← All Of It with Alison Stewart
All Of It with Alison Stewart
The Creative Team Behind the Tony Nominated Musical 'Illinoise'
00:28:39
Choreographer Justin Peck and playwright Jackie Sibblies Drury on "Illinoise"
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McDonald's Employee / Jackie Sibley's Drury
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McDonald's Customer
I' ma put you on nephew all right, Unc.
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McDonald's Announcer / Song Performer
Welcome to McDonald's.
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McDonald's Employee / Jackie Sibley's Drury
Can I take your order?
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McDonald's Customer
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McDonald's Customer
Listener supported WNYC studios.
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Host (possibly a radio or podcast host)
This is all of it.
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Kusha Navadar (Guest Host)
I'm Kusha Navadar in for Alison Stewart.
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Host (possibly a radio or podcast host)
Hey, thanks for joining us.
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Kusha Navadar (Guest Host)
We're really happy that you're here. Later on the show, we've got this week's Food for Thought conversation. We'll talk to chef Mel Ossaroff and take your calls about her new cookbook called Sweet Treats From Brownies to Brioches. After that, we've got filmmaker Kelly Reichart in studio to talk about her upcoming career retrospective at the Metrograph. Kelly joins me next to discuss her 30 year career as a director, screenwriter and editor. And finally, we'll talk about a new book spotlighting public art installed in subway stations in the past eight years. The MTA Arts and Design director Sandra Bloodworth and Deputy Director Cheryl Hagman join us to discuss and listeners will want to hear about your favorite subway art. That's the plan. So let's get started with your Illinois. One of my favorite conversations from this spring was with two of the creatives behind the deeply moving show Illinois. It's a new dance adaptation of the seminal Sufyan Stevens album with a story by Tony winning choreographer Justin Peck and Pulitzer Prize winning playwright Jackie Sibley's Drury. Back in March, we had Justin and Jackie on to talk about the show and the creative wonder behind it. We on Team all of it were saddened by some news yesterday related to Illinois. It's been reported that Tom Gates, the show's primary stage manager and a longtime presence on Broadway, unexpectedly and tragically passed away. His loss is affecting many people in the New York City arts community, especially the cast and crew of Illinois. And we at all of it are sending our deepest condolences. Illinois was a very moving piece of about love and about life. It's touched the lives of a lot of people already. The Tonys have have nominated Illinois this year in four different categories. Best New Musical, Best Lighting design of a Musical, Best Choreography and Best Orchestrations. So in honor of all of that, we want to bring you our conversation with Justin and Jackie again with our deepest appreciation and to celebrate the love and life behind this show. I started the conversation by asking Justin who. Who choreograph, Choreograph the show about his first encounter with Sufjan Stevens album.
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Justin Peck
Oh man. Yeah. I was probably around 17 years old and I heard this album and I was just blown away by so many things about it. I guess the first thing is just the scale of it, that it had such range. It could be an intimate whisper of a folk song and then this like massive scale, orchestral, almost abstract dance music all incorporated into the same, same song cycle. And I think it's really the poetry of the lyrics that, that hit close to my heart. And it's one of those albums that really made me feel seen, made me see the world in different ways and made me be able to relate better to the community around me. So it, it made waves with me and I think that that quality it has is something that's reached a whole generation of people who have been able to engage with it for the last almost 20 years.
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Host (possibly a radio or podcast host)
Now you talk about the lyrics, which really do make a difference in your experience of the album. I mean, Jackie, Illinois is a concept album. It's about people and places related to the state. What stands out to you about the way Sufjan Stevens is as a storyteller?
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McDonald's Employee / Jackie Sibley's Drury
Oh, I think that he's just the sort of consummate storyteller among musicians of his generation. And I knew the album really well. I thought, before going. Going into this process, but then really looking at the lyrics and, like, the density and poetry of them is something that I hadn't fully realized before. Really drilling down into it. There's just so many references and so many sly winks at so many different kinds of imagery. I just. I think it's a really beautiful piece.
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Host (possibly a radio or podcast host)
Yeah. And it's, you know, taking that piece and then making it a staged interpretation. My understanding is that it took a.
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Kusha Navadar (Guest Host)
Little while for that to happen.
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Host (possibly a radio or podcast host)
The New York Times reports that it took almost five years for Sufjan Stevens to agree to a stage production of Illinois. What was his original reaction? Justin?
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Justin Peck
Yeah, so, you know, Sufian and I have had a long collaboration over the years. It's now been over a decade of the two of us working together. And I really consider him to be one of my most important collaborators and also a friend now at this point. And so we spent a lot of time working together over these years. And somewhere along the way, I started to just plant the seed of, you know, what about your album Illinois? Like, is there something there? Is there a musical in it? Is there some sort of, like, staged production to be found inside of all that? And he sort of just like, deflected again and again and again, and I persisted again and again and again until eventually, I think he picked up on the fact that I was really serious about it and very much inspired by this album. So it was a pretty extensive process to get the go ahead from Sufyan. And he's been incredibly generous about just giving the project its space to develop and allowing us to honor this music and trusting us with. With what is such a beloved album.
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Host (possibly a radio or podcast host)
Yeah, and it sounds like that space has allowed you to really envision what you love about it, but then also what more you could add onto it, the. The narrative element, I think, of this piece important. Illinois, the original concept album isn't strictly narrative. It's more of a collage of stories. But the stage show does have an overarching narrative.
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Kusha Navadar (Guest Host)
Jackie, when you entered the project, did.
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Host (possibly a radio or podcast host)
That overarching narrative exist, or did you and Justin work together to figure that out?
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McDonald's Employee / Jackie Sibley's Drury
Kind of both, in a way. When I entered the project, Justin had already done a workshop, sort of a first draft, to put a lot of his choreography out into the world so that he could have a sense of what it was he was working on. He and I talked about his initial conceit of having a group of storytellers hike out to the middle of the woods and share stories around a campfire and knew that one of those storytellers would be having a larger narrative of a sort of. Yeah, like more of an autobiographical story to tell. And so, yeah, we worked together to try to figure out how to shape that story in a way that allows an audience to really connect emotionally with that character and have almost a deeper resonance with the songs of the album.
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Host (possibly a radio or podcast host)
Was there a moment where you both felt like, oh, this narrative is working. We've kind of found the keystone that holds that whole bridge together.
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Justin Peck
I don't know if there was ever, like, that big of an aha moment. I do think that there's. I feel like it's a miracle that we were able to. To excavate a narrative in this album without losing any of the music. And that feels really important to us. You know, the number one priority was to honor the experience of this album, to provide the audience with the full experience of this music in its entirety. And then the second goal for us was really, like. And we didn't know if it was possible, like, is there a satisfying theatrical and dramatic arc that we can shape in relation to the album, with the album as sort of our blueprint to do that? And I do think that this idea of, like, the campfires being, like, an entry point was huge for being able to, I think, aesthetically align with the music. You know, the music has this very, like, diy, kind of, like, grab an instrument and sit around the campfire and, like, play some music together in a communal way. But it also, I guess, it just allows the audience to find a way to connect with what they're seeing. Because the experience of gathering around a campfire and sharing food and conversation and stories and song and music and dance, ultimately is something that almost everyone can relate to. Everyone's had that sort of experience. It's not something that's hard to afford. It's something that you can do in the woods. You can do it on the beach, you can do it in someone's backyard. And it was one of those aha moments of, like, oh, this is something that an audience can sort of latch onto and connect with. And then for us, I think it was just a lot of really detailed work in terms of, like, how to create the puzzle of the show and how to tell the story of the central protagonist. And we did a lot of kind of, like, restructuring. It's kind of like how you would storyboard a film and need to move scenes around. And we tried a lot of things over the various iterations of this show, from Bard to Chicago Shakespeare Theater to the Armory and now moving on to Broadway.
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Host (possibly a radio or podcast host)
Jackie, talk to us about that puzzle a little bit. What did that look like, moving the pieces around? What were things that you tried that didn't work? What were things that you were really proud of?
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McDonald's Employee / Jackie Sibley's Drury
The craziest thing to me is that even though there have been a lot of iterations of the show in different orders, it's never been like, oh, no, that's bad. That's wrong. That's terrible. It's just sort of been really. I think we both have spent a lot of time sitting with it and just trying to figure out how to guide an audience through the show emotionally. So it's been like, I really want. I'm like, what? Didn't work? It just. I think the music is so good, and I think that Justin's choreography is so beautiful. I don't know that there's a wrong version of the show, Honestly. It's just one that hopefully allows for the most people to have the deepest catharsis. And I think that we've arrived almost at that version of the show.
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Host (possibly a radio or podcast host)
You bring up the dancing and Justin's choreography. Important point for listeners. Illinois is a dance musical. There is no dialogue. There's lyrics that you hear performed by a band, but the players on stage dancing communicate through dance, and the songs are sung by the band above the main stage. We can't play the dance over the radio, but here's a clip of the performances you did at Bard last year. Here's the man of Metropolis steals our.
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McDonald's Announcer / Song Performer
Hearts Only a steel man can be a lover if he had hands to. We tremble all over we celebrate ourselves of each other we have a lot to give one another.
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Host (possibly a radio or podcast host)
Jackie, I saw. I saw the performance last week, and it was so striking how emotionally invested the audience became in these characters who weren't speaking. My producer asked me after the show how the show was, and I said that watching everything unfold made me fall in love with my fiance all over again. So. And that wasn't just me that was among the audience, one of the many feelings that I think were felt. So how do you elicit that level of emotional reaction without having the characters themselves say a word?
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McDonald's Employee / Jackie Sibley's Drury
I think it's a lot of the show really rests on how talented the performers both are, both in terms of being able to do this virtuosic choreography, but also in terms of their ability to convey love and emotion and grief and empathy. They're all phenomenal actors in their own right. And there Was something that we sort of came upon organically, which is that the emotions of the show are so primal that it felt like trying to use words to describe them. Even more than the movement was already describing those emotions and the music was already describing those emotions. It felt redundant. And so I do think that without the sort of a layer of language, separating you from that emotion would allow you to sort of intellectualize it, which is what I do a lot. I'm working on it in therapy. But just being able to engage directly with those emotions and being able to put yourself into the arc of the show allows, like, a real special moment of connection for people.
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Host (possibly a radio or podcast host)
And when you think about that, everything Jackie's saying, Justin, how does that come through in the choreography? What were some of the bold choices that you made to make that emotion come through?
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Justin Peck
Well, yeah. I mean, hey, look. So my work as a choreographer has been a craft that I've been chipping away at for a long time now. I think about it constantly. I'm always working on something. There's never a moment where I take a break. And so I feel like I've been able to create a range in terms of, like, what's in my toolbox. And also with this project specifically, part of my goal was to pull from so many influences and present this amalgamation of different styles of dance that becomes, like, its own definitive language. And that all is kind of at our fingertips, and we can apply that to the narrative. And the priority is always. For a project like this, at least, the priority is always story. You know, what is the story? How are we telling the story? And I think there's something about this show and this experience of this musical where it feels almost like you're watching a silent film. And I think when you talk to filmmakers, a lot of them will say, like, the goal is to have as little dialogue as possible. That the goal is to tell the story through images, moving pictures. Right. And I think in an odd way, like, this musical, even though it's a different medium, it's after a similar kind of goal. So it's really trying to tell a full story without any dialogue. And through energy, movement, images, gesture.
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Host (possibly a radio or podcast host)
I would love to get into the story itself. Illinois centers on a character named Henry, whom the Playbill describes as a memoirist in denial who eventually shares a tragic and true tale about first love. And for much of, he's reluctant to share his story. So, Jackie, how did the Henry character and his story kind of come together for you?
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McDonald's Employee / Jackie Sibley's Drury
I guess Justin really had this vision of some of the specific elements of Henry's story, of his Midwestern childhood, of his sort of unrequited French love, friendship with another boy, and also of some tragedy that befalls that best friend. And I think the biggest key that we had to figure out was how to get into and out of Henry's story, and also sort of the psychology of that character of why he needed this community to be able to deal with the sort of trauma of his adolescence.
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Host (possibly a radio or podcast host)
Yeah, you mentioned how to get in and out of the story. The one way that that happens is by sharing stories of multiple characters. So before Henry builds up the courage to share his song, we hear stories from four other characters. There's Morgan with the song Jacksonville. There's Joe Davies with the song they are night zombies. They are neighbors. They have come back from the dead. Ah, there's Wayne with John Wayne, Gracie Jr. I'm just going through the whole concept album here. And Clark with the song of the man in Metropolis that we heard before Justin. How did you think about who these people are and what stories they wanted to tell each other?
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Justin Peck
Yeah, so part of the vision, I guess, for this show involves, like, okay, it's gonna be told through dance. There's gonna be this. This framing device at the campfire, and we're going to have to sort of guide the viewers into, like, how this world works. So rather than just like, diving right into Henry's story right away at the campfire, it's like, there's this. Of campfire storytelling, and there's certain, like, rules with how to do that. And, you know, things like, you want to set a mood, you want to tell a story with as few props or things around you as possible. And so we get the chance to do that with four characters prior to Henry, so that by the time we get to Henry, the audience has sort of adjusted to how this world works. And just, like, again, like, the theatrical rules of this world. So that was really important. And all the while, through these other short stories that are being shared, we're kind of, like, tracking Henry and how he's responding to these other stories, how he's working up the courage to eventually come forward and share his own story. So that's, like, some of the thinking behind it. I mean, one of the biggest influences on this narrative structure is really another dance musical called the Chorus Line, which I'm sure a lot of people know. And that's similar because the structure of that is really, like, okay, you always return to the line. There's literally a line drawn on the floor and the characters always come back to it. And we begin that show with getting these kind of, like, short stories of each character on the line, and we feel something looming in the background, and there's a deeper story that we eventually tell into once we get a little bit further along in that show. So I think, you know, the difference here is, like, instead of a line, we're at a campfire. So it's a bit more circular. But that was, like, one of those, like, guiding North Stars for this project as well. And also, like, a nice way to tie one dance musical to another dance.
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Host (possibly a radio or podcast host)
Musical, and a great euphemism there. North Star for campfire, very on brand. The first storyteller, Morgan, in the play shares a story about lineage and lessons, lessons from our ancestors. The song is Jacksonville. Let's hear a little bit of the original song.
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McDonald's Announcer / Song Performer
I'm not afraid of the black man running. He's got it right. He's got a better life coming.
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Host (possibly a radio or podcast host)
So that was the original song. Morgan's story and dance performance features a tap dancer. It adds this new sonic element to the song, too. How did. Justin, how did you think about adapting these songs? How much you could change them and how to change them and how much you wanted to leave just as written?
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Justin Peck
Yeah, that's a good question. I mean, it was a big conversation with Timo Andres, who's our arranger and orchestrator, as well as Nathan Cosey, our music director. And all that was done the music and the story, in collaboration with myself and Jackie. And a lot of those short stories, they hold a lot. I'll say. They definitely hold a lot. So it was a question of how do we focus this into something that is digestible, something that makes sense to us, and something that works in the world of this show. And that song, Jacksonville, is one of my favorite songs on the whole album. And it just has, like, so much swagger to it as well, and just, like, has actually influenced a very unique kind of style of movement that I don't. Usually when I watch it, I'm like, oh, did I choreograph this? Like, it feels like a standout number in the show, but it's about. It's a little bit complicated because it's about this town in Illinois called Jacksonville. And there's this debate over if it's named after Andrew Jackson or A.W. jackson, who was a black preacher at the time and was really instrumental in the Underground Railroad and bringing slaves from the south to the north for freedom. And so those are two very polarizing figures. And the story in the song is really about this character trying to sift through all that and find the truth of this and trying to reach back into her past and connect with some sort of ancestor who was around during that time to give her the answers and how it's sometimes very difficult to hear those voices from the past and receive, like, the definitive answer of what that is. So it's about that kind of struggle. And. And I just had this idea of, like, including tap dance in the piece and giving it to the character of the cast member who represents that ancestor. And so he comes out in this, like, kind of beautiful period suit and performs this tap dance sequence that feels very rooted and also honors. You know, tap dance is a predominantly African American art form, and so it was a way to kind of, like, give that character voice. So. And for me, it's personal in a way, because there's a show that really inspired my whole trajectory as a dance maker and as a performer, and that's George C. Wolf and Savion Glover's Bringing the Noise, Bringing the Funk. And I always try and credit that whenever I can, because it really did change the course of my entire life. And I was so influenced by seeing that as a young person. And it's a major tap dance musical about the black experience in this country. And when I saw it as a kid, I was sort of. You know, some of it went over my head, and some of it was just so intriguing to me. But I knew that there was a special thing about that show, and I began my career as an artist and a performer through tap dance. So, really, I studied it pretty extensively as a young person, was very devoted to it, had great mentors growing up and learned so much about that form, and eventually transitioned into other forms of dance and made my way over to New York City Ballet. But it's a way to connect back to my origins and my earliest influences in theater and storytelling.
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Host (possibly a radio or podcast host)
You're talking about all of these elements that land at the core of something. And the influences, obviously, Sufjan Stevens laid the groundwork, but, Jackie, an element, when I watched this that I thought was interesting about the staging outside of the dance, an influence, maybe Midsummer Night's Dream. I don't know if I'm reading too much into this, but I wanted to point this out. We talked about the cornfield, and you meant you called it woods and Finding Truth in the woods. And there are literally fairies, butterfly, winged singers up on stage, commenting on what the players down there are doing. Am I just a Shakespeare nerd? Did you Think about that. Talk about that element.
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McDonald's Employee / Jackie Sibley's Drury
Well, I wish that I'd been thinking about Shakespeare or that I could take credit for that idea. But I think that came from Justin in association with our costume designers, Reid and Harriet, who are incredible. And that sort of was more of a nod to the tours that Sufian Stevens would do in the early aughts where he would sort of hand make wings out of kites. And there's an amazing image of him in these sort of, like, feathery, like, angel wings. And so just because the band that is backing this entire show or is the sort of the foundation for the entire show is so incredible, and the singers are so otherworldly, it just felt really right to have them in that sort of fairy, mystical butterfly place in the woods.
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McDonald's Announcer / Song Performer
Yeah.
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Justin Peck
And yes, but it was also, like, something that kind of helped us see and, like, expand the world of this show. And it's something we talked about also with the singers. Almost like the thought that they're like, five years ahead of everyone at this campfire and they're looking down on it and they're singing about it. So it's like they're in their own kind of outer crust, almost like Greek chorus style, commenting on this world that's happening below and beneath them. And they do feel they have this godly quality to them when they're on stage and they're lifted above and they have that look with angel wing, the butterfly wings and all that. And so I do think it's a way to kind of like, layer in more. And I thought about it more, actually, because we presented this at the Chicago Shakespeare Theater, so I was, like, trying to think about all these. Like, it. Trying to source is like, many parallels to Shakespeare in, like, this show as well.
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Host (possibly a radio or podcast host)
So you had thought of that?
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Justin Peck
Well, yeah, but in, like, sort of like a roundabout way. Like, it's not like something that we.
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Host (possibly a radio or podcast host)
Were like, not the origin, but.
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Justin Peck
Yeah, yeah. And then it's like, oh, there's more connectivity to this. There's also, like, a detail of there being these moth images on the notebooks of each character as they're sharing. And it's like when they open their notebook, the words that they've written on the page somehow, like, flutter away and become airborne. And they take the form of sung lyrics.
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Host (possibly a radio or podcast host)
And so you mentioned that Jacksonville was your standout song. Jackie, what's your standout song?
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McDonald's Employee / Jackie Sibley's Drury
Oh, that's basically an impossible question, especially at this point. Like, it's. It's also the strangest thing, even just listening to the original version of Jacksonville just now. Like, I haven't listened to the album itself for about a year and a half and so like the versions of the songs that Timo has created, that Nathan and is creating, that the band is creating, those are the ones that live the most in me at the moment. But I guess it changes every time I watch the show. But when I watched last night, I found the tallest man, the broadest shoulders to be like the most moving, which is a song that happens sort of after Henry shared his story and is being welcomed into a new phase of his life almost with this community behind him him.
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Kusha Navadar (Guest Host)
That was my conversation with Justin Peek and Jackie Sibley's Drury about Illinois, a show based on the Sufian Stevens album of the same name. Justin is the director and choreographer of the show and Jackie is the playwright. The show is nominated for four Tonys this year, and we're sending our thoughts to the entire team behind this show.
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McDonald's Customer
I'mma put you on, Nephew.
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Justin Peck
All right, un.
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McDonald's Announcer / Song Performer
Welcome to McDonald's.
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McDonald's Employee / Jackie Sibley's Drury
Can I take your order, miss?
- [30:41]
McDonald's Customer
I've been hitting up McDonald's for years now. It's been. We need snack wraps. What's a snack wrap? It's the return of something great. Snack wrap is back.
- [30:51]
Fidelity Customer
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