This transcript was automatically generated and might contain errors.

[0:00] Tonya Pinkins: Hi, this is Tonya Pinkins, and you're listening to my podcast.

[0:05] Tonya Pinkins: You can't say that. It's the podcast where you can on the Broadway Podcast Network.

[0:15] Tonya Pinkins: This is called You Can't SAY THAT. And sometimes people say things that you can't say, but you know, pretty much we're pretty clean. But you never know. My next guest, I don't know. I mean, the conversations I've had with her.

[0:29] Tonya Pinkins: But let me say, she is described on Wiki. You got to say my name first.

[0:34] Anne Hamburger: Oh no, I don't.

[0:36] Tonya Pinkins: Okay. You probably know who she is from her voice, but she's described as a serial cultural entrepreneur. Not a serial killer, but a serial cultural entrepreneur. And she is the founder and executive producer of En Garde Arts, which was founded in 1985. Her name is Anne Hamburger.

[1:00] Tonya Pinkins: She was the former executive vice president of Walt Disney Creative Entertainment, where she was the head of entertainment worldwide for the Disney Corporation. I may be lying. Disney Parks and Resorts. Dig Disney Parks and Resorts. And prior to that, she was the head of the La Jolla Playhouse.

[1:18] Tonya Pinkins: For one year. For one year. See, she's straightening me out. And she's become a friend of mine. So I'm very radically honest. And you know, I just gotta say, you know, I met Annie because we have a mutual friend, Annabelle Gerwich, and we met because our kids were trick-or-treating like God, 10 or 15 years ago, right? And we had fun taking our kids trick-or-treating over Los Angeles, Los Feliz. Hey Annie, welcome.

[1:46] Anne Hamburger: Hi, how are you doing?

[1:47] Tonya Pinkins: I'm great.

[1:48] Anne Hamburger: Good.

[1:49] Tonya Pinkins: I met you on the streets of LA.

[1:50] Anne Hamburger: That is true.

[1:51] Tonya Pinkins: Yes, we met on the streets of LA. And then we would have a little lunch, have a little tea here and there, and Annie was like, you know, I'm gonna say something really really radical. I was a little suspicious. I was like, Annie, she ran Disney. Like, is she like into real art?

[2:04] Anne Hamburger: I think you had producer suspicion.

[2:08] Tonya Pinkins: Definitely. I definitely had producer suspicion. I was like, she's gonna have to prove it to me. And I am happy to say that the other day, I saw a show of hers called Fandango for Coyotes and Butterflies, which blew me away.

[2:24] Anne Hamburger: It's Fandango for Butterflies and Coyotes, but the blew me away part's good.

[2:28] Tonya Pinkins: Um, it blew me away. And I saw another play last night at the public called Cold Country, which also was a very beautiful play. But I have to say that I thought yours was better and more important, and I probably ruined your opportunity of getting there because I told them that at the end of it, and I got a bunch of cards to give to you for you to come because like this is good, this is good. Everything about this is really good. But this show that Annie is doing is even better, and you really should do it here because it is about the immigrants and the immigrant experience, and it leaves you with a good feeling at the resilience and the power of these people. So Annie, I'm gonna shut up and let you talk.

[3:05] Anne Hamburger: Well, um really thrilled to be doing this show. Um, I've been working on it for two and a half years. Um I started Fandango for Butterflies and Coyotes by approaching Andrea Atome, a wonderful writer, and saying the whole situation with undocumented immigrants in this country is plaguing me. I think this is a really important issue to tackle. Are you interested in developing a show with me around this? And she said yes. And she brought in Jose Zayas, who's a long-term collaborator with her to direct, and Sinwey Padilla. Sinway, who Tanya has sung with, who's an extraordinary artist, dancer, a singer. He plays multiple instruments. He dances something called zapatiado. Join the team. When we first started out, we interviewed undocumented immigrants, and we did a reading at Joe's pub, and it wasn't very good.

[4:00] Tonya Pinkins: And the reason why wasn't it very good?

[4:02] Anne Hamburger: Okay. It wasn't good was because we basically used verbatim text to create the show. And we walked away from that experience, and we said we really need to fundamentally grow, develop, and change this. And um we had a residency at the Orchard Project where you were as well. That's where I met the whole team, Andrea and Jose and Sinway, and I actually sang in part of the little presentations at the Orchard Project.

[4:29] Tonya Pinkins: Yes, and if you want to edit this podcast with some footage of you singing, I have it.

[4:34] Anne Hamburger: Wow, we could put a little music or something like that. Anyway, so it was there that we kind of had the brainchild of fundamentally shifting the construct of this so that Andrea would take the material as a basis and write a play, and that the story at the center of the play was undocumented immigrants coming together on the night of an ice raid to seek solace by participating in a fandango, which is a celebration of music and dance that hails from Spain and Mexico that is often used in protests as well.

[5:10] Tonya Pinkins: That's amazing because Cold Country is one of those verbatim text pieces, and it's very moving, and I cried, and it was very, very powerful. Um, the thing I felt that was different about Fandango was um I didn't feel sorry for the people. Not that I didn't have compassion for their suffering, but I felt inspired by their resilience and their strength and their bravery and their courage. And despite the outcomes that had for them, it was like, but these people are the people who are gonna keep the world going. And that I love. That was the part of it that I love. There's a nobility to the struggle of poor people. So that you know just moved me greatly.

[5:53] Anne Hamburger: Well, that was purposeful. Somebody told me a story once, actually was Anne Bogart, who was commissioned by the University of Illinois and Champagne Urbana to go talk to some people in a kind of low-income neighborhood. And she sat in a circle with them and she said to them, What kind of theater would you like to see? And they said, We want to see Dreamgirls. And I thought that was really interesting because people who are hungry don't want to see a play about not having enough food. People that are undocumented don't want to see a play that leaves them depressed. And I almost feel like as creative artists and intellectuals and people that almost all firmly left or live on the left side of politics, that we sometimes don't put the right kind of lens on the shows that we make by thinking, what would the person who is experiencing this feel?

[6:58] Tonya Pinkins: But don't you think that's because those people aren't even going to be invited into the theater? They can't afford a ticket, so we're trying to give the lens for the rich people to feel like, oh, I've seen something. And that's okay too. You know, like I had somebody who's you know, colleague of mine who's a wonderful person in the arts, and she was like, you know, this propelled me to make me feel like I want to do something. So that was good. But then we've also had undocumented people come see the show that feel very uplifted and encouraged and understood by it. And you know, what's fascinating about the process we're in right now, and unfortunately this podcast will probably air after the show's over. The show's coming back.

[7:36] Anne Hamburger: It's coming to Queens, it's going to Brooklyn.

[7:38] Tonya Pinkins: Well, the show's doing that absolutely right now. I'm like leaving here and going off to Queens.

[7:42] Anne Hamburger: Okay. And where is it in Queens?

[7:44] Anne Hamburger: It's at the LaGuardia Performing Arts Center.

[7:47] Tonya Pinkins: Tell us the whole place where it's going and what the run of that is so I can make sure this podcast gets out so people can know about it while it's running.

[7:53] Anne Hamburger: Yeah. So it's um tonight and tomorrow night, it's at LaGuardia Performing Arts Center. And then after that, next Friday, week from Friday, we go to Snug Harbor Cultural Center, and then we go off to the Bronx. And for anyone who wants to follow the production schedule exactly, they can go on our website on GardeArts.org. Um E-N-G-A-R-D-E-A-R-T-S.org. But then we end up in Brooklyn at the Irondale Theater, the 26th, 27th, and 28th of March. And literally every night we've done this, we've gotten standing ovations, we've gotten wonderful reviews. We're still waiting for our New York Times review to come out. I do not know why it hasn't, but all the rest of the papers have given us beautiful reviews.

And um really, really proud of the piece. And I would love this show to come back. I would love it to return to a place like the public theater, which would be perfect for it. It's getting in touch with the public theater and getting them to see it. That's always a challenge.

[8:51] Tonya Pinkins: So Annie, why? Why are you, you know, I I'm told that you are the person who sort of started devised theater. Is that true?

[9:00] Anne Hamburger: You know, it's actually not true.

[9:02] Tonya Pinkins: Okay.

[9:03] Anne Hamburger: What is true is that I started the site-specific theater movement.

[9:03] Tonya Pinkins: Site-specific.

[9:08] Anne Hamburger: And I think the terms devised, immersive, site-specific are all commingled. They're actually very different.

[9:16] Tonya Pinkins: Okay. Tell us clear us up.

[9:17] Anne Hamburger: So basically, I started En Garde Arts and started En Garde Arts because I felt that a real desire to use the city as our stage. So we did, I brought a lot of artists who were then unknown. No, let's just say you you have an MFA from Yale.

[9:35] Tonya Pinkins: So I have another one.

[9:37] Anne Hamburger: She came from Baltimore. She said, I'm gonna make New York my stage. No, I came from Yale. I actually started, I actually started En Garde Arts as my third year thesis project. So I went to the chairman of the department and I said, I don't want to write a paper about starting a theater. I want to start a theater. Well, he didn't think I was going to be able to do it. So Ben Mordecai, who passed away, unfortunately, a lovely man, and he said, Annie, your MFA will not be dependent upon your being successful. Because everybody, you know, was kind of going, well, she's out of her mind.

[10:09] Anne Hamburger: This will never happen.

[10:11] Anne Hamburger: Which I've had said about me on many occasions.

[10:15] Anne Hamburger: So in the very first site I tried to get was the Pierpont Organ Library.

[10:19] Anne Hamburger: I was very naive at the time.

[10:21] Anne Hamburger: I sent a letter.

[10:23] Anne Hamburger: I told her I wanted to use the entire Pierpont Organ Library for a show.

[10:26] Anne Hamburger: And she sent me, she got on the phone with me and she said, darling, we're not on guard, avant garde, or any other kind of guard.

[10:34] Anne Hamburger: We're not doing this.

[10:37] Tonya Pinkins: And you were not discouraged.

[10:39] Anne Hamburger: I brushed myself off and kept going.

[10:42] Anne Hamburger: And who was next?

[10:44] Anne Hamburger: So um then we did uh uh with Michael Engler, a brief little show called The Ritual Project.

[10:50] Anne Hamburger: Michael recently directed the movie Downton Abbey and is now doing a major TV series.

[10:56] Anne Hamburger: Um then we did a show called But what did you do with him and 'cause we didn't know what was this first.

[11:00] Anne Hamburger: We did this a waggie piece in Central Park.

[11:02] Anne Hamburger: We didn't know what we were doing on the And you're still trying to do your thesis 'cause you're like not gonna graduate if you don't.

[11:07] Tonya Pinkins: Yeah, yeah.

[11:08] Anne Hamburger: We did it with the actors in costumes and it was a wild, wacky, surrealistic show with these brightly colored costumes.

[11:15] Anne Hamburger: And then um we went on to do uh our first kind of real serious production in a empty warehouse downtown when there were empty warehouses that you could get.

[11:27] Anne Hamburger: Well on uh Lafayette Street and Spring Street called Terminal Bar by a writer named Paul Selig, who's now become a world famous psychic.

[11:36] Tonya Pinkins: Okay.

[11:37] Anne Hamburger: Um and m Michael Engler directed that one as well, had Fisher Stevens and Roxanne Rogers in it, all these people who at the time were unknown when it was about the AIDS crisis.

[11:47] Anne Hamburger: But the shows that really defined the work I did during that time were the big outdoor productions that I did with Tina Landau and Ann Bogart.

[11:57] Tonya Pinkins: What were those Chuck Me and Mac Wellman?

[11:59] Anne Hamburger: Those were the artists.

[12:00] Anne Hamburger: So um Mac and I did a show in Central Park uh on the Bow Bridge called Bad Penny.

[12:08] Anne Hamburger: Um that was really quite wonderful with Reggie Cathy, who unfortunately passed away.

[12:13] Anne Hamburger: And I think what defined these shows, they were plays.

[12:16] Anne Hamburger: They were written plays by extraordinary writers like Mac Wellman and you know, it's the T.

[12:23] Anne Hamburger: S.

[12:23] Anne Hamburger: Elliott of today, I think.

[12:24] Tonya Pinkins: Yeah, and he runs the Brooklyn.

[12:26] Anne Hamburger: Well, he did, yeah.

[12:26] Anne Hamburger: He brought it up.

[12:27] Tonya Pinkins: Did you just leave?

[12:28] Anne Hamburger: Yeah, he's retired now, but um Chuck Me, who's like got an extraordinary facility with language.

[12:35] Anne Hamburger: Um so we combined these plays with directors who not only know how to work with great actors, but also have extraordinary visual uh chops, visual sensibilities.

[12:50] Anne Hamburger: Understand design is not just a set and on a proscenium stage, but understand design is how you work with visuals on a scale as high as you can see.

[13:03] Anne Hamburger: You know, aside specific.

[13:06] Tonya Pinkins: Where does this even come from, Andy?

[13:07] Anne Hamburger: Did you have it in a dream like what were you eating some popcorn and you're like, oh, you know what?

[13:12] Anne Hamburger: I'm gonna do my my play.

[13:14] Anne Hamburger: So I started off as a performance artist and an environmental sculptor.

[13:19] Tonya Pinkins: What is that sculptor?

[13:20] Anne Hamburger: That was like a 19.

[13:21] Anne Hamburger: That was like a long time ago.

[13:23] Anne Hamburger: Anyway, but no, I want to know.

[13:24] Anne Hamburger: You were 19 and you were doing performance art sculpture.

[13:27] Anne Hamburger: I was so what I would do is I would make I would design these fabric sculptures that took up whole rooms, and then I would write scripts and I would direct them and I would act in them.

[13:37] Anne Hamburger: And solo pieces, the Cindy Sherman of the theater.

[13:40] Anne Hamburger: Some solos, some I worked with other people.

[13:44] Anne Hamburger: Um, and I I like made a beautiful blue translucent tent that I performed with, and I made uh fabric sculptors, literally took up gal that were in in huge galleries.

[13:56] Anne Hamburger: We talked about things you're not supposed to say.

[13:59] Anne Hamburger: Um when I was doing performance artwork, I needed 25 yards of fabric for one show that I was doing that had three concentric circles made of muslin fabric.

[14:09] Anne Hamburger: I shouldn't even say this, but tell us.

[14:10] Tonya Pinkins: Oh, it's good, right?

[14:11] Anne Hamburger: Yeah, yeah.

[14:12] Anne Hamburger: And I was teaching in prison at the time.

[14:14] Anne Hamburger: I was teaching um drawing and painting and ceramics in prison.

[14:18] Anne Hamburger: And I befriended an accountant who was in prison because he had embezzled funds.

[14:24] Anne Hamburger: And he was making mattresses right across the street from my classroom.

[14:28] Tonya Pinkins: In the prison.

[14:29] Anne Hamburger: Uh-huh.

[14:29] Anne Hamburger: Okay.

[14:30] Anne Hamburger: Um, and the prison used to piss me off because they always would like prevent me from bringing things in like scissors and glue and things like that I needed for my class, because they were worried about things like scissors and glue.

[14:40] Tonya Pinkins: With good reason.

[14:42] Anne Hamburger: So well, it just kind of annoyed me.

[14:44] Anne Hamburger: So um the accountant said that if I needed 25 years of mu 25 yards of muslin, he would give them to me.

[14:50] Anne Hamburger: So I took great pride in actually being able to walk out of the prison.

[14:54] Anne Hamburger: Smuggled.

[14:55] Anne Hamburger: 25 yards of out of prison for my art.

[14:59] Tonya Pinkins: Okay.

[14:59] Anne Hamburger: It was for my art.

[15:00] Anne Hamburger: Okay.

[15:01] Anne Hamburger: So that's one of the things that I've got to do.

[15:02] Anne Hamburger: Probably say that.

[15:03] Anne Hamburger: But you know.

[15:04] Tonya Pinkins: Yeah.

[15:06] Anne Hamburger: I thought the statute of limitations is run.

[15:09] Anne Hamburger: So 1976.

[15:12] Anne Hamburger: Are they gonna come after me?

[15:13] Tonya Pinkins: I hope not.

[15:16] Anne Hamburger: So you smuggle out the muslin to make this.

[15:19] Anne Hamburger: And then my show.

[15:20] Anne Hamburger: So I because I come from the visual arts world, I've always been highly conscious of theater as a medium that's not just about the spoken word.

[15:30] Anne Hamburger: And the great Morgan Jeaness always says, you know, we have we we we function under the I forget now what she says, but it's kind of wonderful what she says.

[15:39] Anne Hamburger: But it's about like the, you know, that the spoken word is not the only way that we want to tell stories.

[15:47] Anne Hamburger: You know, we can tell stories visually through design, through music, through dance, um, and of course through the spoken word, but all of these things combined to tell a story, and very often, the way we develop work is we get a play, we read the play, a director gets the play, the director directs the play, the director puts the play on the stage.

[16:11] Anne Hamburger: And in some ways, that's great.

[16:13] Anne Hamburger: That's not what I do.

[16:15] Anne Hamburger: Okay.

[16:15] Anne Hamburger: I start off with an idea.

[16:17] Anne Hamburger: I assemble an artistic team.

[16:19] Anne Hamburger: We kind of do the research necessary, especially with documentary theater to exploit that idea over time, and let something take shape.

[16:27] Anne Hamburger: It's the riskiest way.

[16:29] Anne Hamburger: I mean life in the theater is risky, but yeah, but you don't have anything to say, here's the play.

[16:34] Anne Hamburger: You're putting your money in this piece of paper.

[16:36] Anne Hamburger: People are putting the money in this idea that's in your head.

[16:39] Tonya Pinkins: Right, hoping.

[16:40] Anne Hamburger: And you just hope it's gonna be good, right?

[16:40] Anne Hamburger: It's gonna be good.

[16:45] Anne Hamburger: Because there were times when Fandango wasn't good.

[16:48] Anne Hamburger: And now that's process.

[16:49] Anne Hamburger: And now it's great.

[16:50] Anne Hamburger: You know, I always find with creating work, there's like a period of time when you develop work from scratch.

[16:55] Anne Hamburger: I find there's always a period of time where it feels like muck.

[16:59] Anne Hamburger: And then there's a period of time where even if it's funny, it's no longer funny.

[17:03] Anne Hamburger: And as a creative producer, I try to be involved in the process, like all, but also retain enough distance to be able to be of service to the artist and objective so that I can come in and say, maybe you need to look at this this way, this way, or this way.

[17:18] Anne Hamburger: And obviously gaining the trust of artists is paramount.

[17:21] Anne Hamburger: But back to so I started working with Anne Bogart when I was a visual artist.

[17:26] Anne Hamburger: And she at the time in the late 70s was doing all this environmental theater with a company of actors.

[17:34] Anne Hamburger: I was in her company as an actor.

[17:37] Anne Hamburger: Because I was transitioning from performance art to theater.

[17:40] Anne Hamburger: And so in transitioning, I was like, well, okay, now what I want to be.

[17:43] Anne Hamburger: Do I want to be a writer?

[17:44] Anne Hamburger: Do I know director?

[17:46] Anne Hamburger: Do I want to be an actor?

[17:47] Anne Hamburger: So for a period of time, I was acting.

[17:50] Anne Hamburger: And we would go all over the city and do these shows in an empty school building on the Lower East Side.

[17:59] Anne Hamburger: Um, I found a detective office on 42nd Street back when there was a whole lot of empty property on 42nd Street.

[18:06] Anne Hamburger: And Anne has this incredible facility to stage performers, so they're framed in windows or doorways or on the street in beautiful ways.

[18:16] Anne Hamburger: She's as much choreographer as director, um, and you can now see that with the aesthetics she's developed over the years with the City Company and the viewpoints.

[18:24] Anne Hamburger: This was before then.

[18:26] Anne Hamburger: And I was so moved by looking at my surroundings in a completely different way by virtue of the fact that there were scenes unfolding in relationship to doorways and buildings and windows, and it so fed into my own visual theater aesthetic that also came from, you know, studying about environmental sculpture and you know, earthworks and all of that.

[18:55] Anne Hamburger: That it kind of keyed right into what I deemed important.

[18:59] Anne Hamburger: And I've always, what's been a through line my entire career is really thinking about how to bring theater goers together with people who are affected by the subject matter at hand.

[19:09] Anne Hamburger: So when people say to me, who's it for?

[19:12] Anne Hamburger: I always say, it's for both those groups of people.

[19:14] Anne Hamburger: Like how it's very hard to do.

[19:16] Tonya Pinkins: It's like the figure of the oppression kind of thing.

[19:18] Anne Hamburger: Well, no, because uh well, I don't, I'm not that familiar with her work, but no, I believe in crafting well-thought-out, professional, nuanced pieces like Fandango, but it's in how you think about community engagement and marketing and outreach and and who are the partners that you create from the day you start a show so that you get those people in the door because those partnerships take a lot of time and a lot of energy.

[19:48] Anne Hamburger: And I think the mistake that a lot of theater people make is they'll they'll make a play about whatever climate change, whatever.

[19:55] Anne Hamburger: And then two weeks before they open, they start calling all the climate change companies and saying, Come in the door, come in the door, come in the door, and they're like, who the hell are you?

[20:02] Anne Hamburger: So I think, you know, what is most valuable is when one's take tackling a subject that's important to people today that you and at the same time that you're going, I want to make a piece about climate change, I'm gonna make a piece about undocumented immigrants that you start from the very beginning developing relationships with social service organizations and communities that are going to trust you over time, so then they will get in the door.

[20:31] Anne Hamburger: But it's still very, very hard. Like La Mama, everyone would do it. Right. La Mama, we were at La Mama for eight performances. We had a beautiful feature in the New York Times. We sold out every single performance. We had a standing ovation on first preview. When the audience jumped to their feet at the end of the first preview, I just put my head in my hands and wept. I have never in 35 years of producing had a standing ovation for a first preview. Normally it sucks, right? So I was so moved by the fact that that happened. We sold out every performance. So now, tonight we're gonna be at LaGuardia Performing Arts Center, and we found, and that's a venue. So La Mama was 180 seats. LaGuardia is 60 seats, and we are giving away 50% of the tickets.

[21:29] Tonya Pinkins: Okay.

[21:30] Anne Hamburger: Because it's a different community trying to find an audience there, yeah. Yep. And I mean they're gonna want you to come back more.

[21:37] Tonya Pinkins: I'm fine with that, you know. But if and then we're going to Staten Island next week, and we may end up giving away all of the tickets. So, how could we get this word out more for people in Staten Island? Are there organizations? Like, what's the way to do it?

[21:52] Anne Hamburger: Literally am going tomorrow with Gabrielle Torres, my Latinx community engagement consultant, and we are driving to Staten Island with postcards.

[22:06] Tonya Pinkins: Okay.

[22:07] Anne Hamburger: And we are knocking on the doors of churches and community centers.

[22:10] Tonya Pinkins: Okay.

[22:11] Anne Hamburger: That is literally what we are doing tomorrow. So they don't read the New York Times. Absolutely. And we have been in touch with that, we're doing Snug Harbor Cultural Center, and we've been in touch with some of these organizations that serve undocumented immigrants, but it is extremely difficult to convert non-theater goers into theater goers.

[22:35] Tonya Pinkins: Why do you do this? Why? Why do you do you could retire now and sit back and wait to be a grandma?

[22:42] Anne Hamburger: What do you mean, ooh? I'd go nuts.

[22:44] Tonya Pinkins: Why would you go nuts?

[22:45] Anne Hamburger: Because I love being busy. I'm gonna talk about it. So you love the hard. You love the hard.

[22:49] Tonya Pinkins: I love the hard.

[22:50] Anne Hamburger: I love the hard. The only thing I don't love is how hard it is to raise money. But that's like everyone out there's interested.

[23:00] Tonya Pinkins: Sugar daddies.

[23:02] Anne Hamburger: Oh, you turned down the sugar daddies.

[23:04] Tonya Pinkins: I know.

[23:06] Anne Hamburger: Depends on what the bargain is. Artistically.

[23:15] Tonya Pinkins: So what were you like as a kid?

[23:16] Anne Hamburger: Oh God. My mother saved my third grade report card. I still have it. It's hysterical. The teacher's like, Ann is a daydreamer. If she would only pay attention in class. You know, I'm a rule breaker. I have in my whole life. You know, as a little kid, I'm sure that was a big pain in the ass to my parents. But I've always been kind of an excitement junkie, a rule breaker, curious about parts of the world I didn't know anything about. I mean, you know, when you say kid, is it age six? Is it age 21?

[23:51] Tonya Pinkins: No, let's go to age six, like this third grader who is like daydreaming.

[23:58] Anne Hamburger: Doesn't mean you're failing third grade. I didn't, no, I didn't fail. But I do have this the comments from the teacher, which were hysterical, you know. And unfortunately, so I had a mother who was manic depressive, now they call it bipolar. And I it was tough because as a child young child, I kind of had to take care of her. So she would kind of lie in bed, the lights to her bedroom would be off, she'd be under the covers. And there's 10 years' difference between my sister and I, and somehow I was anointed with the role of being the only one that could talk to my mother. So my mother would go through one of these bouts, and then my father would say, Ann, go in and talk to your to her. Or my sister would say, Ann, go in and talk to her. And the problem with that is I was a child, right?

[24:50] Tonya Pinkins: So how did you do it?

[24:51] Anne Hamburger: I climbed up on her bed and I patted her face. And I said, Mommy, it'll be okay. But what happened with that is that from a very young age I felt that I needed to take care of her. So that was tough.

[25:05] Tonya Pinkins: So what I sounds like my life. I'm not gonna let you leave from here because my mother was, I don't even know, schizophrenic, psychotic, and so I was the adult, you know, very, very early on. Um, and I remember I mean, she was probably schizophrenic before what they call a nervous breakdown that I was witness to, which I guess you also call a psychotic break. But like I remember standing behind her, she was sitting in her room, and I was flashing a flashlight on the wall and going, woo, ooh. And she got up and started screaming and chasing me around the house, and we had this house where you could go around in circles, and I thought it was a game we were playing. And then my grandmother came home and you know, they took her away, and I didn't see her for many, many months.

Um so you know, I can relate to that idea, but my mother was always a very hard person. There was nobody who was going to take care of her. She was a person who was always gonna be pushing you away, but you know, yeah, I was having to take care of her by paying the bills and picking up the pieces of that.

[26:06] Anne Hamburger: Well, my mother thought it was a good idea. My before I was born, my mother tried to kill herself three times. My mother thought it was a good idea when I was in elementary school. I think I was probably in fourth grade or fifth grade, to bring me to the mental institution where she was and have me visit the D ward to see where she was institutionalized. Clearly that's a very stupid thing to do with a child. But what happened?

[26:35] Tonya Pinkins: So she took me there.

[26:36] Anne Hamburger: Okay. I remember it like it was yesterday.

[26:39] Tonya Pinkins: Tell us what was that?

[26:40] Anne Hamburger: And we went into this place where I don't even know if this exists anymore, but I remember there was a woman who was catatonic who was sitting there with her arms poised in the air, like frozen. And the nurse went over and pushed her arm down because they I don't know what happens to the brain, but and it terrified me. Clearly, I mean, I think what it's kind of so I mean, a couple things about that. Um, I think art saved my life.

[27:09] Anne Hamburger: Actually, I think um definitely saved mine. The fact that I could, when I was home, go down into the basement. There was a closet where I kept my art supplies and I would draw, and I would turn furniture upside down and I would make up stories. I think if I hadn't been a naturally creative person who could construct these whole worlds, uh, I don't know what would have happened to me. I think what's interesting is like I I've somehow thought back about the connective tissue with like going into a mental institution in fourth grade and doing site-specific work. There somehow seems to be some synthesis in your brain, heightened consciousness between emotional reality, creative reality, and physical structures as containers of information, of content.

[28:05] Tonya Pinkins: I mean, y I do think they're connected somehow.

[28:08] Anne Hamburger: Um, I do think my desire to go teach in prison, I think it's kind of of a of a thing. And I think, you know, uh like Fandango for Butterflies and Coyotes, i you know, yes, you are watching it, but you also get up at the end and you participate, right? And so I'm always thinking about how to and I have all my life thought about, you know, how do we deal with personal space? Um, how does our own personal space relate to the spaces we create within or, you know, when it was outdoors there w the space was I mean, we closed off at in the early days of On Guard Arts, I did it I brought Reza Abdo to New York City, kind of enfant terrible Iranian director who unfortunately passed away of AIDS. And Reza and we closed off four square blocks of the meatpacking district and did a piece called Father Was a Peculiar Man with 60 performers and a marching band and a table that went three quarters of the way down Little West 12th Street with a meat cleaver and a chandelier that hung across the street.

[29:15] Tonya Pinkins: So we did these shows you could not do today.

[29:20] Anne Hamburger: That's so fantastic.

[29:22] Tonya Pinkins: You couldn't do it.

[29:23] Anne Hamburger: Why couldn't we do it today? 9-11 happened. And I would say things that we I mean, that the actors union would never let us do any of this, you know, if we were doing it with union actors. So a lot of what we did, I mean, when I did Orestes with Tina Landau, Jefferson Mays was a reste's amazing performer who then become became well known for I Am My Own Wife and other things. So I mean, I feel very fortunate that I've been able to have such a wealth of creative experiences that have really lasted my whole life in different ways.

[29:59] Anne Hamburger: And I'm not going to be able to do that.

[30:23] Tonya Pinkins: Stay tuned for part two.