This transcript was automatically generated and might contain errors.

[0:00] Tonya Pinkins: Welcome back to my conversation with Adam Feldman.

[0:03] Tonya Pinkins: I'm Tonya Pinkins on You Can't SAY THAT. And we're gonna go in a little deeper on US politics, Canadian politics, and Caroline or Change.

[0:17] Adam Feldman: What did you think of Paris?

[0:18] Tonya Pinkins: Still haven't seen it.

[0:20] Adam Feldman: Okay. Um, but do you like the South Korean storytelling? Because they do some storytelling that is...

[0:25] Adam Feldman: I hear Parasite was great.

[0:28] Adam Feldman: I had my best Oscar prognostication year ever this year. I got like 23 categories right.

[0:33] Adam Feldman: 22, and you know, and you knew Parasite was gonna win either. I think I did well because I hadn't seen almost any of the movies.

[0:40] Adam Feldman: That's the movies that were being talked about. I was feeling out the buzz, and I was putting myself into the perspective of the generic Oscar mood.

[0:54] Adam Feldman: And when you see the actual things, then it's ruined because you have your own opinions on them. You think, oh well, that was so good, that should win. That's not how it works.

[1:02] Adam Feldman: Parasite was so good. It should win.

[1:04] Tonya Pinkins: Yeah, that's what I've heard.

[1:05] Adam Feldman: It wasn't in nothing else was even in. I see too much theater, and so I've been falling behind on movies a little bit. I tend to see them later on when they come to TV.

[1:13] Adam Feldman: And it's spring now, and you're going into theater hell season. I was a Tony voter for three years and it made me hate theater.

[1:19] Adam Feldman: I was never so happy as when I was done with that. It's insane.

[1:22] Adam Feldman: Well, over the we're recording this in early March. I will spend the next seven weeks seeing six shows.

[1:28] Adam Feldman: Six shows, six six chicks, six six shows a week.

[1:28] Tonya Pinkins: Six shows a week.

[1:34] Adam Feldman: The six six chicks, six sheeps sick.

[1:37] Tonya Pinkins: Well, you should see eight since eight are done a week.

[1:39] Adam Feldman: Right. Uh no, I mean, at least at least six a week. And by the end of that, I will be seeing as many as eight. I'll be seeing matinees on weekends.

[1:47] Adam Feldman: Sometimes they have, you know, I and then cabaret shows and whatnot. I will be very tired at the because they crammed 40% of the Broadway season into the last six weeks.

[1:55] Tonya Pinkins: Right, exactly. And um, I understand why they do that, but it is not ideal.

[2:01] Adam Feldman: And when you're seeing that, then you're missing all this amazing off and off Broadway stuff that's being done.

[2:05] Adam Feldman: Right, because the off Broadway seasons are also in the middle of their best times, and so I will end up seeing those because I vote for awards and things like that. I won't review them, but I'll see them.

[2:13] Adam Feldman: Those are among the shows that I'll be seeing. But uh, but it's too much. It's too much, and it's an effort, you know.

[2:21] Adam Feldman: If you're if you see that much theater, it's an effort to remember. First of all, it's an effort to stay open and stay enthusiastic about it and hold on to the magic that got you into it for the in the first place.

[2:35] Adam Feldman: But also to remember that most people don't see nearly that much theater. If you're only writing for theater obsessives, uh, who are gonna see everything anyway, then it doesn't matter.

[2:43] Tonya Pinkins: Right.

[2:44] Adam Feldman: You have to be writing in part for the for real people, uh and uh and real people see a show maybe if they like theater a lot, they see a show maybe every couple months.

[2:55] Tonya Pinkins: Right.

[2:56] Adam Feldman: Um, and if they're an ordinary person, they'd see one every few years, you know, or they visit New York and they see one Broadway show and they want it to be Lion King.

[3:08] Tonya Pinkins: Yeah, and why wouldn't I mean Lion King is a gorgeous show, yeah.

[3:11] Adam Feldman: Um and Lion King holds up really well. I just oh my god, I had the craziest experience of the Lion King.

[3:17] Tonya Pinkins: Really? What was it?

[3:18] Adam Feldman: Well, I mean, I saw The Lion King when it opened, and I was just uh you know, I was blown away by the game.

[3:21] Tonya Pinkins: Really, yeah.

[3:22] Adam Feldman: I was not okay. Absolutely was. I mean, it's a weird compromise show because you have half of it that's just this Disney, you know, uh extravagant park show with the people dressed in big character costumes, and then you have this other half that's just mind-blowingly beautiful.

[3:37] Adam Feldman: Um, and so it's always been a weird mix of that. But uh, but I've always I mean I think it really delivers the goods.

[3:42] Adam Feldman: I think if you want a big Broadway spectacle that elevates itself beyond just a brother's destroys one of the greatest stories in the world.

[3:49] Tonya Pinkins: No, it's Hamlet. Doesn't it?

[3:50] Adam Feldman: It borrows from Hamlet, but it's not jacked not doing Hamlet.

[3:53] Tonya Pinkins: Oh it's Hamlet for me.

[3:54] Adam Feldman: And I was like, how did you take Hamlet turn into this? Half Henry Ford. Like it's a bunch of you know, it's like it's the princess journey. It's a it's a lot of different things.

[4:03] Adam Feldman: But it's uh I I don't I don't love the the story of the movie that much. Maybe that's why I don't mind that it's changed so much in the stage version.

[4:13] Adam Feldman: Um I think that ultimately if you look if you take it seriously, it's basically this kind of divine right of kings. Very conservative, you know, with your weird, queer unclean.

[4:26] Tonya Pinkins: That wasn't that gonna be my cup of tea.

[4:27] Adam Feldman: No, no, no, I mean that that's not that's not a hundred percent for me. Um but uh, but I think that the staging of it is just it's very beautiful, horrific extra.

[4:36] Adam Feldman: I also though as an artist, I take umbrage with anybody who directs things where actors' careers get destroyed by yeah, I I just I can't like that.

[4:45] Adam Feldman: I can't like anything that it that the artistry is not considering the artists who have to do it.

[4:50] Tonya Pinkins: That's fair.

[4:51] Adam Feldman: Um but anyway, I went back to see it for the first time in 20 years or whatever. You know, I went back to see it for their 20th anniversary.

[4:59] Tonya Pinkins: And did it hold up?

[5:00] Adam Feldman: It did. I mean, it looks great, although it was just an amazing experience because it was this huge reunion anniversary of extravaganza.

[5:08] Adam Feldman: Yeah, there was no there were no civilians in the audience. Everyone in the audience was a uh an industry person, or mostly an alum of one of the product international production.

[5:22] Adam Feldman: So it was like it's 1800, whatever it is, so you know, eighteen hundred people, seventeen hundred people, however many people fit in the min's golf.

[5:28] Tonya Pinkins: Um, and everyone was there. Elton John was there, he did an encore, you know, you know, it it was crazy.

[5:35] Adam Feldman: But it was partly crazy because first of all, there were no children in the audience, right? It was all they'd all grown up, it was all adults, it was all adults who knew the show extremely well, and and they were all just screaming the whole time.

[5:51] Adam Feldman: So circle of life, you couldn't hear a word. So like could they could have been singing, I know some of it is not in English, but they could have the entire thing could have been uh that she could she could have just been uh singing a total nonsense, and it wouldn't have mattered because you could not hear where because everyone, as soon as like the cheetahs would come out, like everyone who had played a cheetah, but that's my track, and then like it was extraordinary.

[6:14] Adam Feldman: Uh but it was deafening.

[6:16] Tonya Pinkins: Yeah.

[6:17] Adam Feldman: Um and but it was exciting. It was like, you know, it was one of those rare moments. I had been at the record-breaking performance that Phantom had when it took over from Cats as the longest running show of all time.

[6:29] Adam Feldman: And that was nice. You know, that was an elegant, lovely, you know, a cat came out at the end and gave a rose to the phantom, and it was like uh very decorous, but it wasn't this kind of excitement and madness.

[6:41] Tonya Pinkins: So you get to have experiences that very few people ever get to have getting to attend things like do you write about that, or is it just you get the privilege of attending?

[6:49] Adam Feldman: In those cases, I did write about the Phantom one, which did not, I don't think the Phantom people liked very much. Um because I have mixed feelings about Phantom.

[6:59] Adam Feldman: But I'm glad that it existed. I mean, yeah, Phantom was one of those ones that's like, I'll never see another British show again.

[7:04] Tonya Pinkins: No, sorry, I mean, it's just I'm glad it exists. Lord knows it's given a lot of people a lot of work and made a lot of people a lot of money, and people want to see it, God bless, you know.

[7:13] Adam Feldman: Um it's not really my kind of show.

[7:15] Tonya Pinkins: Mine either.

[7:15] Adam Feldman: Um, but uh I like Lion King more. I can see Lion King over and over, and I will still gasp at the stagecraft in at least four or five of the sequences, you know, and that it that makes it a that makes it a night that I will.

[7:27] Tonya Pinkins: No, it's beautiful.

[7:28] Adam Feldman: Yeah, it is beautiful. Um, and you know, I don't know. There's some there's some shows. I mean, jaded as I am, when I like a show, I I will throw myself into it.

[7:38] Adam Feldman: I saw again, I saw Caroline so many times. I've I saw Hamilton so many times.

[7:43] Adam Feldman: I've seen Hamilton 13 times.

[7:44] Tonya Pinkins: Have I beat you?

[7:45] Adam Feldman: Yes.

[7:48] Adam Feldman: I've seen it four or five times. And I and I and I've listened to the cast album. You know, I saw Natasha Pierre and the Great Comet of 1812 twelve.

[7:54] Tonya Pinkins: Five five.

[7:55] Adam Feldman: We have similar tastes. We just can't agree on the Lion King, but we have.

[7:56] Tonya Pinkins: Yes. So wait a minute, timeout. You're writing for a specific audience. It's definitely not the audience that is the New York Times, correct?

[8:08] Adam Feldman: Uh well, it's related to that audience. I don't think it's entirely different. It's um what's nice about writing for Timeout is that Timeout has a brief, and Timeout is for people who are looking to find things to do in the city and who are actively engaged in the process of finding that stuff.

[8:24] Adam Feldman: They want to see the best stuff, they want to be in on the coolest new thing, and they and that's a good audience to be writing for.

[8:31] Adam Feldman: Um if you're writing for you know, if you're writing for the Daily News, uh then people might flip through your review on their way to the sports pages, and that's great, but it's not as motivated.

[8:46] Tonya Pinkins: Right.

[8:46] Adam Feldman: They're coming to you to go tell me what's hot. And I think that's one reason why the Daily News and the Post sort of dropped their full-time theater critics at a certain point because they weren't really destinations for that.

[8:58] Adam Feldman: I mean the Daily News now, Chris Jones, who's from the Chicago Tribune, is now writing reviews for the Daily News, and that's great. And the Post for big shows will have, you know, one of their entertainment reporters write about it, but they don't have a devoted slot for it anymore.

[9:12] Adam Feldman: Um we do because we are to some extent a destination for internationally. So it's there's Timeout in many places.

[9:19] Adam Feldman: So but the theater's extremely local, um, obviously. Although Broadway theater commands a huge tourist audience.

[9:26] Tonya Pinkins: But there's Timeout London.

[9:28] Adam Feldman: Well, no, right, but but they're writing about London theater. You know, it's not like I'm saying you know Timeout from London. You know, when you come to New York, do you go to Timeout? That's your source for where what do I see?

[9:37] Tonya Pinkins: Right.

[9:38] Adam Feldman: It has been, and we've been here for 20 plus years, and uh we have a certain reputation, I think, uh that we've been able to maintain for guiding people to the right thing.

[9:49] Adam Feldman: I'm not being compensated by Timeout for this particular plug, nor by the Tourist Board of Montreal. Um, but yeah, I like it.

[9:56] Adam Feldman: So it's it's a privilege to write for that audience because you know that people are paying attention. It's a smaller audience than than some other audiences, uh, but it's a motivated audience.

[10:05] Adam Feldman: You know, um we have people, the people who read it care about about seeing good theater.

[10:11] Tonya Pinkins: And so I always wonder, like for me, I have a kind of rule, you know, silly rules, but it's like if it's a Times Out critics pick, I'm not going.

[10:22] Adam Feldman: Time uh Time Out critics pick?

[10:23] Tonya Pinkins: Not yours.

[10:24] Adam Feldman: New York Times critics.

[10:25] Tonya Pinkins: Oh, New York Times critics.

[10:26] Adam Feldman: New York Times critics pick up.

[10:28] Tonya Pinkins: I'm not going to say to my face.

[10:28] Adam Feldman: No, no, no.

[10:32] Tonya Pinkins: No, New York Times critics pick.

[10:32] Adam Feldman: I just go like they bought that.

[10:34] Tonya Pinkins: No, I don't think that's true.

[10:35] Adam Feldman: I it feels that way to me.

[10:36] Tonya Pinkins: I uh I yeah, you know, I I think they're doing the best they can. I don't always agree with the Times, and sometimes I disagree.

[10:42] Adam Feldman: It's frustrating because the Times does have more uh of a voice, a more powerful voice than everyone else.

[10:49] Adam Feldman: It is especially frustrating for me when a show that I really like doesn't get the that they can destroy it.

[10:55] Tonya Pinkins: I don't know if they can destroy it, but they can hurt it, and especially for certain kinds of shows, the kinds of shows.

[10:59] Adam Feldman: Not every show needs critical support, but some shows can really benefit from it. And uh what we were talking about with Caroline before something is this is the case.

[11:07] Adam Feldman: Sometimes you need confidence of going in as an audience member saying, I I heard this is good. I'm gonna give it an extra bit of trust. And I and critics can help with that.

[11:19] Adam Feldman: And so my I don't what frustrates me is when a show that I think is really good gets a kind of dismissive review.

[11:28] Adam Feldman: And Caroline was a good example of that. I mean, not to cut back to it, but Caroline wasn't a negative review, it was just kind of a well, I guess this is good review.

[11:39] Adam Feldman: You know, like I think I remember there was a phrase that stuck in my craw from from Ben's review, which was uh he said it was it might be too good to be good.

[11:48] Adam Feldman: And I thought, well, boy, that's that's a luxury. Oh, this caviar is too delicious. I don't want it. Take this caviar away.

[11:59] Adam Feldman: Um so but we were also the year of the Republican National Convention. We were on the do not see list.

[12:08] Tonya Pinkins: Right.

[12:08] Adam Feldman: So, you know, it had a lot of people. And it was the year of Wicked and Avenue Q and Boy from Oz.

[12:13] Adam Feldman: And so it was there was a lot of other buzz for other shows and we're gonna make big money believed, and they did make big money.

[12:19] Adam Feldman: I mean, Wicked is the biggest moneymaker for Universal, I think, of all of its products.

[12:23] Tonya Pinkins: Right, but there was, you know, it unfortunately they're they're but that it lost music to Avenue Q, that we're like, come on.

[12:30] Adam Feldman: I I love Avenue Q.

[12:32] Tonya Pinkins: I love Avenue Q, but that score of Caroline.

[12:34] Adam Feldman: Caroline is su is a is a better score.

[12:36] Adam Feldman: But I do love the score for Avenue Q. I will not be able to do that.

[12:43] Adam Feldman: You can't get that as a revival for the score, right?

[12:45] Tonya Pinkins: She can't ever get that.

[12:46] Adam Feldman: No, she can't.

[12:47] Tonya Pinkins: Um, but she got one for Fun Home.

[12:49] Adam Feldman: So, oh, so she only gets one?

[12:52] Tonya Pinkins: No, but because Stephen Sondheim has a whole bunch of them.

[12:55] Adam Feldman: Yeah, Sondheim has a few.

[12:57] Tonya Pinkins: Um, but you know, sometimes it comes around. People get things for the wrong thing, and then they make it up later.

[13:02] Adam Feldman: I know, you know, it's silly. But you know, Bernadette Peters won for Annie Get Your Gun, which no one particularly liked her in.

[13:09] Tonya Pinkins: And then she didn't get it for Gypsy because she'd just gotten it for Annie Get Your Gun. You know, it's like, it's just one of those things.

[13:14] Adam Feldman: It is politics.

[13:15] Tonya Pinkins: It is politics.

[13:17] Adam Feldman: And all the awards groups are the same people.

[13:19] Tonya Pinkins: Yeah.

[13:19] Adam Feldman: It's not even like politics makes it sound like it's calculating, it's fondness, it's industry, it's they've put in their time, it's their turn.

[13:31] Tonya Pinkins: Well, I felt that it was Cheetah's turn for, you know, the one that she just did.

[13:37] Adam Feldman: Was it The Visit? Not The Visitor, the one that she just did on Broadway and she didn't get it.

[13:42] Tonya Pinkins: Whose turn?

[13:43] Adam Feldman: Cheetah Rivera.

[13:44] Tonya Pinkins: I thought it was Cheetah's time.

[13:45] Adam Feldman: Oh, for The Visit.

[13:46] Tonya Pinkins: No, but she already had.

[13:48] Adam Feldman: She already had.

[13:49] Tonya Pinkins: I thought she didn't have a Tony.

[13:49] Adam Feldman: No, no, she has. She got one for Kiss of the Spider Woman and for The Rink.

[13:52] Tonya Pinkins: Oh, okay.

[13:53] Adam Feldman: She, okay, good. I'm glad she got one.

[13:55] Tonya Pinkins: Um, but yeah, she's got plenty.

[13:59] Adam Feldman: Okay.

[14:00] Tonya Pinkins: She's got hers.

[14:00] Adam Feldman: Uh, but yeah, sometimes there's that.

[14:04] Tonya Pinkins: But I mean, it's not evil. It's just when you're like, I think in your year, for example, for Caroline, um, I think ultimately, you know, I wrote a cover story on this at that time.

[14:16] Adam Feldman: I didn't read it.

[14:17] Tonya Pinkins: About, well, good, you shouldn't have.

[14:19] Adam Feldman: Um, actors should not read.

[14:21] Tonya Pinkins: I don't think actors should read assessments of them while they're doing a show.

[14:25] Adam Feldman: No, I think it's dangerous.

[14:27] Tonya Pinkins: Yeah, because those words stay in your mind.

[14:29] Adam Feldman: They stay in your mind, and then you're right. Then you're like, can I achieve those words again?

[14:33] Tonya Pinkins: Yeah, it's, uh, I think I fully understand when actors don't. But, uh, I wrote a story that year about what a great race it was for Best Actress in a Musical.

[14:41] Adam Feldman: Uh, and, uh, and I think that ultimately what it came down to there is one, they were giving it to Avenue Q and they wanted to give something to Wicked, so that helped Adina.

[14:51] Tonya Pinkins: And two, uh, you and Donna and Kristen had all won Tony Awards already, and Adina had not.

[15:00] Adam Feldman: So if it comes down to that, if it comes down to, well, there are four women giving these amazing performances, and one of them doesn't have a Tony.

[15:07] Tonya Pinkins: And Audra was in that category, wasn't she?

[15:08] Adam Feldman: No, it was, uh, it was, uh, Stephanie D'Abruzzo.

[15:10] Tonya Pinkins: Oh, Stephanie D'Abruzzo, that's right.

[15:12] Adam Feldman: Um, and Stephanie was lovely in that show, but it wasn't a performance on the same, um, plane.

[15:16] Tonya Pinkins: Right.

[15:16] Adam Feldman: And it demanded a lot less.

[15:18] Tonya Pinkins: But we can't, Wicked is a brand.

[15:19] Adam Feldman: I mean, it's the Wizard box.

[15:20] Tonya Pinkins: But also those, I think that the four that I mentioned, I'm, this is no diss on Stephanie. She was very good in Avenue Q, but she was behind a puppet most of the time.

[15:28] Adam Feldman: It wasn't that kind of performance.

[15:29] Tonya Pinkins: Right, right. The other four were giving really distinctive, memorable, personal performances.

[15:35] Adam Feldman: And the awards split between people that year.

[15:38] Tonya Pinkins: You know, I didn't, Donna got one of them, and, uh, like they really split.

[15:43] Adam Feldman: Well, yeah, but again, when it came down to, so there are those factors.

[15:46] Tonya Pinkins: I think that Adina won partly because people wanted to give something to Wicked, and partly because she was the one who hadn't won.

[15:53] Adam Feldman: And she was going to become a huge, like brand.

[15:56] Tonya Pinkins: I mean, she's like the highest-paid cabaret artist worldwide.

[15:58] Adam Feldman: Well, she's, and she's very talented and distinctive.

[16:01] Tonya Pinkins: And she contributed a great deal to that show.

[16:03] Adam Feldman: Absolutely.

[16:04] Tonya Pinkins: Um, this is the value, even in, I think that's a great example.

[16:07] Adam Feldman: Wicked is a good example of how, uh, having, uh, original stars with strong personal identities as performers can really help a show in the long term, even if it's going to be a long-running show in which those people will be replaced many times over.

[16:25] Tonya Pinkins: Um, the stamp that Kristen and Adina put on those roles is still on those roles, and that helps to define those roles for performers who step into it in the future.

[16:37] Adam Feldman: Um, so that's, you know, I know that nowadays a lot of when you're, when you have that kind of show and you're really selling the logo, you don't want to pin too much on the star because then if the star leaves, exactly, you know, blah, blah, blah.

[16:52] Tonya Pinkins: That happened with The Producers, for example, right?

[16:55] Adam Feldman: Um, but still having a ri, having a strong original star, uh, an original star with a strong personality, a one-off, yeah.

[17:05] Tonya Pinkins: Um, because no one's going to be exactly them anymore, but there will be residual elements of their performance.

[17:10] Adam Feldman: Though I have to say that I feel like too many musicals have been writing the songs to have that at the end of them, and I can't stand it.

[17:20] Tonya Pinkins: Like people are composing that now, and it's maddening.

[17:23] Adam Feldman: Well, and it's also brutal on women's bodies.

[17:25] Tonya Pinkins: Yeah, I mean, the voices are not, that's not sustainable eight times a week.

[17:30] Adam Feldman: Right.

[17:30] Tonya Pinkins: Um, it's not pretty either, and it doesn't, and it ends up getting unpretty, and then you have all these mean pirate videos of people missing those notes.

[17:38] Adam Feldman: Yes, and of course they're going to miss those notes sometimes because those notes are set impossibly high.

[17:43] Tonya Pinkins: Yes.

[17:44] Adam Feldman: Um, and it goes back to, I mean, it started earlier.

[17:49] Tonya Pinkins: I mean, it's a different sound.

[17:50] Adam Feldman: So you, it starts when you have people just sort of, I guess I would probably put the first one I can really think of like that is Melba Moore, uh, doing those crazy high parts in Hair and then in Pearlie.

[18:03] Tonya Pinkins: You know, she, but Loretta Devine said that they purposely sang everything high in Dreamgirls so they couldn't get fired and couldn't be replaceable.

[18:10] Adam Feldman: So you had to add Melba Moore, and then you started having things that were set in that place where people had to do this mixed belt thing.

[18:16] Tonya Pinkins: Yeah.

[18:16] Adam Feldman: Uh, and, uh, that Patti LuPone seems to effortlessly do.

[18:20] Tonya Pinkins: Patti LuPone did it in Evita forever.

[18:22] Adam Feldman: Right.

[18:23] Tonya Pinkins: And, uh, but Patti LuPone is a war horse, a war horse.

[18:28] Adam Feldman: And then you put other people in that position, um, and it will be, and, and then they did it in Dreamgirls, and then everyone does it.

[18:34] Tonya Pinkins: Uh, and now it's just written for that because all the pop stars do it, but they do, they have to do it, they do it once in a studio, you know, eight times a week in real time.

[18:43] Adam Feldman: Right, you know, it's monstrous.

[18:45] Tonya Pinkins: But now all the girls coming up.

[18:47] Adam Feldman: I know they have to sing that way.

[18:48] Tonya Pinkins: And I just don't even like the way it sounds, I don't even want to hear it.

[18:52] Adam Feldman: Sometimes it can be exciting.

[18:54] Tonya Pinkins: Give me a time it was exciting recently.

[18:56] Adam Feldman: I saw the concert version of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat that they did a few weeks ago, and, uh, boy, they split up the narrator role between three awfully good singers.

[19:08] Tonya Pinkins: Really?

[19:08] Adam Feldman: Uh, yeah, and, uh, that, uh, it's that we're just killing it was like vocal gymnastics, yeah.

[19:14] Tonya Pinkins: Because, and also there are three of them, so they didn't have to do, you know, they could just pull it out, and it was only because the narrator, there's no content, so they could just be show-off-y, and boy, were they show-off.

[19:24] Tonya Pinkins: That sounds exciting.

[19:24] Adam Feldman: It was exciting.

[19:25] Tonya Pinkins: Yeah, because you're just watching people do flips.

[19:27] Adam Feldman: Yeah.

[19:27] Tonya Pinkins: Right, but you can't do that eight shows a week.

[19:28] Adam Feldman: No.

[19:29] Tonya Pinkins: Absolutely not.

[19:30] Adam Feldman: Right.

[19:30] Tonya Pinkins: Impossible.

[19:31] Adam Feldman: Although these women are, well, two women and a guy.

[19:36] Tonya Pinkins: It was Alex Newell, uh, and, uh, and it was also Jessica Vosk and, uh, Eden Espinoza, and they are, uh, very seasoned at doing that particular thing.

[19:48] Adam Feldman: Um, that's, uh, uh, but Jessica got one of the biggest applause points in the night for, for this, the second act opener to the Pharaoh's Dream thing, where she, uh, I mean, which is not obvious show-off song, but, and it wasn't even the highest, it was just how full and how beautiful the voice sounded.

[20:09] Tonya Pinkins: So, you know.

[20:10] Adam Feldman: Now you do dance too, right?

[20:12] Tonya Pinkins: I don't really do dance.

[20:13] Adam Feldman: Oh, so you didn't see Black, White, and Gray?

[20:15] Tonya Pinkins: I did not.

[20:15] Adam Feldman: Uh, I see some dance sometimes, and I do all the dance listings, got it.

[20:19] Tonya Pinkins: Uh, but I don't review dance.

[20:20] Adam Feldman: We've never reviewed dance, um, in the magazine, even when we had Gia Kourlas, who's at the time now used to be our dance editor at, uh, Time Out, but, um, she never reviewed dance in part because the shows never last long enough.

[20:34] Tonya Pinkins: And so our magazine is really built around telling you what you should be doing next week, not about what you should have seen last week.

[20:42] Adam Feldman: So does it have to run more than one week?

[20:43] Tonya Pinkins: Yeah, basically, it has to run more than one week or forget time.

[20:46] Adam Feldman: We don't, we don't, we don't review music shows either for that reason because it's, it's, we would just be telling people what they should already have seen, and that's not helpful to them.

[20:54] Tonya Pinkins: Um, we can see these shows, and then in the future we can write previews of them.

[20:58] Adam Feldman: Got it, but we can't review a show that is already done.

[21:01] Tonya Pinkins: Got it.

[21:02] Adam Feldman: Um, so, so dance.

[21:04] Tonya Pinkins: Dance was never on that model, um, and it isn't still.

[21:08] Adam Feldman: Uh, I like to see dance shows.

[21:10] Tonya Pinkins: I'm not, um, as experienced at it, so I don't, I wouldn't want to write about it anyway.

[21:15] Adam Feldman: I don't, I trust my own expertise on that.

[21:17] Tonya Pinkins: I can, I can write about, uh, musical theater dancing.

[21:22] Adam Feldman: Uh, I do know about that, but I, I don't want to, you know, I don't want to pretend that I'm, uh, good enough as a ballet of main to...

[21:22] Tonya Pinkins: No, I'm going to tangent you back to constitutional language.

[21:38] Adam Feldman: It's kind of something that I'm interested in.

[21:41] Tonya Pinkins: I didn't pursue it, so I can't tell you anything about it.

[21:44] Adam Feldman: Are you joking?

[21:45] Tonya Pinkins: No, I'm not joking.

[21:46] Adam Feldman: Um, I was working at the time with there's this wonderful professor at Harvard, I think she's still there named, uh, uh, uh, Elaine Scarry, and she was very interested in government, and she would have been the one I was working on there.

[21:57] Tonya Pinkins: I ended up doing other coursework with her, and she wrote an amazing book on pain, which I recommend to people.

[22:06] Adam Feldman: Uh, but, um, it's, uh, it's called The Body in Pain.

[22:12] Tonya Pinkins: But, uh, no, I didn't end up going down that route, so I don't know.

[22:15] Adam Feldman: But do you, I mean, it sounds like it's something that's of interest to you, so I was like, you know, this constitutional convention.

[22:20] Tonya Pinkins: I mean, everybody's saying we can't have a constitutional convention, but then we have the fact that in 15 years the majority of Americans will live in the South and you will still have the Senate as it is, with, you know, it's currently, you know, leaning a certain way, and the only way to alter that is with a constitutional convention that would change the balance of powers of the Senate, which was really based on slave-holding states.

[22:41] Adam Feldman: Right.

[22:42] Tonya Pinkins: So, like, you know, what are your thoughts on that?

[22:43] Adam Feldman: Well, uh, it's complicated.

[22:45] Tonya Pinkins: Uh, I think everything is.

[22:46] Adam Feldman: No, that's a different question because I, I think that what I was pursuing, what I was talking about before was really much more of an academic thing.

[22:51] Tonya Pinkins: It was be studying the language and the way that these things are written, not the content, which is what it's supposed to be.

[22:57] Adam Feldman: Got it, got it.

[22:58] Tonya Pinkins: Um, the, uh, you mean what words meant at the time.

[23:00] Adam Feldman: Right, and, and how they are used to shape, uh, concepts.

[23:04] Tonya Pinkins: Uh, but in this case, I think the challenges of a constitutional convention are obviously that people, that in order to make constitutional change, you have to have massive majorities.

[23:13] Adam Feldman: Um, and a lot of these places that would have to vote for it have a vested interest in the existing system.

[23:18] Tonya Pinkins: And so getting above that threshold is just on a practical level extremely difficult.

[23:23] Adam Feldman: And so what, I mean, it's nice to dream about that, but, uh, on a practical basis, these small states that have this disproportionate power, um, are not gonna be eager to give that up.

[23:36] Tonya Pinkins: Correct.

[23:37] Adam Feldman: And unfortunately, the system as is, as it is, uh, requires them to do that.

[23:44] Tonya Pinkins: And so that is gonna be a major structural impediment.

[23:47] Adam Feldman: What we can do and hope for, we can hope that there are long enough demographic and cultural shifts in some of these places that are currently considered strongly red, uh, that these will be more in play than we think.

[24:04] Tonya Pinkins: For example, Texas is changing, Georgia is changing.

[24:06] Adam Feldman: Yeah, because all these people are moving to the South.

[24:09] Tonya Pinkins: Yeah, but the Senate's gonna still be the Senate.

[24:11] Adam Feldman: Well, right.

[24:12] Tonya Pinkins: We're gonna have this huge influx of population in the South that are people who were blue, which is gonna flip that the South is gonna flip blue.

[24:19] Adam Feldman: Some of it, not Mississippi, uh, you know, well, Alabama and Mississippi could just cut those out.

[24:24] Tonya Pinkins: But Georgia, yes, and, uh, and Texas possibly, like these, those places, and those are big prizes in terms of the Electoral College.

[24:33] Adam Feldman: Those are, they're very vote-rich places.

[24:35] Tonya Pinkins: Um, and ultimately, if those places, we win those places and we continue not to win North and South Dakota, then that's good for us.

[24:43] Adam Feldman: Um, it'll be hard in the Senate, but it'll be fine for us in the Electoral College.

[24:49] Tonya Pinkins: They, I, I think that that's what we can hope for.

[24:53] Adam Feldman: Meanwhile, we need to make sure that we present a consolidated front.

[25:00] Tonya Pinkins: And that we just, we aren't able to, we have a hard time doing that because a lot of the insurgent part of our side, uh, is training a lot of its fire on our, on other people on our side because they know they can't fire on the other side, the other side doesn't care, isn't listening.

[25:18] Adam Feldman: You know, so there's fire, we gotta get the fire's gotta go somewhere.

[25:22] Tonya Pinkins: The fire has to go somewhere, and they believe, um, or they minimize the difference in my opinion.

[25:29] Adam Feldman: They they uh understate the differences that are major differences between even the people they dismiss as uh centrists and corporatists, uh you know, uh neoliberals on on our side, there is a an enormous gulf between that and the current administration.

[25:44] Adam Feldman: Um there just is, and and that gulf is unfortunately minimized in some of the rhetoric, and then that becomes dangerous in the long term because those people, when they do not, when their candidate does not get the nomination, feel disenfranchised, feel disillusioned, feel cynical, do not show up to vote.

[26:01] Adam Feldman: Uh and and then our side loses in crucial tight places that where we could really use their support.

[26:08] Adam Feldman: And so what we need to do is remember to take a long view, step back, and remember who our allies are.

[26:16] Adam Feldman: Yeah, that's just not the nature.

[26:17] Adam Feldman: I mean, you know, I made a feature film this year, it says socio-political horror film called Red Pill.

[26:22] Adam Feldman: And it's essentially about that.

[26:23] Adam Feldman: It's about how one side, you know, they think they're the smartest, they think they're the no, they've got the ideas, but they can't consolidate to be a force.

[26:32] Adam Feldman: And the other side is like, you know, we don't agree about a lot of stuff, but we agree that they're bad.

[26:39] Adam Feldman: The other side, the other side has easier messaging.

[26:39] Adam Feldman: Easier messaging.

[26:43] Adam Feldman: And so it allows them to be far more effective and focused.

[26:46] Adam Feldman: It appeals to people.

[26:47] Adam Feldman: And this is one of the things, it's a paradox.

[26:50] Adam Feldman: It's because I think one of the things that Hillary Clinton ran into trouble with in 2016 is people thought that she was being dishonest.

[27:00] Adam Feldman: I think the opposite was true.

[27:01] Adam Feldman: I think that her tendency was to explain too much, to get into too much nuance and detail.

[27:06] Adam Feldman: And she would keep talking and she would qualify her opinions and she would keep and that impulse read the opposite ways because people think, oh, but what she's trying to be evasive.

[27:18] Adam Feldman: She's saying too much.

[27:19] Adam Feldman: You know, like I said, when you don't have a clear message, people think that you're talking around something.

[27:23] Adam Feldman: In fact, she was talking very much more specifically about it.

[27:26] Adam Feldman: And giving you details that most people that's too much work.

[27:28] Adam Feldman: Just can't you say it plain?

[27:30] Adam Feldman: Right.

[27:30] Adam Feldman: Just say it plain.

[27:31] Adam Feldman: And then people have, you know, we have a natural anti-intellectual sort of not say natural, we have a general anti-intellectual bent in the country and in the world.

[27:31] Adam Feldman: In the world.

[27:40] Adam Feldman: And when you hear someone talking too much, there's a there's a way in which that sounds like they're trying to talk around it, trying to trick you.

[27:49] Adam Feldman: But we we also can't forget about the fact that we are also in the era where um, you know, surveillance capitalism and Google and Facebook, you know, targeting people with very specific messaging that's gonna control how they see things.

[28:03] Adam Feldman: For sure.

[28:03] Adam Feldman: Uh, you know, we don't even know what what people are being see what what people are seeing.

[28:07] Adam Feldman: Like you and I, we don't we get the same a different feed.

[28:09] Adam Feldman: Right.

[28:10] Adam Feldman: Um and and and it's worse than that because the feed that we get is specifically designed to reinforce what we already think.

[28:16] Adam Feldman: And to keep us online.

[28:18] Adam Feldman: Keep us irritated and online.

[28:20] Adam Feldman: And to keep us thinking, to keep telling us what we already know or what we think we know.

[28:24] Adam Feldman: Or whatever's gonna keep us irritated enough that we stay online and repost and keep looking and keep reposting.

[28:30] Adam Feldman: Retreat farther and farther into our own bubble worlds.

[28:33] Adam Feldman: And then ever so often that bubble will burst, and we'll be so surprised.

[28:37] Adam Feldman: We'll say, Oh my god, I I everyone that I know loves Elizabeth Ward.

[28:42] Adam Feldman: You know, who just dropped out on this day that we are recording.

[28:46] Adam Feldman: Right, you know, I mean, it's it's uh, but it it can be really, and this is one this is a this is one thing that I think we really got into trouble with the last time around, which is that in real life uh Hillary Clinton basically cinched the nomination uh on Super Tuesday in the last primary.

[29:06] Adam Feldman: Mathematically, there was no chance that Sanders was ever going to be the nominee.

[29:12] Adam Feldman: But the media continued because they have to make a story out of it for another five months.

[29:15] Adam Feldman: They continued to play it like it was a real horse race.

[29:17] Adam Feldman: And the Sanders people and the Sanders uh camp continued to run as though it were.

[29:23] Adam Feldman: And and it was I mean theoretically, it could have been a miracle, and it could have won 80% of the vote in the remaining states, and that would have divided enough for him to get a majority of the delegates.

[29:31] Adam Feldman: But it wasn't on no one, everyone knew, everyone in the real world knew that that wasn't gonna happen, except the Sanders side in that election kept the illusion alive.

[29:41] Adam Feldman: And there were all these articles that were written in the Sanders press, and they would all just share them with each other on Facebook, and we'd be like, he's still gonna win, he still has a chance.

[29:49] Adam Feldman: Here's how.

[29:50] Adam Feldman: Um, and uh, and so when it didn't happen, there was a because that's all they had been reading, there was a deep sense of disappointment, disillusionment, cynicism, surprise.

[30:02] Adam Feldman: And that's from your feed.

[30:03] Adam Feldman: Now, let me tell you, from my feed, from my feed, this was I'm not saying from my feed, but my sense of what happened that time was that Sanders and 45 were talking the same talk.

[30:17] Adam Feldman: Whether that talk was sincere or not, they were talking the same talk.

[30:20] Adam Feldman: And so they were appealing to both were appealing to a populace.

[30:26] Adam Feldman: And I think people were ignoring those people, that that that they that that people had a strong sway, and they were ignoring the fact that those people were looking for someone, and that if Sanders didn't wasn't the nominee, he they were gonna go the way they went.

[30:42] Adam Feldman: And so for me, from my perspective, I I know people say he pushed her to to change her views, but I really was disappointed that he didn't take it all the way to the convention and just force it even more.

[30:58] Adam Feldman: That was my disappointment, and I felt I first of all, I knew neither of them were gonna win.

[31:03] Adam Feldman: I was clear that neither of them were gonna win, but I felt he should have pushed it even further, and that she was believing her own hype, not going to certain states.

[31:14] Adam Feldman: Like it was like, no, you do not you're not understanding this populist thing that the current president was appealing to, and that was speaking to the same audience that he was there, and they were taken for granted.

[31:26] Adam Feldman: It's very easy in retrospect.

[31:28] Adam Feldman: I think a lot of people did expect Clinton to win.

[31:31] Adam Feldman: Most people did expect Clinton to win.

[31:32] Adam Feldman: Yeah, I wasn't one of those people.

[31:34] Adam Feldman: No, I'll tell you, no, uh, well, okay, I will say I think in in a way, maybe the generalized expectation that Clinton was certainly gonna win is what cost Clinton is the biggest factor.

[31:45] Adam Feldman: Well, because it it depressed voting and also it it changed people's decision making.

[31:49] Adam Feldman: Like Comey would I don't I really don't think would have released that letter if he didn't think she was gonna win.

[31:54] Adam Feldman: If he had he not thought that she was gonna win.

[31:56] Adam Feldman: I think that he didn't want she everyone knew she was gonna win anyway, and he didn't want afterwards for people to say, you suppressed this letter.

[32:01] Adam Feldman: And and the media, everyone thought that she was gonna win anyway, so they might as well hit the email thing.

[32:05] Adam Feldman: And Sanders people were like, he's she's gonna win anyway.

[32:07] Adam Feldman: We might as well push our position as far as we can.

[32:09] Adam Feldman: Everyone thought that she was going to win.

[32:10] Adam Feldman: And she thought she was gonna go to the window.

[32:11] Adam Feldman: There was no way she was ever going to win because women are more hated in this country than black people.

[32:18] Adam Feldman: Black people, you know, we got a black president before we got a woman.

[32:21] Adam Feldman: We're still not ready for a woman president because women hate women.

[32:25] Adam Feldman: There w we are not ready for a woman.

[32:27] Adam Feldman: There w there was I was clear there was no way a woman was gonna win.

[32:30] Adam Feldman: And people looked at me with contempt like I had two heads.

[32:34] Adam Feldman: It was like, no, we there's too much Ms. Ogeny in America.

[32:38] Adam Feldman: I think that's sadly true.

[32:39] Adam Feldman: But I will say, I will say this.

[32:41] Adam Feldman: And this is a bit uh everyone I knew thought that Clinton was gonna win.

[32:47] Adam Feldman: I You know me.

[32:48] Adam Feldman: Well, no, I mean almost everyone I knew.

[32:52] Adam Feldman: I had no circle because I didn't believe it.

[32:54] Adam Feldman: Uh I will say this.

[32:56] Adam Feldman: I did not on the day of the election, I did not think that Clinton was gonna win.

[33:00] Adam Feldman: Uh be and I'll tell you when

[33:04] Adam Feldman: This is a larger All right, let's see if I can articulate this right.

[33:09] Adam Feldman: The time the moment that I knew, or in my heart, like I still thought, well, we we had a chance, and we did have chance, you know.

[33:15] Adam Feldman: Uh but the moment that in my heart, my secret heart, I knew that we were not gonna win was the night before the election.

[33:24] Adam Feldman: Because I was in bed, and here I found myself um gloating in advance about the election.

[33:33] Adam Feldman: I was fantasizing about rubbing it in to all those stupid, terrible people who supported uh Donald Trump and what fools they were gonna look like, and how disastrous it was gonna be for the Republicans, and how satisfying it would be to say, look, you idiots, look what just happened.

[33:52] Adam Feldman: America, America won.

[33:55] Adam Feldman: Um and and I felt that hatred in my heart.

[34:01] Adam Feldman: Uh and I and I knew at that moment we can't win.

[34:07] Adam Feldman: Uh because I'm like I'm a good barometer of that's why I guess Oscars well.

[34:07] Adam Feldman: I'm a good barometer of what people are feeling.

[34:15] Adam Feldman: There was a lot of that.

[34:17] Adam Feldman: There was a lot of that I will drink your tears feeling going around in our side.

[34:22] Adam Feldman: And the other side really doesn't like that.

[34:27] Adam Feldman: Um, and you're never gonna win with that kind of hatred, you're not, because they sense that.

[34:33] Adam Feldman: No one likes being thought of as an idiot, no one likes being dismissed, uh, no one likes uh being condescended to.

[34:49] Adam Feldman: We have to find ways as hard as it is, because people who support that man are so I can't like it takes so much for me not to be angry with them all the time.

[35:01] Adam Feldman: Um, because to me it seems so obvious.

[35:03] Adam Feldman: But but a lot of people are not paying this much attention, or the the media that they're getting is telling them a very different story, and and they're trying to do the best they can.

[35:16] Adam Feldman: I mean, there's some of them who really are just terrible people, of course.

[35:19] Adam Feldman: But um many of them are not.

[35:21] Adam Feldman: Many of them, you know, are responding to elements of his message that resonate with them.

[35:28] Adam Feldman: And we have to reach those people.

[35:30] Adam Feldman: We have to appeal to those people, we have to forgive those people for their mistakes.

[35:35] Adam Feldman: We have to allow them, we have to give them the space and the face to walk it back.

[35:41] Adam Feldman: We have to get, we can't, if someone makes a mistake and then realizes or comes to a different understanding, we have to create an open space to welcome them and not just say you are forever damned for your mistake or for your bad way of thinking that you used to have.

[36:12] Adam Feldman: And I think we need to have a more loving understanding of that.

[36:19] Adam Feldman: I'm not saying we shouldn't fight.

[36:20] Adam Feldman: I'm not saying I'm saying that I guess I'm saying we have to we have to fight in a more loving way.

[36:29] Adam Feldman: And I'm gonna play devil's advocate as we wrap up right now and say that it's so much deeper than that.

[36:37] Adam Feldman: There's so many more people who are um disenfranchised, whose lives are not in any way altered by who is in the White House, who are struggling, and who are just like it's not a good idea.

[36:51] Adam Feldman: You can't get any more.

[36:53] Adam Feldman: It's not true.

[36:54] Adam Feldman: You just don't know it.

[36:55] Adam Feldman: I'm gonna say their lives aren't altered, and it's like, you know what?

[36:58] Adam Feldman: Now you get to feel a little bit of what I'm feeling.

[37:02] Adam Feldman: Um I don't, you know, I don't say this lightly, but I I don't I I see not only another eight years, but I think the next question will be when are the term limits ended?

[37:14] Adam Feldman: And uh how many more years will we have the current administration.

[37:17] Tonya Pinkins: Thank you, Adam Feldman, for having this conversation with you.

[37:22] Tonya Pinkins: We'll have to do this off-platform.

[37:23] Tonya Pinkins: I enjoy you.

[37:24] Tonya Pinkins: You're smart.

[37:25] Tonya Pinkins: I don't meet very many smart people that I can actually talk with.

[37:28] Tonya Pinkins: You were listening to Tonya Pinkins on You Can't SAY THAT.

[37:33] Tonya Pinkins: Thanks for listening to You Can't SAY THAT, the show Where You Can.

[37:38] Tonya Pinkins: I'm Tonya Pinkins.

[37:39] Tonya Pinkins: This is part of the Broadway Podcast Network, produced by Dori Berinstein and Alan Seales, edited by Derek Gunther, music by Anthony Norman, available wherever you get your podcast.

[37:51] Tonya Pinkins: And visit me on Twitter and Facebook and Instagram, and let me know what you'd like to hear me talk about.

[37:58] Tonya Pinkins: For more information, visit VPN.fm forward slash YCST.