We Had a World' Based On Secret Recordings of A Dying Grandmother

Summary

All Of It Podcast Episode Summary

Episode Title: We Had a World' Based On Secret Recordings of A Dying Grandmother
Release Date: April 18, 2025
Host: Alison Stewart
Guests:

• Andrew Barth Feldman – Actor known for Dear Evan Hansen
• Trip Cullman – Director
• Joshua Harmon – Playwright (via Zoom)

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Introduction to the Play

In this episode of All Of It, host Alison Stewart delves into the creation and impact of the play We Had a World, a New York Times Critics' Pick currently running off-Broadway at the Manhattan Theater Club's City Center Stage until May 11th. The play is inspired by playwright Joshua Harmon's secret recordings of his final conversations with his dying grandmother, exploring the complexities of familial relationships and personal history.

Notable Quote:

"ALL OF IT is a show about culture and context." – WNYC System Description

Genesis and Development of the Play

Joshua Harmon shares the inception of We Had a World, explaining how his recordings with his grandmother became the foundation for his latest work. Encouraged by his grandmother to create a brutally honest portrayal of their family dynamic, Harmon sought to transform personal dialogues into a compelling dramatic narrative.

Notable Quotes:

• "I wanted you to promise me to make it as bitter and vitriolic as possible. In other words, giving me license to tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth." [02:52]
• "I think it's for each person a very personal experience. And I guess that's the beauty of it." [21:02]

Directorial Vision and Staging

Director Trip Cullman discusses the creative decisions behind the play's intimate staging. The lack of elaborate props and the open stage design are intentional choices to foster audience imagination and engagement. Starting the play with the protagonist in his underwear serves as a metaphor for vulnerability, aligning with the play's themes of exposing deep-seated family secrets.

Notable Quotes:

• "I thought it was like a kind of perfect visual metaphor to get the writer stripped down and exposed." [04:01]
• "The audience is required to utilize their imaginative process." [07:29]

Performance Dynamics and Actor Insights

Andrew Barth Feldman highlights the unique challenges and rewards of performing in an intimate setting compared to larger productions like Dear Evan Hansen. The ever-changing audience dynamics necessitate a heightened level of presence and adaptability from the actors, fostering a deep connection between performers and audience members.

Notable Quotes:

• "There's nowhere to hide. You have to be alive. You have to be listening." [06:25]
• "The audience reacts completely differently every night. And it is a chemistry that I am fascinated by." [19:53]

Director Cullman emphasizes the collaborative process with the actors, particularly in adapting to the absence of a live audience during rehearsals. Introducing friends into the rehearsal space helped actors acclimate to genuine audience interactions, enhancing the authenticity of their performances.

Notable Quote:

"We're very different every day. But it's everybody, collectively and individually, is bringing something so different every day." [19:57]

Exploring Complex Characters and Relationships

The play centers on the strained relationship between Joshua, his mother Ellen, and his grandmother Renee. Actor Janine Saralis, portraying Ellen, brings depth to her character's internal conflicts—balancing love and resentment towards her own mother. The narrative explores how unresolved familial tensions influence personal growth and relationships.

Notable Quotes:

• "How do you square that circle? How do you make sure that you don't pass on that dysfunction to your progeny?" [07:23]
• "She is the killjoy at the very top. But... it's very hard to hold all of those different truths in your head." [15:39]

Audience Engagement and Personal Resonance

Joshua Harmon reflects on the personal connections audiences forge with the play, revealing that viewers often project their own family experiences onto the narrative. This universal resonance underscores the play's exploration of identity, memory, and the multifaceted nature of love within families.

Notable Quotes:

• "It just felt like I knew this was going to be the last time I talked to her and I wanted to make sure that I remembered what we said." [02:19]
• "People are watching it. I think we realized... they're starting to really process something personal, and that's exciting." [21:02]

Conclusion and Final Thoughts

We Had a World serves as both a personal memoir and a universal examination of family dynamics. Through its intimate staging and raw emotional depth, the play invites audiences to reflect on their own relationships and the intricate layers that shape familial bonds. The collaborative efforts of Harmon, Cullman, Feldman, and Saralis bring a nuanced and heartfelt portrayal to the stage, making it a standout production in the contemporary theater landscape.

Final Quote:

"There is nobody like her." [10:14] – Janine Saralis on Janine Saralis' portrayal of Ellen

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Production Details:
We Had a World is currently playing at the Manhattan Theater Club's City Center Stage until May 11th, featuring performances by Joanna Gleason, Ellen Sierras, and Andrew Barth Feldman.

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This summary encapsulates the rich discussions and insights shared by the guests, providing a comprehensive overview of We Had a World for those who haven't listened to the episode.

Transcript

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[Alison Stewart]

This is all of it on wnyc. I'm Alison Stewart. The story goes that playwright Joshua Harmon secretly recorded his last conversation with his dying grandmother. That recording inspired his latest work, We Had a World, a play that shows how differently people experience the same thing. The show tells the story of a playwright named Joshua who wants to understand better the fraught relationship between his mom and her mom. At first, we learn about his grandmother's cultured life on the Upper east side. She loves taking him to museums and plays. She's a bit eccentric as a child of immigrants who grew up in Brooklyn, she weirdly talks with a British lilt. Joshua also learns that his grandma has a complicated past and some present day demonstration. His mom is a high achieving lawyer who has had a difficult relationship with her family and she's a little resentful that Joshua gets along so well with his grandma. Until a day when Grandma lets Joshua down, mom tells Joshua the truth. The truth that brings us to a gut wrenching, messy and humorous rollercoaster journey into this complex trio of grandmother, mother and son. We Had a World is a New York Times critics pick. It's running off Broadway at the Manhattan Theater Club City center stage through May 11th. It features Joanna Gleason, Ellen Sierras and my next guest, Andrew Barth Feldman, who you might recognize from dear Evan Hansen. Hi, Andrew.

[Andrew Barth Feldman]

Hi.

[Alison Stewart]

Also with us is director Trip Cullman. Hi, Trip.

[Trip Cullman]

Hello.

[Alison Stewart]

And remotely, playwright Joshua Harmon.

[Andrew Barth Feldman]

Hello.

[Alison Stewart]

Via Zoom.

[Joshua Harmon]

Hello. Thank you for having me.

[Alison Stewart]

So, Joshua, you recorded your last conversation with your grandma. What made you hit play?

[Joshua Harmon]

Is that bad?

[Alison Stewart]

Hit record, I should say.

[Joshua Harmon]

Yeah. You know, when you're a playwright, you're starting out, you're encouraged to record things, to get to hone your ear, to train your ear in terms of dialogue. And it gets to be kind of fun. And so I have found, you know, now I'm getting peppered with these questions all the time. Are you recording me? But I'm not. But it is occasionally fun to do it. And it just felt like I knew this was going to be the last time I talked to her and I wanted to make sure that I remembered what we said. So I did.

[Alison Stewart]

I hit record and what was your process of turning that into a play?

[Joshua Harmon]

You know, prior to that recording, she'd asked me on her. As, you know, it was about a month that she was sick, and she asked me to write a play about our family. And she said, I want you to promise me to make it as bitter and vitriolic as possible. In other words, giving me license to tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth. And so I wanted to honor that promise. I found her really complicated. I think I probably understand character in part because of how complicated she was. And when the pandemic hit and I had nothing to do, it felt like a good time to go through old family letters to transcribe this recording and to sit down and see if I could turn all of these things into something dramatic.

[Alison Stewart]

The play starts sort of casually. All of a sudden. Andrew, you come out from the side of the stage, singles. He's kind of ready to the crew. You strip down to your underwear.

[Andrew Barth Feldman]

Yep.

[Alison Stewart]

And the play begins. Trip. How did your team develop that as a way to start the play?

[Trip Cullman]

Well, the play is very much about a playwright trying to figure out how to write this play about his family. And, you know, I've never asked Josh this personally, but like a lot of playwrights, when they write, they're in their underwear in their privacy of their own homes. And I thought because the piece is so vulnerable and exposing of all of these sort of secrets and emotional nuances inside of this complex family dynamic, I thought it was like a kind of perfect visual metaphor to get the writer stripped down and exposed.

[Alison Stewart]

Yeah. What does the audience get from that.

[Janine Saralis]

Moment of you in your underwear?

[Andrew Barth Feldman]

Immediate intimacy, which is crucial for the rest of the show. That I'm standing there in my underwear looking at all of these people, making eye contact with them. I can see every single person in the audience every day. So it feels like a nightmare.

[Trip Cullman]

And there's also a little bit of a bait and switch, because when the grandmother character first arrives, it feels, like, dreamlike. And he's in his underwear, which is also such a trope of nightmares. And you think that there's almost romantic or sexual energy between the two of them. And then they pop out and they're like, it's your grandmother. And you're like, oh, okay, all right, we got it. We got it.

[Janine Saralis]

Joshua, can you explain to us where the title of the play came from?

[Joshua Harmon]

I can. And let the record also show that I do write dressed. I am dressed now. I think it's. You know, I wanted to try to capture something about Our. My childhood, but also something more global about the world. And it occurred to me as I was working on it that my sense of my own family and the disintegration of the idea of what it had been was happening at the same time that climate change was really taking hold. I am in my early 40s. I am of a generation that experienced winter in New York differently than people who are new here or have recently been born do now. And so it was about looking back at very small, this family, these three people, and very big. And how part of what this play is about is bearing witness and documenting something.

[Janine Saralis]

The stage is open, no curtain, not.

[Alison Stewart]

Many props, sort of in the round.

[Janine Saralis]

Andrew, as an actor, how does performing on this sort of intimate stage compare to something huge like Dear Evan Hansen.

[Andrew Barth Feldman]

Yeah, I mean, it's truly the most thrilling work I've ever done. You have to communicate these ideas differently every day because the audience is different every day. And so I find new scene partners from line to line, moment to moment. Sometimes I really lock in with somebody who's so present. Sometimes I'm taking it to a lot of people at once. Sometimes there's a friend in the audience, and so I can come sort of to home base with my friends or family that are here. There's nowhere to hide. You have to be alive. You have to be listening. Especially when you have scene partners as incredible and as present and as generous as Janine and Joanna. All you can do is listen and be sort of proverbially in your underwear the entire time.

[Janine Saralis]

Trip. What does that do for you creatively, that sort of set, very little props, no curtain?

[Trip Cullman]

Well, I always like to think that, like, what makes film and television so extraordinary is that they show you an entire world that's fully realized. And in theater, I like that an audience is required to utilize their imaginative process. And so, to me, I always like to keep a lot of blank space for the audience to have, to have that energy, that sort of creative imagination to fill in and to be a participant, because they are there. And so to me, the way which this story is told purposely asks the audience to engage with it, both from their hearts, their minds, and their creative imaginations.

[Alison Stewart]

I'm speaking with Andrew Barth Feldman, director Tripp Coleman, and playwright Joshua Harmon. We're talking about their play, We Had a World Running off Broadway at the Manhattan Theater Club, City center stage, through May 11th. Let's talk about the two women in this play. I don't know who I should say this to. Cause I have a feeling you're all gonna have something to say about this. We've got Joanna Gleason as Renee. She's part of the Broadway legends that we just finished talking about. And Janine. And pronounce her last name for me. Saralis Soralis, who plays Ellen, your mother. Andrew, I'll start with you. What do these two women bring to the stage for you as an actor?

[Andrew Barth Feldman]

Oh, my goodness. What's interesting especially is that we're all three very different actors. So we are attacking these things very differently. Joanna is so smart and so funny and she is playing. I'm watching her play in real time with words and ideas that are coming to her. That's been a massive inspiration. Not to mention the sort of acute joy that comes from all of those especially early scenes between us. This love that we get to pass between us and then through to the audience. Janine can't tell a lie. Janine cannot lie. She would crumple onto the floor if that's what was true in this moment. And that is another huge inspirational heart opening thing. Like you said, she's the one who sort of pivots the play. She's the one who takes us in a different direction from that easy adoration that Joanna and I have at the beginning. Then it's all Janine and her, just her heartbreak that she's really feeling. And there's no way to not inherit that when you're standing next to her.

[Janine Saralis]

Joshua, for you, what did Joanna and Janine bring to the roles that maybe you didn't even know that you'd written?

[Joshua Harmon]

Yeah, I mean, Joanna is in the Legends and Janine, if you know there's justice in the world, will be someday, she is. There is just nobody like her. I think I felt my obligation was to put it on the page, but I wasn't interested in impression or impersonation, so I wasn't asking them to. There was almost never a moment where I said, oh, actually she would say it like this, or could you do this? So it was about watching what they brought to these words. And I think what was surprising to me is the depth of emotion that both of them, all three of them, display and how quickly they have to ping pong between this intense pain and then, you know, life keeps going and they're moving into the next scene. And that ping pong is, I think, for an audience, really thrilling to watch.

[Janine Saralis]

Trip Ellen is such an interesting character, a complex character. She does change the pivot of the.

[Alison Stewart]

Show quite a bit.

[Janine Saralis]

When you think about her internal strugglers, what her internal struggles. What is she wrestling with in this play?

[Trip Cullman]

That's a great question. I think that she is wrestling with something that's maybe irreconcilable, which is that she inherently loves her mother. And also, no one in the whole world has caused her more pain than her mother. So how do you square that circle? How do you make sure that you don't pass on that dysfunction to your progeny, your son? How can you allow yourself to correct the mistakes that you experienced as a child growing up? Or how do you inevitably pass on dysfunction that's sort of like in our blood, in our DNA, in our emotional truths? And so I think that that's part of what she's in deep conflict around.

[Alison Stewart]

We see in the beginning of the play, the grandmother and the son, they start loving up on each other. And Ellen is sort of lingering by the side of the stage trip. Why make her visible at that point to us, the audience?

[Trip Cullman]

Well, you know, this is not in the play, but in a way, it felt very true to me that, like, again, in a play that is the structure of which is a playwright trying to organize and make sense of all of these events from the past. In a way, I think Joshua, the character, has enlisted his mom to reluctantly show up at Stage 1 of Manhattan Theater Club and participate in this sort of excavation of the past. So I wanted her to be sort of, again, in terms of conflict, she wants to be present. She wants to be there to help her child out. And yet she's not a creature of the theater. So she doesn't, you know, she doesn't feel as comfortable talking and acknowledging an audience or certainly going through reminiscences of her own past. There's a great line at some point in the play where the character says, is this just the greatest hits of the worst moments of my life? So, you know, it's both really torturous for her and also a great act of love on behalf of her son.

[Alison Stewart]

Andrew, you're from the area?

[Andrew Barth Feldman]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm from Long island, and now I'm on the Upper west side. Yeah.

[Alison Stewart]

How much of do you see of yourself in Joshua?

[Andrew Barth Feldman]

Very much and very little in the way of the actual experience. My family experience is very specific and very different. But what I do connect to is using theater to ask the question, if you do get a chance to connect with somebody that you've lost again, what is the best use of 100 minutes of that time? That's the question that I, as an actor, get to ask every single day. Through Josh's writing.

[Alison Stewart]

When you're thinking about Josh and his mom, what are their most intense disagreements about?

[Andrew Barth Feldman]

Who's got the blame?

[Janine Saralis]

Mm.

[Andrew Barth Feldman]

Who's got the blame? If you. If you ask Ellen, it's always her mother. It's always Renee. It's always Josh's grandmother. But Josh sees it as more complicated than that. And, in fact, if his mother is the one who's providing access to the problem and saying, this is. This is what it is, then Josh is saying, well, then it's your responsibility to fix it. If you're the one I get to talk to. I don't get to talk to my grandmother about her. Her disease. I get to talk to you about it. So what are you gonna do to fix this for me and for my sisters, where she sees her and just wants to shove it down and move forward and anticipate everybody else's needs and ignore her own?

[Janine Saralis]

Josh, it was interesting with the mom because for a while, you're like, oh, she's kind of the bad guy. She's the bad guy. And it takes this turn when you really. Your heart opens up to her. I was curious about your pacing when you were writing it, when to make that point to us, the audience, when you're like, oh, wait a minute. This woman has been through something.

[Joshua Harmon]

Yeah. I mean, I guess it's really a Rorschach, because I don't see her that way, but she is the. I guess the killjoy at the very top. But, you know, when you. When you. It's early in the play, when you understand what she's actually been through, what her childhood really is like, and it just causes a paradigm shift, and hopefully that's what keeps happening throughout the course of the play. Is that sort of what the play is about, but that you think you see things one way, but actually, if you look at it from this point of view or you consider it from how this person sees it, you can see it in a whole different way. It makes it very confusing, and it's very hard to hold all of those different truths in your head. I think it's probably why I wrote the play. How could this person, my grandmother, be so incredible and so awful at the same time? So cruel, and. And it's sort of an impossible task. And I think that's why I was drawn to it as a question for the play, because it is unanswerable. And that, for me, is the most exciting place to write from. When you're trying to answer a question, you know, you'll never actually be able to answer.

[Janine Saralis]

We're speaking with Andrew Barth, Trip Coleman, and Joshua Harmon. Their new play, We Had a World, is running off Broadway at the Manhattan Theatre Club's City center stage through May 11th. Joshua, tell us what Andrew brings to the role.

[Joshua Harmon]

Very little. No, you know, he.

[Janine Saralis]

We're talking about you like you're not here.

[Joshua Harmon]

He's very special. He, you know, he is able to play 30 years of this character from 5 to 35. And he is our emcee, he's our guide. He's the person who takes us through it. And so of all three of them, he has to be the most accessible to the audience and then pivot immediately into some very difficult scene and then try to lighten the situation with something funny. And then he's pulled back. And so I think Andrew is just an incredibly elastic actor. He has access to the highs and the lows and he, you know, he's pretty fearless. I think all three of them are an unjudgmental, which is essential here because they don't sit in judgment of their own characters. They do what they do. They all make mistakes. They all hurt each other at different points. And I think, like the other two women, Andrew does it fearlessly.

[Janine Saralis]

Trip, what was a decision that you had to make, preferably with Andrew, that was a little hard that you couldn't quite. Couldn't quite get right, but it was a decision that ultimately you're glad you made. Directors always make decisions. That's their job.

[Trip Cullman]

That's true. We do. You know, I hate to be sort of a cop out, but it was a truly joyful process from start to finish and one where I just felt in deep creative collaboration with all three actors from the get. And I think, you know, part of what was interesting about this particular piece with Andrew is that, like, as he mentioned earlier, the big, in some ways the most important scene partner for him didn't arrive until four weeks into the process, which is the audience. You know, so interesting. Trying to prepare to have that experience is tough because the audience isn't there. So, you know, at some point during when we got into run throughs in the room, Josh and I would invite some friends and stuff like that and put them around the room so that Andrew could start to experience what it's like to actually have to talk to people. I mean, for instance, when you do a musical theater audition, so much of the time you see an actor come in and they start singing like, above your head. And that's the opposite of what we wanted we wanted, like, if Andrew's gaze is going to align upon you, he's actually communicating to you specifically. So I think that was a really fun challenge that Andrew met the challenge of beautifully, perfectly.

[Alison Stewart]

I was gonna ask, how did it change once the audience got in the room?

[Andrew Barth Feldman]

I mean, not only did it change, it keeps changing, kind of speaking to what you said, what you guys were talking about before Alison and Joshua, that there is. There are moments that are usually moments where you see characters differently or your allegiance changes. But every single audience, sometimes they come in and they are on Janine's side from the beginning to the end. They're on Joanna's side from the beginning to the end, or my side to the beginning to the end, or they're laughing so hard at something that the audience the night before was completely silent about. This is not like nothing I've ever done before, where it's like, this is the laugh line, and we have to get it right. And this is where we make people cry, and this is where we make people gasp. The audience reacts completely differently every night. And it is a chemistry that I am fascinated by, because I don't even know how much of a role the three of us play in that. We're very different every day. But it's everybody, collectively and individually, is bringing something so different every day. And I get to do the work of being the conduit for them. That is the greatest gift for an actor in theater.

[Alison Stewart]

Were you expecting that, Joshua?

[Joshua Harmon]

You know, we had done a few readings of it, and I think what had surprised me was how. I think what I was dreading is that I would be peppered with questions after, did this really happen? Is this true? And instead, I just became kind of like a priest and took a lot of confessions. You know, people wanted to open up about their parents, their grandparents, their. And so it became clear that it was for each person a very personal experience. And I guess that's the beauty of it, right? Is that, like, you put a lot of yourself in there. There was this Joni Mitchell quote that I really held onto as I was working on this, which was that in order to strike against the nerves of other people, you have to be willing to strike against the nerves of your own life. And something about that has proven very true by being vulnerable, raw, personal. The response is that people just want to open up to you. And so I think people are watching it. I think we realized, actually about halfway through the show, people are sort of drifting away from the play in their heads, and they are starting to really process something personal, and that's exciting.

[Alison Stewart]

I've been speaking with actor Andrew Barth Feldman, Tripp Coleman, he's the director playwright Joshua Harmon. We were talking about their play We Had a World. It's running off Broadway at the Manhattan Theatre Club's City Center Stage through May. Thanks so much for being with us. We really appreciate your time.

[Andrew Barth Feldman]

Thank you for having us.

[Joshua Harmon]

Allison thank you very much.

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