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.

[0:03] Tonya Pinkins: You can't say that.

[0:05] Tonya Pinkins: It's the podcast where you can on the Broadway Podcast Network.

[0:10] Tonya Pinkins: We gotta speak to live.

[0:13] Tonya Pinkins: We gotta say we'll see you.

[0:26] Tonya Pinkins: My next guest reminded me that we have been friends for 40 years.

[0:32] Tonya Pinkins: Oh my god, I'm not even that old.

[0:35] Tonya Pinkins: I have learned so much from her over these 40 years.

[0:40] Tonya Pinkins: She's taught me vocabulary.

[0:42] Tonya Pinkins: She's taught me about art.

[0:44] Tonya Pinkins: She is a bookmaker.

[0:46] Tonya Pinkins: She's a painter, she's a sculptor, she's a mathematician, she's an intellectual, and she is one of my whitest, whitest friends.

[0:55] Tonya Pinkins: Toehead white hair when she was young, silver white hair now, porcelain white skin.

[1:02] Tonya Pinkins: But when I'm talking about the whites, I am not talking about her.

[1:06] Tonya Pinkins: She also made the race cards.

[1:10] Tonya Pinkins: I commissioned her to make the race cards.

[1:12] Tonya Pinkins: It was her idea, and I commissioned them.

[1:15] Tonya Pinkins: We uh I gave them as gifts during the time that I was doing Rashida speaking uh at the signature theater, and they were so popular that they were sold in the stores.

[1:25] Tonya Pinkins: And so join me in welcoming my good friend Sarah Stengle.

[1:32] Sarah Stengle: Hi, it is very nice to be here and to uh run over some of our long shared history.

[1:41] Sarah Stengle: Long haired hairs.

[1:42] Sarah Stengle: We met at a frat, right?

[1:44] Sarah Stengle: We met at a frat party that was just like the floorboards were soaked with beer, and the boys were like puppy dogs.

[1:52] Sarah Stengle: They were so unsophisticated.

[1:54] Sarah Stengle: And they were trying to get us to talk to them.

[1:57] Sarah Stengle: We were just happened to be standing next to each other and they were trying to engage us in conversation at a fairly low level and we I don't remember who suggested it but we looked at each other and we were like let's leave let's leave and the rest was history and the rest was history we we left and I think we had dinner together in the you know in the elegant school cafeteria Carnegie Mellon in Pittsburgh where it's where we were yes now you don't know this probably one of the first words you taught me which you used it all the time I didn't know what it meant and I had to go look it up was the word tactile tactile it's a great word yes you use that word all the time I was like what is she talking about what is she talking about you were talking about how you were so tactile you're so tactile and I I had to go look it up and then I was like I'm tactile too now where are you in the world?

[2:52] Sarah Stengle: I'm in New York I am in St.

[2:55] Sarah Stengle: Paul I'm looking out the window at fresh snow what yes which suits me fine I think it's beautiful.

[3:03] Sarah Stengle: Yeah and you like the cold I do like the cold so many levels.

[3:09] Sarah Stengle: Yeah um and I like the quiet that it um creates so one of my earliest memories of freshman year I was um taking piano lessons and I was in a practice room practicing the piano and Tonya was a music major and she ran into me there and she came in to hear me playing whatever I was playing and she sang for me.

[3:09] Sarah Stengle: And she sang for me in this little soundproof room.

[3:35] Sarah Stengle: So the sound is very close and very intense.

[3:38] Sarah Stengle: And all the hair stood up on my arms.

[3:40] Sarah Stengle: And I am not somebody who suffers from jealousy.

[3:47] Sarah Stengle: But I was just like, oh my God.

[3:52] Sarah Stengle: I am so jealous.

[3:53] Tonya Pinkins: Oh.

[3:54] Sarah Stengle: And it took me years to realize that jealousy is a compass towards what's missing in your life.

[4:04] Sarah Stengle: And if you are doing what you want with your life, you don't have to be jealous.

[4:08] Sarah Stengle: But I didn't start taking voice lessons till many years later.

[4:11] Tonya Pinkins: How many years now has it been that you've been singing gloriously?

[4:14] Sarah Stengle: I've been singing for 12 years, but I would not say that I was singing gloriously all that time.

[4:19] Sarah Stengle: I had a lot of difficulty finding my voice.

[4:22] Tonya Pinkins: What was the difficulty?

[4:23] Sarah Stengle: Well, there were several.

[4:25] Sarah Stengle: One was that um I only listened to alto music, and almost all the music that I liked and listened to was in that alto chess voice range.

[4:36] Sarah Stengle: And I am a freaking soprano.

[4:40] Sarah Stengle: And I had to own my voice.

[4:42] Sarah Stengle: And being in that register, you're very, very exposed.

[4:46] Sarah Stengle: And I was not a good note reader.

[4:48] Sarah Stengle: And so I had a lot of um anxiety about singing.

[4:52] Sarah Stengle: And I did learn some things from you.

[4:57] Sarah Stengle: I remember when our choir went to the Guthrie Theater, I was having an absolute panic attack.

[5:04] Sarah Stengle: I was like, I can't even breathe.

[5:05] Sarah Stengle: How am I gonna sing?

[5:07] Sarah Stengle: And you were just like, find your privacy.

[5:10] Sarah Stengle: Doesn't matter where you are, find your privacy wherever you are.

[5:13] Sarah Stengle: Pretend you're in the shower.

[5:15] Sarah Stengle: And I am blessed with extremely poor vision.

[5:20] Sarah Stengle: So I got out on that stage and I saw the 750 people.

[5:25] Sarah Stengle: I took my glasses off and I pretended that it was just this like woods with the little campfire and that one light in front.

[5:34] Sarah Stengle: And I just looked at the campfire, I did all right.

[5:37] Sarah Stengle: So I have learned some.

[5:41] Sarah Stengle: Oh, I could just go on and on.

[5:43] Sarah Stengle: But that was one lesson I learned was how if you have to perform and you're anxious, you just have to find your privacy, right?

[5:50] Sarah Stengle: Public solitude is what we use actually called the public solitude, the ability to act as if you're uh in solitude when you're in the public.

[5:59] Tonya Pinkins: Now, when I was sharing with you the other day that I was going to call this episode about, you know, how white you were, you you told me something about that I didn't even know.

[6:08] Tonya Pinkins: I was pushing that button about you.

[6:11] Sarah Stengle: Well, I don't think there's a comparison.

[6:13] Sarah Stengle: I don't doubt or question the fact that I am privileged, but I think women in America, they just people just feel free to comment on you however you look, um, your skin, your physique, your face, your haircut, whatever it is, it's public property that people can remark on.

[6:28] Sarah Stengle: But when I was in middle school and high school, I got called albino, I got called a freak, I got told I looked like oatmeal, I got told I looked like the underbelly of a dead fish.

[6:42] Sarah Stengle: That was because my, you know, my skin is the blue blood vessels show.

[6:48] Tonya Pinkins: Stunningly beautiful.

[6:49] Sarah Stengle: Stunningly beautiful.

[6:50] Sarah Stengle: Thank you.

[6:51] Sarah Stengle: Thank you.

[6:51] Sarah Stengle: But to this day, I do not like showing my body, and I don't like strangers looking at it.

[6:56] Sarah Stengle: I um I'm not um I I I like internalized to the point, and I don't think I'm alone in this, and this is not just about race.

[7:08] Sarah Stengle: I think sexism in America is is huge.

[7:11] Sarah Stengle: But you know, I got to the point where I was a 13, 14, and I thought that I was too ugly to be seen at a pool, and that I had to cover up for the consideration of those poor people who had to see me.

[7:23] Sarah Stengle: I that's how bad I felt.

[7:25] Sarah Stengle: And I've talked to other women who have had similar experiences, and I'm not looking for validation about my looks at this point.

[7:32] Sarah Stengle: I'm pretty sure.

[7:33] Tonya Pinkins: No, no, no.

[7:34] Sarah Stengle: But it's like when I met you, I just remember thinking you were just one of the most beautiful women I'd ever seen.

[7:40] Sarah Stengle: I mean, first of all, your coloring, your skin, your eyes, your hair, the thickness.

[7:46] Sarah Stengle: That was, you know, and I like a good looking woman.

[7:48] Sarah Stengle: So what can I tell you?

[7:49] Sarah Stengle: I was at the front, and I was like, this woman, this is a babe right here.

[7:52] Sarah Stengle: She's gonna be my friend.

[7:54] Sarah Stengle: We had a lot of fun.

[7:57] Tonya Pinkins: That was the thing.

[7:59] Tonya Pinkins: I mean, when you and I walked around Pittsburgh together, everybody noticed, and I have to say it was I kind of got a charge out of it.

[8:09] Tonya Pinkins: And I remember when we used to go out.

[8:12] Tonya Pinkins: Um, it didn't matter if there was a line, they would just like come in.

[8:18] Tonya Pinkins: And that was that was kind of fun too.

[8:21] Tonya Pinkins: I mean, I am fairly introverted, but I like to go out and dance.

[8:26] Tonya Pinkins: And uh we had fun.

[8:28] Sarah Stengle: We did.

[8:29] Tonya Pinkins: Now you were in St.

[8:31] Tonya Pinkins: Paul, Minnesota.

[8:32] Tonya Pinkins: You were there for the uprisings, you were in the heart of the uprisings, and it was incredibly disturbing.

[8:39] Tonya Pinkins: Tell us a little bit about what you were seeing.

[8:42] Sarah Stengle: So I live on a secondary highway.

[8:46] Sarah Stengle: Um I'm a sculptor.

[8:49] Sarah Stengle: There's a gas station across the street.

[8:50] Sarah Stengle: It suits me fine because I can sing and I can use power tools.

[8:54] Sarah Stengle: I chose this location on purpose, but it is a secondary highway.

[8:59] Sarah Stengle: And during after George Floyd was killed, they closed the major arterials and there was a curfew.

[9:07] Sarah Stengle: But past my door the night after, there were all these really expensive black SUVs whizzing by my door in the middle of the night towards downtown St.

[9:22] Sarah Stengle: Paul and towards downtown Minneapolis.

[9:26] Sarah Stengle: And they had their lights off and they were going 60, 70 miles an hour, and they were just one after the other.

[9:32] Sarah Stengle: No license plates, very, very creepy.

[9:37] Sarah Stengle: And then I was watching the news and I was hearing I have friends that live in the Powderhorn district.

[9:37] Sarah Stengle: I have friends that live on Lake Street.

[9:47] Sarah Stengle: I think the insurrectionists, which is what I'm going to call them, really underestimated the cohesion of those neighborhoods because those have been diverse neighborhoods for decades.

[9:57] Sarah Stengle: And there's tons of creative people who are open-minded and liberal, who love their neighbors and aren't afraid to eat.

[10:27] Sarah Stengle: Mostly my friends are liberal, but the comments that some of these news feeds on Facebook were saying about how, oh, it's so sad that these people are ruining their own neighborhoods, and it's so sad, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

[10:41] Sarah Stengle: And I was like, it isn't sad.

[10:43] Sarah Stengle: This is terrorism.

[10:44] Sarah Stengle: This is terrorism.

[10:46] Sarah Stengle: And I actually got triggered by the absolute disregard of the eyewitnesses.

[10:51] Sarah Stengle: Like the narrative fit into this slot of what the expectations of writing in America means.

[11:01] Sarah Stengle: And these like poor, angry, inarticulate people that can't use their words and have to smash windows. I'm like, no, these are projectiles that cost a tremendous amount of money that start a fire in the instance. They're like $2,000 a pop, and they're used by the military for countries for interactions. This is like these are $70,000 cars with really affluent white people zooming in from out of town and inciting violence with such precision and intelligence. And I would say that, and then these East Coast guys would be like, Oh, those poor people. I said, like, that's not what's happening. And I've read a little bit more about it. I think the same thing happened in the Newark riots. And I'm very skeptical about Ferguson as well.

But what it also reminded me of was, I don't know, I hope you don't mind me going right here, but I'm a survivor of numerous assaults. Um, I'm a survivor of numerous assaults. And what I found now in this decade in this century, there is more less stigma with speaking about it and a softer landing for some of these things that people don't want to hear. But back in the um 80s, it was so dismissed. It was just so dismissed. It's like you're supposed to shut up and take it, or it's not that big a deal, or if he didn't rape you, what's the problem? You're not pregnant, what's the big deal? Um, you know, oh, you got away light, you didn't get raped. Great. Well, that's nice. So what if he's gonna go turn around and like do that to somebody else?

There was just this feeling of, you know, I would describe myself as a generally articulate person who's self-aware. And I would articulate the experience, and it would just be like, oh, happens all the time. Like, what's the big deal? And this feeling of like being a fish in a bowl, and you're sort of bubbling out the truth, and it just doesn't land. Just does not land. And that's what I that's the feeling that I had seeing all these expensive cars. And I'll just say, you know, one more thing is that three weeks later, there were a whole nexus of these cars a block and a half from my house. And I kept calling the police and saying there's all these expensive cars here with no license plates.

There's something going on, there's something going on, there's something going on. And the police just treated me like I was just this babbling old lady. Like, what's the big deal if there's no license plates on the car? And I was like, no, you don't understand. I've lived here for eight years, I've never seen this before. This is something new. And then the hotel, the Marriott in um downtown St. Paul got burned to the ground, and the next day they were all gone and I never saw them again. And it's just this total disregard of the criminal behaviors of affluent white people.

[14:10] Tonya Pinkins: Now, see, you should have said there's a black person down the street from me at the Marriott, and then the police would have been there in a minute. Oh yeah, there's a black person singing too loud in the gas station. I mean, seriously, it's like the discrepancy is so striking. So I found the whole um episode of um Uprisings 2020. Uprisings 2020 to be fairly disconcerting, just in terms of the total willingness of the media not just to dismiss eyewitnesses, but also the mayor of Minneapolis, the mayor of St. Paul, and the chief of police of St. Paul all said, like, we have arrested 80 people from out of town, out of state, out of city. You know, there were people in the city as well colluding with them.

And there, of course, there were punks who took advantage of it because it's just fun to go smash things. There were. So I didn't get to witness the violence so much as I got to witness the scale of people coming in because these other roads were cut were closed, and they were just zooming by my house.

[15:23] Sarah Stengle: I yeah, I agree with you about women. I've always said that women are more hated in America than even black people. I mean, we're kind of at the bottom of the totem pole on that. So, you know, I I'm I you know I I think I feel like I've known you long enough for me to call you a white girl. It's fine. You have the privilege of that you can walk into spaces and people might assume you shared their politics. You were telling me you were in Wisconsin a week ago, and that literally people have divided around the mask stores and the not masked stores. Do you ever get an insight into the women who voted for Trump because they just assume you must be in the same place that they are?

[16:05] Tonya Pinkins: Stockholm syndrome?

[16:07] Sarah Stengle: What do you mean? I mean, honestly, if you are a woman voting for Trump, you are voting against your own self-interest in every way. But I think the women who are married to these big strong bully guys who just think that if their husbands stay in power, they get to stay home in their safe little houses and they don't have to go. I don't know. I I honestly, none of my friends, I mean, I have none of my friends would have voted for Trump.

[16:35] Tonya Pinkins: Now come on now, Sarah. You know, every time I see two white women, I gotta know one of them and part of the other one voted for Trump. So you're in that kind of a depends where you live.

[16:43] Sarah Stengle: If you nope, I am in a liberal bubble. So and I I am very happy in a liberal bubble. Like I l really love nature. And you know, my sister has a cabin out in Wisconsin. I would get killed. My mouth is so big. I am so done shutting up about shit. I I really I am not a perfect citizen. I'm not an angel, but I am tired of bystanding stuff, and so I have a big mouth and I say what I think. Especially, yeah, and and I uh they would hate me in in Sawyer County, Hunter County, or whatever. And there's pockets of um liberalism around, you know, it goes with education. So around the university cities and things like that, I could be okay. But as much as I love nature, I have decided I do not want to live in Trump country and have to stand by or agitate all the time. I don't have the emotional energy for it.

[17:37] Tonya Pinkins: So, for example, the county that I live in had the highest rate of any county in America for being for gay marriage. And it's not a particularly gay place. It's just a very liberal place. And it's a place, you know, Minnesota also has the highest per capita of voting. This has to do with the urban areas, though. There's almost two Minnesotas. So there's like Minneapolis. And then there's like the rest. And if you look at the city, Chicago and then Illinois, New York City, and New York State. I mean, that's kind of, yeah. But absolutely, I live in a liberal bubble. And if I if I moved to Red Country, I I think I would really feel a lot of anxiety, especially since I like to live alone. I just feel like I would be hated. They would want me dead.

[18:32] Sarah Stengle: Don't do that. You're irreplaceable to me.

[18:36] Tonya Pinkins: Thank you. Now, you know, there's this thing I was told, I've never been able to find it in writing this sculptor Aegon Vayner, a friend of mine. Um, I read his book, and she told me that she had read a quote, he said, the only appropriate response to abuse is creativity. And your art definitely, you know, you've got these beautiful allegories, you're going to share one with us. But I want to talk about the race cards when I was doing Rashida speaking, which was definitely a soul murdering experience, and you happened to be in town during the process, and we got into this conversation. So, where were you coming from when you shared this idea to me?

[19:18] Sarah Stengle: That I went, okay, I'll commission you to do it. Okay, so I saw the play. I did not like the play. I didn't like the and I think you're an electric actress, and I certainly wasn't gonna say anything in the question and answer period that would have any negative effect or any. I just didn't want to add any negative energy to the situation. It wasn't my show. But I was sitting and looking forward to the question and answer period, and I was absolutely stunned by the obliviousness of most of the questions being asked, that they thought that this was like groundbreaking progress against racism when it was really just a very twisted external perception of an arrogant playwright who probably didn't talk to any black secretaries before he wrote the play and didn't talk about the nature of being in a subservient position across the board.

You know, if you're a woman secretary, that didn't resonate either. And just sort of assuming that women were catty and unpleasant to each other and friendship. It was it was a very spiritually emaciated play to me. And I'm sitting there watching this like very negative portrayal of women as manipulative, weak and resentful, peevish, catty competitive. You you just run down the list. So I felt like it was written by a misogynist who happened to also be racist, who thought he was doing groundbreaking anti-racist work, and he was so proud of himself. So I'm sitting there, I'm getting madder and matter, and then these in name questions start coming in. I'm like, oh my fucking god, is there work to be done?

And so I came home and I was in a rage. And you were staying with me on your bed. You were staying with me too. And then we had a conversation about it. And then I was like, oh, and you had to give a gift to everybody. My opening yes, because this was before opening, and I wanted to give a gift, and it was like I was enraged myself. Yeah, and you had been making those beautiful paper bowls. And I was like, well, why don't I make a little something to go into the bowls? So last thing I'll say, then I'll shut up for a sec, is that I didn't want to alienate the audience. This was a bunch of people who were trying to do good.

[21:54] Tonya Pinkins: Who was trying to do good? They have to, I mean, if you asked the people who were producing that production, they would say they were doing groundbreaking integrations. And they would just be lying. Okay. I mean, Joel Drake Johnson, he actually died this year, so rest his soul. Um, if you had asked him, he said he this came out of him um going to a doctor when he had prostate cancer, and he did not think the black nurse was compassionate enough. And he wrote a letter of complaint to the doctor, and the doctor fired the nurse, and then he felt guilty, and then he read an article about Viola Davis saying, Why do I always have to be the supporting actor? Why can't I be the star? So in his mind, he was writing a play where the black woman got to be the star and tell her point of view.

And no matter how many times I told them, and you know I'm pretty direct, I was like, this character, Jacqueline, is not the star of this show. She doesn't start the play. She doesn't end the play. And this is not a play about her point of view. This is a play that says, This crazy black woman got herself fired. Okay, that's what that play said. And so I was actually fighting constantly against the cognitive dissonance of these white people. Like if they were telling themselves this was some radical anti-racist work, it was like, you all are insane. The inmates are running the asylum, which is why I created and ran all of those talkbacks. I got those guests. I set that up because I was like, oh my God, these people are dangerous to themselves and to the world because they are they're just so not integrous.

And I say all the time, uh a racist person, I am very safe and comfortable with. They are in internal alignment, they are trustworthy. You know what they're going to do. A normal, a northern liberal who believes and espouses all this stuff, they are the most dangerous person in the world for me because there's no integrity. And when push comes to shove, if they get into a position where it's about self-preservation, they are going to throw you under the bus. They cannot be trusted.

[24:05] Tonya Pinkins: I just want to say that living in Princeton, New Jersey, and having my studio in Trenton, New Jersey, and live and living, you know, going my friends went to the Quaker Front School, and they were fiercely liberal in everything they said and talking about um inclusion and all of that, and they were absolutely terrible to my niece and nephew's nanny, who was often the only black person in the world. They would actually like they would they would talk about all these conscious raising pieces of literature, but they would walk into the building, and if she was between them and her kids, they would take her shoulders and move her aside like she was a piece of furniture, and there was absolutely no regard.

Now the staff was better than the parents. The staff, I mean, it it was there were many good things about the school. I'm not against the school, but there were parents in that school who would say they weren't racist and they were really racist. And the number of people in that school who would allow their children to go to Trenton, which is 85% black, I believe, to visit my studio or even have a slice of pizza at this little pizzeria where everyone wears bow ties and the lines 45 minutes because the food is so great. You would have thought that they were going to get dragged off by rapists between the parking spot on the sidewalk and the front door. That there were just like gun-toting kidnappers or something like that.

Walking out of the streets, see, I turned my phone off with my computer answered it. Let's keep going. Oh, okay. So I mean, I'm exact I am exaggerating, but there were I I remember having conversations, like this one girl's like, Oh, you're a sculptor. I would love to be a sculptor, I want to learn woodworking. I'm like, I have a wood shop you want to visit. Why don't you bring your daughter over my studio? It was just like that's never gonna happen. I mean, that that was a they didn't say it, but that was the look on their face in Trenton, it's like never gonna happen. And I had museum shows, um, you know, there's a huge community around the City Museum of Trenton that was a wonderful uh wonderful community and included artists from a large radius, and many people came from all walks of life to those openings.

But outside of what I find is that musicians, artists, writers, creative people are just they they're so engaged in what they're doing creatively that they just they see talent for talent, they see interest for interest, and they're not as concerned about some of these things. Um but that so many of my friends in Trenton would not come to the Eldersley Museum because they were afraid of what of that. Afraid of what? Of uh parking their car in a city with a black population, they're afraid of parking their car and walking across the lawn of the museum to the museum.

[27:02] Tonya Pinkins: I can't think of any other episode. Okay, now you're from Pennsylvania. That's a real tough little state, Bethel, right? Bethlehem. Bethlehem. So you came up in a white white community, very academic family. How do you get to be like you? I don't even like the words racist, I don't like the word liberal. So how do you get to be you? Like you do not come from a diverse background. No, not at all. Um, but my mother is a tiger advocate for the for whatever she thinks is right. My mother is cut of a very unfortunate. But what year was she born in? So how does she even get to be that? She had a son of a bitch for a father. There's really no other explanation. She had a racist son of a bitch for a father.

So she, I mean, I I shouldn't speak ill of the dead, but you know, he he was special. And that's gonna take us to our next conversation, which is about cults. We're gonna get to talking about the cults. But anyway, anyway, um in the early 60s, the math department where my father worked at Lehigh University hired a professor named Scott Williams. And my father would eat lunch with him because most of the other faculty would not. And Scott Williams was built like a fire plug. He was also a blacksmith. And he would come over to our house, and the we three kids just loved him because he had a very playful side. And I used to I remember like he would hold his arm out and I would treat it like a jungle gym.

I'd swing off of it. And I I had a very big soft shot for um Scott Williams. And I remember one time there was a dinner party, and Scott Williams was listening to me talk, and my mom told me I had to go to bed, and I threw a huge fit. So like I think very early on, before I was aware of anything, you know, Scott Williams ended up going to New York State University. So he was only in um Pennsylvania for about three years. But during those three years, they used to do things together like go to Halloween parties that my my mom and dad dressed up as cavemen, he dressed up as Mr. America. And I remember I remember those those those events made an impression on me. But at my private school, there was only one black uh person, and he was a boy, and boys and girls did not really speak to each other after second grade in that school, or they got accused of being, you know, so and so and so and so sitting in a tree.

So, like I didn't talk to him because I didn't want to deal with that. I mean, I I don't I mean, I I so but I do think that being an artist, um, and wanting to have a workspace in New York City that I and and also wanting to have a fairly big workspace when I wasn't affluent caused me to live in neighborhoods and see things and experience things that other people from my same background, if they were in, you know, wouldn't experience. So I've lived in in on the border of Bedsty in East New York, and um I've had my studio in um Trenton, and I actually really like Trenton. It's a town absolutely full of jazz and creativity and foundries and artist studios.

[30:44] Sarah Stengle: I hear you, I hear you making this case for like, you know, I was so poor, I had to move to the poorer neighborhoods to sports space. But without getting into details, I know that you were actually at one point married into one of the richest families in the world, and still it is like you have not made the privileged choices that have been made available to you. What is that about honestly? Really super rich people, it's a spiritual wasteland. They're pretty comfortable using people, and they're not at all interested in actually making art. They are interested in consuming art, and it's a very different mindset. And you travel in those circles where they have like 20-acre lawns or 300-acre lawns and servants, and you have paint under your fingernails, forget about it.

It's so stressful. It was so stressful being married into that family, and um, my ex-husband did not put importance on the shallow things that some of the rest of his extended circle did. But I married into it all, you know, it wasn't just him, it was the whole extended circle. And like, you know, all things human, they weren't all bad, but to say that I did not fit in well is but but we so feel, you know, like we so want to have an attitude that you know, white girls they just have it so easy, and they just marry so that they can get the money, and then they can have the money, and even if they get divorced, they get the money, and then they can just live their easy life and they can vote for Trump. And like you made different choices. I I don't know how you made those choices.

[32:33] Tonya Pinkins: This is Tonya Pinkins. You're listening to You Can't SAY THAT on the Broadway Podcast Network. That was part one of my conversation with my dear friend Sarah Stengle. Come back for part two.