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[0:00] Danya Taymor: Hi, I'm Danya Taymor, and welcome to The Theatre Podcast with Alan Seales.

[0:17] Alan Seales: Hey everyone, welcome back to The Theatre Podcast. I'm your host, Alan Seales, and this is now the beginning of what's going to be the final countdown leading up to the Tony Awards on June 16th. And to celebrate, we're diving into a new podcast takeover with one of the strongest contenders for Best New Musical, The Outsiders. So stay tuned to the feed here throughout the month of May for a series of episodes with the cast and creatives of this incredible new musical. And first up in this episode, the captain of the ship, as she puts it, director Danya Taymor. Not only is The Outsiders nominated for Best New Musical, but Danya Taymor got her nomination for Best Direction of a Musical. One of the coolest things that we spoke about was what she had the cast do every day during rehearsals, the daily warm-up that allowed everyone to literally check in with each other, get in sync, and start to normalize the behavior of talking about how they feel with one another, which of course led to some extremely strong offstage bonds that can clearly be seen to have carried onto the stage to make the scene work just absolutely rock solid. So of course, follow me on the socials, reach out and say hi. And now everybody, please enjoy The Outsiders takeover and this episode with Danya Taymor.

[1:38] Alan Seales: Our guest today is a New York-based director who reopened Broadway with the Broadway play Pass Over, the first play back after 18 months of darkness on Broadway. After the pandemic, of course, other work includes the out-of-town production of The Outsiders, Samuel Beckett's Endgame, Will Arbery's Pulitzer Prize finalist Heroes of the Fourth Turning, Evanston Salt Costs Climbing, and Jeremy O. Harris's Daddy. She is the recipient of the Cullman Award for Extraordinary Creativity from Lincoln Center. Her latest credit is the Broadway production of The Outsiders, which just opened. Danya Taymor, welcome to The Theatre Podcast.

[2:13] Danya Taymor: Thank you so much. I'm so happy to be here.

[2:16] Alan Seales: Oh my god, the award Extraordinary Creativity. I don't even, I mean, that like sums up The Outsiders so perfectly.

[2:29] Danya Taymor: Oh, thank you.

[2:31] Alan Seales: I saw it the other day. Immediately, I was like, wait a second, what's on the stage? Oh, it's that. And I actually got yelled at by the ushers. I went up during intermission and was touching the stage because I want to figure out what it is. It's like that recycled stuff that's, recycled tire that's on like kids playgrounds. Is that right?

[2:47] Danya Taymor: Yeah, yes.

[2:49] Alan Seales: So I guess let's start with your Extraordinary Creativity background, because I know you went to Duke, which is my stomping ground. I went to NC State, so we're supposed to be rivals.

[3:04] Danya Taymor: That's right. Take that.

[3:06] Alan Seales: Yeah, yeah. I didn't actually know we were in the final four until a couple of my friends were like, hey, did you know you're in the final four? And I was like, shootie hoops? Send me to Broadway. I don't need to know the shootie hoops. So anyway, back up then. So as a little Danya, where did you get into your Extreme Creativity? Like what got you into theater?

[3:28] Danya Taymor: My mom took me, so in the city I grew up in, there is a children's theater, and you could go starting at the age of seven. And I was six, almost seven, but my mom was like, let's go, let's try out for the play. And so she took me, and I auditioned for the play, and I got in, and I just fell in love. I loved the experience of making it, of going to rehearsal, and I also loved being with kids of all ages. So, you know, my mom brought me there. My mom also, you know, she is a psychiatrist, but she also is a painter, and she's really curious about all art forms, music, theater, dance, film. And so she exposed me and my brother to a lot of that stuff from an early age. And I think that that kind of immersion or exposure is part of what drew me to all of it. But she definitely took me to that first tryout and helped me break the rules and get into the play.

[4:22] Alan Seales: Well, what city did you grow up in?

[4:27] Danya Taymor: I grew up in Palo Alto.

[4:27] Alan Seales: You mentioned the city you grew up in.

[4:27] Danya Taymor: Yes, Palo Alto. Yeah, in California, in the Bay Area. So it was either become a director or go to Google, basically, kind of your choices?

[4:33] Danya Taymor: You know, it wasn't as Google-ified as it is now when I was growing up. Facebook and, I mean, Apple has been there obviously for a long time, but I do feel like there was a change when I left for college that is more intense now than it was then. But I didn't know that I was going to do theater for my life until probably like halfway or towards the end of college. As you said, I went to Duke, so not a school that's known as a theater school. But there, I think because it wasn't a theater school, my interest was more unique. So when I expressed an interest in directing, the faculty there was like, oh my gosh, yes, do it. Let us help you do this. And because there was less, for lack of a better word, competition, I think I really got to try and fail and not have any sort of like self-consciousness around what I didn't know.

I have since worked at like Juilliard and NYU and directed students in those spaces, and they know so much more than I knew when I was their age. But I think that that was a gift, like being at Duke and directing my roommates or people who played on the football team or people who had never been in a play and may never be in one again, I think helped hone my directing style or my ability to meet different people wherever they come from.

[6:01] Alan Seales: You didn't know you're going to do it as a career until the end of college. What did you originally go to Duke for?

[6:04] Danya Taymor: I thought that I would be a psychiatrist, or I also majored in public health at Duke, and so I was curious about epidemiology. I know my dad is a pediatrician, and he always had this dream like I would take over his practice, but I don't think I ever really had medical school in me. But I was really curious about a lot of different things, and I think Duke was a great place to go. And then as I started to get deeper and deeper into directing, I started to really, really love it and decide towards the end when I did my thesis that like, yes, it was worth it and that I would take a shot. But I thought that I would probably kind of follow more in my mom's footsteps.

[6:52] Alan Seales: You actually kind of followed my path in a little bit. I guess we'll say we shared similar paths, because I originally wanted to, I got a computer science degree and wanted to move to Japan to perform or to write artificial intelligence. And then I ended up becoming a professional actor with my computer science degree, which then brought me back to computer science, and which has now brought me back to theater. It's this weird circuitous, is that the word, path that I'm taking? But so when you're going, I guess when you went to Duke and you're, or went to college, and you're there taking all sorts of classes that have nothing to do with theater and performing, especially directing. And when you were a kid, though, you said you wanted to, you were performing, I guess, similar to probably what I did.

It was, I was getting a computer science degree and doing, performing all over this, all over the side. That's all I wanted to do outside of class, was still perform. So is that, is that sort of like what you were going towards? And then at what point did you just make the switch and say, you know what, I'm going to try this directing and oh, yeah, I really like this instead?

[8:00] Danya Taymor: Yes, I had, it actually started in high school. My high school theater teacher, Kristen Lowe, who's going to come see The Outsiders this weekend with a bunch of kids from my high school, which is so exciting. She really encouraged us to do everything. So she did this New Works festival in the spring called Speed Limit 25. And she, like the ethos of it was that everything had to be written by people under 25. And it started out like that. We looked at plays from the Humana festival or all around. And then the next year, she was like, you know what, you guys should write them all. They're going to be written by you guys, you'll direct them, you'll act in them, they'll build the sets, you'll stage manage, you'll do the lights.

And everything is as important as everything else. And I think that that really planted seeds of the way I think about theater as a collaborative art form and how many different kinds of people it takes to bring a work forth. And so that was really the first time I directed was in, I think, my junior year of high school. And I loved it. And I felt a sense of groundedness and calm and like rightness that I never felt on stage. I definitely performed, but I always felt a little self-conscious in a way that once I started directing, that kind of went away. And then when I went to Duke, I auditioned for the fall play. And when the cast list came out, I was listed as the assistant director, which I had not said I wanted to do or volunteered myself for.

But the director, I guess, saw something in me and I was like, okay, wow. And so I kept having these incredible mentors who kept saying like, oh, this is a path, this is a path. And of course, Julie Taymor is my aunt. I grew up seeing her plays, but she was in New York and I grew up in California. And she was this, when I was little, I think this huge figure in my imagination. And it was only when I moved to New York later that I really got to know her better and get closer to her. But I know that obviously that presence of this person in my family who's doing it at the highest level also must have been in there somewhere too of directing.

[10:13] Alan Seales: I think it's hilarious that you auditioned and then get cast as the assistant director. But I totally understand the feeling of being self-conscious on stage. Some people are just totally comfortable in the limelight. That's the only place they're comfortable. And some people, that's like they need it, but it's still like the source of their biggest, the biggest source of anxiety. But then, I guess as a director though, how do you view it in terms of like, you're steering the ship, you're the captain of the ship.

[10:45] Danya Taymor: Yes.

[10:46] Alan Seales: So if the ship goes down, you're responsible, but as you said, or you're held responsible.

[10:53] Danya Taymor: And you are, and you are.

[10:55] Alan Seales: Do you really think so? Ultimately, if there's backstage conflicts with producers, or like you've got cast, it's hard to work with somebody.

[11:01] Danya Taymor: I don't think you're the only responsible party, but I think that as a director, it's important to take ownership of the collective health of a project. And I've definitely been in some projects where you try everything you can and it's still not going right. So no, you can't, and you shouldn't ever scapegoat one person. But I do feel like that sense of responsibility is important. And I wanted to say one other detail about the experience of being cast as the assistant director, because I think this was part of what made me really want to be a director, is I auditioned for the play. And then in between the audition and the callback, a friend of mine, my age, a little bit older, 20 years old, unexpectedly passed away.

And it was so shocking and devastating. And I was in North Carolina, and I couldn't go back to California. And I went to the callback, and I tried my best. And afterwards, when I was talking to the director, he said, something happened to you in between, and I didn't know what, but I knew that I wanted you to be a part of this, but I couldn't tell that something happened to you. And I was so moved that this literal stranger perceived what had happened to me without knowing. And I thought, oh, wow, part of a director's job is seeing people or feeling people's energy.

[12:40] Danya Taymor: It starts with casting and my whole creative team will tell you I take a long time and bless them because they sit there with me. But I want to get to know the people who I'm going to be spending time with and I want to give them a chance to get to know me too. So I'll talk with people for a while before I'll really play with them in the room to see what our collaboration is going to be like. And I think that has really served us well in The Outsiders because we've got people who really are yearning to collaborate, who have a lot of potential. We've got so many Broadway debuts. And so to me as a director, that's a privilege, which is to take somebody who is having their first big experience and try to make it healthy and fun and rigorous and show them that all those things can happen at the same time.

And then, you know, moving through the different aspects of the process from rehearsal to tech to previews to open, it does help to be sensitive to people's energies and try to meet them where they're at on any given day and help them through doubt, fear, exhaustion, whatever it is, and allow for people to bring their energy and whatever it may be. So, and that goes for the design team too, and the producers and anybody who's working on a piece. I think a sensitivity to the collective energy is important. And something I really learned on this is that if I can, no matter how challenging something is or something's going wrong, if I can enter the theater with a positive attitude, this sounds basic, but it's amazing.

If I can enter with a positive attitude, we get so much more done than if I enter and I'm annoyed or, you know, whatever the negative thing may be. And that's profound to me. Like, oh yeah, people want to have a good time. They can work hard and they can have fun at the same time.

[14:41] Alan Seales: I think what you just said was embodied so well in the press event a couple of weeks ago. I don't know if you remember, I interviewed you and the leads from the show. If we were all going through, we were in the rehearsal space and in open jar studios and everybody, every single person, yourself included, just seemed so genuinely happy to be there. It wasn't one of those, God, another press day, like sort of things. It was everyone's energy was amazing. Everyone was happy. They were unfocused in the interviews because they were all just having fun and talking to each other throughout the interviews. It was such an amazing experience to see everyone sort of in their natural, Steve Irwin, in their natural habitat.

Here we go. Here's the outsider's act. But yeah, we're in the rehearsal space. Obviously, that's where everyone was comfortable. And you could tell that you were, like, you were captaining a very happy ship. And is that difficult? Has that been difficult with The Outsiders, given how serious of a show that is? Or does it make it easier because it's an easy dichotomy?

[16:07] Danya Taymor: I don't know if it's easier or harder, but I do think something I think about a lot when working on intense material, obviously The Outsiders has a lot, but so does a play like Jonah or Heroes of the Fourth Turning or Pass Over, is that there has to still be a sense of play in the room as you're making things. It's hard enough to go do the thing every night, so that when we're crafting it or making it, I try to keep the space really, really playful, and a space where people don't have to be afraid to fail. And so we cultivate that in the room. And I do this on all the shows with, like, a long warm-up that we do every day. And it allows people to get to know each other, to breathe together, to work with people they might not have scenes with, and it creates a collective.

And I think that that energy, that collective energy, is part of what gets palpably felt on stage. And I think it's part of why the company is able to trust each other, because you can't just, like, snap your fingers and have people trust. You have to work at it. And so I think we spent a lot of time dedicated to that kind of ensemble building, which then makes staging so much easier or makes working on intense scenes, whether it might be loss or violence, feel okay while we're making it and not overly serious or like it's really happening, but something that we can craft together as a company.

[17:25] Alan Seales: Can I ask what a little bit of the warm-up is? Like, how do you get to know each other?

[17:29] Danya Taymor: Yeah, so part of it's physical, just, like, getting in the body. And the physical warm-up, you know, I do it on all the plays, so it can really change depending on what bodies you have in the space. I did this amazing Danai Gurira play called Familiar, and I had these three incredible actresses over the age of 60. And so, of course, there's going to be a different way that those bodies move than if you have a room full of 20-somethings. So we do stretching, we do warm-up, and then we do exercises that help build, like, consent into the room in a really natural way. So we'll do partnering exercises where I take this from Merce Cunningham, chance operations, I'll have everybody draw their partner out of a hat.

So it's not like I'm putting together the pairs. It's just like, whoever you get that day is your partner. We do massage, and so there's different ways in which you can do this. You don't have to touch at all to be able to do this. If you don't feel like being touched, or you don't want that on any day, you can do it through mirroring. So if I were your partner, I would lead you by putting my hands on my cheek, and you would just follow me. So you don't have to touch at all. And so that's a way that you can normalize saying, like, I don't feel like that today, or I don't want to be touched today. And it's not weird, and nobody needs to feel like, oh, I did something wrong. Then if you do, you say, like, okay, my neck hurts on the left side, this is the kind of pressure I'd want. And so it just kind of, like, brings in communication in a way that we can practice every day.

[19:04] Danya Taymor: And then we do other stuff, like mirroring exercises, or exercises that have to do with memory, play, just, like, silly, dumb stuff that reminds us of being kids. And I use music a lot. We all make, like, a collective playlist. And we do it for, like, an hour, an hour plus every day.

[19:24] Alan Seales: Wow, an hour-long warm-up every day.

[19:26] Danya Taymor: Yeah. And it gets, you know, towards the last week in the room, it gets shorter to, like, 30. But it makes staging so much easier. You know, you've built so much collective memory within the group. And, you know, such random details about each other, you know, when people are partnering, they get to know each other, they talk about whatever when they're in their partners. We all are listening to the same music together, we're breathing together. And I just find that it's a really nice way into starting an intense day of work.

[20:02] Alan Seales: Time for a quick commercial break. Hang on a second.

[20:06] Alan Seales: Welcome back to the episode. I've never heard of anybody, I guess, putting that much effort into, a captain of any ship, putting that much effort into having the crew get to know each other outside of the work like that. I guess that, yeah, that's really, really neat. Well, obviously, it's working. So the energy between the Socs and the Greasers are, like, as a cast, it's very much, it's always in sync. It's always, like, it just moves. The show is, speaking technically, the pace of the show, the use of all the props in the show, the use of the set, the use of the, we mentioned at the very beginning, this dirt, I'll put in quotes, the dirts, the rocks, the grittiness, the literal grit on the stage that the Cooperman brothers brilliantly have used as part of the staging and the choreography, where they're kicking it, they're throwing it, it's all over the place.

And so you as a captain of the ship, putting all this together, are you, I mean, I guess the creativity, how much are you going to the scenic designer and saying, this is what we want here, and going to the choreographers, the Cooperman brothers, and saying, we need it to be, you know, we need the language to be down and gritty and dirty. And I mean, how much are you steering versus, or guiding versus idea giving, if that makes sense?

[21:30] Danya Taymor: Sure. I think that part of the reason why the collective vision of the show feels so united is because we all spent a lot of time together dreaming into it. We first did a workshop of it at the Daryl Roth, a kind of like black box version where we didn't have very much stuff, we had some tires, we had like some, actually, I don't even know if we had tires yet, probably a couple, some moving boxes, a couple flashlights. And we already had AMP, the design team, the sonography team doing it, we're on board. And so much of the design that's now on a Broadway scale came from that like, bare bones, nothing workshop. And then we spent so much time as a team together, dreaming and asking questions and wondering.

Christine Jones, who's one of the members of the scenic design team, commented to me that it's so rare to have the writers at so many design meetings. But as a person who works on new plays a lot, I'm like, how could they not be here? They wrote it. We want, you know, we want their opinion, we want what's in their minds. And so we had so many meetings where all the composers, the book writers, the choreographers, and then the full design team were present. And I think that's what helps make the vision unified. And now we're all speaking the same language. And so when new ideas come, they're within the language of the show. And that's why I feel so excited for the run of the show too, because I think the performances are going to grow and deepen, they won't be frozen, but I feel so confident that they're going to grow in the language that we've all created.

And so I feel a sense of incredible trust with the performers too. Because of the way we were able to work with our understudy company in our swings, like, I feel genuinely excited to see other people go on because they're not going to be trying to recreate the performance of the person who has the role. They'll be, you know, I'm encouraging them to do their own. And I think that will be exciting too. So I think it just takes a lot of time. That's the thing that you can't skip is how many hours you all spend together. Like the writing team and the Coopermans and I went to Adam, Adam Rapp has this great house in Bearsbone, we just spent like many retreats up there, days at a time, working on it as a group, and not staying quote, in our lanes, but asking questions about different disciplines.

And you know, the other thing I'll say is, there's a lot of people who are also directors on this team, Christine Jones, the Cooperman brothers, Adam Rapp, Justin Levine might as well be a director. And so that to me is an asset, because you have so many people looking at this holistically. And that's a gift for me. I love that.

[24:13] Alan Seales: That seems like it could either be a blessing or a curse, depending on how much you get threatened by other people's expertise.

[24:41] Danya Taymor: Yeah, definitely. Yes, I meditate in the morning. I do a lot of yoga. And actually, since doing the musical *The Outsiders*, I've just had to become 100% sober because the musical is so much that I just need all my faculties. So, I'm almost at my year of sobriety.

[25:02] Alan Seales: Wow.

[25:03] Danya Taymor: Yeah. Yeah, it's intense. I mean, the story itself, the book, right, written by S.E. Hinton, you know, a lot of people read it in middle school or even high school. And it was kind of the first exposure, I think, that young minds have had to just classism and outright, I don't know, bullying is too light of a word. Discrimination that has nothing to do with race, right? And some of it does, some of it doesn't. And it's just it's really heavy stuff. And the way, though, that it resonates with people, it kind of transcends gender, transcends race, transcends everything. And it's a need to be accepted. It's a need to get along. And I think bringing that mentality into theater, which is a culture of people who are embracing the herd mentality, the need to share stories, the need to belong to a tribe of misfits. That's what theater is. And it all just fits so perfectly together.

[26:17] Alan Seales: So, I guess thinking back along the journey of *The Outsiders* and your career... Oh, okay. Pause on *The Outsiders*. Thinking back to your career journey, at what point did you say like, you know, I think I got this. I think I'm figuring out how to do my thing. Or are you still there? Are you even there yet?

[26:37] Danya Taymor: I don't think I'm like, I got this. I think I'm still... I mean, I feel endlessly curious about the form and about the field. And I'm so... I love it. So, every day, I'm like, wow, I can't believe I get to do this. I love this. I love it so much. I think the first time I felt like I was working in a way that perhaps I could sustain myself was doing *Pass Over* at Steppenwolf, which was a job I got because a director dropped out at the last minute, and I knew the writer, and she advocated for me. And I think that that was the first time that I was working in an institution of that level. And I felt like, oh, wow, this is different. It's different to work with resources and support and with all that behind you, and it really helps.

And so, I think that that was definitely a turning point in my career. And, you know, as a young director, once somebody gives you the chance, then other people are more willing to. So, the first door that opens helps open other doors. You know, *Pass Over* has been a blessing to me throughout my career. I think because *Pass Over* happened on Broadway, I was even considered for *The Outsiders*. I don't know if I would have been considered without a Broadway credit as I've never done a musical. Maybe, but maybe not.

[28:02] Danya Taymor: And so, I remember reading when I was younger this interview with a director I really admire, Lila Neugebauer, and she said in it that there's no blueprint for how to be a director. And that can be so scary, because there's so many different ways to come to it. But it can also be reassuring when you're in the wilderness thinking like, oh, my gosh, is this going to work out? That really helped me think like, it can, it doesn't have to follow the template of anybody else. And it probably won't. So, I mean, I definitely feel like, yeah, working on this musical at this level is amazing. It's kind of beyond my wildest dreams. But I definitely don't feel like, oh, I got it. I'm done. I'm good. I feel like, oh, wow, I've grown so much over the last two and a half years working on this. I want to keep growing.

[28:46] Alan Seales: And, okay, so then taking this to *The Outsiders*, is this a point where you can look at the show and say, this is good. We are set. I don't want to change a thing if I had to do it all over again. Like looking at your own decisions, the outcome of your decisions now as it appears on stage, do you ever go back and you're like, oh, I wish I did that differently? Or 100%, we're good. I'm happy with this.

[29:14] Danya Taymor: That's a great question. You know, I saw the show last night. I know this, I don't know if I'm allowed to say this, but it hasn't opened yet, even though that's how the podcast opened.

[29:21] Alan Seales: Yeah, we're recording. We're a few days from opening.

[29:26] Danya Taymor: Yeah, we're a few days from opening. But I saw the show yesterday, the Monday before opening. And it was the first show that we didn't have rehearsal in the afternoon after a day off where I didn't come to the theater. And I thought, oh, this is going to be really an important one. And as I was watching it, I did think like, wow, I love this. I love this musical. I'm so proud of it. We really put so much into it. And, you know, I don't think you can ever feel like you're 100% done. You could work on something forever. And I don't actually know if that's a good thing. You know, you have to stop at a certain point. But I feel like we put everything into it with the time that we had and the resources that we had.

And I'm so proud of the result. And I love it. And that's a really good feeling going into opening. There's no major choice. I'm like, oh, man, I wish this or I wish that. I feel like we got to finish our work, you know, for the most part. And again, like, I don't know if it's good to work on something forever. There's a moment where like, it probably turns back in on itself.

[30:28] Danya Taymor: I read this. I'll read this to you. I love poetry. And I brought a lot of poetry into the room to inspire the company and also the design team. But I read this Langston Hughes poem yesterday, I think, called *Final Curve*. And it's really short. It goes like this. When you turn the corner, and you run into yourself, then you have turned all the corners that are left. And I thought, like, oh, wow. Yeah. I think on *The Outsiders*, we turned all the corners that are left. And Jack Vertell, who's our creative consultant, incredible person of the theater, wrote this amazing book on musical theater, worked with August Wilson. He wrote me this incredible note last night after the show about finishing and the profundity of that and just how special this show is as it reaches its finish line. And so it is a special moment, and I'll hold that close as we move towards opening.

[31:30] Alan Seales: That's beautiful. That's really beautiful. And sorry, I'm just taking this in for a second, because it applies to so many things. You can always be done. I mean, you can always turn the corner, you find yourself again, and then you can keep going around the same path. But you got to be able to move on. And yeah, that's great. That's really, really good.

[31:57] Danya Taymor: I saw a friend of mine the other day, a couple days ago, and was like, I went, I walked by, she was walking by the stage door after the show was over. She was like, the audience stage door, stage door is insane. And the show hasn't even opened yet, again, as we're recording. And stage door is insane for this show. Is this what you expected? Is it resonating with like, it's resonating with this younger generation in a way that I didn't expect, honestly, because it is an older book.

[32:27] Danya Taymor: Well, I hope for this, like, for better, for worse. When I was directing this, I was like, put yourself in your 14-year-old mind's eye, and look at this through her eyes and do whatever she would think is cool and awesome. And I feel like that's part of why it's resonating with teenagers. I try to make it it's for everyone. And I think we all have our teenage self still inside of us. So I say that to include literally anyone because you could be 80 years old and still remember what it felt like to be 14. But that's really what I tried to do when I was making it. So when I hear the screams of the young people, it's really, really affirming. And I can't say like, I hoped for it, but I thought it might happen.

Because if I were that age, because if I were that age, watching this show, watching this company, I would lose my mind. And I want to see it over and over and over again. So I love that that's happening. I love that it's resonating with them. I love when we have student groups in, because they help us all, you know, like, why do we stop reacting to things that way? Why do we stop being effusive and screaming and crying out loud? It's because society tells us it's like, not proper. And so when I feel like we have a big student contingent or just teenager contingent in the audience, it gives everyone permission to feel. And I think that's also something so special about *The Outsiders* is because it appeals to people across age, race, gender, political ideology.

My hope is that like the audience of this show is one of the most mixed places on Broadway. And so you're sitting next to somebody that you think is nothing like you having the same emotional reaction to something or sometimes a different emotional reaction and that making you feel curious or together. So yeah, all that to say the stage door is crazy. It's awesome. I love it.

[34:29] Alan Seales: It's a little bit of something for everybody, depending on what you're into, what you notice, what you're there for, right? Because I mean, I cannot get over how simplistically impressive the set is. Like, there's, I don't think there's any automation, right?

[34:47] Danya Taymor: There's one tiny piece. It's just one of the cars. But other than that, no automation.

[34:52] Alan Seales: Right, right, right, right. Yeah. The car comes in and out from stage right. But yeah, it's all very simple elements that are crafted together in such a unique and creative way. And I'm not going to spoil anything about the rumble, but holy cow, man, just blew me away. And all of this, whether you're there for the set, or you're there for the lighting, or you're there for the score, or you're there for the book, the actual script, or you're there for the overall picture, the singing, the acting, it every single element, crafted together, and it just works. And what you said about all of you getting together and staying out of your lanes, this was something actually, I forget, I think it, somebody else on the creative team, when I was interviewing them, I forget who it was, said something very similar is that you would ask each other what it was needed.

Oh, I think it was actually the Coopermans because they were like, who needs more tires? And you know, everyone was like, more tires everywhere. But, but yeah, it really feels like such a collaborative effort. There's no single department that stands out over the rest. And I think that goes back to what you were saying, you captained this, this amazing ship, and you did a freaking phenomenal job. So thank you.

[36:04] Danya Taymor: Snap, snaps and applauses. But yes, time for a quick commercial break. Hang on a second.

[36:13] Alan Seales: Welcome back to the episode. I want to pivot over, you've mentioned *Pass Over* real quick, because that was the very first show to reopen on Broadway after, what was it 18 months of shutdown?

[36:22] Danya Taymor: I say, yeah, 18 months of darkness. So what was that experience like trying to bring back, literally trying to bring back Broadway full stop?

[36:33] Danya Taymor: It was incredible. And it was such a gift to do it with a group of collaborators that I've been working with for so long. I think that that's what made it possible. You know, John Michael Hill, Namir Smallwood, Gabriel Ebert, that cast, we had so much trust and so much history. I've been working on the play with Antoinette for five years. The design team was such a tight knit group as well. And so I think that that aspect of the shared history allowed us to do this.

[37:03] Danya Taymor: I am the author, producer, and co-host of the Broadway Podcast, which is brought to you by Zola Levitt Ministries.

[37:33] Danya Taymor: I am the author, producer, and co-host of the Broadway Podcast, which is brought to you by Zola Levitt Ministries.

[37:43] Danya Taymor: I am the author, producer, and co-host of the Broadway Podcast, which is brought to you by Zola Levitt Ministries.

[38:13] Danya Taymor: I am the author, producer, and co-host of the Broadway Podcast, which is brought to you by Zola Levitt Ministries.

[38:43] Danya Taymor: I am the author, producer, and co-host of the Broadway Podcast, which is brought to you by Zola Levitt Ministries.

[39:13] Danya Taymor: I am the author, producer, and co-host of the Broadway Podcast, which is brought to you by Zola Levitt Ministries.

[39:43] Danya Taymor: I am the author, producer, and co-host of the Broadway Podcast, which is brought to you by Zola Levitt Ministries.

[40:13] Danya Taymor: I am the author, producer, and co-host of the Broadway Podcast, which is brought to you by Zola Levitt Ministries.

[40:43] Danya Taymor: I am the author, producer, and co-host of the Broadway Podcast, which is brought to you by Zola Levitt Ministries.

[41:13] Danya Taymor: I am the author, producer, and co-host of the Broadway Podcast, which is brought to you by Zola Levitt Ministries.

[41:43] Danya Taymor: I am the author, producer, and co-host of the Broadway Podcast, which is brought to you by Zola Levitt Ministries.

[42:13] Danya Taymor: I am the author, producer, and co-host of the Broadway Podcast, which is brought to you by Zola Levitt Ministries.

[42:43] Danya Taymor: I am the author, producer, and co-host of the Broadway Podcast, which is brought to you by Zola Levitt Ministries.

[43:13] Danya Taymor: I am the author, producer, and co-host of the Broadway Podcast, which is brought to you by Zola Levitt Ministries.

[43:43] Danya Taymor: I am the author, producer, and co-host of the Broadway Podcast, which is brought to you by Zola Levitt Ministries.

[44:13] Danya Taymor: I am the author, producer, and co-host of the Broadway Podcast, which is brought to you by Zola Levitt Ministries.

[44:43] Danya Taymor: I am the author, producer, and co-host of the Broadway Podcast, which is brought to you by Zola Levitt Ministries.

[45:13] Danya Taymor: I am the author, producer, and co-host of the Broadway Podcast, which is brought to you by Zola Levitt Ministries.

[45:43] Danya Taymor: I am the author, producer, and co-host of the Broadway Podcast, which is brought to you by Zola Levitt Ministries.

[46:03] Danya Taymor: I am the author, producer, and co-host of the Broadway Podcast, which is brought to you by Zola Levitt Ministries.

[46:43] Danya Taymor: I am the author, producer, and co-host of the Broadway Podcast, which is brought to you by Zola Levitt Ministries.

[47:13] Danya Taymor: I am the author, producer, and co-host of the Broadway Podcast, which is brought to you by Zola Levitt Ministries.

[47:33] Danya Taymor: I am the author, producer, and co-host of the Broadway Podcast, which is brought to you by Zola Levitt Ministries.

[47:53] Danya Taymor: I am the author, producer, and co-host of the Broadway Podcast, which is brought to you by Zola Levitt Ministries.

[48:13] Danya Taymor: I am the author, producer, and co-host of the Broadway Podcast, which is brought to you by Zola Levitt Ministries.

[48:33] Danya Taymor: I am the author, producer, and co-host of the Broadway Podcast, which is brought to you by Zola Levitt Ministries.

[48:53] Danya Taymor: I am the author, producer, and co-host of the Broadway Podcast, which is brought to you by Zola Levitt Ministries.

[49:12] Danya Taymor: I am the author, producer, and co-host of the Broadway Podcast, which is brought to you by Zola Levitt Ministries.