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[0:00] ♪ Musical number: "When Lightning Strikes" — performed by Unknown artist ♪

[0:25] Jeryl Brunner: Hi, this is Jeryl Brunner, and you're listening to When Lightning Strikes, when we talk about the tingly mic drop moments that led you to becoming an artist.

[0:38] Miriam Pultro: Miriam Pultro is an actor, singer, composer, lyricist, musician, director, filmmaker, and theater artist who wrote and stars in Glass Town, which played at the Tank in New York City.

[0:54] Miriam Pultro: The rock musical spotlights the Brontë siblings as a rock band.

[1:00] Jeryl Brunner: Welcome, Miriam.

[1:02] Miriam Pultro: Thank you. Thank you for having me.

[1:04] Jeryl Brunner: This is so intriguing that you created Glass Town, which I know is based on the beautiful stories, right? That Charlotte Brontë wrote. What inspired you to write Glass Town?

[1:22] Miriam Pultro: I have said many times to people that the root of the idea came from finding out that they had a brother. Because I knew that there were three sisters, and I had read quite a bit of their work, and I'm one of three sisters and a brother. And we improvised musicals together as children, and I was writing stories before my memory really kicked in. And I found out they had a brother named Branwell. And I was like, oh, they're like a band. Like the girls are the singers, and he's their guitarist. They roped him into their stuff so that they could get their stuff made. So they could create what they actually wanted to.

[2:00] Jeryl Brunner: How did it go from, oh, how cool is this to let me create this requiem, you know, this epic requiem? How did it come to be?

[2:14] Miriam Pultro: I submitted to a couple of writing cohorts right before the pandemic started, including one that extended their deadline into the pandemic because it was literally that week that was their deadline. And I didn't get into any of them. So several months later, mid-pandemic, sitting alone, I was like, I still think it's a really good idea, but I don't know what it is yet. I don't know if it's a play with music. And I just started writing songs. I had acquired a biography of Charlotte that I love very much, and I had read a lot of their poetry and their short stories, their Glass Town stuff, and I just started writing until it had a clearer form.

[3:00] Jeryl Brunner: What was the book that you read that you loved about the biography? What was it called?

[3:07] Miriam Pultro: I think she's written two, and I think the one I read is called Charlotte Brontë: A Fiery Heart. It's by a woman named Claire Harmon. And for people who don't know, I was so fascinated that, you know, prior to Jane Eyre, Charlotte wrote these stories, right? To, I'm sure you could tell it much better than I. Was it because I read that her father couldn't tell bedtime stories because he wasn't well, and that she created this world?

[3:40] Jeryl Brunner: Oh, it's this fantastical world. I've heard it sort of described as something akin to almost Game of Thrones that she, you know, wrote all about this other universe, practically, right? With intrigue and fantasy, but I'll let you tell it.

[3:58] Miriam Pultro: I've never heard that, but they did have a single father. Their mother died shortly after Anne was born, and they were raised by their dad, who by all accounts seems to have been a little aloof, maybe. But very permissive, gave them, they were very well educated, actually. The girls in particular, Charlotte in particular, she spoke three languages, she taught abroad. And he was not in any way dismissive of their creative efforts. But as children, they were raised in the parsonage; they lived there their whole lives. It was just the four of them, and they collectively created a series of stories and poems about this world named Glasstown, and they drew maps and they had adventures; they all had individual characters.

There were wars and rebellions, and it was all very British colonial imagery for sure. But the tone of all the stories is different, and the interest that they took in the world is very different. Like Charlotte's is much more fantastical and fairies and magic, and Branwell's is very like cheeky pirate adventures. And yeah, like even collaborating on this world, they developed their own voices.

[5:16] Jeryl Brunner: So, how would you describe your Glass Town? Your musical.

[5:22] Miriam Pultro: I've been the short version we've been using is it's a rock requiem. Yeah. They all dealt with death very early. With the death of their mother, the death of their two older sisters. They were raised and lived most of their lives very, very isolated. Emily in particular was not a social person. They all died very young. And yet, for a brief moment before they all passed away, they achieved success. They were famous in their lifetimes; they were incredibly famous in their lifetimes. And three of them died within a year of each other, and then Charlotte was alone again for about six years after that. Just her and her dad. And that story, while so tragic, is kind of strangely magical. There's this perverse excitement that we get about stories like this, where it's so unbearably tragic.

You can't, I can't fathom an existence like that. Like to lose five siblings and a mother and an aunt, and to be heartbroken on top of all of that and dealing with that. I wrote a song about it in the show too, because I was like kind of accusing myself, like I'm attracted to this story because it's sad. But these are real people's lives. And yet their will and their drive to create and their push to get published, and they never stopped. They never stopped. They wrote from the time they were children all the way through the time that they died, and it was just like their life's dream, all of them for all of them. And you think about women back then and what a miracle, right? I mean, was it a miracle to be published? You know, and as a woman, you know, how many women back then got that opportunity, and then to really be successful, you know, to have the stories resonate, you know, and continue to resonate.

[7:28] Miriam Pultro: Yeah, I think about that constantly. I mean, women didn't have the right to vote. They were considered citizens, and here they were, you know, sharing their voice very powerfully and beautifully.

[7:44] Jeryl Brunner: You describe it as a rock requiem. Can you talk about that, the story, the arc of the play, of the piece?

[7:53] Miriam Pultro: I wrote songs from their perspective as opposed to about their work, like drawing inspiration from their work. That's how I got to know them. I was more interested in who they were as artists and people than in their classic works. For example, Jane Eyre's been adapted a million times. But the reason Charlotte wrote Jane Eyre, it seems a lot of her work is permeated by what was going on in her personal life, where she fell in love with a married man and couldn't be with him. And so Jane Eyre plays to me like wish fulfillment. So that theme plays out in the show, but it'll come out in a song called "Villain Victim," where she's singing about like, I wish you wanted me, which is a universal sentiment. I wanted there to be lyrics that were clearly from her perspective, from their perspectives, but that if you didn't know anything about what was going on in the Brontë's lives, the song might still mean something to you. The lyrics might still have some meaning.

[8:51] Jeryl Brunner: And I loaded that at the very, very beginning, before the show even begins, or before you all start, say that some of the characters come out and they're drawing. Can you talk about that? And there's, I love all the collages of writing on the wall, you know, in your set design and that choice.

[9:15] Miriam Pultro: Well, Daniela, our director, decided she wanted, we're leaning into the concert conceit. So it's not like the curtain comes down and everything goes dark before the show starts. We're on an open stage. We're playing as a band. It's like the band would come out on stage and do a sound check and all that. So in order to play at the literary aspect, she has we have paper everywhere, we have books that we tore up and papered the walls with, and we all use a little bit of a prop of some kind of whether it's a notebook or a piece of paper in lieu of a letter. And the cast has just had fun with like changing that up every night and what they're actually doing on stage for the few minutes before the show starts.

[9:58] Jeryl Brunner: Yeah, that's so great. I like because it really brings you in. And what do you love about the Tank? I mean, it's such a phenomenal space. It's a place where you can go and take risks more than ever, especially in New York, where it's so hard to find a theater where you can workshop your piece, you know, with the where you have opportunities. What appealed to you about the Tank?

[10:27] Miriam Pultro: They were already very supportive of me personally and my work, which was very nice. I didn't develop a relationship with them until the pandemic. And I was living alone, and I got involved by producing a couple of online concerts, and then we workshopped Glass Town on their same stage a year ago and filmed it. It's like a slightly shorter version. There's been some tweaks and stuff since. And we live streamed it. Not live streamed, it was pre-recorded, but like streamed it through the Tank's platform in March of 2021. And when the time came and like the piece was getting closer to done, and I didn't really know what to do with it yet because I don't have the money to produce it. We went back to the Tank because they are the only space, as far as I know in the city, that is able to run their business, their organization in a way that allows artists to produce without a rental fee, which is always the most giant cost of doing anything, is finding a space.

[11:29] Jeryl Brunner: Let's talk about your lightning strikes moment.

[11:32] Miriam Pultro: I think I was just always creative. My mom is a singer, my dad was a dancer. They met doing theater in the 70s, and while they weren't heavily involved in the arts by the time they had kids, there was always music of some kind in the house. And I again I had siblings, so I was singing with my siblings. It's how I learned how to sing harmony. And I was writing stories and songs, like from the time I could pick up a pen, basically. I don't know that it ever occurred to me that I wasn't an artist.

[12:03] Jeryl Brunner: Where, and this was in Philadelphia where you grew up. Yeah, do you remember some of those early songs or compositions that you wrote?

[12:14] Miriam Pultro: They were not songs individually, but I distinctly remember a whole improvised musical that we did with our stuffed animals. Something to do with orphans in the mountains. It was very heavily Sound of Music inspired. And we recorded it on a cassette tape. It was like an hour and a half long. Like we just went and made up the story as we went, and everybody got songs, and then there were solos and there were like exciting songs. There was stuff. And I'm sure my mom still has that tape somewhere.

[12:25] Jeryl Brunner: Orphans in the mountains.

[12:48] Miriam Pultro: Something like that.

[12:50] Jeryl Brunner: What do you remember any of the songs?

[12:53] Miriam Pultro: No, but I not at all. But I have a very clear memory of sitting in the bedroom on the floor doing it. And I would have been six or seven, maybe. And I just, I very, I have very clear memory of that day that we did that.

[13:09] Jeryl Brunner: So how did you go from, yeah, the stuffed animal musical to performing professionally?

[13:19] Miriam Pultro: I grew up singing in church, as a lot of folks do. Got involved in children's theater when I was about 11 or 12. We started doing like the local recreational center plays, which my mom had done when she was a kid, which is how we knew about them. They had been going on that long. I just always, I desperately wanted to perform. Desperately wanted to perform. I wanted solos, I wanted to be a star. And moved into doing like high school theater and then went to college to study music specifically, not theater. I didn't know there were theater programs, but I did study music for a while. And my college experience was very frustrating, but I picked up a whole lot of music theory. I had been writing music seriously at that point by the time I was like 15.

I just sat down with the piano and started writing things. I would lead worship at my dad's church on the piano, like just me and the piano. And then I was in a rock band at college. I was in a screamo band. And I was the only one who didn't want the band to break up when the time came.

[14:25] Miriam Pultro: I was like, no, this is my dream.

[14:27] Jeryl Brunner: What are you doing to me?

[14:28] Jeryl Brunner: Where did you go to college?

[14:30] Miriam Pultro: I went to a small Christian school outside Philly that is now called Cairn University.

[14:37] Jeryl Brunner: And it was you said a Screamo band?

[14:40] Miriam Pultro: Mm-hmm.

[14:41] Jeryl Brunner: Tell me about that.

[14:45] Miriam Pultro: Um like CBGB screaming?

[14:49] Jeryl Brunner: No.

[14:50] Miriam Pultro: Sure, but not really.

[14:52] Miriam Pultro: So there's a popular genre of music called emo. There's a lot of that woven into Glasstown's music for sure, because early 2000s, it's very like introspective, emotional lyrics, big vocals, powerful harmonies.

[15:09] Miriam Pultro: Um, but screamo indicates there's probably also some screaming involved in the vocals. Um, which is the band that I was in, and I became the screamer, like I would sing, and also I was I had a pretty good scream, so I was a screamer.

[15:27] Jeryl Brunner: I love that.

[15:29] Miriam Pultro: Like Nirvana, kind of scream.

[15:31] Jeryl Brunner: Yeah, like gritty.

[15:32] Miriam Pultro: Yeah. It's a choice, it's like just a way to use your voice differently.

[15:35] Jeryl Brunner: I love that. I just funny, I just finished uh Dave Grohl's memoir.

[15:41] Miriam Pultro: So good.

[15:45] Jeryl Brunner: About that time of his life. Um and uh and how did you learn how to play piano?

[15:52] Miriam Pultro: I had a few lessons as a kid because we did have a piano in the house. Um, neither of my parents really play an instrument. I think my mom used to be able to play some guitar, but neither of my parents uh was as musical as I then became. But we had a few few piano lessons as kids, and then again, you talk to almost any, I feel like musician and composer. They they it it all starts around the time you hit puberty. Like 11, 12, 13 is where your your taste starts to solidify and like your interests start to solidify, and that's when I started writing music. But I didn't have like a lot of piano skill. However, because my mom sang in the church worship band, we had these little guitar charts where it was just the lyrics and the name of the chord above, and I just I just started like using my ear to figure out what that chord meant.

Like, what is an A? I knew what the note A was, I figured out triads, I figured out mine, or I figured out augment. I just I taught myself music theory without knowing what I was doing because I had a good ear. And then I started writing.

[16:53] Jeryl Brunner: That's extraordinary. So what was one of the first professional shows you did or performances you did?

[17:03] Miriam Pultro: The first professional gig that I booked out of New York. Actually, not the first first, but the first one I was living in New York was um uh public television has all these groups. They do like Celtic woman and you know, like world music appeals to a broad audience, they do like big concerts once a year, whatever.

[17:25] Jeryl Brunner: Yes.

[17:27] Miriam Pultro: They put together an Italian-American singing group called Belaria, and I auditioned for that, and I was one of five people they hired for it, and we filmed a PBS special on the Venetian stage in Las Vegas, and there was supposed to be a tour, never materialized. I was really glad to be let off the hook. But it was a boost. It was my first like big professional gig and it made me feel good.

[17:49] Jeryl Brunner: Was this right after college that you came to New York? What did you do right after college?

[17:55] Miriam Pultro: I was married for two years. And when I divorced I lived with friends in Baltimore for a year and then I moved to New York.

[18:04] Jeryl Brunner: Is there something you wish you could ask the Bronte siblings or Charlotte?

[18:11] Miriam Pultro: I'm crying now.

[18:12] Jeryl Brunner: Oh gosh I hope I didn't make you cry.

[18:15] Miriam Pultro: No, it just I feel very tied to her now.

[18:18] Miriam Pultro: Yeah that's beautiful to Charlotte in particular but I just want to know that she was happy.

[18:23] Jeryl Brunner: Yeah.

[18:24] Miriam Pultro: That she got some joy before she passed.

[18:27] Jeryl Brunner: Yes.

[18:29] Miriam Pultro: She had such a hard life and a complicated life.

[18:34] Jeryl Brunner: Yeah.

[18:35] Miriam Pultro: And gave us so much.

[18:38] Jeryl Brunner: Yes.

[18:39] Miriam Pultro: And how beautiful that you're continuing you know her legacy like the show that I've written is a lot about creation and isolation and legacy and I'm perpetuating I'm a part of it now because I'm I'm still speaking about it you know and I love that I mean here it's you're doing everything I mean not only did you create you um glass towel you know from from scratch right that you're you're also starring it. What inspired you to also yeah to be so integral ill in your all the pieces of it?

[19:26] Miriam Pultro: I know you're not directing it, obviously.

[19:28] Jeryl Brunner: Thank God.

[19:31] Miriam Pultro: Thank God, not my skill set. No credit again to my director, Daniela Cagiano, because the piece would not exist without her. And her vision for it is what made it real because I had an idea and I was like, I can write music, but I can only see outward. I have no idea what this looks like or what the structure of it is. And because of her coming alongside me, it developed. Um, I forget your question now.

[20:01] Jeryl Brunner: Sorry.

[20:02] Jeryl Brunner: What's uh why am I such a big part of it?

[20:05] Miriam Pultro: Yeah, or what inspired you to put yourself in it? Why was that important for you to play Charlotte?

[20:12] Miriam Pultro: I have been writing my own work for over a decade. Like um starting when I was a kid writing music, it was because I was a singer-songwriter, I wrote for the band that I was in. It was always anything that I created was essentially with myself in mind to perform. Um, I started getting into like indie filmmaking in my 20s because I wasn't finding the opportunities that I wanted. I just got tired of waiting for people to hire me. I was like, I can do this. And then um when I lived in Australia, I was focused more on my music, so I was writing a lot, I was doing a lot of gigs. There were a lot of a lot of cool bars with pianos there, so I was like, Great, can I come play a gig? Um, and really developed my musicianship again in that regard.

And then when I came back to New York, I was kind of peripherally involved in theater. I really wasn't sure if I wanted to get back into it. It was still kind of focused on film, and then I had this idea for Glasstown, and it was always always gonna, I was always gonna be involved in some regard. Um, and I'm the oldest, Charlotte was the oldest. Um, she was she was the driving force between behind them getting published to begin with, like because she wanted that for herself, she guided them all, and then she became the default curator of their legacy because she outlived them. So I felt like well, I'm I'm Charlotte in this instance. I'm the one who's creating the piece, I'm the oldest, I'm the I am the oldest in this cast, too. Um and I'm the person who has seen it from beginning to end. Like I don't know.

[21:44] Jeryl Brunner: And what about the casting? What can you talk about how you chose?

[21:52] Miriam Pultro: Oh, yes, I can talented musicians. I can voices Eddie Marshall and Emma Clay before I had written a note of music. Um, Eddie is a guitarist, singer-songwriter, jazz pop band leader that I knew from a production that he played guitar for before the pandemic. And um, during the pandemic, we just kind of like connected as mates online kind of peripherally, and I was like, I think he's the right person for this. And I reached out to him and he was like, I'm not really an actor. And if you've seen the show now, if you've seen the show, I've been calling him Eddie, I'm not an actor Marshall. Like, we've created a monster because he's the only person who gets to go off book because Branwell disintegrates on stage.

He just he self destructs in real time, and it's meant to be funny and also sad. And he's doing such a tremendous job. He riffs differently every night. He plays with the audience, he plays with the band on stage. I'm stunned because he is such a sweet, gentle man in in real life, and he seems like such an ass now on stage. So he's got charisma for days. He does sex appeal and he's flirty and he's like a lot of fun.

[23:06] Jeryl Brunner: I love hearing all of this.

[23:08] Miriam Pultro: I love him as a human so much. I felt about 20 years younger. Just like googly eyes. Famously, Branwell was in love with a woman 17 years older than him. So and then Emma Clay, who plays Anne, is also a singer-songwriter. She plays acoustic guitar beautifully. And I had watched her uh there was, I think it was a musical theater factory event online during the pandemic. Everybody shared a song, and I watched her perform, and I was like, that's Anne. That's exactly what I'm looking for. She's a little more indie pop. Yeah, she's just an like perfect. I had like artists that I had drawn inspiration from that I was like, I think this is the type of music I want to write for this character. And there Emma was like doing exactly what I thought I was gonna write anyway.

She's an amazing person, golden throated badass, like rocker chick. I think Anne has the best songs in the show. And then Emily was the only person we needed to really cast. Um because I I always knew she would be the toughest, the toughest person to cast. She was a difficult challenging human to get to know in real life and writing music for her. Writing writing the music was always a challenge. Um yeah, just trying to trying to get into her head where she was kind of famously unknowable. Um and I think frequently misrepresented. I think in all of the reading and the research and the stuff that I've done, my takeaway is that I think nobody really got Emily except her family. And they they saw her as um, they there was no judgment of her in her household.

It was she was encouraged to be exactly who she was in an era where not only as a woman but as someone who was probably neurodiverse, um, possibly on the autism spectrum, very probably aromantic, asexual, and very non-social in in any other context other than living isolated in Howarth with her siblings where she could create to her heart's content. In any other context, she probably would have suffered a whole lot more. And it seems she actually led a fairly content life, which is great.

[25:38] Jeryl Brunner: What a beautiful voice she has, so rich and layered, melodic and beautiful and powerful and soulful, you know, all of it.

[25:49] Miriam Pultro: Yes, yeah. So yes, and then you have all those wonderful musicians.

[25:56] Jeryl Brunner: Yeah.

[25:57] Miriam Pultro: We have the best, best people. Everyone is a gem of a human to work with, and that's the best part.

[26:03] Jeryl Brunner: So, what is your dream for Glasstown? What what would you like to see?

[26:10] Miriam Pultro: We've discussed this a bunch as a team because everybody's really invested in the future of the piece, and we really believe in it, and kind of our rallying cry has become, I believe in Glasstown. Like I believe in it as a piece of art, and I also kind of believe in the magical place that they created. Um we'd love to see it do an off-Broadway run. It don't think it works for a Broadway stage. I have no desire to put it on a Broadway stage. I think it loses the intimacy and the rock the rock concert vibe in a too big space. But then we've also talked about touring it. Like we could take it to Boston for a week and in Chicago for a week. And um, it would tour really easily because there's no set. It's touring a band. It's literally like pack up your gear, we're getting on the road. Except for the writings, but you could recreate those anyway. We'll devise a different kind of, you know, something we can roll up and take with us.

[27:06] Jeryl Brunner: Exactly. And what about for you as an artist? Are you working on I know you're lee deep, you'll probably leck deep in Glasstown. But are you looking into other pieces that you're writing?

[27:18] Miriam Pultro: What else has that? I'm gonna have to soon. People keep asking me, what's after Glasstown? I was like, I need a break in a life. Okay. But today, as it happens, I have a deadline in two days, so I need to work on it today. I was invited to apply for something with a mates theater company to be like an artist in residence for next year, and I have to come up with something. And I think I I have again like the faintest whiff of an idea. I have no idea what form it would take. It would definitely be music, heavily musical in the realm of theater, but even less musical theater than than Glasstown is. And having created Glasstown from nothing now, I feel confident that even with the whiff of an idea, I can make something out of it. I'm not intimidated to be like, I don't know, I don't know what it is yet. I don't care if I don't know what it is, because I it will reveal itself to me in time and I will continue to work on it until it is done.

[28:15] Jeryl Brunner: I can't wait to experience more of your work. It's such a pleasure to have you. Thanks so much for joining us.

[28:30] Jeryl Brunner: The theme song was written by Tom McGovern. This episode was edited by Kyle Moore, and the talent was booked by Anna Strike.