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[0:00] Bess Wohl: Hi, I am Bess Wohl. Welcome to The Theatre Podcast with Alan Seales.

[0:12] Alan Seales: Hey, everyone. Welcome to The Theatre Podcast with Alan Seales. That's me. I'm Alan. I'm your host. And our guest is Bess Wohl, who is a writer, and she has truly a fascinating way of looking at the blank page. She currently has Liberation on Broadway, which only has a few days left as we are dropping this episode, so please get your tickets and get over to see it if you haven't already. It's phenomenal. But I think we've all had those moments where we feel like we're turning into our parents, and Bess actually leaned into that feeling to crack the code on a play she's been sitting on for over a decade. Yes, Liberation. We get a little bit into the woo-woo side of the creative process, including her literal vision of her character sitting in a doctor's office waiting room, just getting annoyed and tapping their toes while waiting for her to finally write their stories that, of course, were swirling around inside her head.

This is a really beautiful look at what happens when a writer decides to stop muscling the work and just kind of starts letting it flow and listening to what the characters have to say. We also talk about her time at Yale Drama and how she accidentally became a playwright while trying to be an actor, why she thinks writing is actually just an act of supreme confidence, or at least faking it until you make it. You know, get a little bit of swagger until you get the words down. This is just a smart and funny and honest conversation about the intersection of history and personal memory. Make sure you're following the podcast online on all the social platforms and whatnot. You can watch the video version of this episode on Patreon and Spotify. Now, everyone, please enjoy this episode with Bess Wohl. Here you go. One, two, three.

[1:52] Alan Seales: Our guest today is a Drama Desk and Outer Critics Circle Award-winning playwright and filmmaker. Her acclaimed body of work includes Small Mouth Sounds, Make Believe, American Hero, Continuity, Camp Siegfried, and the Tony Award-nominated play Grand Horizons. She also wrote and directed the feature film Baby Ruby. Now, her latest play, Liberation, is currently on Broadway, and everybody's talking about it. Bess Wohl, welcome to The Theatre Podcast.

[2:19] Bess Wohl: Thank you. Thank you for having me.

[2:21] Alan Seales: How is that? Okay, so everybody is talking about Liberation. Everyone is like, have you seen it? Have you seen it? Have you seen it? And I just want to go straight into this for a second because it's something that we desperately, I think, need to have on stage right now, which is A, an original work, and B, something historical. It's nice. It's a memory play, but it's still so freaking current and relevant, and that is both great and totally sad.

[2:49] Bess Wohl: Yes, yes. It is maybe more relevant than I wish it were. I didn't know when I wrote the play what climate the play would meet audiences in, right? Because I've been working on it for years and years, and no one can tell the future, not even me, unfortunately. So I didn't know how it would meet people, what the political landscape would be when it did meet people. And of course, we're in a really difficult time, but I do feel, or I hope I should say, that this play offers a space of community, healing, joy, laughter, questioning that people really need right now. So in spite of everything, it feels really good to be able to offer it in this moment.

[3:34] Alan Seales: Well, as we're recording the episode, this is before the holidays. We're December 25 in current presidential administration. Things are all over the place. And I mean, you started writing this years ago. You said, when actually did you start?

[3:50] Bess Wohl: I've been trying to figure out this play for an embarrassingly long amount of time.

[3:54] Alan Seales: Really?

[3:55] Bess Wohl: Like maybe over a decade. I'm just gonna be honest.

[3:58] Alan Seales: Wow.

[3:59] Bess Wohl: I know, I know, I know. It was a slow burn. There were a lot of false starts. There were a lot of plays shoved into drawers, metaphorical drawers, literal drawers, all the drawers. And I finally cracked it maybe about three years ago, really. And I ended up having an even more urgent feeling that I had to deliver this play to the world now with all of the things that have happened in recent years politically. But it took a long time and it took a lot of research and a lot of interviews and a lot of conversations with actors, conversations with people who lived through the historical moment of the play, digging into my own life and biography and feelings, talking to my mom, who's a huge part of the play. It was a real filling up with everything that I was feeling and wondering about both politically and personally. And then once I was really filled with that, the play kind of poured out of me.

[5:05] Alan Seales: Oh, so when you mean cracked it, it wasn't like scripts and refining it, like cracking it as in finding a producer. It was putting the story on paper?

[5:14] Bess Wohl: Yeah, it was figuring out how I wanted to tell the story. It was figuring out how to make something that felt truthful historically, but also felt urgent and current and contemporary. And I think the play travels back and forth in time between now and the 1970s. And I think once I figured out how that time travel worked in the play, I really understood how I wanted to tell the story. Because I didn't want to do something that was just a history lesson. I didn't want to do something that felt preachy. I didn't want to make some kind of feminist manifesto, wo-manifesto, as we say in the play. I wanted to make something that was really emotional, where people could come and laugh and cry and feel all their feelings. And it just took a while to figure out how to do that, especially when you're dealing with historical material that people are familiar with, by and large.

[6:08] Alan Seales: Right, right. And so for those who don't know or haven't seen it, it's set in the 70s, the women's liberation movement. And this is a memory play told by Susanna Flood, who is playing your mom, right? Talking to the audience and going back and forth between showing us what happened and telling us her own kind of commentary. And I think it's so well done and so well written. I mean, I can't say enough good things about it, but how much of this is out of your mom's mouth onto the page true? And how many liberties did you take with everything?

[6:38] Bess Wohl: It's a blend. It really is such a mix of fact and fiction and imagination and research and all the things, which all my plays really are. But this one in particular, because it's also so personal, I think it shows up even more. My mom worked at Ms. Magazine when I was a little kid, and that was part of the genesis of this play. And then I also did a lot of research with women from the period and talked to people and all of that. So I don't know that I could go through and parse moment by moment, but I know that there are lines that are literally things that my mom has said to me. And then there's things that are complete fabrications or flights of fancy or works of imagination. Like any play, really, there's the real and the imagined blended together.

[7:30] Alan Seales: Right. I mean, the characters, the individual people in the group, are those all individual real people? Or is one character a blend of multiple other real people?

[7:41] Bess Wohl: They're all composites. There's nobody where I would say this is a one-to-one. And even Susannah Flood's character, played so brilliantly by Susannah, with very similar hair to my hair, it must be said, it's not me. It's just a version of feelings that I've had and things that I've thought about that I wanted to put on stage. But none of it is autobiography or documentary in any way. And all of the women and Charlie on stage are blends and composites of people I talked to.

[8:20] Alan Seales: Well, how long did it take to research all of this? Because now if you're going through this whole group of people and all of this researching and distilling them down to, what is it? It's six characters plus Susannah as you, right? So seven?

[8:30] Bess Wohl: Yeah, seven and Charlie.

[8:33] Alan Seales: Yeah. What was that like for you to pull these buckets of thoughts and feelings and people together and put them into these distinctly different characters? Because everybody's got their own purpose and reason why they're there.

[8:48] Bess Wohl: It was really interesting because what happened as I did my research was certain lines or phrases or words that people had said would just stick in my head. And a lot of them made it into the play. And little biographical details would stick in my head or a certain story. But I didn't do dry research of the kind that you would do if you were writing a paper on the subject or something. It wasn't like, oh, I need to make a timeline and figure out all these exact details. In fact, it was more just a word or a phrase or a moment in conversation that I thought, okay, that's gold. And taking all these little nuggets together and then being able to weave them into characters. And the characters really emerged.

And then I had a sense of who the characters were from my conversations. But I was at a point in my life where I didn't have time to write the play yet because I was busy with other things. And I knew I had a writing retreat scheduled. And on that retreat, I was going to just write the play. It was a two-week retreat. So I had filled myself up with all of these little details. And I thought, okay, in these two weeks, I'm going to write the play. And I had this vision of the characters sitting in a little waiting room, almost like a doctor's office waiting room. And they were waiting there for me to clear the time. I know this sounds so woo-woo. I'm sorry, but I'm just telling you the truth. I had a vision of these characters sitting in a little waiting room waiting for me to clear the time to start the play.

And as the retreat got closer and closer, I thought to myself, okay, just don't leave. Don't leave the waiting room. Wait a little longer. And all of them, like Margie, sitting there smoking her cigarette, like, when are you going to get to me? I have a play to be in. And I could see them there. And I just was praying that they would stay. And then I got to the retreat. And as soon as I got to the retreat, I just wrote the whole play in about 10 days. And then, of course, spent years revising it. But it really was a sense that these people were waiting to have their stories told patiently. And I just needed them to stay until I had time to write their stories.

[11:05] Alan Seales: I really love that picture. You're right. They're waiting. I feel like this is sort of like an inside-out moment where they're all just kind of living rent-free in your head. And you just have to get them out so they can move on and you can move on and everything can become what it needs to be. I mean, can't you see them there, though, with their purses on their laps, their coats?

[11:29] Bess Wohl: I could really see them there. And they were starting to get irritated with me. I realize I sound a little off right now. But I am telling you, that is the creative process for me. It's not logical. It's intuitive. And this was my strong feeling. I knew they were there waiting for me. And then, beautifully, once I got to the retreat and I was ready to write, it was the strangest writing process I've ever had because it actually was just a feeling of listening as much as writing. They finally were liberated, to use that word, to tell their stories. And I was almost just transcribing what they were saying.

[12:13] Alan Seales: And were any substances involved? I mean...

[12:18] Bess Wohl: Oh, I know, I know, I know.

[12:20] Alan Seales: No, no judgment. I would recommend it. So I think that as a species, and I'm going to go woo-woo on you for a second. As a species, we are now hyper-intelligent. We are now over-analyzing every subconscious perception of pheromones and instinct and whatever we had as evolving animals. Now we're trying to over-analyze it. So when you're able to let all of that go and just be present and in the moment and feel what these people need to feel with you as a vessel, for lack of anything else, then we get this brilliant writing. You know what I mean?

[13:04] Bess Wohl: Thank you for saying that. I do feel that the older I get, the further I get along in my career, the more I feel that writing is this process of getting out of the way, actually, and letting something come through rather than a feeling of making something happen or muscling it. So I appreciate what you're saying because I think, obviously, there's so much work in terms of structure. And as I said, this woo-woo moment that I'm describing happened after years of research and conversations and reading every book about this time and talking to so many women who lived through this time and men and living this myself as a kid going to Ms. Magazine with my mom when she was working there. So it's not like it appears out of nowhere.

You've done all of this foundational work. But I also feel that once something's ready to come through the best version, and I don't always achieve this. Sometimes it's not like this at all. But the really delicious version is when it does feel like as the ego and writer and worker, you're sort of getting out of the way and letting something happen rather than making something happen.

[14:34] Alan Seales: And I don't have that skill. Maybe I do. I've never actually tried. But I am one to overanalyze everything. And I'm one of those people that might get unlocked at night where I'm by myself, things are a little bit quiet, all the distractions are going away. Sometimes I'll take a little five milligram edible and sometimes 10 depending on what kind of day I've had. And I'll sit there and just think about things. I'll be by myself. And I'll be able to all of a sudden sort of unlock the emotional state of who and what I'm thinking about. And I'm able to sort of zoom in instead of like I'm watching TV. My mind is normally in a place where I'm zoomed out, watching things happen and perceiving. And it's something that I've always been working on is like, how do I zoom in?

How do I be in the moment? How do I experience what I'm actually experiencing versus thinking about it and then determining what to do next? And yeah, so I don't know where I'm going with this. I'm just saying I feel like that's where you've kind of tapped into. So maybe if I did write, I don't know what I would write, but it's still one of those things where I have so much respect for your ability to just like let it pour out without thinking, is that right? Do I need to change it? Is that the right thing to say? Like it just letting it go. It's really not something that I can do all the time. So I don't want to overstate like I have this special ability. It can happen for a period of time if I'm ready.

And if, as I said, I've done the foundational work, but I do feel that writing is an act of confidence a lot of the time that it's funny. A lot of people I think think of confidence in terms of a sports player or an actor or someone who needs to perform, right? You need that confidence and that belief in yourself to perform in the moment and you absolutely do. But I also feel that as a writer, when you sit down in front of the page, there's a feeling of confidence that you have to somehow find or fake it if you don't really feel it or manifest it from somewhere that you can just keep moving through these words on the page and you're not going back and rethinking and doubting and questioning every second.

Because if you don't have that sort of, it's almost a feeling of bravado when you sit down with your words and the page, it's very hard to make progress and move forward. Even if you trick yourself into being confident, there is a strange kind of bravery or swagger that you need to feel for a moment when you're writing.

[17:18] Alan Seales: And so I think that's part of it too.

[17:21] Bess Wohl: Well, okay. So diving into that, your past, your history, if I researched correctly, grew up in Brooklyn, parents in very different professional worlds, right? What did your parents do?

[17:35] Bess Wohl: My dad still is a lawyer and my mom worked at Ms. when I was little and then she wrote fiction as I got older.

[17:47] Alan Seales: Don't go anywhere. We're going to take a quick commercial break.

[17:49] Alan Seales: All right, everyone. Now we're back. Okay. So she was writing. Okay. But you went to Harvard and then Yale School of Drama, both for acting.

[18:04] Bess Wohl: Yeah.

[18:05] Alan Seales: So you wanted to be an actor.

[18:07] Bess Wohl: I was an English major at Harvard and I did a lot of writing there. And then I thought, okay, I can't possibly do what my mom did. Similar to Susanna Flood in the play saying, I love my mom, but becoming my mom was kind of complicated, right? And then in the play, it's literalized because she actually does step into her mother's shoes and enact her mother's life from before she was born. So I was sort of literalizing my own questions of, am I becoming my mom? And at the age of 21, when I got out of college, I thought, okay, well, I don't want to follow my mom's exact path by becoming a writer. So I'll go to acting school. So I went to Yale Drama as an actor, but then inevitably, because this is how life works, I started writing while I was there, writing little plays for my classmates to be in and performing them in the cabaret. And then through going to acting school, I became a playwright.

[19:09] Alan Seales: Through going to acting school, became a playwright. When did that epiphany hit you? Or when did you accept your fate?

[19:18] Bess Wohl: It really was. It's destiny. I wrote a play for the cabaret for my classmates. And that was really, the cabaret at Yale is a student-run space where you can put anything up and designers will act and playwrights will do the lights. And it's all sort of a cross-pollination and chaos and really fun. And so I decided I, as an actor, want to try to play because there were so many things that I knew my classmates were capable of that I hadn't seen them do. So it was a little bit of a challenge to these actors that I loved, and they were my friends, and I respected them so much. And I had this impulse of, what if you played this kind of a part? Or what if you played that kind of a part? And so I wrote something for the cabaret, and then that ended up becoming something that we did in New York.

We did it at the Fringe Festival. We won Best Production at the Fringe Festival, which was extremely thrilling for us. And then we got a New York Times article out of it. I know, we were off to the races. It was really exciting. The Times article actually came out on the day of the massive New York blackout. There was a huge blackout. I think it was, was it 02? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It was like 01, 02. I had not moved here yet, but I had friends who had, yeah.

[20:45] Bess Wohl: Yeah, so this huge Times article was coming about our show in the Fringe, and we were so excited. And then there was a giant blackout, and none of the papers got printed. And no one got their papers. It was like four papers got printed. We ran to the newsstand in the morning and grabbed some of them. So it was kind of a little bit ill-fated, but that said, it was the thing that sort of launched me into a life of writing.

[21:16] Alan Seales: So did you end up graduating Yale Drama with the acting degree, and then you just started writing?

[21:22] Bess Wohl: Yeah, I graduated with an acting degree, and then I still pursued acting. I went out to LA. I had some small parts in movies and guest roles on TV shows. I was driving around Burbank, auditioning to be the wife in every sitcom imaginable. But I knew in my heart that writing was my path, really. I felt that every time I auditioned, I always thought there was probably a better actor for the job. I would think, would I cast me in this? Maybe not. And so I think that was a sign that maybe this wasn't the thing I was meant to do. And then I moved back to New York and joined a playwrights group at a theater called Ars Nova, which is a great space for emerging writers. Jenny Steingart, love her.

[22:21] Bess Wohl: Yeah, Jenny Steingart, Jason Egan, Emily Schultz, just an amazing team over there. And they accepted me into their play. It's called Play Group. It's a new writers group. And that was where I wrote my first sort of, wasn't my absolute first play in New York, but it was the first play that really felt like it broke through called Small Mouth Sounds. And they produced it at Ars Nova, and that really set me on a professional path in a bigger way.

[22:57] Alan Seales: I was going to bring up Small Mouth Sounds because it's like this masterclass in silence. It's a play where the characters are prohibited from speaking. So how do you write a play without words?

[23:13] Bess Wohl: Great question. I think a lot of my artistic impulses come from the same place that a prank comes from. This feeling of something subversive or disruptive that I want to see if I can pull off, that motivates me. There's something rebellious in my attitude towards writing. They're not huge rebellions, but to me, they feel huge. There are these subversive acts. And so in Small Mouth Sounds, the idea that really generated that play was this thought that I would do a long speech, actually, because the play begins with a speech from a guru or teacher. It's set at a silent retreat, and you see the participants in this silent retreat, but you never really see the guru. He or she or they is offstage as a voice.

And I wanted to do a big long speech from the guru and then have the end of the speech be, now we're going to observe silence. So that it was a dare sort of at the end of the first page of the play. The rest is silence, as Shakespeare would say. And I like that challenge. And then I sort of took the play from there. And the play was a lot about behavior and how people act when they have this obstacle of not being able to talk to each other. So there's, in classic theater terms, objective and obstacle, the objective to connect and the obstacle that we can't talk. And that turned out to be a really fruitful combination.

[25:04] Alan Seales: Wow. And it got, I mean, it was so popular. It just kind of blew up. And you're speaking my language though, of like doing it to be rebellious or doing it because no one else thinks you can. That's what I love to do. I'm like, well, nobody's done that. It seems easy enough. I guess I'll try. And I've built so many things now, like physically and in the digital space that I was like, well, nobody else has done this. I'm just going to give it a shot. And it ends up being pretty good.

[25:33] Bess Wohl: Yeah. Yeah. Totally. I love that. It doesn't always work, right? Sometimes you're like, oh, no one's done this. And there's a good reason.

[25:40] Alan Seales: It's too hard.

[25:43] Bess Wohl: But I think liberation comes from that same place in a way, a play about feminism. Well, that sounds like a bummer. And yet I wanted to attempt a version of it that felt alive and interesting and not cheesy and not preachy and not like a joke and not just like this sad struggle about these women who took everything I had seen or not everything, but many things I had seen felt like they fell into these different traps. And it was like, can I dance between the raindrops here? Can I avoid the traps of this material? Can I put seven women on stage? Can I put six women on stage fully naked? Like all of these things that are feel to me a little bit rebellious. That's what motivates me.

[26:43] Alan Seales: Well, see, there's a theme. I was going to bring up the theme of what you're doing because I think like even Baby Ruby deals with some sort of uncomfortable that the feature film deals with some uncomfortable material as well. And you mentioned the nudity in Liberation, which everyone is like, what the? And then it totally settles in and makes sense. Everybody told me a story like Act Two comes up, spoiler, beginning of Act Two, everyone's naked on stage. Somebody, some dude just yelled out, titties. Did you hear that?

[27:19] Bess Wohl: Oh my God. I was there that night, but I tend to lurk in the very back of the theater. And I think this guy was sort of down in front. So I heard about it later and was like, oh God. But that is one of the only inappropriate reactions that we've had to the scene, thankfully.

[27:35] Alan Seales: Could be a lot worse.

[27:36] Bess Wohl: People have been really respectful, by and large. So we got through that moment. And that was also very early in our process. That was during previews at Roundabout. I think that was before audiences understood what the play was and knew what they were coming to see.

[27:58] Alan Seales: Well, so my original question was like, you've got this sort of theme, you stick to a pattern of diving into the uncomfortable and you sort of covered it a little bit earlier of like, you want to do things because nobody else has done them or try things out or whatnot. Where does that specifically come from? And is there a line that's too far?

[28:17] Bess Wohl: Mm-mm. Great question. Where does that come from? Feels like I could get too far into my therapy by telling you all about it. But I will say that I think in my regular life, my outside life, I tend to be a pretty affable person, play by the rules. I went to Harvard, I did everything that I was supposed to do, easy to get along with, all of these qualities that are not bad qualities. But I think inside of all of that, I have this rebellious streak that I save for my writing. And again, it's not so outrageous. It's just to me, it feels subtly subversive. And that's where I put that. That's where I put my sort of feeling of bravery or confidence or questioning. I just put it all in there. And then in the rest of my life, I show up on time to pick the kids up at school and I do what I'm supposed to. And in my writing, I let myself push against the limits a little bit more, maybe. That's my self-analysis.

[29:50] Alan Seales: There's a lot of... Oh, there's so much we can dissect in this. And you're right. This is a lot of therapy. Because yeah, this goes back to what I said of living my experience through a window of what I think people will want to hear or see. And then yeah, so being a woman in a male-dominated society and a male-dominated industry. And yeah, there is a bit of, I have to give them what they want in order to get what I want. And like I said, you were speaking my language earlier, I totally get the need. And I acknowledge I am a cis white male and have a totally different experience that I will never, I can never have your experience. But, well, there's no but. And sorry, I lost my train of thought trying to be politically correct.

Oh my gosh, shit. Yeah, because there's the subversive side, the need to express yourself, to do things that you don't necessarily know will be accepted by everyone, but you have to be accepted by everyone in order to have people want to work with you again. Like it's really frustrating. And just kind of, yeah, it's tiring. It's really tiring. And especially now as I'm getting older, I'm just like, you know what, I need to do less of that and just let it be where it be.

[31:17] Bess Wohl: Yeah, I think there's always, in theater in particular, I'm always walking that line between giving the audience what they want and pushing them maybe into a place that's a little uncomfortable or surprising. And I'm not a writer who is looking to torture the audience in some way. It's not theater of cruelty. I'm not subversive in that way. I want them to have a good night at the theater. I feel like that's a contract that I make with them. They paid for their ticket. I want them to enjoy the experience and come out feeling filled with something meaningful. At the same time, I'm working from my own objectives and my own interests and considerations. And I'm thinking about how can I try something that I've never tried before?

How can I push the envelope a little? How can I experiment? So I'm holding both things. I'm trying to find a sweet spot where it feels interesting and experimental and fresh to me. And it also lives within this contract I've made with the audience, which is you will enjoy yourself tonight. You will have a good time. I think that's important. I think offering that is not a small thing. I mean, when you think of what we're asking of people when they come to the theater, which is not only their money, but also their time, which in a way to me is even more precious than money, I'm asking you for two hours and 20 minutes of your precious time on this earth. And I do not take that contract lightly. That's a big deal to share that time with someone. We don't have a lot of time. So I really care what I give them, and I want it to be rewarding for them.

[33:05] Alan Seales: What, for Liberation specifically, what kind of feedback have you heard that others have received at stage doors, or that you've had yourself, or listened to the questions at talkbacks and whatnot? How is this being perceived from your side of the world?

[33:22] Bess Wohl: It's so interesting. There have been a lot of surprises, actually. I knew when I was writing this play that the people who had lived through this time period, especially women, but also men, would connect with the material on some level. And that's been true. People have been coming and saying, you put my life on that stage. How did you know what it was like? I recognized my friends, or my wife, or my sisters, all of that, right? There was a real recognition from people who are now in their 80s plus, women even in their 90s who've come to the show and said, I see myself. And that part is amazing. And Susannah Flood does such a brilliant job every night of talking to them and bringing them in, because it is such a present and alive connection with the audience.

When you go to this play, it's not exactly audience interaction, but it's not not. I mean, the audience is invited to respond in a vocal way. So that I knew. But the surprise has been, honestly, young women coming and really connecting to the play in a deep way, coming out crying, wanting to call their moms, wanting to come back with their moms. That I did not expect. And for a lot of them, it's new information this time period. It's all new. And then the other thing that is fully unexpected, and I'm not just saying this is true, is men. I did not know how men would receive this play. I did not take anything for granted in terms of them caring about this subject matter. And the fact that men have come and felt so deeply about the play, I mean, you included, and that they've even come in groups like men come with each other, is really, really fascinating to me and really moving and also really hopeful.

[35:20] Alan Seales: Don't go anywhere. We're going to take a quick commercial break.

[35:24] Alan Seales: All right, everyone, now we're back. You've accomplished what so many people try to do by writing in the first place is to get others to experience something that you want to express or that we won't have the opportunity to ever experience. Or I forget what part of the brain this actually is scientifically, but there's something that can only experience empathy and experience going through something by actually doing it, imagining it just isn't enough. And then storytelling actually puts us there. It exercises the same response as if we were going through it. So by seeing amazing productions like this that are going through a tumultuous time in history or an experience with a character, people saying they can relate to it or they see themselves in it, it's allowing them to relive themselves in a visceral way or experience things viscerally that they would never otherwise have the chance to do.

[36:23] Bess Wohl: I love that scientific fact. I never knew that, but it feels right that once you've gone through something, even in an imaginary way, you have a deeper understanding of it. And I also think, and I think this is what's so spectacular about actors, and I have to say our ensemble is so incredible, amazing. And one thing that I think about a lot in terms of what they do is they go through these heart-wrenching things every night, eight shows a week, and their body doesn't know that it's not real. And so I just feel all praise and gratitude to them for what they're doing. And I'm sort of mystified by how they do it because they really are pouring their hearts out on that stage every night and putting themselves through an emotional workout, a physical workout, a spiritual workout. It's an incredible thing to witness.

[37:19] Alan Seales: Wow. Was there any pushback on the top of Act Two at all? People are like, we can't do this. This is Broadway.

[37:25] Bess Wohl: That's a great question. This is Broadway. I like how you said Broadway. That makes it extra fancy.

[37:34] Alan Seales: That means it's fancy.

[37:39] Bess Wohl: Yes, exactly. I think by the time we transferred, because we started off-Broadway, that's Broadway, that's not off-Broadway. By the time we transferred, people sort of accepted what the play was and knew that was a fundamental part of the play. I think there were conversations before we did the play off-Broadway at the Roundabout Theatre not trying to get rid of that part of the play, but just asking how we were going to do it and what actors would be open to doing it. Again, I can't say enough about this ensemble because every single person who appears naked on that stage has gone through a really deep process of conversation with themselves about what they're comfortable with, conversation with us, conversation with our intimacy coordinator, and finding a path to play the scene, which they are so brilliant in, and in a way, I think, is now sort of the heartbeat of the play.

That scene feels so fundamental and so important. But a lot of performers wouldn't go there, and I respect that too. It's a really personal decision, and I feel really proud of our process around it and what our director, Whitney White, who's phenomenal, phenomenal, she was able to accomplish something so beautiful with them by building trust and approaching it with a lot of care.

[39:03] Alan Seales: Yeah. I mean, it is so well done. The whole show is so well done. Just to set it in the gym, a single set, I can't say enough good things about it. Everybody needs to go see it. Anyway, so now as we wind down, we're going to play Plot in 60 Seconds, which is a fun little game. I have a list of 17 popular musicals. You're going to give me a random number that you decide, one through 17. I'm going to tell you what show you picked from my list, and then you give me the plot to that musical in 60 seconds or less. If you don't know it, make it up because it's fun.

[39:52] Bess Wohl: Okay.

[39:53] Alan Seales: One through 17.

[39:55] Bess Wohl: Nine.

[39:56] Alan Seales: Nine is Rent. Go.

[39:59] Bess Wohl: Rent. Oh my gosh. There's a group of people who can't pay the rent and they're not going to pay the rent. There's a landlord who wants the rent. There's a woman who dances at a joint and they light a candle. There's a guy named Roger and a guy named something else. He's writing one great song. I'm doing a terrible job. Then they all go have a big dinner together and sing la vie boheme. Somebody has AIDS. Then you think that Mimi, who's the woman at the hotbox club, she dances at the Kit Kat club. No, that's Cabaret. She dances somewhere. And she dies and then she comes back to life, which is amazing.

[40:58] Alan Seales: Yay.

[40:59] Bess Wohl: Three, two, one.

[41:02] Alan Seales: How'd I do?

[41:03] Bess Wohl: I don't know if I'd invest in that, but it was pretty good.

[41:08] Alan Seales: That's a great game.

[41:10] Bess Wohl: That was fun. Okay. Now the three standard closing questions I wrap up with. You actually did say something about this a little bit earlier. I'll see if you give the same answer though, but simply what motivates you?

[41:21] Bess Wohl: Oh, gosh. What motivates me, I think, is what I said, which is a feeling of wanting to do something that I've never done before, something a little subversive, something a little bit surprising. And also in addition to that, wanting to connect with people. As cheesy as it sounds, there's nothing more beautiful than putting something out into the world and feeling that people connect with it and are moved by it and see the world a little bit the way you do maybe, or see it differently, but want to talk about it. I really feel that the world can be a very lonely place and writing plays, not always, but can in the best version, make me feel a little less lonely. It's like this thing I care about so deeply, oh my gosh, maybe someone else cares about it too.

[42:16] Alan Seales: That's your scientific backing there again, herd mentality evolution, a feeling of belonging and finding our people. It's survival.

[42:26] Bess Wohl: Yes, oh gosh, I know, but herd mentality, I don't know if that sounds very good.

[42:32] Alan Seales: Sorry, sorry, not herd mentality in a bad way. I just mean safety in numbers.

[42:36] Bess Wohl: Yeah, it's connected.

[42:37] Alan Seales: You're finding people, you're sharing yourself and being accepted by people who want to be with you and understand you.

[42:43] Bess Wohl: Yeah, and the more personal it is sometimes, the more universal it is. I thought when I was writing Liberation, is anyone going to care about these things that I care about? I really wondered that, and I thought maybe the answer would be no, and then it turned out to be the opposite, which has been an amazing feeling.

[43:00] Alan Seales: All right, what advice would you give to your younger self and younger people listening now starting out down a similar path?

[43:06] Bess Wohl: Ooh, ooh, what advice? I should have an answer at my fingertips for this question, because it's not the first time that I've been asked this question, but I always struggle with it because I'm trying to think of a piece of advice that I actually would have taken at that time or a piece of advice that doesn't feel trite or cliche, but I think one thing I wondered about a lot when I was younger was this question of finding your voice. What is my voice? I thought that the voice was this thing out there that you could find, and once you found it, everything would sort of flow from there. I've learned, or for myself, my path has just been to write and not worry about your voice. Let other people worry about what your voice is.

Just worry about the things that you want to explore and the stories you want to tell, and don't think necessarily that it's about your voice. It's about the voice of your characters, and it's about the voice of the work. I guess that's all a way of saying get out of the way and just write, and you'll find something through the process of writing.

[44:17] Alan Seales: I love that. All right, so last question. This is the hardest one, and you can give any answer except Liberation. If you can only see one show for the rest of your life, but you could see it as many times as you want, what would you see?

[44:31] Bess Wohl: Oh, wow, and it doesn't have to be a play that's running now?

[44:35] Alan Seales: Nope, anything. Anything you want, any show. Somebody's even said The Office TV show.

[44:43] Bess Wohl: And it's the only thing I'm allowed to see for the rest of my life?

[44:48] Bess Wohl: Oh, you're making it so hard for me. Oh my gosh, that is a really, really, really, really difficult question. Okay, I've got a weird one. There's a play called The Hour We Knew Nothing of Each Other.

[45:05] Alan Seales: Written by?

[45:06] Bess Wohl: Hanke.

[45:07] Alan Seales: Okay, okay.

[45:09] Bess Wohl: And the whole play is silent. Are you Googling it right now?

[45:13] Alan Seales: I am. The Hour We Knew Nothing of Each Other.

[45:16] Bess Wohl: Okay, so it's The Hour We Knew Nothing of Each Other, and this whole play is just people crossing a town square. There is no talking. You just watch people cross a town square for the whole play, but it's scripted. And it's amazing because it's like watching life, you know? And I think I am answering this way because I would never get tired of that. It's such a meditation on observation and behavior, and it doesn't have language in it. It's just this sort of fascinating observational experience, and I think I could watch that over and over and over again and never get bored or tired. I think I could just, I just love that play, and it inspired Small Mouth Sounds in a lot of ways, and it's inspired me throughout because it's very experimental and it's very strange, but it's also very beautiful.

And I was in a production of it at Williamstown, just a student production when I was sort of an intern at Williamstown back in the day, and I just always loved it. I just thought it was a brilliant, brilliant, brilliant piece. So I would watch that over and over for the rest of my life.

[46:38] Alan Seales: That was the inspiration for the opening scene of Beauty and the Beast by Disney, but they had decided to add words.

[46:43] Bess Wohl: Exactly.

[46:44] Alan Seales: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[46:45] Bess Wohl: And songs.

[46:46] Alan Seales: And songs, and you know.

[46:48] Bess Wohl: Townspeople.

[46:49] Alan Seales: Animation, magic.

[46:51] Bess Wohl: Exactly. It would be amazing if that was also inspired by this same play, and I would love that if that were the case.

[47:00] Alan Seales: So many Disney animated movies are inspired by some pretty weird and dark stories sometimes.

[47:06] Bess Wohl: Oh, totally.

[47:06] Alan Seales: The original Aladdin is dark, and I mean, a lot of this old stuff. Anyway, where can we connect with you online and find you on social media?

[47:15] Bess Wohl: Well, I'm on Instagram, so I'm not hiding, and definitely easy to connect with there. I'm not on anything else. Well, no, I'm on Facebook, but I don't really check it. And then I'm not on TikTok or what are the other things? LinkedIn. I'm not on any of that stuff.

[47:32] Alan Seales: Blue Sky, Substack. As a writer, look into Substack. A lot of writers are really enjoying Substack now.

[47:39] Bess Wohl: I know. People keep telling me about Substack, but I really feel that I need to focus on actually writing plays. If I had a Substack, I would never write another play. Even Instagram. I mean, I can repost things that people have posted, but don't ask me to make a post because I will spend a full day trying to figure out what I should say in this post. I take the insta out of Instagram. It should be called all day. I just waste so much time. So I'm actually trying to limit the other ways that I express myself so that I can funnel my self-expression into making more plays. Because otherwise, I'll just sit online all day and never do anything else.

[48:24] Alan Seales: I think that is beautiful. And yeah, I'm more of an outgoing poster than an incoming consumer when it comes to social media for the same reason.

[48:33] Bess Wohl: Yeah. Anyway, but I am on threads and Instagram and TikTok and Facebook. I have presence there. I am posting. Comment, leave a rating, leave a review wherever you're listening. Thanks to Jukebox the Ghost for the intro and outro music. And Bess, thank you so much.

[48:43] Bess Wohl: Thank you so much for this lovely conversation. You are such a joy to talk to.

[48:55] Alan Seales: Thank you. Thank you for having me. It's really fun to get to talk to you.