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[0:00] Jeryl Brunner: From Shakespeare to Schwartz, from Fawcy to Alvin Ellie, from San Tom to Burelis, from McNally to Faye. It happened to the greats, it still happens every day. When lightning strikes is the moment you know when lightning strikes, where your mentor goes you can stand in Chalureka, do whatever you'd like. You'll never forget the moments when lightning strikes.

[0:26] Jeryl Brunner: Hi, this is Jeryl Brunner, and you're listening to When Lightning Strikes, where we talk about the heart-thumping, tingly mic drop moment that led you to becoming an artist. By the time she was a student at Bennington College, Elizabeth Swados was already a force, considered an exceptional talent as a writer, composer, and director. In 1978, when she was in her twenties, Elizabeth Swados' musical Runaways, about teenage runaways, began at the Public Theater, moved to Broadway, and earned her four Tony nominations. Elizabeth Swados had a gift for introducing new forms into the mainstream. She wrote in a variety of musical genres, including world, folk, rap, and experimental music. She delved into topics not usually seen in musical theater, like racism, murder, and mental illness.

She used Greek, Latin, and Navajo to spotlight ancient Trojan women. She wrote about genocide in the midst of the Salvadorian civil war. In 2016, Elizabeth Swados passed away after battling esophageal cancer. This past May, “The Liz Swados Project,” a tribute album devoted to Swados and her legacy, debuted on Ghostlight Records. The album includes 20 songs from her work and is performed by some of the theater's most inspiring voices working today. This Tuesday, November 24th at 8 p.m., Ghostlight Records and Joe's Pub will present a free virtual celebration of the Liz Swados Project. The event will feature several artists who appear on the album who will perform and offer personal insights into Liz's work.

My guests today are two visionaries behind the Liz Swados Project. Roz Lichter is one of the executive producers on the album and was also Liz's longtime partner. Also with us is singer, composer, and musician Shaina Taub, who was a student of Liz at New York University, and a collaborator and also performs on the album. Welcome to you both.

[2:59] Roz Lichter: Thank you.

[3:00] Shaina Taub: Thank you.

[3:00] Roz Lichter: It's a pleasure to be here.

[3:02] Jeryl Brunner: Yes. I'm so thrilled to have you both here today. Also to talk about Liz and her legacy and the Liz Swados Project. Let's delve into what inspired the Liz Swados Project. What inspired you? How did it come together?

[3:24] Roz Lichter: Well, I think Liz inspired us post-mortem. Liz has always inspired many people. And I think the fact that there wasn't an album of many of her songs that people had not heard inspired her, the performers, and her Liz Kids, of which Shaina is one, to actually get together with Ghostlight Records to assemble an amazing group of performers who were either Liz Kids or influenced by Liz's work to do this album. And that was the main inspiration for it. So many of her songs had been unknown, and yet her influence was widespread.

[4:22] Jeryl Brunner: Yes, yes. And how did it all come about? You know, was it right after, was it in 2016 or more recently that, and how did you choose the material? Because when I think about her canon of work, yeah, you had a plethora to whittle it down to 20 songs.

[4:46] Roz Lichter: Well, Chris Kukul, our music director and Liz's music director for 20 years, and Lauren Fitzgerald with the help of, you know, others like Shaina, chose the songs, and we started thinking about it about a year and a half ago, a couple years after Liz passed away. And it was noticeable from the hundreds of letters that I received after Liz died as to how many people far away and down the block were influenced by her music and her way of teaching.

[5:26] Jeryl Brunner: Do you want to talk about, Shaina, your involvement, how you got involved?

[5:33] Shaina Taub: Sure. I mean, in 2017, the year after Liz passed, there was an incredible Lincoln Center American Songbook concert. Is that right, Roz? Was it 2017 that that happened?

[5:45] Roz Lichter: Right, yes.

[5:48] Shaina Taub: And they had always wanted to do something even while Liz was alive, right?

[5:53] Roz Lichter: Right, yes.

[5:54] Shaina Taub: And they were so in, and the previous summer, I think, and correct me, always correct me if I'm getting this wrong, Roz, but the previous summer in 2016, they did an encore on Off-Center at City Center, did a pretty amazing production of her show Runaways.

[6:09] Roz Lichter: Right.

[6:09] Shaina Taub: And so there was this sort of, again, that had also, I believe, been in the works for a long time. So that was this huge, exhilarating event in New York of Runaways, and then the following spring of this Lincoln Center American Songbook show that like the album had many of Liz's kids and disciples singing selections from her prolific songbook. And it was such a special night. The live recording of Michael Friedman singing one of her songs is from that evening. And I remember I, you know, I wasn't directly as centrally involved in the execution and producing of the album like Chris and Lauren and Roz, but I remember that night, sort of this feeling of, oh my gosh, we have to record this. This can't just be an ephemeral evening. We've gotta, you know, these songs have gotta be recorded for posterity.

[7:11] Roz Lichter: And I love that you're...

[7:11] Shaina Taub: Yeah, yeah, and I love that you're taking the songs and having a free concert at Joe's Pub. Do you, can you talk about that?

[7:21] Roz Lichter: A virtual concert. Your collaboration with Joe's Pub.

[7:26] Shaina Taub: Well, I have a long collaboration with Joe's Pub.

[7:30] Roz Lichter: Yeah.

[7:31] Shaina Taub: And the pandemic, unfortunately, you know, impacted the show that was going to premiere at Joe's Pub. Why we're doing it is again to widen the audience for the album and also to reintroduce some of the singers on the album, the performance artists, and to the public theater generally was a special home for Liz. She probably did about 10 shows there when Joe Papp was alive. And in fact, Liz is buried near Joe Papp's grave in Staten Island, where my family is also buried. And I think the combination is that it's totally appropriate for Joe's Pub to honor Liz and to honor the album. So we're very excited about that.

[8:31] Jeryl Brunner: Yeah, I want to talk to you both also about when you first connected, when you each first connected with Liz at her extraordinary memorial at La Mama. Gary Trudeau talked about his connection with Liz and he said after a lifetime of coloring outside the lines, if any child of God should be allowed to break the rules and attend her own memorial, it should be Liz. He would certainly make the most of it, darting about in red sneakers, re-blocking everything, exhorting, cajoling, inspiring, annoying, adding bird crawls, knocking each of us out of our comfort zones into versions of ourselves we didn't know existed, and we'd all be amazed. I feel that embodies so much of who Liz was. So I want to talk about when you first connected with her, each of you, and what your first impressions of her were.

[9:46] Shaina Taub: I'll let Shaina take that one first.

[9:49] Shaina Taub: I just always defer to you as...

[9:51] Shaina Taub: Yeah. I mean, I came to New York for school when I was 16 for college, and it was the first year that Liz directed and created with a group of NYU students her reality show, which is now a 15-year project that was her brainchild of this orientation show that is performed every fall for the incoming class at New York University that was sort of promotes this wellness exchange hotline that is offered to NYU students, you know, who are dealing with mental health issues and all other kinds of problems. And so this show is designed to welcome the students to New York and also touches on, I mean, everything from STDs to drugs to dangers of the city, of the things mental health, physical health, I mean, all anything you can imagine, all wrapped up into this hour-long musical sketch comedy review written and created by Liz and the NYU kids.

And this was the first fall that it was happening. And so literally I moved here from Vermont, and within a few hours of unpacking my bags in my dorm room, I went to see the reality show, which was Liz's show. And it just, my life changed in that moment. I didn't understand that you could create your own work. Where I came from, it was like, oh, you know, we did The Music Man, we did Fiddler on the Roof, we did shows, you know, plays were something you did, the musicals that were fully formed and came down from the North Pole, and then you did them. And to see this thing, and when it was explained to me that the students had written this and made this, I wasn't writing yet. I was just a performer.

And I remember Preston Martin being in that, Chad Kristafarin, Jordan was Robinson, Emma Tanbound Fine, and I was just so blown away. Justin Levine was in that show. And then I was like, who's responsible for this? And I heard started hearing this name, Liz Swados, and I was like, I just have to find her.

[11:52] Shaina Taub: And then later that year, I saw her incredible production done with students at NYU as well of the Dybboc. And my mind was similarly blown. I never heard music like that. I'd never heard sounds like that. That's her adaptation of the musical adaptation of the Dybby. And so I she was sort of this mythic offstage character to me of just these mind-blowing theater experiences I was having of something I'd never seen, and kept hearing the person responsible was this woman, Liz Swados. And I was like, I've gotta find her. But I didn't, I I don't know. I didn't know where to find her or what to do. And then my sophomore year, I kind of thought, maybe I want to write, I'm only performing. Maybe I should try and take some class.

And I signed up for a playwriting class. And I went to it for one day. And I was like, I hate this. I don't want to write a play. I don't think that's for me. What do I do? And I was talking late at night in my dorm room with my friend who lived a few floors below me, Sam Pinkleton. Oh no, I didn't realize that. That's fantastic. Well, Kismet. Yeah. No, well, just you wait. I have more surprises and say, and Sam was like, you should come take the quit playwriting practicum and come take this elective called Performance Composition Adaptation with Liz Swados. And I was like, oh, she wait, she teaches a class. And he was like, yes. And I was like, what's performance composition adaptation? He was like, it doesn't matter.

It's just come to the class. And I was like, okay. And so then the next day I walked into the class and I was nervous. And we were all sitting in a circle. And Liz was sitting there with like her harem pants and her wild red hair and her prices. And I was like, this is her. I just felt like I had like seen the Buddha. I was just kind of like, oh my God. We sat in a circle and we were going around saying something we wanted to adapt. And I realized that, and she was like, it could be a way someone walks. It could be something you heard yesterday. Like adaptation could mean anything. And that was my first day in the class. And also sitting in that circle was Matt Garing, who is now my husband.

Like then the next week in the class, I wrote my I shared my first original song. It just like that class kind of began my life in every single way. Um so I just think of my life sort of like before and after Liz, because now my entire life is writing music, my whole identity as an artist. I never thought that being a writer, songwriter was like just something I could be until I really saw it modeled for me in Liz. And I was like, oh wow, you can, you can make your own work. That's so extraordinary. And I love how then it evolved that you collaborated her with her. You music directed for her. So now at the end of that class, like the last day of the class was in May, and it was a presentation.

And then I got home from class later that day. And in my inbox, she I'm so sorry, I'm I'm not sick with the sickness, but I'm a little allergies today. Um, she there was an email in my inbox from Liz that was like, I'd love for you to music direct the world premiere of my new oratorio atonement at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in October. And I was like, I was like, oh my gosh, I've never music directed anything, I've never conducted anything, I've never had a professional job as a anything like this. And I but right, and so I was like, but immediately I responded and just said yes. And I was 18 years old, and just like now I'm 32. And looking back, and the fact that she was willing to trust a young person with her masterpiece, a young person who was not ready yet, like the quote you were saying from her memorial of pushing out of the comfort zone.

Like I wasn't ready for that job. But Liz pushed me off the cliff before I was ready, and in falling, it made me ready. And that job sort of empowered me to think, oh, I can do this. No, I can do this. But it takes that kind of radical faith and belief in young artists and young people in general that Liz had that is so rare. And I I now, yeah, just look back and wonder that she gave me that opportunity at age 18. And I'm not unique. She gave that kind of opportunity to many, many young people, the Liz kids that that's Ross. Liz kids. And and for people who don't know Sam Pingleton, he he ended up, I'll let you tell it. You know, that's I love that part of the story too that you were both in the same dorm, right?

[16:21] Roz Lichter: For people don't know, Sam is a very successful um choreographer. Yes, and he went on, he also directed and choreographed the that revival of runaways I was talking about at Sydney Center in 2013. So that was a beautiful full circle moment. Yeah, and I remember being at the Tony Awards. He and he talked about Elizabeth Swados as his mentor. Yeah.

[16:45] Shaina Taub: So let's Roz, can you talk about your connect first connection with Liz?

[16:51] Roz Lichter: Liz is always personal to me. Uh I uh I met Liz because her attorney had passed away uh age appropriately, and uh and she was looking for an uh lawyer and our mutual colleague Ella Novak, who was casting director at the public when she when Liz was uh uh did many of her shows recommended me. Ellen was a client of mine, and Liz came to the office. I was had an office on Lower Fifth Avenue, and I was not familiar with her work. Uh most of my uh exposure to musical theater was uh Sondheim and then the traditional pajama game and music man and uh basically I love musicals but I wasn't aware of her work and I did do a little research and it it said that she was an avant-garde artist downtown I went oh my god she's gonna be like Philip Glass and I'm not gonna understand a thing about her work and it's not gonna be melodic and it's oh my god so I met her and of course her work is totally melodic and gorgeous and rich and we were sitting in the office and uh of course this is personal but uh I might as well uh declare it the uh Liz told me later that as soon as she met me not only did she want to be a client uh but she wanted to be my lover.

So uh that I didn't know and I was totally uh unaware of of that and we started working together by going to California to meet with some film executives so that she could pitch some of the projects they wanted her to do and for projects that she wanted to do. And our r personal relationship uh began there a few months after I started representing her. And uh it was uh an amazing education for me both on a personal level as well as a professional uh musical theater level, I loved her music, and I couldn't believe that when I thought of a downtown artist, I only thought of somebody who didn't make melodic songs. But the way she made melodic songs and the harmonies that she did, I I was just blown away.

It took me to a new dimension in my love of musical theater, a much better dimension in terms of the not only the quality, but the variation. And personal story about a bird lament. I had never heard of bird lament, which Liz was very famous for in creating the sound of birds, either within her repertoire or as an exercise that she did at the uh at BAM at Brooklyn Academy of Music. But I was at her apartment at Loft, we used to call it on Mercer Street in New York. And uh she did have a bird, and it was a cockatoo, and it was that big white bird. I was making a phone call, and Liz was near me, and the bird just bit me on my chin and then hung on my chin, and I was mortified, scared, and I went, oh my god, I didn't I didn't expect that.

I expect I expected that the music might be an issue, but not the birds hanging from my chin, and I still 30 years later still have the scar from the bird. Although later on we got we bought some birds and we had flying macaws and and and the birds hated us, and so we put them in a sanctuary, but in Vermont. And uh she then at any rate that time was doing a show called Red Sneaks about drugs in the community. And uh based were inspired by the Red Shoes. And I went to see it. I didn't realize that I went to see it. This was before we got together personally. I went to see it every night, and I guess I was falling in love as well.

[21:44] Shaina Taub: What was it about that piece I met?

[21:46] Roz Lichter: Uh the red sneaks.

[21:48] Shaina Taub: I love just the title.

[21:50] Roz Lichter: You had me at the title.

[21:51] Shaina Taub: Uh it's nothing romantic.

[21:56] Roz Lichter: In fact, it was about you know drugs and the lore of addiction and the lore of drugs.

[22:03] Shaina Taub: And uh very simple stage.

[22:06] Roz Lichter: And um the actually one of the the kids that was in it uh is uh a television was a television star, is a television star whose name escapes me for the moment, but he started out with Liz when he was very young.

[22:27] Shaina Taub: Well, that's that's the thing is that her music hits you in a very visceral way.

[22:32] Roz Lichter: Um I love that she crosses all that she's she crosses all genres.

[22:39] Shaina Taub: You know, when I think about how she wrote Runaways, I mean um Lynn Manuel Miranda talks about how his parents on one of their on I think on their honeymoon they went to see the runaways, and that he he credits her as a great visionary, just as a rap artist.

[22:58] Roz Lichter: I mean, she was writing rap before people were actually defining rap as rap.

[23:05] Shaina Taub: I mean she wrote ra rap master Raleigh, right?

[23:08] Roz Lichter: And she but and I think about just the the different kinds of songs and genres that she worked in and created.

[23:21] Shaina Taub: Yeah.

[23:21] Roz Lichter: Yeah.

[23:22] Shaina Taub: I mean, as Gary Trudar said, she wrote outside the lines, but she but Gary also said at the memorial, which I advise people to, it's still up on YouTube. It's sort of the way to get to know Liz, uh, that she would change, and and Shaina probably could talk to this better, speak to this better than myself, the way she changed in the middle of a show uh in rehearsal.

[23:46] Roz Lichter: Uh uh, let's change the whole thing.

[23:48] Shaina Taub: No, no.

[23:49] Roz Lichter: We're we're getting rid of this, and uh let's change uh the whole thing. Is that true, Shaina, in terms of your experience?

[23:58] Shaina Taub: Yeah, she wasn't precious about keeping the same thing. Yeah, it was always what's gonna be the best thing for the show, and she was willing, yeah, to sort of throw it out and try something new.

[24:11] Roz Lichter: Which some people are afraid to do.

[24:13] Shaina Taub: Yeah.

[24:15] Roz Lichter: What do you do about her lightning strikes moment? What led her to becoming an artist? What was it that inspired her?

[24:27] Shaina Taub: Liz. I have no idea. I think it was she was born an artist, and I think that it just as people learn to speak when they're three years old or two years old, uh she learned uh as her other language, music. So I I don't know if they you know, her parents might have inspired her. That that's one analysis, but I think uh really she was self-inspired. I think her life was a musical, a musicality to all of her work, whether it be novels or nonfiction or children's books, there is a synchronization with her kind of inner, some people might call it turmoil. I call it life-giving, uh planting all kinds of seeds in a garden that had both, you know, roses and daffodils and lilacs and every kind of uh flower, musical flower that you can imagine. So I just think it was in her. I think she always thought music and musical and uh you know, went on to play the guitar and went on to uh play the piano, and she was dyslexic, so she could not read music.

[25:53] Shaina Taub: That's extraordinary, and yet she was able to write all this beautiful music. How did she and I love that she gave as you say the Liz kids and so many people opportunities and trust, like you were saying, Shane, that that she let you direct music direct this piece of hers so early on in your life.

[26:19] Shaina Taub: Yeah. Yeah, and it really showed me like going through preparing a music direct that oratorial, you know, she gave me the her the score. And that idea of being outside the lines is very literal because she was outside the bar lines. Like it would be these scores, these pages of sheet music, sort of without bar lines, without measure lines. Um so there would be notes on the page and the lyrics and chord markings. But as sort of a student of music theory growing up in piano lessons, I was like, there are no bar lines. Like how do I like where does what there aren't this doesn't divide nicely into four or four or even six, like I just like couldn't find and it kind of made me realize that she disregarded purposefully joyfully disregarded that in a way of this this measure has seven beats and that one has four and this one has five, and that that is adventurous and original and unique, and it sort of helped me realize as a budding songwriter at the time, like, yeah, you don't have to stay inside those formulas and those lines. And if a song goes in a completely different direction or changes feels twice through, or has an odd bar here and there or everywhere, that's a feature, not a bug, you know.

[27:42] Roz Lichter: Right, right. What do you miss most about her?

[27:52] Roz Lichter: Well, I miss I miss the music every day. I miss uh I miss snuggling with Liz every day and kidding with her and uh dancing with her. I miss arguing with her about silly things and uh and every time we would finish our argument, which never really exceeded more than a couple of minutes uh we would do a Lindy um and and uh I miss her brain I miss her heart so there's nothing that I don't miss and uh I have uh said goodnight to her every night since she's passed away so it's not like I talk to her uh but she's inside me every day that's it sounds a little mystical and it is a little too mystical for me but uh uh we it's not exactly like having a conversation as a matter of fact at night during you know the early evening we hardly talked we just our eyes spoke to each other when we were out for dinner we were not one of those couples that used our iPhones um uh and and separated we just hardly talked but we had our eyes talking to each other so I'm you know I miss that it's beautiful it's beautiful.

[28:04] Shaina Taub: I feel like I know every day it's so I'm my husband was also a Liz student and worked for Liz as an assistant for many years and while I we were both just sort of the first half of our 20s really was like working with and for Liz in various capacities, so many projects and jobs and shows. And so yeah, every I feel like hardly a day goes by where we're not we're not like singing a little piece of a Liz song or especially a reality show song kind of like the house. We're always yeah, Liz is never never far from our our life because she it just feels like she just brought us together and also helped us just sort of I don't know what the right word is, just I'm using like birth metaphors, but they don't feel right.

I don't know to sort of like push both of us to be artists we didn't think we could be, and I really feel like our whole life is sort of defined by that that time, that formative time and our for me, like my teen, really my teens of like 16 to 19, and then into my early 20s that she formed.

[30:37] Shaina Taub: Yeah. And I just I miss like the process with her, like those summers. I then I went on to be a part of the that reality show project I was talking about for several years, and it was always in the summer from like June to August. So I think I was doing it like 2008, 2009, 2010, and there was just nothing better uh than being in rehearsal every day with her and then leaving rehearsal to go write new material and staying up late writing new material and the thrill of knowing that you could bring in in the next morning to present it to Liz and see what she thought like that those summers, I just I just missed that gift of being able to know that whatever you were writing, you were gonna get to sort of share with her.

[31:21] Roz Lichter: Yeah, you know, I think about oh, did you want to add something, Raz?

[31:25] Roz Lichter: Yeah, I I think uh I think we we uh pushed each other to be the best we could in a in a intimate relationship. And uh one of our core values was that if we had an argument or disagreement, like many couples do, we made sure that we did not go to sleep without resolving what we were arguing about. The the uh the cute thing was uh if I did something wrong and I was embarrassed or apologetic, uh Liz would forget about it within about 60 seconds. She would go, she would look up from her writing pad and say, of course I forgive you. What what are we talking about? And then by the way, on writing pad, Liz wrote her everything out in notebooks. She did not use a computer.

[32:27] Roz Lichter: Uh in fact, the first computer we bought for her for email, I think was called Helen. It might have been a Fisher Price toy, so that people could do emails. And then uh finally when she she got a computer, uh it was mostly for emails, and then her assistants who would try transcribe her writing uh to uh you know, word program or so forth, uh, I finally got her to do backup or get her assistants to do backups of of what was uh on the computer, but she rarely wrote novels or music or anything on a computer.

[33:11] Shaina Taub: Gosh, and I think about how prolific she was. I mean, she wrote children's books and novels and memoirs, but it was not it was all by hand on this yellow pad.

[33:14] Roz Lichter: It was all by hand and um it was and she had a sort of a little chicken little writing. So uh her cartoons, of which there are hundreds or thousands of cartoons. I sometimes have to get a translation from somebody who could read her chicken uh writing uh better than than me. But all of those or most of those cartoons, as we remember, is at the Lincoln Center Performing Arts Library. It's online. That's where Liz wanted to donate her uh archive. So if anybody can't get to the library, which is an exciting library to go to, I'm not sure that it's open fully during the pandemic, but most of her stuff is online.

[34:16] Shaina Taub: And also with the Liz Swados project, I kind of get over just the the plethora of artists you have. I mean, I'm a um do you want to talk about how you chose that, how you went about choosing the performers to be on the album?

[34:34] Roz Lichter: I mean, it's just that's not that's not my skill set. I just approved all the singers that Chris wanted, and uh I was just uh I trusted his taste. I I knew many of the singers, and and so that was easy for some of the singers I didn't know. I just trusted Chris's uh taste and what he wanted to explore around Liz's music, and he also let the artists explore their interpretations and adaptations of Liz's music, which is I think so important on this album. Uh they're not straightaway songs in the sense that uh mimicking the way they were exposed in musical theater over the years when Liz was alive, their interpretations and adaptations.

[35:26] Roz Lichter: And uh yeah, I think I think it's quite exciting that Joe Stubb is doing this, but I also think it's exciting for people to download the music because it's something you will treasure because it's some of the best singers in Liz fashion that are working today or not working, and because of the pandemic.

[35:57] Jeryl Brunner: Do you want to mention some of them?

[35:59] Roz Lichter: The many artists who are. Well, Shaina Taub.

[36:02] Shaina Taub: Yes, uh, Allie Stoker, the Banksons, uh Grace McLean, Stephanie Shu, Stephanie Shu, Sophia Ann Caruso, Starbuzzby, right, David Danu, Amber Gray, yeah, uh Michael Jackson, yeah.

[36:22] Roz Lichter: Who uh yeah, I mean, a lot of them uh people I didn't know uh because in the last year of Liz's life I was busy uh doing well mostly with Liz, and so uh a lot of the new singers or people I'd been around I was not aware of, so it's so exciting to me to go to the recording studio and hear their interpretations of Liz's work.

[36:55] Shaina Taub: Do you want to talk about sort of being in the rehearsal room with her and what that experience was like?

[37:01] Roz Lichter: She was really into precision and you know, really saying the words and chewing your consonants and hitting the words and making sure the words could be understood. And it I kind of took that for granted because she was one of the first people I worked with, but it's just this value of really communicating the language in this like radical deep way.

[37:24] Shaina Taub: And it's now when I'm sometimes behind an audition table, like I always know when a Liz kid comes in. I'm like, what I'm trying to just feel it, you know. It's like um, and punctuality was really important to her. I just remember like you wouldn't everyone got there early because there was when she kicked off rehearsal, which was usually bringing the group into a circle to do these incredible vocal warmups that I used to think maybe she got from some ancient culture, but then I found out was just these languages that she made up herself, like Lord of the Rings or something, and these incredible vocal warmups. You didn't want to be late because it was sort of, I mean, I didn't grow up going to church or anything, but there was sort of a sacred ritual feeling about it that to be late was to sort of disrespect the sacredness of the rehearsal room.

[38:13] Roz Lichter: And it wasn't lofty or pretentious in the way that could sound. Like it was just like we respect each other in the process by being here on time, and like punctuality is a spiritual thing, and that's something I've definitely Yeah, that's the perfect way of saying it, Shaina punctuality is a spiritual thing and a respect for the art in the room and your fellow colleagues. I mean, it's just amazing way of saying that.

[38:39] Shaina Taub: And I love yeah, and I think about you know, now there's so many ways to express yourself through YouTube or a vlog or a podcast but I think about when Liz was starting she just um there wasn't there weren't the mediums we have now and yet she was unstoppable yeah and and that she I tell me if I'm wrong that she wasn't dictated by what was commercial she didn't care right that that um and yet her pieces were so relatable so beautiful that it didn't it didn't matter that she you know that she didn't look at you know how they would perform you know to the maximum I think she I think I think that's true I think there was a little bit of a mixed message from her family particularly her father that Broadway was the only thing that was important and he pushed a lot on that and that was very disorienting in the house in our home because Bob Swados was pushing Broadway and Liz was doing work that could be on Broadway but her motivation was not Broadway it was really what was coming out of her and what she wanted to do she understood that I don't want to uh not comment on this.

[40:18] Roz Lichter: She understood that maybe a lot of her work was not commercial. And she understood some of the sacrifices she might be making um and that she wasn't pleasing everybody. But at the same time, there was this mixed feeling of, you know, how do I, you know, please my father, who uh, you know, was keen on Broadway, was keen on status, was keen on a lot of things, but in Liz's own way, of course, she achieved enormous status. And uh in a way, now post her death, uh, you know, I wanna say sometimes she's like Saint Elizabeth because people are coming out in all ways of praising her. And uh, you know, it's quite exciting, but at the same time, uh she was, as I said, in at the funeral, uh it wasn't like she was ahead of her time, she was on Liz time, and people always say that she was ahead of her time.

She was on Liz time. It might have been ahead of her time, but it was what she was thinking and feeling and wanting to do uh was it it wasn't like second nature, it was her nature. She had to create what she wanted to create, and one of the things that we're working on now is the adaptation of her novel Walking the Dog, which was the last novel that she wrote.

[41:53] Roz Lichter: And uh we had a reading of it at Barnes and Noble with Meryl Streep and uh Sheila Evans and several other people after Liz passed away. And I'm now uh executive producing with Cynthia Mort, who is a writer, uh showrunner in California, very well-known one, uh, to see if we can get it into a television series. And because Liz's time, in a way, is now the time of interesting streaming programming of interesting work that people are seeing that is not just cut and dry uh cardboard. I I think about the Trojan Woman, you know, how that wasn't the piece, it's so powerful. It just was at La Mama not too long ago, right? The anniversary of it, and how it's not even in English, and this was post me too, and how it resonates all these years later.

[43:01] Shaina Taub: If even uh you know, and I think about how her voice is so necessary, you know, especially Low.

[43:14] Roz Lichter: Yeah, um, yeah, yeah.

[43:18] Shaina Taub: Oh, and for people who might not know, she uh Liz collaborated with Meryl Streep very early in Meryl Streep's career, right?

[43:27] Roz Lichter: At the public theater.

[43:30] Shaina Taub: Yes, Meryl's been great. Meryl Meryl was a uh is a sponsor of the album and has been just really terrific when asked about Liz. Just to really encourage people to listen to this album and find I don't know how long the runtime is, it's under an hour, I think. Listen to it start to finish. That's the way that I listen to it. And you know, honestly, I wasn't I beyond my own song, I wasn't deeply involved with the curation and creation of the album. So I feel like I can just stand on the outside and unequivocally praise it and gush about it because they just really Chris Kukel did such a gorgeous job that the spirit of Liz shines through because the spirit of it each individual artist covering the song that they cover shines through. You feel the individuality of every performer on that record.

[44:23] Roz Lichter: And that's beyond beyond Liz's personal genius of her own work, which absolutely should be lauded and recognized for all time. She brought out the best in others as a teacher. In in that combination, I always say is just what makes Liz so rare. A lot of people have artistic genius. A lot of people have genius as a teacher and mentor and sort of creative midwife for for the next generation. But Liz was both, and in equal measure. It wasn't the teaching and the mentoring that didn't that wasn't sort of on the side for her. That was who she was. It was part of it. And for those two things to go hand in hand, it's just so special.

[45:09] Shaina Taub: Can you talk about the song that you that you sing that you yeah, that I do is from that oratorio Atonement that I music directed when I was 18 at the cathedral for Liz. And it's a setting of a Mary Oliver poem called Wild Geese. And it just out of all the songs and Atonement, even though there's so many memorable ones, that one has really stayed with me over the years. And it was important to me to have that that piece represented on the album. I just wanted to say that I think Liz and I pushed each other to have the best relationship we could. Obviously, this is not Polly Anish kind of thing. We had the day-to-day relationship issues and love, but I think we each pushed each other to be the best we could in a relationship.

[46:04] Roz Lichter: It's wonderful. What do you think she would say about the album?

[46:08] Shaina Taub: I think she would love it.

[46:10] Roz Lichter: Yeah.

[46:10] Shaina Taub: I think she would love it. I think she would say, I've achieved something. I have all these little babies running around doing beautiful work, uh, of which they have been kind enough to do some of my work. And I think she'd be very excited about it.

[46:32] Roz Lichter: Yeah, I I love to think of her as a champion that was for others that that was embedded within her.

[46:39] Shaina Taub: Yeah.

[46:40] Roz Lichter: That's yeah.

[46:42] Jeryl Brunner: Well, thank you both so much for sharing. I uh it's such a pleasure.

[46:48] Shaina Taub: Oh, thank you.

[46:50] Roz Lichter: Thank you.

[46:51] Jeryl Brunner: Have a wonderful day.

[46:52] Shaina Taub: It happened too much.

[46:53] Roz Lichter: Thank you.

[46:57] Jeryl Brunner: It's the moment you know. The theme song was written by Tom McGovern. This episode was edited by Kyle Moore, and the talent was booked by Anna Strauss. Lightning strides.