body height, and you're right behind them, and you're visual. And then over time, the audience seems to forget that the real people are there, because you're just watching the facial expressions, I put in air quotes, of these puppets. It's almost full body, right? Which I think was pioneered, was this pioneered with Frozen?

It sort of started with Lion King, I guess. So, the way I'm operating Pooh is very similar to how Timon is operating in Lion King. I have it on good authority that Pooh is a good bit heavier, because of all the stuff in Fluff. If only Pooh was a slender meerkat, wouldn't that be so helpful? But yeah, I guess, yeah, that's the Disney style. I'm pretty sure that was a Julie Taymor thing. I mean, it certainly comes from a long lineage of Bunraku and old, old, old styles of puppetry. But this kind of style that we've seen was taken from a few different styles and brought together to be this modern, yes, the Disney style, let's call it, absolutely. But yeah, Olaf has done the same way as well.

[15:04] Alan Seales: Do you have a favorite that you do? Can you do, like if you can do one, is it sort of like an instrument where if you know a violin, you can pick up a cello, or if you know the horn, you can pick up a French horn, right? So, you can pick up similarly type things, or is it sort of a different skill per subcategory?

[15:12] Jake Bazel: There's definitely a good bit of it that you can transfer from style to style, in that the tenets of puppetry are the same no matter the puppet you're picking up. I would say sort of the one style of puppetry that really differs from what we're doing at Muppets is marionettes, string puppets, because that's an indirect form of manipulation as opposed to you're actually touching the puppet or you're touching a rod that is controlling the puppet directly. With marionettes, you've got to handle all of the swinging back and forth, and it's a whole different sort of philosophy there. So, I can't. I'm useless with the marionette. But yeah, most other styles, you can sort of work around them the same way. Yeah, they're all related. We're all in the same family.

[16:05] Alan Seales: So, the million-dollar question then, what do you think of Team America?

[16:08] Jake Bazel: I mean, we love it. We've got to love it. We love puppets being out in the world. We love puppets making it into the pop culture zeitgeist. It's all a wonderful thing. It's all a wonderful thing. So, you were probably actually 12 when Team America came out. But I love the technology, and I love South Park. So, the merging of the two into marionettes, and I was watching one of the behind-the-scenes things, too, where I don't remember how many sets of servos actually made it into the final versions of the puppets, but it originally was too realistic, and so it lost a lot of comic effect. So, I think it was servos that controlled, I'm pointing at my smiley muscles, like the upper cheekbones to make you actually smile. I think that made the talking so realistic, instead of just moving your up-and-down jaw sort of thing, that it became too real, too believable, and again, lost all its comedic effect.

[17:13] Alan Seales: But when, gosh, I guess, for you doing the Disney-style puppetry, what are you controlling with the hand that's inside the head? So, you've got eyes and mouth in there, or just, I don't remember off the top of my head, but it's just mouth, right?

[17:30] Jake Bazel: Yeah, it's just the mouth. So, I'm doing the exact same thing I would be doing in a Muppet-style up-over-my-head puppet. It's just out in front of me, instead of up over me. It's literally opening and closing my hand in there. That's all there is to it. Yeah, but then you combine that with body posture and breath and weight and all of these things that we're thinking of as puppeteers, the amount of times people are like, oh, wow, you had a blink mech in there, right? No, no, that was just, you know, people start to believe these things are real. You don't really need those mechs and those servos and those things most of the time. You can really give a good performance without all the bells and whistles. Puppets can be pretty simple and pretty effective.

[18:18] Alan Seales: Yeah, I guess it's up to the human brain to fill in the gaps, and we start to see things based on assumptions and based on what we know about realistic objects, right? The brain will start to fill in the gaps. And if we forget that you are behind Pooh and we just start looking at Pooh as an actual live character, because you're doing your job so well, then of course we're going to start thinking Pooh is alive, and then our brain is going to make those unconscious connections.

[18:46] Jake Bazel: Well, that's hopefully the goal, yes. That's good to hear that that's working, for sure.

[18:52] Alan Seales: Were you involved with casting the rest of the actors? Because multiple people play multiple roles. I think you're the only one, right, that does just one character in the show?

[19:03] Jake Bazel: Yeah, once I'm strapped into the bear, I'm not going anywhere. That is the puppet that I'm on for the rest of the ride. I wasn't involved in casting at all. I've worked with a lot of this cast on other shows. The puppetry community and folks who have puppetry experience were a small and mighty group, so we tend to kind of hop from job to job together, which is a lovely thing. So I know a lot of these folks. I think there was only... I think Christina, who's our kenga, was the only person I hadn't worked with at all before this show. Mind you, it's a small cast. No, I wasn't involved in casting at all. I was thrilled when the cast came through. A lot of these folks did work on the workshops as well.

Yeah, Kirstie, who's our piglet, was in all the workshops with me. So we've been piglet and poo now for years together, which is wonderful because we have a good amount of scene work together. And I think I certainly feel... I can feel that the time we've spent building out these scenes. There are many cut scenes, many versions of the script that are no longer there, but those moments informed what actually ended up in the show because it was the two of us. So that's been a gift to have that much time, for sure.

[20:28] Alan Seales: We're going to take a short break. Stay tuned for more of the episode.

[20:40] Jake Bazel: When you get a new script, I guess, as a puppeteer, do you approach it sort of in a different way than you would if you were just Jake the actor on stage? Because...

[20:53] Alan Seales: Well, yeah, I'll stop right there. I don't think so. I don't think so. I mean, I think the only thing you're really cognizant of as a puppeteer that you wouldn't be of as an actor, and it's in addition to, is you want to make sure you're not really just like a talking head. Like, you know, puppets work when they're moving, when there's a physicality to them. So when you're just talking and flapping the mouth, they don't really live up to what they can be doing. So you're always trying to add business to it in terms of physicality and that element. But other than that, no, we are just approaching these scripts as actors. There's really no difference there. It's just, you know, okay, how would I approach this as an actor? Okay, and then how can I then communicate that one-to-one to the puppet?

[21:49] Jake Bazel: How much of the puppetry... I mean, I feel like this is a lot just like acting, right? You said there's basically no difference, but the majority of acting is listening. It's just active listening. So you're nodding, you're moving, you're shaking around. Like you said, you're not just standing there. So are you practicing, or does it become sort of second nature by this point in your career to develop mannerisms and physical characteristics for your puppets so that they're still actively moving in character when they're not speaking?

[22:23] Jake Bazel: Yeah, I certainly developed a sort of movement vocabulary for Pooh in rehearsals where he has the things that he goes to when he's listening, whether that's scratching his head or, you know... He certainly has his things that he goes to, but I don't think about those in the moment. I'm fully just in the scene. Thankfully, it's at a place where it's now second nature, and I'm not having to think, okay, well, now I need to move this puppet in this way. I am full-on thinking as Winnie the Pooh in that moment, for sure, and just reacting and listening.

[23:02] Alan Seales: So you get stuck in trees at home searching for honey all the time.

[23:06] Jake Bazel: Oh, yeah, I can totally relate. I've been doing a lot of sleeping, a lot of eating. This is all very true, actually. It's been a lot of sleeping and a lot of eating. Yeah, it's been a great permission slip, playing Winnie the Pooh, to get to lean into both of those. My passions for sleeping and eating and seeing my friends.

[23:28] Alan Seales: Well, sleeping, eating... Okay, I'll take this back to a somewhat serious bit. Sleeping and eating, of course, you said you were ready to go during a ripest COVID hit, and then it all got shut down. So I guess your own mental health, your own ability, you're on this upward trajectory. You're doing this thing with Disney. It's this great brand you're involved with. You're creating. You're helping create. You're attached to this as a creator. And then it just stops. I mean, were you ever at a point where you're like, well, there goes that. I guess I've got to do something else now. Or were you like, this is it. I'm okay. I'm okay. This will happen still.

[24:03] Jake Bazel: Yeah, I vacillated back and forth. So when everything hit, actually, the day Broadway shut down, we were in rehearsals for a workshop for Pooh. We were going to be presenting the final draft of the show for Thomas Schumacher and a few other folks in development at Disney. Just some little guy, yeah? Yeah, just some guy. Just some guy. And we were two days into the rehearsal process for that workshop. And obviously then we just all left. And we said, okay. It was that see you in two weeks thing that we all went through. But truth be told, I had just closed the show. I was doing Paddington. I was doing The Other Talking Bear for a few months before that. And I did not realize how close to burnout I was, you know, just working and working.

Had not realized how burnt out I was. So those first few weeks of quarantine, I was very happy to rest. It feels almost like now doing Pooh, after everything we've been through with the pandemic, it feels a bit like, oh, well, that's why we were making this show. Because it was meant to happen now. Again, these characters and these stories mean so much to people. And it's such a place of safety for so many people that, yes, if nothing had gone down and we did this in fall of 2020, it would have been a lovely show. People would have had a great time. We would have had a great time. It would have been everything we were hoping it would be. But now doing it under the context of getting to come back together, getting to come back to theater, it means so much more to get.

[26:05] Jake Bazel: And to build the opportunity for people to be in the same room as these characters that mean so much to people, and give them that sense of safety, and everything's going to be okay, and we're here together again.

[26:23] Jake Bazel: It feels like this is why we made this show. We couldn't have possibly known that, but the timing of it feels really special, for sure. Not that I'm saying I'm glad this all happened this way, at all, but what a beautiful job to come to out of all of this.

[26:43] Jake Bazel: As an audience member, too, you've got the parents who, it's nostalgia for them. They're coming back and revisiting these characters that they haven't seen probably in a long time, nor ever in this live action form like this.

[27:02] Jake Bazel: And then, as the case with my children specifically, sometimes they're introduced to this stuff for the first time. They're familiar with it, maybe like we've read some books or whatnot.

[27:14] Jake Bazel: But now, Eeyore, my son's donkey, he cannot sleep without Eeyore now, and that's just one of the things. He just loves Eeyore.

[27:26] Jake Bazel: And I feel like there's an opportunity, like you said, coming out of the pandemic, and bringing the nostalgia and the love for these characters that have never, like they've never been, there are a lot of characters that are trying to triumph over one another, or to be in competition.

[27:48] Jake Bazel: But this is a storyline and a group of characters that are always just solving adventures together. They're not ever trying to put each other down. It's such a special group of characters, and I feel like that translates coming out of the creative team and the organization putting it all together, right?

[28:07] Jake Bazel: Yeah. I mean, I've been saying this, that these books, especially the original books, the quality that I love most about them is each story is much more about the relationships between the characters than any one of the characters. It's such an ensemble thing.

[28:24] Jake Bazel: They all have blind spots in beautiful ways, and the way they sort of puzzle piece together is what makes these stories what they are, and it's why they've lasted for 100 years, and why we all, I think, find ourselves in them.

[28:41] Jake Bazel: The staying power is certainly in its, because they're all stories about relationships. They're all about friendship, and not necessarily always getting along. They're not oversimplified and twee in that way, but it's the relationships when we don't get along, and then, yeah.

[29:03] Alan Seales: When you're creating for children, what's your background, and what's the training process that you've gone through to specifically create and perform for children versus adults? And I'm not saying adult content. I'm just saying when you're making a kid's show, it's obviously done in a little bit of a different way so that the kids can stay more engaged through whatever means that work best for them, and not being a creator of anything for children, I have no idea, but I know it works.

[29:36] Jake Bazel: Yeah, I mean, a lot of that comes down to the material that we're dealing with, but it's not necessarily because we as actors are dealing in a different way with that material, if that makes sense.

[29:47] Jake Bazel: One of the first shows I did when I got to the city was the Very Hungry Caterpillar show, and that had an even younger market than Pooh does. We had some true tiny little potato babies in the audience, and it was wonderful, and they would watch the show.

[30:03] Jake Bazel: They didn't know where they were or why they were, but they were watching the show. They were not off somewhere else. But we as actors approached that material like sort of anything else, and we found the metaphor in it.

[30:18] Jake Bazel: I really love working on projects that can exist on different layers for multi-generational audiences, so I try not to do kid stuff that is just kids, kids, and hey, boys and girls, like that stuff I really don't care for.

[30:36] Jake Bazel: I do gravitate towards stuff that, yes, in the simplest form, kids love it and they're going to love it, but I think those things work because there's layers there and because we're pulling in the parents and the grandparents, too.

[30:55] Jake Bazel: And Winnie the Pooh is the North Star of that. There's so many layers there. For the longest time, these books have been sort of a North Star of the kind of work I wanted to do. I never thought it would translate to me actually getting to work with these characters and these stories in any way.

[31:15] Jake Bazel: But that's far more interesting to me than doing kids shows. It's stories that can speak to kids as if they're adults and speak to adults as if they're kids.

[31:34] Alan Seales: Right. Yeah, I get that. I mean, we're obviously not watching Pooh solve astrophysics equations, right?

[31:43] Jake Bazel: Because that would be so entertaining. I mean, give the people what they want.

[31:47] Alan Seales: We could have Paddington Bear and Winnie the Pooh playing chess.

[31:54] Jake Bazel: That's the cut scene.

[31:58] Jake Bazel: I can see why that was cut from the show.

[32:00] Jake Bazel: I guess the whole thing for me is kids are empathetic. Kids are more open to emotion than adults want to let on that they are.

[32:19] Jake Bazel: I don't ultimately think maybe that adults are less receptive than kids are. I think adults just have more of the armor on as we get older, right?

[32:27] Jake Bazel: We learn how to segment and compartmentalize and pretend things aren't bad or good or whatever the case is.

[32:33] Jake Bazel: So you've got Eeyore, which for years has been famously helping kids deal with sadness and depression.

[32:41] Jake Bazel: And I want to say Pooh also has a little bit of anxiety and Tigger can be manic.

[32:49] Jake Bazel: And you've got all of these extremes, right?

[32:52] Alan Seales: So is there any part of that that made it into the creative process? Or you as Pooh, I guess, does any of that shape how you portray him or does he affect you outside of the show?

[33:07] Jake Bazel: I feel like every character becomes part of the actor at some point.

[33:12] Jake Bazel: Oh, yeah. I think people think of Pooh as ever the optimist. And I'm not sure that's entirely true now having played him for a bit.

[33:24] Jake Bazel: Because I spend very little of the show fully happy.

[33:30] Jake Bazel: Pooh's home base is like, he's like a detective. He wants to put the things together. He's doing the puzzle in his head at all times.

[33:40] Jake Bazel: He's sort of one step behind everybody. And I think that's probably where a bit of that maybe anxiety comes from. It's like he's just in a place where he's figuring it all out, which I can certainly relate to.

[33:53] Jake Bazel: I am just always in a place where I'm just trying to figure it out.

[34:00] Jake Bazel: Yeah, and it actually really is a fun, very human place to come from, it feels like.

[34:08] Jake Bazel: I think that's why people respond to him is because he's just trying his best. He's like, I woke up. I guess the next right thing to do is go have breakfast. And then I guess I'll, I don't know, go take a walk.

[34:19] Jake Bazel: It's like pretty much all of us in quarantine. Like, what are we going to do? I guess I'll take a nap. I don't know. I'll go walk and see Piglet and then go from there.

[34:31] Jake Bazel: Yeah, I think I certainly got closer to Pooh during that time. I can see it from a different perspective, for sure.

[34:38] Alan Seales: Oh, I love that. I absolutely love that. But the show is beautiful, and everybody needs to go see it.

[34:45] Jake Bazel: And so where can we find you on social media?

[34:49] Jake Bazel: Yes, social media. So I'm at jakebazel everywhere, everywhere I need to be. I mean, I'm on Twitter, but I'm not on Twitter, you know?

[34:56] Alan Seales: Mm-hmm.

[35:00] Jake Bazel: I'm on Twitter, but I'm not on Twitter. But I'm everywhere. And yeah, you can find me there.

[35:05] Alan Seales: Wonderful. So let's close out with three standard closing questions that I think you're prepared for because you said you've listened to past episodes. Okay, the first one is, what motivates you?

[35:15] Jake Bazel: I do everything for the kid that I was.

[35:19] Alan Seales: Ooh, I love that.

[35:22] Jake Bazel: You should get that tattooed on your hip or something. Not your face, because you need your face. But yeah, get it tattooed on your hip.

[35:29] Jake Bazel: I do everything for the kid that I was. Actually, oh, I'm trying to decide if I want to go into this.

[35:36] Jake Bazel: Okay, I'm going to ask this question then. So the kid that you were, is that still inside you, or are you trying to get back to that?

[35:41] Jake Bazel: Oh, I think I've very intentionally preserved it. And I think that comes from that day at Sesame when I was 12. And I saw this as a profession from such a young age that I knew that this was sort of the part of me that I wanted to lead with and speak to.

[36:03] Jake Bazel: So I think I've done a very intentional job of trying to protect that part of me. So it's still in there for sure.

[36:09] Alan Seales: Oh, I love that. Okay. So second question then, what advice would you give to your younger self and younger people listening now starting out down a similar path?

[36:16] Jake Bazel: Oh, just be patient. Please be patient. Be patient with yourself. I think that was the blessing and the curse of seeing it so early as a kid that I was like, oh, I want to do it now. And I got really impatient, and maybe I didn't actually let myself be enough of a kid in some ways.

[36:38] Jake Bazel: So, yeah, just like it's going to take time, and that's okay. It's going to take time, and that's okay.

[36:43] Alan Seales: I like that. All right, last question, hardest one. If you could 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?

[36:51] Jake Bazel: Oh, that is a good question. Well, I will say that answer is going to change daily.

[37:03] Jake Bazel: Oof. I'm going to go with, right now, I'm going to go with War Horse.

[37:10] Alan Seales: War Horse?

[37:11] Jake Bazel: Stick to the puppet theme.

[37:13] Alan Seales: Yeah.

[37:14] Jake Bazel: Wow. The first time I saw that show, I was like, oof. It was a gorgeous production.

[37:18] Alan Seales: It was a gorgeous production. Oh, did you see, speaking of oversized puppetry, did you see King Kong?

[37:24] Jake Bazel: I did not see King Kong.

[37:26] Alan Seales: Oh.

[37:27] Jake Bazel: I did not see King Kong.

[37:28] Alan Seales: That's okay.

[37:29] Jake Bazel: But I had many conversations about King Kong, and that puppet is absolutely stunning.

[37:34] Alan Seales: Amazing.

[37:37] Jake Bazel: They had to incorporate the puppetry into the choreography because you've got puppeteers.

[37:44] Jake Bazel: I don't remember how many people it took to operate Kong. It was like a dozen.

[37:48] Alan Seales: Yeah.

[37:49] Jake Bazel: But you've got people running up, climbing up a ladder hidden on his back so that they can grab a rope and jump 20 feet off his head so that they act as a counterweight to lift the hand so that the fist can slam back down and do gorilla things.

[38:05] Jake Bazel: Listen, I can never complain about how big Winnie the Pooh is when that thing has been on Broadway.

[38:13] Jake Bazel: I can never complain about the size of Pooh and the weight of that puppet when King Kong has been on Broadway.

[38:21] Alan Seales: I think he weighed 2,000 pounds.

[38:23] Jake Bazel: I'm sure it did.

[38:25] Jake Bazel: I believe that's the stat.

[38:27] Alan Seales: I'm sure that show was a workout.

[38:29] Jake Bazel: I have no doubt.

[38:31] Alan Seales: Oh, gosh. And to interact with something that large, I mean, just incredible.

[38:38] Jake Bazel: Anyway, thank you, thank you, thank you so much for this lovely conversation.

[38:42] Alan Seales: Thank you.

[38:43] Jake Bazel: You're bringing out my inner child here.

[38:46] Alan Seales: Thank you.

[38:48] Jake Bazel: So I've appreciated it. Everybody go see Winnie the Pooh. It is incredible.

[38:52] Alan Seales: Please do.